Editorial links: what counts as one and how to earn them

Editorial links are links a writer or editor places by choice because your content earned them. You earn them by giving publishers original data and expert sources worth citing, with nothing exchanged.

These links matter offsite, meaning in content about your brand on sites you don't own. Editorial links earn mentions and citations on the third-party sites AI answers draw on. A mention is an AI answer naming your brand, with or without a link.

A citation is an AI answer linking to or footnoting a page as a source. Platforms like AirOps track which third-party pages AI engines cite for your category prompts. Those cited pages are where a placement carries the most weight.

A placement is a published link or mention of your brand on a third-party site. The sections below define an editorial link, then cover paid gray zones, earning tactics, and measurement.

What is an editorial link?

Editorial links are links a writer or editor adds by choice, with no compensation. Google's spam policies don't define the term, so use this working definition.

Editorial backlinks share four traits, and each one has to hold for the link to count:

• The publisher asked for nothing in return.
• An editor or writer at the publication made the call.
• The link supports a point in the surrounding content.
• No sponsorship or link swap sits behind it.

Control is the dividing line. A bought link puts you or a vendor in charge of the placement. An earned link leaves that decision with the publisher.

Here is what editorial links look like in practice:

• A journalist cites your survey of [number] buyers and links the methodology page.
• A roundup author links your guide as the clearest explainer on a topic.
• A reporter quotes your in-house expert and links the source page.

The table below sorts common link types by who decides and who pays. Use it as a quick reference when you review a backlink report.

A followed link is one signal among several in AI search. Aleyda Solis, founder of Orainti, says authority signals are shifting from backlinks toward mentions, citations, and entity-based trust. Count the editorial mention as the asset and the link as a bonus.

The page around the link matters too. Our guide to getting cited in AI Overviews covers the page side of the picture.

What counts as editorial and what doesn't

A link counts as editorial when the publisher chose it and nothing changed hands. Links that only look editorial are the harder call, so run each one through these four questions.

A nofollow attribute doesn't make a link less editorial. Google has treated nofollow, sponsored, and ugc attributes as hints since its 2019 nofollow update.

Guest posts sit in a gray zone. Google's link spam policies list optimized anchor text in articles, guest posts, or press releases distributed on other sites. The same policies flag advertorials where payment buys links that pass ranking credit. In our view, an unpaid guest post with a natural, relevant link stays much closer to editorial.

Link insertions are paid by default. A site owner edits an old article and adds your link for a fee. That makes it a paid link, whatever the vendor calls it.

Some paid offers borrow editorial language to look safer. Many lean on DA or DR, meaning Moz's Domain Authority or Ahrefs' Domain Rating. Both are third-party link-profile scores, and neither is a Google metric.

Watch for these red flags in any offer labeled editorial:

• A published price list for placements.
• A guaranteed DA or DR score, such as "DA 70 guaranteed."
• The same writers bylined across unrelated sites.
• A sponsored label stripped from the final post.

Can you buy editorial links?

No, you can't buy editorial links. Once money changes hands, the link is a paid link.

Google's spam policies treat buying or selling links for ranking purposes as link spam. Google's guide to qualifying outbound links asks you to mark paid links with rel="sponsored". rel="nofollow" is also acceptable.

Read any vendor package sold as editorial as a paid placement offer. The figures below come from BuzzStream, a company that sells outreach software. They reflect marketplace listings and self-reported surveys.

BuzzStream's own pricing guide quotes higher per-link rates for digital PR than its survey average.

Quality is the bigger problem with bought links. The same insertion study rated 97.5% of insertion sellers in its quality sample as low quality. BuzzStream's 2026 survey found about 80% of digital PR practitioners never buy links.

Treat paid placements as unproven for AI visibility until you see them cited. Ask one question of any link-building provider: do AI models cite their links? A placement no model cites adds cost and no AI visibility.

Favor earned coverage you can track over a purchased slot.

"I much prefer that people work with PR agencies that are getting visibility versus buying links," says Eli Schwartz, author of Product-Led SEO.

A bought link comes with no proof that any model cites it. An agency that earns coverage hands you mentions you can track in AI answers.

Eli Schwartz, author of Product-Led SEO, explains why visibility beats bought links in the recording below.

Label sponsored posts as sponsored, and keep them out of your editorial count.

How do you earn editorial backlinks?

You earn editorial backlinks by giving publishers something worth citing and making it easy to find. These seven tactics form a working editorial link building plan.

1. Start from the pages AI engines already cite.
2. Publish original data journalists can cite.
3. Become a source journalists can quote.
4. Refresh outdated stats on cited articles.
5. Run small, targeted outreach.
6. Reclaim unlinked mentions.
7. Build relationships with editors in the long tail.

