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Backlink guide: How to get backlinks in 2024

Written by
Elly Tedrow

Getting high-authority backlinks is one of the biggest challenges websites must overcome to improve SEO and increase organic traffic.

But, old-school, link-building tactics are a waste of time. 

The SkyScraper technique—where you take existing competitor content, create an improved version, and ask sites to link to you instead—was a viable backlinking strategy ten years ago. 

Back in the day, emailing sites to update their broken links with a relevant link to your site could win you a few links. 

Today, not so much. 

You’ll end up emailing hundreds of sites and get either zero response or a request for money in exchange for a backlink.

To get backlinks that increase website authority and traffic, follow these tactics instead.

Tools mentioned: 

  • Ahrefs
  • Semrush
  • Help A Reporter Out (HARO)
  • Qwoted 
  • Featured
  • Hunter.io
  • RocketReach
  • Refunnel

8 Tips to get organic backlinks (including tools and examples)

Most people take a transactional approach to link-building. They research hundreds of site owners and authors. Then, they email and ask for a backlink, without offering anything of value in return.

The result: No one responds. 

If your link-building strategy isn’t working, it’s likely because you aren’t addressing the most important question: What’s in it for me? 

The hard truth is that most people don’t care about your content or brand—unless you give them a reason to. 

You need to provide value. 

Every link-building tactic I recommend provides value in at least one of these categories: 

  • Expertise: Offer free, sought-after advice that reflects your expertise. Guest posts, interviews, original research, and podcasts fall into this category.
  • Equal exchange: Offer something of equal value as a backlink. A backlink swap, where two sites with similar DRs link to each other, is one example.
  • Money: Paying for a backlink depends on the budget and quality of a site. However, it's worth the investment if you need to grow quickly (within six to nine months) and have a low DR (under 40).

Leveraging expertise and equal exchange, you’ll get backlinks that increase your domain rating and traffic—without spending money.

That said, it’s still difficult to build links with a newer site that has a DR under 40. Below, I’ll share the tactics and templates that work, moving from easy to more challenging.

Work your way up and start with the ones that provide quick wins before testing the more challenging tactics that require more authority to work.

1. Share high-value content

The best way to get organic backlinks is through high-quality, shareable content, but what does that look like? 

I’ve been creating content for brands for over a decade. No matter the format—blog, email, social—people share content that has the following qualities.

  • It solves a problem that the target audience experiences. 
  • It’s easy to skim with short paragraphs and concise sentences.
  • It digs into the details and provides data and examples. 
  • It’s educational or entertaining. 
  • It includes original visuals rather than stock photos (videos, charts, etc.).

In my experience, people also tend to share interactive content. Examples of interactive content include: 

  • Templates 
  • Tools 
  • Calculators
  • Quizzes
  • AI generators

Example: Online bootcamp Thinkful gets thousands of visitors monthly from its “Tech Career Quiz” page. 

NerdWallet’s financial calculators (among other tactics) helped drive its backlinks and authority score up to 85. 

2. Make a list of tools you use and offer testimonials

Of all the strategies on this list, this has the highest success rate. It’s also the easiest for new sites to do. Here’s how it works. 

Businesses need customer reviews, testimonials, and case studies. They use them as social proof and have dedicated case study or customer story pages. 

Audit all the tools and services that you use within your business. Then, reach out to the marketing or customer success teams in those businesses. 

Offer to provide a customer story. To entice them, make sure to highlight the measurable success you’ve experienced using their tool. It also helps to structure your story with the classic problem, solution, and result framework. 

However, keep it brief. The initial email is to spark interest. You can get into the details once they approve it. 

Using this tactic, my clients have gotten backlinks from Zapier, Semrush, Klaviyo, Hotjar, and more. 

Below is an email template. Feel free to adjust it for your backlink outreach.

Email example: 

Subject: Hotjar customer success story (123% conversion rate) 

Hi Jane, 

I lead CRO at Some Company. We sell at-home fitness equipment and have passed $5 million in sales this year.

We’ve used Hotjar for the last six months and have seen a 123% increase in conversion rates. Overall, we’ve increased sales 345% by using Hotjar’s heat mapping feature. 

Would you be interested in a customer success story for your site? 

