Content-led acquisition: earning references to what you publish.

Google has no guidance on building content to attract links. It does document what it wants content to be. Its helpful content guidance describes people-first content as created primarily for people, and not to manipulate search engine rankings.

A page that is useful to a real audience is also the kind another writer can cite. The guidance asks whether content shows first-hand expertise and depth of knowledge, and whether it is clear who created it and why. Those questions apply to a page we hope others will reference as much as to any other.

On the other side of the link, Google notes that linking out to cite sources can help establish trustworthiness. A writer who cites a source is doing what Google describes, which is a reasonable argument for making the source easy to cite: a clear page, a stable address and a plain, crawlable link target. Google says it can generally only crawl a link that is an <a> element with an href attribute.

Content created mainly to manipulate linking and ranking signals is named in the spam policies as an example of link spam. The test is the reason the page exists.

Google calls the "why" perhaps the most important question about content. Content should be created primarily to help people; content made primarily to attract search engine visits is, in its words, not aligned with what its systems seek to reward. For a page meant to earn references, the reason it exists is the first thing to settle. Google also says good anchor text is descriptive and relevant to the page it links to, which is easier to achieve when the page has one clear subject.

Research that nobody else has published is a clear case of content worth referencing. Google has no page on how to produce research or how research earns links, so none of that is attributed to it. What its helpful content questions do ask is whether content provides original information, reporting, research or analysis, and whether, when it draws on other sources, it avoids simply copying or rewriting them and adds substantial value and originality.

That is useful as a checklist. Is the finding new? Is the method visible enough for a reader to judge it? Does the page say what it does not show? Those are our questions, applied in the spirit of Google's, not Google's own wording.

Research also has a use after publication. Search Console's Links report shows which of your pages other sites link to most, and it describes this as a way to check that your most linked pages are the ones you expect. If a piece of research is being referenced, the report is one place the pattern may show. It includes links found over time, some of which may have gone, so it is a guide rather than an audit.

The "how" question applies too. Google says that explaining the process, such as how tests were conducted and what the results were, can build trust with readers. Research that shows its working is easier to trust, and so easier for others to cite. Where it uses other sources, citing them follows Google's advice to link out when it makes sense and to give readers context.

Calculators, free tools, templates and reference pages are a common kind of linkable asset. Google has no documentation on them as a link-building method. It does have a warning that applies. Its spam policies list keyword-rich, hidden or low-quality links embedded in widgets that are distributed across various sites as link spam, and so are widely distributed links in the footers or templates of various sites. A tool is worth publishing for the people who use it. Using it to spread links is the problem the policy describes.

A resource page also has a cost that is easy to miss: it links out, and those links age. Domains lapse, change hands and change use. Google's guidance on qualifying outbound links concerns links you publish, and the pages you publish as resources are full of them. We wrote about this in expired domains in outbound links and why one-off link audits go stale.

Google's SEO Starter Guide says that other sites linking to you happens naturally over time. We cannot say what will make a particular tool get linked, and neither does Google. If a tool or resource lets visitors add links of their own, Google recommends marking those links with ugc or nofollow.