Editorial Links: What They Are and How to Earn Them (2026)

A journalist is writing about churn benchmarks. She finds your study, quotes the number and links to it. Nobody paid her, and nobody placed the link but her. That's an editorial link, and it's the kind Google has always trusted most.

Plenty of vendors now sell "editorial links," which has blurred what the term means. This guide gets it back into focus: what counts, real examples, and eight ways to earn them on purpose. Our link building guide covers where they fit in a full SaaS strategy.

What Are Editorial Links?

An editorial link is a link that a site's editor or writer chooses to add because your page is the best source for a point they're making. You don't pay for it, and you don't place it. The editor decides whether to include it, where it goes and what the anchor text says.

Ahrefs defines an editorial link as "an organic inbound link that's not traded for, asked for, or paid for." We'd change one word of that. A link you pitched for is still editorial if the editor weighed your pitch and chose to add it. Asking isn't the same as paying.

What rules a link out is losing the editor's judgment. If the placement was bought, swapped or added by you, it isn't editorial, however the vendor labels it.

Editorial Link Examples

You'll find them wherever a writer needs to back up a point. The most common examples are a journalist citing your data, a blogger recommending your tool in a "best X" list, a trade publication quoting your founder, and a resource page listing your guide. Each one exists because the writer needed a source.

Notice what's missing: author bio links, sponsored posts, directory profiles and links you added to a forum yourself. Those can still be useful, but nobody chose them on merit.

Here are two real editorial links, both still live in October 2026.

Data citation: Screaming Frog cites an Ahrefs study

Screaming Frog's guide to enterprise SEO audits argues that backlinks still matter, then backs the point up: "a study by Ahrefs found that 96.55% of pages on the internet receive no" traffic from Google. The anchor is "study by Ahrefs" and it points straight at the research. Screaming Frog sells its own SEO software, so it had no reason to do Ahrefs a favor. The number was simply the best source.

That one study now carries dofollow links from HubSpot (DR 93), Adobe (DR 96), Salesforce (DR 92) and Neil Patel (DR 91), according to Ahrefs' backlink index. It was published once. Writers keep finding it because it ranks, and they keep linking because the number is specific.

Tool recommendation: Rank Math lists Ahrefs' free Backlink Checker

Rank Math's roundup of the best free SEO tools recommends "Ahrefs' free Backlink Checker" and links to it inside the entry. Rank Math makes an SEO plugin and owes Ahrefs nothing. It included the tool because readers can use it without paying, and Elegant Themes (DR 93) links to the same checker in its own list of free SEO tools. That's a utility link: the page earned it by being useful, not by being pitched.

Editorial Links vs Other Kinds of Links

Editorial links differ from other backlinks in who decides. In the editorial case, the site's editor decides based on merit. With paid, swapped or self-placed links, the decision is really yours or the vendor's, which is why Google trusts those links less and treats some of them as spam.

Google's spam policies define link spam as "creating links to or from a site primarily for the purpose of manipulating search rankings." An editorial citation is the opposite case: the link exists because it helps the reader. Our guide to the types of backlinks sorts 20 link types by value and risk.

If the line between an outreach-earned link and a grey hat placement feels blurry, our guide to white hat link building has a four-question test for exactly that.

How to Tell If a Link Is Editorial

A link is editorial when someone at the publication chose it on merit and nothing was paid or swapped for it. You can't see the conversation behind a link, but the page usually gives the game away. Four questions settle most cases in under two minutes.

• Is the link inside the article body, next to a claim it supports? Links in sidebars, footers, author bios or widgets are almost never editorial.
• Is it marked rel="sponsored" or sitting under a "sponsored" or "partner" label? Then it was paid for, and Google expects exactly that label.
• Would the article lose something without it? An editorial link backs up a specific point. A link bolted onto a generic sentence usually wasn't the writer's idea.
• Do other posts on the site each carry one commercial link to an unrelated business? That pattern means the site sells placements, so even a well-placed link there is suspect.

For your own links the test is simpler. If you paid the site or wrote the link into the copy yourself, it isn't editorial. If you pitched and the editor made the call, it is.

Why Editorial Links Matter for SEO and AI Search in 2026

Editorial links pass the most ranking value because they're the kind of link PageRank was designed to count: independent votes from people who chose to cite you. They're also the hardest for competitors to copy, since each one depends on a specific writer's judgment rather than a budget.

They matter for AI search too. The OppAlerts study of about 167,000 domains found that links from pages that rank in search results were the strongest single signal for AI visibility, correlating at +0.331. Editorial citations on pages people read are exactly that kind of link.