Pick two or three tactics to start. Pair them with the link building tools that fit your workflow.

Start from the pages AI engines already cite

Run your category prompts in AI search and record every cited source. That list becomes your target set.

Josh Grant, former VP of Growth at Webflow, advises targeting the sources models already cite in your category. Build your outreach list from those sources first.

• Note the date each cited page was last updated.
• Rank citation domains by their share of total citations.
• Prioritize cited pages that name competitors and leave you out.

Publish original data journalists can cite

Original data gives a writer a fact nobody else has. BuzzStream's State of Digital PR found 95.9% of practitioners pitch data-led content.

Survey your customers or analyze anonymized product data. Publish the methodology so writers can check your numbers before they link.

Kevin Indig, author of the Growth Memo, recommends digital PR and data-driven stories to earn brand mentions.

Become a source journalists can quote

Vince Nero, Director of Content Marketing at BuzzStream, advises offering journalists access to expert sources. Offer your in-house experts for calls, and make their credentials easy to verify.

Refresh outdated stats on cited articles

Cited articles go stale, and their authors know it. Email the author and flag 2 or 3 outdated data points. Then hand over current pricing or a fresh stat.

You do part of the editor's job for them. The update is your opening to join a page AI engines already cite.

Run small, targeted outreach

Relevance decides whether a pitch gets read at all. Cision's 2026 State of the Media found 72% of journalists call under a quarter of pitches relevant. The survey covered 1,899 journalists in 19 markets.

• Keep each list small enough to personalize every pitch.
• Find writers who covered the same topic in the past year.
• Read each writer's bio and recent articles before you pitch.

Reclaim unlinked mentions

Search for mentions of your brand that carry no link. Ask the writer to link the source page you would cite yourself.

An unlinked mention already counts as an editorial mention. The link makes the reference easy to verify for readers and crawlers.

Keep the request short and specific. Name the article and the exact page you want linked.

Build relationships with editors in the long tail

Keep smaller, topic-specific sites on your list. The AirOps fan-out report found no positive correlation between DA and AI citations. Treat domain authority as a secondary filter for your target list.

Smaller publications give you room to build a working relationship with one editor. Send useful data first, and ask for a link only when it fits their next piece.

How editorial links relate to AI mentions and how to measure them

A 2026 arXiv preprint studied AI citations about 128 mostly European brands. In its Nordic-Baltic subset of 131,514 citations, 85.7% pointed to sites the brand doesn't own. Track mention rate and citation rate as two separate numbers.

Mention rate is the share of tracked prompts where AI answers name your brand. Citation rate is the share where AI answers cite your own pages.

AI engines lean heavily on third-party sources, and that pattern fits the value of earned coverage. It does not prove that a link causes a mention.

Authority metrics tell you little about AI citations. The same fan-out report found backlinks showed no positive correlation with AI citations either.

Links still count for classic rankings. Google's ranking systems guide says PageRank, its link analysis system, remains part of its core ranking systems. Judge each link on ranking value and AI visibility separately.

Judge single placements first. Give topic-level results a longer window before you decide on a program. BuzzStream's 2026 survey of 150+ practitioners found 85.2% say digital PR results take no more than six months.

Your prompt set shapes every number you report:

• Branded prompts already name you, so the answer names you too. Track category prompts to see real visibility.
• Group prompts by topic so you can see which topics move.

Pew Research Center found Google users clicked a result in 8% of AI-summary visits, versus 15% without. The study tracked 900 US adults in March 2025. Analytics only sees the click, so add a "where did you hear about us?" field to capture the rest.

Crystal Carter, Head of AI Search & SEO Communications at Wix, recommends auditing which backlink partners AI answers cite. Shift effort away from partners that never appear.

Use the table below to match each metric to what moves it.

What to do next with editorial links

1. Run [number] category prompts in AI search and log every cited third-party page.
2. Audit your backlink report and pull paid placements out of your editorial count.
3. Choose one original data asset you can publish this quarter.
4. Email the authors of two cited articles with corrected stats and a fresh source.
5. Set baselines for mention rate and citation rate before your next placement goes live.

AirOps for editorial link building

Your editorial link building target list starts with the pages AI engines already cite. AirOps Analytics tracks AI search visibility and SEO performance side by side: citations, mention rate, and share of voice. Share of voice is your brand's portion of mentions against competitors across tracked prompts.

AirOps External Content builds and earns presence across the third-party sources AI agents already trust. It runs as a managed service: the AirOps team brings the strategy, measurement, and execution. The team reports mention rate and citation rate as separate results.

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