10 Best Ways To Get Backlinks For Your Site In 2026

Here are some steps you can take to get backlinks. Though none of these are easy, they are some of the best approaches to the process. However, they do differ from some of the best link building strategies and tricks specifically, as though there is some overlap, link building is a process exclusively consisting of outreach for links.

1: Create Linkable Assets:

 

Quality triumphs over all for search engines 

Search engines value original and people-first content that is beneficial to users above all else, and they help such content earn backlinks by increasing its visibility. More importantly, you fill a hole or provide an ailment to those within your niche, making your content incredibly citable and useful. Though creating such content is a lot easier said than done, it is what search engines prefer over any other method of getting backlinks.  

You can create such content in the form of:

• Original Data: Run a study, statistical analysis or deep research into a topic within your industry, and present your findings. Given its originality and usefulness, it could catch the eyes of search engines and start earning you backlinks from those using you as a source.
• Helpful Tools: Building a program/tool which acts as a shortcut for those in your industry or that fixes up quality of life issues to lessen workload is immediately in demand. People could potentially flock to your page just to use your new handy tool, and may even spread the word, giving you valuable backlinks.  
• Captivating Articles: Creating an article that’s helpful in any form for your niche, whether that be a listicle roundup or a professional essay, can be used as a source and turn into a magnet for backlinks. 
• Video/Podcast Production: Your content doesn’t have to just be in textual form. If possible, you can make something like an intuitive and educational video or podcast. After making such content, you can simply post it to your webpage, and earn backlinks if those videos get referenced via links. 

Now, what even counts as quality content? There’s some variance, but the answer is usually original and helpful content. For example, Google still operates on their principles of E-E-A-T, which stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. This entails that you provide users with professional experience and competence, as well as being a trustworthy and reputable source of information yourself. Even with the many changes in recent years, that expectation of quality remains. 

2: Guest Posts

 

Guest posting is the procedure of making content for a site that isn’t your own.

In the case of link building, you want to guest post in order to earn a backlink. While websites are constantly working in order to execute consistent content output, they become desperate for fresh, quality content. This is where you step in, as though your work will be placed on a page not your own, the authority that will be passed on and the potential referral traffic you’ll receive via the backlinks will make your work worth its weight in gold. 

To guest post for backlinks, you should:

• Find Site For Guest Posting: You can find guest posts by searching through site directories, or by analyzing competitors, and using certain search queries such as

• • [your industry] + “write for us”
  • [your industry] + “guest posting”
  • [your industry] + “become a contributor”
  • [your industry] + “article submission”

• Make Your Pitch: After contacting web owners, suggest your guest post idea and explain how it will provide the host site value. 
• Create a Quality Guest Post: If accepted, write a proper article that will prove your capabilities and provide a fresh perspective for the host site’s audience.
• Add Your Backlink: Provide the link to your own site in the guest post and reap your rewards. 

3: Invest In Networking

Your connections can define you, especially if you want to get quality backlinks. 

Conducting cold outreach for backlinks is difficult, and oftentimes you’ll be met with rejections. Backlinks are valuable, and the top pages don’t like handing them out willy-nilly. However, if you’re already on good terms with an authoritative website’s ownership, it becomes a lot easier to ask for a backlink. 

To build strong relationships for getting backlinks, you should:

• Find Appropriate Partners: In order for the backlink to be worth it in the first place, you should be talking with people working in your industry with reputable websites.
  You can find these people by looking through “about us” sections on those reputable websites, and locating the editors, authors and SEO specialists who are responsible for site content. 

• Provide Value First: Help out first before asking for something in return. This can be done by making a genuine suggestion for a fix, sharing your potential partner’s content, or pointing out the existence of a broken link. These don’t take much effort to do, but small steps go a long way for a potential strong partnership

• Collaborate: Work on win-win joint projects, appear on their website as a guest or do just about anything that builds trust between two parties. Furthermore, If you collaborate on certain projects, you’ll probably automatically receive a backlink as a citation. 

• Interact On Social Media: Share or interact positively to your potential partners’ work to leave the impression that you’re constantly supporting them. Once more, these are small gestures that leave a lasting impression.

