How can you build backlinks and check your website’s search visibility and technical foundations?

To build backlinks, start with content worth citing and collaboration with relevant websites. To check your website’s search visibility, first confirm that search engines can discover and index important pages, then address broken links, site structure, loading speed, and mobile usability. Link building and technical checks are not substitutes for each other: links from relevant, trustworthy websites may improve rankings, but even indexed pages may perform poorly because of other technical issues.

Provide content worth citing, then look for relevant link opportunities

Backlinks are links from other websites to yours. Semrush’s 2024 guide emphasizes the relevance and trustworthiness of linking sites and identifies original research, interviews, and unique insights as content that may attract citations. Here are some ways to get started:

• Publish content that is useful to your target readers and worth citing on other websites.
• Contact websites with relevant audiences, share specific content pages, and explain what information they add and why they would help readers.
• Look for broken links on relevant websites. If your content is a suitable replacement, suggest it to the site owner.
• Respond to media requests for expert commentary, or seek opportunities to be cited through case studies and announcements about genuine collaborations.

For example, when suggesting a replacement for a broken link, focus on whether your content fills the information gap rather than simply asking the other site to add your URL. These are ways to acquire links, not formulas that guarantee acceptance or higher rankings.

If important pages cannot be found in search, check indexing and potential blocks first

Yoast’s 2026 technical checklist notes that important pages must first be discovered and indexed before they have a chance to appear in search results. Use Google Search Console to check the indexing status of individual URLs. If many pages you want to appear in search are not indexed, investigate the reasons listed in the reports.

• Check whether robots.txt blocks crawlers from accessing important pages.
• Confirm whether pages intended to appear in public search results still have a noindex tag.
• Check whether URLs return 404 errors and whether internal links still point to pages that no longer exist.

New websites in particular should confirm that blocking settings used during development have not been left in place after launch. Submitting a sitemap can be part of the checking process, but you still need to investigate why pages are not indexed. Do not treat “submitted” as meaning the problem is resolved.

Technical foundations require both content accessibility and routine maintenance

A website should have clear categories and navigation, with appropriate links between related pages. Important content intended for public visibility should not be hidden behind a login wall. Next, check for broken links, excessive redirects, page loading speed, and a smooth mobile browsing experience.

Checks should not be a one-time task. According to Semrush’s 2024 guide, after major updates such as deleting pages or migrating a content management system, you should audit the site’s crawlability again to identify and address affected pages. For additional settings related to video search or AI search, first confirm your needs, then define a separate scope for those checks.