Link building as a practice isn't owned by anyone. It's a core SEO discipline that emerged organically as search engines like Google began using links as ranking signals in the late 1990s. Any business, agency, or individual can build links using ethical outreach, content creation, or relationship-building tactics. What you need to understand is that while you can earn or build backlinks, you don't own them in any legal sense. The website publishing the link controls it entirely. They can remove it, add nofollow attributes, or change the anchor text whenever they want. This is why link quality and relationship management matter more than sheer volume. A link from a site that trusts you and sees ongoing value is far more stable than one acquired through a one-time transaction. At Ottawa SEO Inc., we treat link building as collaborative asset development rather than link acquisition. When we help clients in Toronto, Montreal, or Ottawa build links, we focus on creating resources that other sites want to reference long-term—original research, local data studies, or tools that solve real problems. This approach means fewer links disappear six months later when a site does a cleanup or changes ownership. The question of ownership also touches on link buying. Paid links violate Google's guidelines because they artificially manipulate the trust signals that links represent. You might pay for placement, but Google's algorithms are designed to detect and devalue these patterns. The 2023–2024 core updates hit sites relying on purchased link networks particularly hard. If you're running an in-house SEO team, you own the strategy and execution process, but you're still dependent on external publishers. If you hire an agency, clarify who maintains those publisher relationships after the contract ends. Some agencies keep their outreach contacts proprietary, which can leave you stranded if you switch providers. We document every outreach relationship and make those connections transferable to the client because the value should stay with your business, even if the links themselves remain under someone else's control.