• Maintain Connection: Make sure not to lose the connection you’ve formed. Though you shouldn’t go through a binary procedure to make sure that you keep connected, you still should interact every once in a while so the relationship doesn’t become stale. 

After you realize that your partnership is in a good spot, asking for a backlink or doing some sort of minor exchange with your connections is a reasonable next step. Make sure that the sites and owners you’re building your relationship with have sites that are truly valuable. If not, your links won’t be either. 

4: Add Links To Unlinked Brand Mentions

Unlinked brand mentions are direct references to your company name without a backlink attached. According to Ahrefs, in their group of 558 analyzed sites, 29% of them contained some sort of an unlinked brand mention. Such mentions are often found in listicles, comparison or alternative articles which provide a catalogue of organizations. If you’re able to find these unlinked citations, it’ll likely be easy to add a hyperlink to them, since the web owners have already added your name to the page. 

To find unlinked brand mentions, you should:

• Manually Search Brand Name: By searching up your company name in search engines or on social media, you’ll find content with your brand mentions. Though a bit time consuming, this process ensures that you know where exactly these mentions are placed. 
• Use Automated Tools: There are plenty of online tools on the market such as Ahrefs’ brand tracker which scour the web and discover these brand mentions for you. If you’re serious about getting backlinks, investing in these tools for a short period of time can be useful. 

5: Fix Broken Links

Websites and search engines go through updates and changes all the time, and other times pages just get old and disappear. As a result, plenty of hyperlinked content gets lost in the shuffle. According to TripleChecker, roughly 68% of their analyzed websites contained at least one broken link. 404 errors often go unnoticed and unchanged, causing issues right under the noses of plenty of websites. What you can do is broken link building, which requires you to replace that obsolete hyperlinked content with your own, and get a quality backlink. 

To find and fix broken links, you should:

• Choose Websites: See which websites within your industry will actually be beneficial if you get a backlink from them. Try to form a large list of potential hosts to maximize potential.
• Find Broken Links: To actually find these broken links, you can go ahead with two approaches:
• Manually Finding Broken Links: Scour through the webpage and press on every link you can find. Try to go through older articles that haven’t seen updates. 
• Find Broken Links With SEO Tools: Tools provided by sites like Ahrefs and Semrush allow you to analyze a page’s backlink profile, and gives you an automated signal for 404 links.
• Understand What Content Was Present: Using a tool like the WaybackMachine allows you to check a page’s history and understand what content was present. This way, you’ll tailor your content to what the host website wanted there to be initially.
• Create Content: If you don’t already have a suitable replacement, create the content that will take the old link’s place. Make sure you’re providing some sort of value with the content created, and try to improve upon what the old link had.
• Pitch Your Replacement: Contact site owners and point out their broken link. Then, suggest adding your own content as a fix. Then, if all goes well, you get a good backlink. 

6: Skyscraper Link Building

By analyzing the backlink profiles of your competitors using SEO and link building tools, you can see where their links are placed and the page they’re pointing to. This gives you the opportunity to potentially take that backlink placement by creating content superior to your competitors. Alternatively, you can search for well-performing content within your industry with a ton of backlinks, improve upon it, and suggest the sources of those backlinks to link to your better page instead. These are often ways for you to raise your website up while bringing a competitor down. 

To do so, you should:

• Find Content: Using SEO tools, you can find potentially replaceable content by…
• Searching For Successful Articles: See what informative and high-performing articles within your industry have a porous backlink profile, and keep them in mind.
• Analyzing Competitor Backlink Profiles: By taking a look at competitor backlinks, you’ll see where they’re earning their links from, and now which pages to target. 
• Improve Your Targeted Content: Research, verify and make content which trumps the older piece you’ve set your eyes on replacing. 
• Contact Owners: Pick the websites you want to help by offering your better content, contact them, and if they accept you get your backlink. 

7: Help A Reporter Out (HARO)

 

While there’s multiple ways for you to assist journalists in exchange for a backlink, the platform HARO is a systemized and navigable way to do so quickly. The site stands as a bridge between professionals in any field and journalists looking to verify their information. Reporters drop help requests on the platform, while professionals give out their answers, and get a backlink in return. 

