Linkbuilding in the LATAM Market: Current State and Challenges

The question driving this article is straightforward: how is linkbuilding practiced, purchased, and evaluated in Latin America's Spanish-speaking markets today? Sources consulted include official Google documentation, four quantitative studies published between 2022 and 2025, public statements from specialists in both English and Spanish, and coverage from industry publications such as Search Engine Journal and Semrush Blog. Where data is more than three years old, that is explicitly noted.

Why the Linkbuilding Debate in LATAM Matters Right Now

The SEO ecosystem in Latin America underwent rapid transformation between 2022 and 2025. Internet penetration in the region exceeded 75% in countries such as Argentina, Chile, and Colombia, according to data from the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), expanding the universe of sites with the potential to receive and generate organic traffic. At the same time, the maturation of regional e-commerce — accelerated during the pandemic — prompted mid-size and large companies to invest in technical and off-page SEO for the first time.

In that context, linkbuilding evolved from a practice reserved for specialized agencies into a service in demand across sectors as varied as fintech, retail, digital health, and native media. But that maturation was not uniform. Between Mexico, which has the largest Spanish-speaking digital ecosystem in the region, and markets such as Peru or Bolivia, the sophistication gap is significant.

Adding to this is an external catalyst: Google's algorithm updates over the past two years — particularly the Helpful Content Update and successive revisions to the link spam algorithm — changed the conditions under which backlinks have an effect. Understanding how the Latin American market responds to those changes is the core of this analysis.

What Google Says About Links in Its Recent Update Cycle

Google's official position on links has not changed structurally, but its nuances have. In the Google Search Essentials documentation (updated in 2023), the company reiterates that links are one of the factors it uses to assess a page's relevance and authority, but makes clear that their relative weight varies by niche and query type.

In an interview published by Search Engine Roundtable in April 2023, Gary Illyes noted that links had become "less important" than they were several years ago, referring to Google's work diversifying quality signals. The statement sparked immediate debate in the SEO community because it did not specify which types of searches or verticals were affected by that reduced weight.

Separately, in his appearance on the Search Off the Record podcast (episode published in 2022), John Mueller reiterated that the editorial quality of the linking site remains more relevant than the number of referring domains. This position has been consistent with what Google has communicated since at least 2019.

The direct implication for LATAM is that the model of high-volume, low-cost linkbuilding — widespread in the region due to the availability of inexpensive sites — faces a growing risk of either manual penalties or, more commonly, algorithmic irrelevance: the links exist but do not move rankings.

What Quantitative Studies Say About the State of Linkbuilding

Four pieces of quantitative research provide relevant data for this analysis.

Ahrefs Study on Referring Domains and Authority

Ahrefs published a correlation analysis on its blog in 2023 examining the relationship between Domain Rating (DR) and Google rankings across millions of keywords. The main finding was that sites with a higher number of unique referring domains tended to rank better, but that the correlation weakened in niches with high commercial intent when backlinks came from sites with low topical relevance. This distinction — topical relevance over volume — is particularly important for markets like LATAM, where the inventory of high-DR sites in Spanish is considerably smaller than in English.

Semrush Report on SEO in Emerging Markets

The Semrush State of Search included data on SEO behavior in Spanish-speaking markets. Among the relevant findings: Spanish-language sites with active linkbuilding strategies showed backlink profiles with less referring domain diversity compared to their English-language counterparts, suggesting lower sophistication in acquisition. In addition, the percentage of nofollow links in LATAM site profiles was higher than the global average — a trend the report attributes to the proliferation of improperly configured sponsored posts.

Backlinko Analysis of Ranking Factors (2020, dated)

Backlinko's ranking factors study, published in 2020, continues to be cited in linkbuilding discussions. Its data indicated that the number of unique referring domains was one of the factors with the highest correlation to top rankings. However, given that it is more than three years old and that Google's algorithms have changed substantially since then, its conclusions should be treated as historical reference rather than current evidence.

Authority Hacker Report on Linkbuilding ROI

Authority Hacker published a 2024 survey of more than 800 SEO professionals on linkbuilding practices and perceived ROI. Sixty-eight percent of respondents indicated that linkbuilding remained the off-page tactic with the greatest perceived impact on rankings, though 41% reported difficulty measuring that impact directly. The report did not break down data by market, but the general trends are consistent with what is observed in local conversations and surveys across LATAM.