Looking forward,

Elly

3. List your business on review sites 

Over 93% of consumers make a purchase after viewing online reviews. Did you know that reviews also influence SEO? More reviews won’t automatically increase your rankings or DR. Reviews are one of many factors, but it does boost authority and trust. 

When setting up your business, one of the first to-do items is to set up Google Business. At minimum, you should collect reviews on Google and directly on your site and product pages. 

However, you should also submit your business to review sites. Links on these sites are typically marked as nofollow, but some aren’t. 

Plus, they help people discover your company. Many of these sites appear for top, high-intent search results like [your brand name + reviews]. Overall, they’re a rich source of customer feedback and referral traffic. 

The following are review sites to submit your brand to organized by niche.

All 

  • Trustpilot

Tech and SaaS

Services-based 

D2C and CPG 

4. Get press features with PR platforms

Journalists and publishers need experts to weigh in on topics and provide advice, especially in health and finance niches. 

Share your expertise and earn high-authority backlinks by responding to press inquiries. Here are three, free PR platforms to find opportunities:

HARO

Help A Reporter Out is the most well-known platform to discover press opportunities. Sign up for free and you’ll get a list of inquiries sent to your email. You’ll also reply to the inquiries via email.

Qwoted

Many of the opportunities you see in HARO also appear in Qwoted. However, you don’t have to dig through your emails to find them. Instead, create an expert account, search, respond, and track within the platform.

Featured

Featured connects publishers to subject-matter experts. It’s generally easier to get a backlink through Featured because publishers include branded blogs, individual creators, and media. Before responding to an inquiry, check the domain rating of the site and aim for ones over 40.

Getting press takes time to see results. You’ll need to monitor inquiries and respond quickly, often within one to three days. There’s also no guarantee that submitting your response will result in a feature.

5. Create statistics listicles

You’ve probably searched for data and statistics to support content on your website and blogs. Then, linked back to the content source. 

Original research like state-of-the-industry reports and studies are high-value content that gets tons of backlinks and press features.

Examples: 

However, original research is costly and takes time to compile. It’s hard for brands starting out to pull off without data and analysts. It also requires design and occasionally development resources. 

As an alternative, create a statistics listicle. Instead of original research, you compile statistics focused on one topic or niche.

Examples: 

The statistics you pull should relate to your company’s industry. For example, Backlinko covers content marketing strategies. 

Also, check how many backlinks top pages get with Ahrefs’ free backlink checker. It will help you estimate how many you can get if you rank on the first page. 

For example, Backlinko gets almost 3,000 backlinks from the TikTok statistics page. Over 72% of the links are dofollow, so they pass authority.

6. Be a podcast guest

Today, link-building is all about building partnerships. Again, it goes back to providing value. Instead of asking for a link, collaborate on projects that give something to each party.

Appearing as a guest on podcasts helps you connect with partners. Plus, you can get a backlink and reach new audiences.

First, research podcasts that align with your audience. Use email finder tools like Hunter.io or Rocket Reach to source emails for your contact list.

Many podcast hosts have forms on their sites for potential guests to submit. Before reaching out by email, check their site first. Then, reach out and ask if they’d be interested in having you on their podcast. 

Make sure to highlight your experience and why you’d be an ideal guest. But, don’t forget the most important question: What’s in it for them?

Expertise isn’t enough. Podcasts want to grow their audience, so you’ll have more luck getting on one if you also have an audience. 

For example, when I worked for a company that held entrepreneur events in New York, I reached out to the podcast Side Hustle School. 

The audiences overlapped perfectly. However, sweetening the deal by offering to cross-promote in a newsletter to around 20,000 subscribers is why they responded. 

Once the podcast interview went up, Side Hustle School included a backlink to the company’s website. It even led to a few sales, because the audiences aligned so well. 

7. Collaborate on events and webinars

Like podcasts, events and webinars have multiple benefits. They can grow your email list, attract press, and increase sales. 

For example, at the height of COVID, I reached out to Codecademy about partnering on a “Learn from home” event. 

During the free, online event, multiple companies including Twitch, Duolingo, and Skillshare hosted sessions. Each company promoted the event, earning media placements on TechCrunch, Business Insider, and other publications. 

As a result, over 15,000 attendees signed up via email, and the company I worked for at the time earned dozens of new backlinks. It also saw membership sales attributed to the event for months after it ended. 

