An editorial link is a backlink another website gives to your page because your content is useful, trustworthy, or worth citing, not because you paid for it or traded for it. In SEO, editorial links are valuable because they are earned naturally and often come from relevant, authoritative pages.
Why an editorial link matters for SEO
Editorial links can improve rankings, visibility, and referral traffic because search engines treat them as stronger signals of trust than many manually placed links. When a publisher, blogger, journalist, or industry site chooses to reference your page on its own, that link suggests your content helped answer a question, support a claim, or add context.
For beginners and in-house teams, editorial links matter for three practical reasons:
- They can strengthen your domain’s overall authority over time.
- They often send qualified visitors who already care about your topic.
- They are more sustainable than shortcuts like low-quality link buying or mass directory submissions.
What makes a link truly editorial
It is placed by the publisher’s choice
The linking site decides to include your page because it improves their content. You did not control the anchor text, placement, or decision.
It comes from relevant content
A strong editorial link usually appears inside a page closely related to your topic. Relevance often matters as much as authority.
It adds value for readers
The best editorial links point to original research, useful guides, tools, statistics, templates, or clear explanations that help the audience.
Practical example of an editorial link
Imagine your company publishes a beginner-friendly guide called “How to Do a Content Audit for SEO” with a downloadable checklist. A marketing blog writes an article about improving old website content and links to your checklist as a recommended resource. That is an editorial link because the editor chose your page to help readers take action.
By contrast, if you paid for the mention or inserted the link yourself in a guest author bio, it would not usually be considered a true editorial link.
How to earn more editorial links
- Create link-worthy assets such as tutorials, original data, glossaries, templates, and free tools.
- Publish pages that answer specific questions better than existing results.
- Use digital PR and outreach to show relevant writers your most useful resources.
- Refresh outdated content so it stays accurate enough to cite.
- Build topical authority by covering a subject deeply, not with one-off posts.
If you want more editorial links, focus less on asking for links directly and more on publishing pages people genuinely want to reference.