For a deeper look at the specific metrics regional agencies use when evaluating their campaigns, the Study: Most-Used Backlink Metrics by SEO Agencies in LATAM provides first-hand data on the local market.

What Specialists Say: Industry Voices

An analysis of public statements from specialists reveals points of consensus and tension that quantitative studies do not capture.

International Perspective

Lily Ray, Senior Director of SEO at Amsive Digital and widely recognized for her work on E-E-A-T, argued at a Brighton SEO presentation that linkbuilding without genuine editorial authority signals is increasingly ineffective: "Google has a greater capacity to evaluate whether the site that's linking actually has real credibility on the topic, not just high domain metrics." This is directly relevant to LATAM, where part of the site inventory used for linkbuilding in the region carries high DR but low editorial authority within its niches.

Cyrus Shepard, founder of Zyppy SEO, published a 2023 analysis on his personal blog on the relationship between topical relevance and link value, arguing that a link from a DR 40 site with high topical relevance can outperform one from a DR 70 site with no clear topical connection. This argument has direct implications for how media inventories in LATAM should be built.

Hispanic and Regional Perspective

Fernando Angulo, Head of Communications at Semrush and one of the most active Spanish-speaking voices in disseminating SEO content in Spanish, has noted at multiple editions of events such as SEMrush Academy Live that the Latin American market is at a transition point: "The larger companies already understand that linkbuilding isn't about buying links in directories, but there's a huge mass of small and mid-size businesses still operating with a 2015 mindset." That statement dates from 2023 and remains an accurate description of the current state.

Within the Argentine SEO community, specialists active in local forums and events have documented a growing trend over the past two years toward purchasing links in native digital media, partially replacing the low-quality directories and blogs that dominated the market five years ago. This evolution is also visible in markets such as Colombia and Chile.

In Mexico, the region's largest market, sophistication is higher. Agencies with established operations work with verified media inventories and apply criteria based on topical relevance and real organic traffic — not just domain metrics. The article Linkbuilding in Mexico: Market, Opportunities, and Relevant Media covers that reality in greater depth.

Points of Agreement Across Sources

Cross-referencing the sources reveals several points of consensus that hold regardless of their origin:

• Topical relevance outweighs raw volume. Google, specialists, and recent studies all agree that a backlink profile with fewer but more topically aligned domains is preferable to a high-volume, generic one.
• An excess of nofollow links does not build authority. While nofollow links serve a function in a backlink profile for naturalness, a high percentage of nofollow — a trend detected across LATAM — limits the impact on rankings.
• The editorial quality of the linking site matters. Google's ability to read genuine authority signals goes beyond DR or DA: the linking site's publication history, the presence of identifiable authors, and its organic traffic are signals that specialists recommend evaluating.
• High-volume, low-cost linkbuilding has an increasingly short shelf life. Not because Google always penalizes it explicitly, but because its impact fades or disappears with successive spam algorithm updates.

"The problem isn't that linkbuilding has lost relevance; the problem is that cheap linkbuilding never had the relevance it was credited with. The Latin American market is learning that distinction more slowly than other markets."

Points of Disagreement: Where Sources Contradict Each Other

Not all positions converge. There are three areas of disagreement worth naming precisely.

How Much Has the Weight of Links Actually Declined?

Gary Illyes's 2023 statement about links being a "less important" signal has no published quantitative counterpart. Correlation studies from Ahrefs and Semrush continue to show an association between the quantity and quality of referring domains and rankings. The discrepancy can be explained in several ways: the relative weight declined but remains significant; the decline is niche-dependent; or correlation studies fail to capture true causality. The debate remains unresolved in the specialist literature.

Sponsored Links: Dofollow or Nofollow?

Google is explicit in its guidelines for qualifying outbound links: paid links must be tagged with the sponsored or nofollow attribute. However, the widespread practice in the Latin American market — including publications on sites with real traffic — is to publish dofollow links without disclosure. Specialists with conservative positions recommend following the guidelines; others argue that the risk of a manual penalty in lower-volume markets is low when links come from editorially sound sites. This is one of the most visible tensions between technical policy and market practice in LATAM.

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