8. Encourage and capture UGC

User-generated content (UGC) is gold for brands. UGC includes: 

  • Blog product reviews 
  • YouTube reviews, try-ons, and tutorials
  • TikTok and other social media posts

UGC provides social proof and shows Google your brand has consumer trust and authority. It’s also going to help you on social media. Over 40% of GenZ prefers using TikTok and Instagram over Google as a search engine.

Users may also link back to products and companies. However, affiliate links—when a person gets paid a commission for sales made through a link—don’t directly contribute to SEO. 

UGC is still worth it, not only for building your SEO authority. It increases traffic and conversions and cuts down on your own content creation costs. Many brands use UGC in ads, and from experience, it tends to have the best return on investment.

However, you’ll need to build a customer base and a system for tracking to understand the impact of UGC on your website and business overall.

Refunnel is a platform that helps brands track and store UGC in one place. Also, it helps manage usage rights and other assets. It also has a free plan, so I highly recommend it. 

Why are organic backlinks important? 

Backlinks aid overall SEO and content efforts, and can also be a source of highly valuable referral traffic. They are important because they signal to Google and website visitors that a website has authority. 

Every website has a domain rating (DR), also called an authority score. It measures a site’s authority or trustworthiness from zero to 100. The higher the score, the more search engines view a website as authoritative. 

Domain rating directly impacts a site’s ability to rank at the top of search results. High authority sites tend to appear first for competitive keywords. As a result, they get more organic traffic.

To increase your site’s DR and traffic, you need backlinks from other high-authority sites. 

Types of backlinks

Not all backlinks contribute to your site authority. Backlinks have tags that tell Google and crawlers how to categorize them. Knowing the types will help you decide which backlink opportunities to pursue.

Below are the main types of backlinks and what they mean for a website.

  • Dofollow: These are the most coveted backlinks because search engines follow them, and they contribute to SEO and site authority.
  • Nofollow: Search engines don’t pass authority through these links, so they won’t help your SEO. They’re often used for paid links or user-generated content.
  • Sponsored: These are relatively new tags for backlinks on sites that offer sponsored content. Google created them to provide more transparency for paid sponsored advertising on blogs and publications like Forbes, Bustle, etc.
  • UGC: Pure user-generated content links to a site without payment. It includes reviews and tutorials from real customers. 

Dofollow and UGC backlinks can pass authority and improve your SEO directly. Nofollow and sponsored don’t pass authority, so they don’t directly contribute to SEO.

However, you should still seek nofollow and sponsored backlinks. They are valuable but for different reasons. 

For example, press features and sponsored content can drive highly targeted, ready-to-buy traffic to your website. In the past, I’ve seen an uptick in sales from both types of links. 

Buying backlinks: Should you do it? 

Paying for organic backlinks is frowned upon because it’s technically against Google’s guidelines. However, this is a point of debate in the SEO world. 

Years ago, it was easier to acquire backlinks naturally—partly because website owners didn’t fully understand the value of a link. Today, they’re aware of the value—especially from sites with domain ratings over 50—so they’ve started selling backlinks. 

If you aren’t open to buying backlinks, you can still increase your DR. However, it usually takes more time and effort on your part. Many successful companies buy backlinks but they tread carefully.

When to buy backlinks

A poor backlink strategy can do more harm than good. 

I’ve worked with backlink agencies before with little to no success. Many sell links to outdated, low-traffic sites that happen to have DRs over 50. 

Plus, it’s expensive. At the low end, backlink agencies charge a $2,000 to $3,000 monthly fee for a set number of links or $300-$500 per link. 

Linkbuilder is one of the more reputable link-building services, and its packages range from $3,000 (8 links monthly) to $20,000 (58 links monthly). 

Before buying a sponsored or other backlink, ask these questions to evaluate if it’s worth the cost.

  • Is the domain rating over 50? 
  • Who’s the site’s target audience and does it overlap with yours? 
  • What’s the monthly website traffic? 
  • How much traffic does the webpage your link is on get?
  • Do they provide data around link clicks, conversions, and sales? 

In general, I don’t recommend buying batches of backlinks solely for SEO. Ask yourself if the link is still worth it even if it doesn’t contribute to SEO, because there's a chance it might not. If the site’s audience overlaps with yours and can also lead to sales, it’s usually worth it.