3 strategies to implement during the summer
Every summer, we see the same pattern.
Many marketing teams slow down their activity, campaigns get postponed, and editorial calendars lose momentum for several weeks. However, after more than five years managing link-building strategies for clients across a wide range of industries, and working with a network of over 40,000 publishers, we’ve consistently found that summer is often one of the best times of the year to gain rankings.
Surprised? The reason is simple: while part of your competition is waiting until September to ramp things up again, you can use these months to build the authority you’ll need when it’s time to compete for the traffic peaks of the final quarter.
In 2026, this strategy makes even more sense. The growing presence of AI Overview and the increasing influence of their cited sources on user behavior mean that links acquired today can continue delivering value for months to come. Content that earns visibility not only in traditional search rankings but also in authoritative publications and informational resources can significantly impact performance across emerging search environments.
Recent studies from Ahrefs and Semrush continue to show a strong correlation between authority, mentions in relevant media, and visibility in AI-powered search results.
The question isn’t whether you should be doing link building during the summer.
The question is how to do it in a way that gives you a competitive advantage by September.
1. Strengthen the URLs that will drive business in Q4
One of the most common mistakes is using the summer months to work on secondary content or low-priority pages.
Based on our experience managing campaigns for hundreds of projects, summer should be used to strengthen the URLs that will be competing in autumn and winter.
Think about the pages that generate the most business between September and December:
- Back-to-routine topics: school, work, fitness, nutrition.
- Promotional campaigns and discounts (Black Friday, Christmas, etc.).
- Brand comparison pages for gift-related searches.
- Home improvement and renovation content.
- Off-season travel destinations.
If you know a URL will need authority in three or four months, now is the time to start building links to it.
Links rarely produce their full impact immediately. Google needs time to crawl, interpret, and consolidate those signals. That’s why projects that wait until September to launch their campaigns often find themselves behind schedule.
The strategy is straightforward: identify the five to ten most important URLs for the final stretch of the year and focus your summer investment on them.
2. Use Summer to earn mentions your competitors aren’t building
When people talk about link building, many companies still think exclusively about dofollow links.
However, the reality of SEO in 2026 looks quite different.
At Growwer, we’ve observed that the strongest strategies combine traditional backlinks with brand mentions, unlinked citations, and nofollow links from authoritative publications. Not because they pass PageRank directly, but because they help build authority signals and brand recognition that are becoming increasingly important in environments such as Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, and Perplexity.
That’s why we recommend allocating part of your summer budget to initiatives that many competitors continue to overlook:
- Securing brand mentions in industry publications, even when no link is included.
- Publishing content on authoritative websites where links are marked as nofollow.
- Increasing the frequency with which your brand is associated with key industry topics.
Research we’ve conducted at Growwer points in the same direction: for GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) strategies, unlinked citations and nofollow mentions are gaining importance because AI models evaluate contextual authority and the recurrence of mentions—not just the technical attributes of a link.
In other words, while many competitors remain focused exclusively on acquiring dofollow links, you can use the summer months to build an additional layer of authority that will be much harder to replicate once everyone resumes their campaigns in September.
3. Build topical authority, not just links
One of the clearest SEO trends we’ve seen over the past few years is Google’s growing ability to understand relationships between content, entities, and topics.
That’s why, instead of directing all your efforts toward a single page, we recommend using the summer to strengthen an entire content cluster.
For example, if you sell invoicing software, don’t focus your entire strategy solely on the main commercial page
Build links to:
- Your product page.
- Related guides and educational resources.
- Industry comparison articles.
- Customer success stories and case studies.
- Informational content that supports the broader topic.
This distribution helps create a much stronger and more consistent authority signal.
In fact, as SEO continues to evolve toward entity-based and topical-authority models, this broader approach is becoming increasingly important for improving organic visibility and increasing the likelihood of being cited in AI-generated responses.
The difference between a strategy that delivers short-term gains and one that produces sustainable results often comes down to this.
The work you do in summer pays off in autumn
The best SEO results rarely happen overnight.
The rankings you gain in October often begin taking shape in June, July, or August. Competitors who disappear during the summer leave room for others to move ahead—but only for those who continue working while everyone else waits.
That’s why, rather than looking for shortcuts, our recommendation is to use these months to strengthen the foundations of your SEO strategy: reinforce the URLs that drive revenue, secure high-quality backlinks, and build topical authority around your most important business areas.
When search demand increases after the summer, you’ll be glad you started early.
Growwer can manage the entire strategy for you
If you’d rather focus on growing your business while a specialized team handles your link-building strategy, Growwer can take care of everything.
Our managed service covers the entire process from start to finish: campaign planning, publisher selection, outreach and negotiation, content creation, and performance tracking.
We work without long-term contracts, provide complete transparency on every action, and assign a dedicated specialist who supports you throughout the entire campaign. In addition, our network of more than 40,000 media allows us to identify opportunities tailored to virtually any industry or market.
Campaigns start at €500, making it easy to begin building authority before the most competitive period of the year arrives.
If you want to enter September with a competitive advantage, now is the time to start.