SAASY LINKS built 23 editorial backlinks, averaging DR 61, for an email marketing SaaS over three months. The client's AI citation count went from 1, on Perplexity only, to 9 across four AI platforms.

The Editorial Pull Model: Why Editors Link

The Editorial Pull Model says editors link to a page for one of four reasons: proof (a number to cite), utility (something readers can use), authority (a voice worth quoting) or timeliness (a reason to write now). Pages with at least one strong pull earn links. Pages with none rarely do.

The model is most useful before you pitch. Look at the page you want links to and ask which pull it has. A product page usually has none, which is why nobody links to it no matter how many emails you send. A benchmark report built from your product data has proof and, if you publish it yearly, timeliness.

Two pulls beat one. A free tool (utility) launched with data on how people use it (proof) gives writers both something to recommend and something to quote. That combination is behind most of the linkable assets that keep earning links for years.

How to Earn Editorial Links: 8 Methods

The fastest routes to editorial links are original data, free tools, listicle outreach and expert commentary, because each gives an editor a clear reason to link. The slower routes, like evergreen guides and relationships with writers, compound over time. Most SaaS teams get the best results running two or three methods at once.

Publish original data

Surveys, benchmarks and anonymized product data give journalists a number to cite. Put the headline finding in a short, quotable sentence near the top of the page, then send it to the five to ten writers who covered the topic most recently.

Build free tools and templates

Calculators, checkers and templates keep earning links because writers recommend them long after launch. Our guide to linkable assets covers nine formats and how to pick one worth building.

Get into "best X" listicles

Comparison articles in your category already rank and already reach buyers. Pitch the author with a reason to include you. SAASY LINKS' analysis of 200+ listicle placements found pages featured in three or more "best of" lists saw an average 47% organic traffic increase within 90 days. Our listicle placements for SaaS service handles this outreach.

Offer expert commentary

Writers need quotes from people with real experience. Respond to requests on platforms like Qwoted and Featured within an hour, keep answers under 150 words and include one specific number or example the writer can't get elsewhere.

Run digital PR campaigns

A campaign built around one strong story, such as a survey with a surprising result, can land links from several publications in a week. Our comparison of link building vs digital PR explains when a PR campaign is worth its higher cost per link.

Convert unlinked mentions

When a publication names your product without linking, the editor has already made the editorial decision to write about you. Asking for the link is a small follow-up. Our guide to unlinked brand mentions shows how to find them.

Keep evergreen guides current

Writers link to the clearest explanation of a concept, and they check the date. A guide that's refreshed every year keeps collecting citations while outdated competitors lose them.

Build relationships with writers

Follow the five to ten writers who cover your space, share their work and send them useful data before you ever ask for anything. Editors link more readily to sources they already know and trust.

What Makes a Good Editorial Website?

A good editorial website has real editors who reject pitches, named authors, steady organic traffic and outbound links that point only where they help readers. Those are the sites where an editorial link carries weight. A site that publishes anything for a fee has no editorial standards, whatever its Domain Rating says.

Most sites that sell guest posts fail that test. BuzzStream's 2026 study of 257,267 guest post sites classed 96.2% of them as low quality, and 39.6% had no organic traffic at all.

Checking a site takes about five minutes. Open its last ten articles and look for named authors with real bios. Check organic traffic in Ahrefs or Semrush over the past year, since a sharp drop often means Google has already discounted it. Then look at who else it links to: if every post carries one commercial link to an unrelated business, the site is selling placements.

One quick rule: ignore sites with more than 25 outbound links per page. At that point you're looking at a link farm that happens to have some real content, and any editorial signal is diluted to nothing.

Can You Buy Editorial Links?

Not really. A link you buy isn't editorial, because the payment replaces the editor's judgment. Most "editorial link packages" are paid placements on sites that sell to anyone. What you can pay for is the work that earns them, like data, content and outreach. Our guide on how to buy backlinks explains where that line sits.

But "editorial" has become a sales label, so it's worth knowing the tells. A vendor offering a fixed menu of sites with prices next to each one is selling placements. So is anyone guaranteeing a set number of "editorial links" per month on named domains, because no real editor commits to that in advance. Buying these packages gets you links on sites that sell to everyone, which is exactly the pattern Google's SpamBrain is built to discount.

That's the model behind our editorial link building service: we research, write and pitch, and editors decide. Every live URL is shared with you before it's billed.