What is a live link in SEO? Indexes Ahrefs has

A live link in SEO is a backlink added to partner sources. It can be a text or graphic. We name the link live when it is visible to everyone. However, there are many cases when people use the live link in other contexts. Here are some other cases when people use the expression “live link”:

• When the developer publishes any page on the site, they say “the link is live.”
• When you send emails and insert a link in them. If it is pointing to some URL, people say the link is live
• When you send a document for temporary use, and people say the link is live until some date.

Types of backlinks in SEO

Internal backlinks

These are links that direct to the internal pages. I think you have noticed it many times on platforms like Wikipedia. Internal live links should always be dofollow.

Inbound backlinks

There are live links that go outside of the website. External live links can be nofollow or dofollow. Do follow the links that are about linky juice. No follow links can be promoted or naturally added by any website who do not want to give the power of the backlink.

Outbound backlinks

Outbound backlinks are backlinks from your website that go to another website. Here again, the link can be nofollow or dofollow. When you add the link, like dofollow, you are signaling that it is a source you rely on or you took the information from them. Additionally, it is a very helpful thing for UI/UX.

What should be the status of a live link?

If we say the link is live, technically, it should be:

• Active.
• Not broken or removed.
• Not redirected.
• Indexed
• Clickable

How to check if the link is live or not?

Easy 2 steps we use to check if the link is live or not, if it is live but not visible:

Step 1: Ctrl + U

You will see the HTML code of the page.

Ste2: CTRL+F

Search for your URL or domain name that should be added.

Alternative ways

Alternative ways to check whether the link is live or not are with backlinks management tools like Ahrefs.

• If you buy external dofollow backlinks, these types of links will help your pages rank on Google. Make sure to avoid PBN backlinks.
• Internal dofollow backlinks will connect your relevant pages and will help your pages always be indexed.
• Nofollow external live links can help you create a natural backlink portfolio and gather traffic for your target source.

To measure the effect of live links, you should track

• Your traffic
• Google positioning
• Indexed pages
• Service or product sales

We love the sentence ” Your link is live” as this helps complete the plan of our monthly link building service. However, after this message, we check the page where the link was added. It can be done manually or with backlink monitoring tools.

In some cases, we get a message that the link is live, but after our manual checking, we identify that it is not live. Here are all the points we noticed when the link is technically live but not really:

• link inside a <div style=”display: none”>: This can be a manipulative link, so you should avoid this type of link.
• Javarendered links: These links may not be seen by Search engines, you should check with a URL inspection tool
• CMS issues: Companies that have their own custom CMS can have bugs in their code. Sometimes they add the link, they see that, but others don’t.
• Cache: When you first enter the URL, it is kept in your browser history. So you should clean your cache, or just try to update the page with CTRL+R.
• Draft content: Sometimes, editors did not save or keep the content in the draft. Just random.

There are 3 points I can mention here.

1. The link exists in the noindex tag page. The link works as a UI/UX feature.

2. The link is nofollow. This is the question that can be discussed as the links of nofollow nowadays have a good impact on a clear backlink portfolio. The website with full dofollow backlinks can be manipulative and promotional. However, it is said that dofollow backlinks are very effective.

3. Links in the widget, plugins, or iframes: People who use WordPress know that there are some educational articles that WordPress or plugins can suggest to better use their tools. So that links cannot be visible. Technically live but not visible.

There are many factors to consider when deciding whether to outsource link building. Your concern is about whether the links added today will be live in a year or more. Of course, when you outsource link building, you do not manage the process, and you do not know with whom the editors speak. Honestly, there are no specialists who can guarantee with 100% that the links will be live for a long time. People are changing their blogs, articles, and in the process, your link can be deleted for many reasons. Reasons can be like new content relevancy with the target page that they added, not good fit anchor texts, and many more. However, to check whether link building agency can add backlinks for you and keep them for a long time.

Ask Backlink Examples

I can advise you to ask for samples of the backlinks they got for their clients and check when they added that link and how long it has been live on the website.

Request Case Studies

Requesting link building case studies can help you understand which companies they worked for and check whether their clients have lost many backlinks or not.

According to Ahrefs, At Least 66.5% of Links to Sites in the Last 9 Years Are Dead. Our clients always ask us whether the links we will add will always be live. It is not a thing that link builders can guarantee; however, using the best strategies will help to decrease the number of deleted links.

• Broken Link Building: Broken link building is a strategy of earning backlinks from the pages that are broken. As you find problematic pages in external sites, editors like it as you helped them to recover the pages with quality content.
• Free Link Exchanges: Free Link exchanges prevent deleting your links as the cooperation is mutual. Of course, it is not about the direct exchanges, as it is again Google’s policy.
• Haro Link Building: Haro link building is a great strategy, as you can get backlinks from sources like Forbes. Of course, this type of website will never delete your link if you appear yet.
• Contextual link building: Contextual link building is a strategy to earn relevant and contextual backlinks. In case your link is relevant, the editors of the site will not delete your link, as it also helps their readers get more information.

There are 3 types of indexes you can notice in Ahrefs’ site explorer.  These indices help SEOs to identify existing live backlinks of their website and find lost backlinks.

Live Links

This includes only “live” backlinks Ahrefs found and crawled. Always updated the date of recrawling. Ahrefs always recrawls the page, and after recrawling it, it can change the index status or keep it in the “live link” section.

Recent Links

Recent links consist of backlinks that are “live” and backlinks that were “live” (the last 3-4 months) but are now lost. Here can be some reasons not to be found, or just the link is deleted or hidden.

Historical links

Historical links are links that were “live” but are not today. Historical links are a whole data Ahrefs found you have links from.

Live links in SEO are backlinks that are active and work as a referral traffic channel, and help to signal to Google that you are a trustworthy source. The risks of nowadays live links are that the links can be deleted for many reasons. When you outsource link building, you should carefully look at the portfolio of the link building agency and get a guarantee that they will manage the backlinks.