• Sign up and set up: Make your way to the official HARO site and then register yourself as a source. Afterwards select the industry in which you work in. 
• Filter queries: Find questions that come from areas that will benefit you with a backlink.
• Answer: Tailor a quick but data-rich answer which proves your competence and ability. What’s important here is to answer quickly and always leave your contact/site details. 

8: Leverage Social Media

Social media backlinks don’t carry the same authoritative value as regular backlinks, as most links on social media have the “no follow” tag on them. Nevertheless, paying attention to how your content is presented on social media can increase your chances at getting high quality backlinks to your website.

You can use social media to get backlinks by:

• Making Your Links Available In Bio: To optimize your promotion, make sure your social media profile does contain links to your website. If users want to site your post or see where they can find more of your content, it’s key to include a spot where they can navigate to your brand’s page. 

• Post Your Work: It could be articles from your blog, highlighting features of your company, or maybe presenting a new tool you made. Whatever the content is, you should post it on social media and spread the word. If it’s useful and is seen, there’s a good chance it’ll start being cited by others in your niche. 
• Engage With Others: Comment, repost, react and do whatever necessary to engage with others in your sphere and spread your companies awareness, that way people will get to know you and be more likely to cite your work with a backlink. 

9: Add To Directories

Website directories can act as a base for your backlink profile, and could even bring in some referral traffic. If you’re just starting off, they can be a great first step for your link building endeavor. However, you should also be careful when looking for directories, as lower quality and irrelevant catalogs can be harmful. 

To get directory backlinks, you should:

• Search Up Directories: You can find relevant website catalogs by using industry specific queries. For example:
  • [your industry] + “directory”
  • [your industry] + “resources”
  • “site list for” + [industry]
  • “software used by” + [industry]
  • [industry] + “association listings”
• Prepare Your Information: Collect the necessary information you’ll need to provide to the directory for your site’s implementation. 

• • 1: Gather your exact business/site name, physical address, phone number or email. 

• • 2: Write a concise but exact description of your site. 

• • 3: Collect your logo, brand images, and social media links.

• Submit Your Site: Finally, register for an account with the directory, or log in, or contact the admins and simply request for your site to be added. In this step, it’s key to prove your value, and explain why your site’s inclusion will be a positive one. 

10: Outsource The Process

Finally, if you realize that the procedure of getting high-quality backlinks is too much for you to handle, you can always outsource the link building process. Nowadays, there’s plenty of reliable freelancers and white hat link building agencies which can bring a massive boost to your website. However, you do need to pick and see whether one is right for you vs the other when buying backlinks.

• Link Building Freelancer: Freelancer link builders are often cheaper than agencies, but can’t provide the scale of benefits of an agency and may be unreliable in some instances due to the fact that you’re working with just one person.

• Link Building Agency: A link building agency, though a bit pricey, consists of a whole team of link builders looking to help your site. This means there’s a lesser likelihood of unexpected obstacles, and a higher chance of achieving a larger scale. 

Whatever direction you take when outsourcing the process, make sure that you’re hiring a group or individual who is trusted and has a reliable track record. Getting backlinks are important, but some links could potentially hurt your site, so be positive that you’ll get your money’s worth.

As mentioned previously, if earned incorrectly or through non-ethical methods, backlinks can potentially harm you. So, in order to avoid any potential search engine intervention, you should always stay alert of what approaches can eventually bite you in the back. These points are important to remember when entrusting the process to a third party as well, since they won’t be able to fool you if you catch on to them cutting corners.

You can get backlinks without risking your company by:

• Diversifying Anchor Text: Search engines hate it when links to a webpage all have the same anchor text. As such, try adding some variation to your anchor text placements.
• Avoiding PBNs & Link Farms: Websites providing links off of unethical principles such as PBNs or link farms always get caught. Never be fooled by their short-term benefits, as the potential harm they can cause to your site will be significant. 
• Prioritize Relevance: Always ensure that the sites you’re getting your links from are relevant to your industry. 

Getting backlinks is no easy feat, but it’s not impossible either. So long as you’re conducting link building the right way, you’re sure to see some benefits sooner rather than later. Of course, you must remain patient, as a good chunk of your pitches will likely be met with cold rejections. Finding backlinks is also part of the struggle as well, so it’s preferable that you know how to find them too. Nevertheless, when your opportunities do take a turn for the better, trying to get backlinks is worth it more times than it’s not.