How to Get Backlinks: 19 Methods Ranked by Effort vs Impact
There are only four ways to get backlinks: add them yourself, ask for them through outreach, earn them with content people want to cite, or buy placements. Within those four buckets sit 19 practical methods — and they are nowhere near equal. This guide ranks all 19 by real-world effort versus impact, based on what we see vetting link placements every day.
TL;DR:
- Every backlink method is a version of add, ask, earn, or buy. The effort-to-impact ratio varies wildly between them.
- Start with warm wins — unlinked mentions, partnerships, reclaiming lost links — then run one scalable channel (guest posts or niche edits) plus one compounding asset (research, tool, or stats page).
- Cold outreach converts in the single digits for most sites; Ahrefs' own 111-email campaign hit 17% and credited much of that to brand recognition.
- A link only helps if the site is relevant, has real organic traffic, and places the link editorially. Vet before you pay for anything.
- Scholarship link building is dead. Skip it entirely.
What are the four ways to get backlinks?
Getting backlinks means convincing another website to link to yours, and every tactic ever invented is a variation of four moves: adding the link yourself, asking for it, earning it, or paying for it.
Add covers links you place with no one's permission — directories, forum profiles, community comments. Easiest to get, least valuable, mostly nofollow. Ask covers outreach: guest posts, resource pages, broken link pitches, unlinked mentions. This is where most practical link building happens. Earn covers links that arrive unsolicited because you published something worth citing — research, tools, statistics. Highest value, hardest to pull off. Buy covers paid placements, where the entire risk lives in what you buy, not that you buy.
The 19 methods below all map back to these four. Knowing which bucket a method belongs to tells you what to expect: add-type links are quick and weak, earn-type links are slow and strong, and everything else sits in between.
The ranking table
Effort is your realistic time and money cost. Impact combines link quality, scalability, and how often the method actually produces links when tried.
| # | Method | Bucket | Effort | Impact | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Niche edits | Ask/Buy | Low–Med | High | Best effort-to-impact ratio |
| 2 | Guest posting | Ask | Medium | High | Reliable, scalable |
| 3 | Unlinked mentions | Ask | Low | Med–High | Easiest wins if you have a brand |
| 4 | Original research | Earn | High | Very high | Earns links for years |
| 5 | Digital PR | Earn | High | Very high | Big swings, big misses |
| 6 | Free tools | Earn | High | High | One build, ongoing links |
| 7 | Stats pages | Earn | Medium | High | Link magnet for journalists |
| 8 | HARO-style quotes | Ask | Medium | Medium | High volume, low hit rate |
| 9 | Broken link building | Ask | Medium | Medium | Works, slower than it looks |
| 10 | Resource pages | Ask | Medium | Medium | Steady, unglamorous |
| 11 | Podcasts | Ask | Medium | Medium | Link + audience in one |
| 12 | Partnerships | Ask | Low | Medium | Underused, easy asks |
| 13 | Comparison pages | Earn | Medium | Medium | Attracts links passively |
| 14 | Testimonials | Ask | Low | Low–Med | Quick, limited ceiling |
| 15 | Roundups | Ask | Low | Low–Med | Declining but cheap to try |
| 16 | Communities | Add | Low | Low | Mostly nofollow, still useful |
| 17 | Directories | Add | Low | Low | A handful matter, most don't |
| 18 | Buying placements | Buy | Low | Varies wildly | Works if vetted, burns if not |
| 19 | Scholarship links | Ask | High | Near zero | Dead. Skip it. |
The workhorses: methods 1–2
Niche edits are links added to existing, already-indexed articles on relevant sites. Because the page already has age, traffic, and often its own backlinks, the link passes value immediately — no waiting for a new post to rank. The catch is vetting: plenty of sites selling edits are link farms. Check organic traffic and referring domains in Ahrefs before you commit. This is exactly what our niche edits service handles — every placement verified before you pay.
Guest posting is still the most scalable white-hat method: you write the article, the host site publishes it with a link to you. Quality varies enormously, which is why "write for us" footprints attract spammers and why real outreach — pitching sites that don't advertise guest slots — outperforms. If you'd rather skip the pitching grind, a guest posting service with transparent site metrics does the sourcing for you.
The compounding assets: methods 3–7
Unlinked mentions are the lowest-hanging fruit that most sites never pick. Someone already wrote about you — they just didn't link. Find mentions with Ahrefs Content Explorer or Google alerts, email the author, ask for the link. Conversion rates on these emails beat every other outreach type because the hard part (getting mentioned) is already done.
Original research — surveys, data studies, industry benchmarks — earns links passively because writers need citations. One solid study can pull referring domains for years. The effort is real: collecting data, analyzing it, packaging it readably. But nothing else on this list compounds the same way.
Digital PR takes research and adds a newsroom muscle: a story angle, a press list, timed outreach. When it lands, you get links from publications you couldn't buy your way into. When it misses, you've spent weeks for nothing. We break down what makes campaigns land in our guide to digital PR link building.
Free tools — calculators, generators, checkers — attract links because people link to useful things without being asked. A mortgage calculator, a headline analyzer, an invoice generator. Build once, earn links indefinitely. The effort sits in the build, not the outreach.
Stats pages are the budget version of original research: aggregate existing statistics on a topic into one well-organized page, keep it updated, and rank it for "[topic] statistics" queries. Journalists and bloggers searching for a stat land on your page and cite it. You're not creating data, just curating it — which is why impact is a notch below original research. The same passive-citation logic applies to original infographics and genuinely comprehensive guides: anything writers reference instead of building themselves.
The grinders: methods 8–13
HARO-style quotes (now Connectively, plus alternatives like Qwoted and Featured) put journalist requests in your inbox. Answer fast, be genuinely quotable, and you earn links from news sites. The hit rate is low — expect many pitches per placement — but the links are ones you can't get any other way. Unused answers aren't wasted either; repurpose them as posts on your own channels.
Broken link building means finding dead links on relevant pages and offering your content as the replacement. It works, but the math is slower than tutorials suggest: finding broken links is easy, finding ones where your content genuinely fits is not.
Resource pages — curated "useful links" pages — still exist in most niches, and the pitch is simple: your content belongs on their list. Rejection is common, but the effort per pitch is small.
Podcasts give you a backlink from the show notes plus exposure to an audience. Pitching is straightforward if you have a specific topic and a point of view. One recording, one link, sometimes more when episodes get syndicated.
Partnerships are the overlooked one: suppliers, integrations, clients, tools you use. These are companies with a reason to link to you — partner pages, integration directories, case studies. The ask is warm, so it converts. If you run an affiliate or integration program, every new partner is a potential referring domain.
Comparison pages ("X vs Y", "best X for Y") earn links because other writers reference them instead of doing the comparison themselves. They also rank and convert, so the link value is a bonus on top of traffic.
The small change: methods 14–17
Testimonials for products you actually use often get published with a link. Five minutes of effort, but the ceiling is low — you'll run out of products fast. Roundups ("best tools", "top blogs" posts) accept suggestions, but the format is declining and many are pay-to-play now. Communities — Reddit, Slack groups, forums — produce mostly nofollow links, which still have a place in a natural profile and drive real referral traffic. Directories are worth a few hours once: Google Business Profile, then industry-specific and local directories with real traffic, then stop. General directory submissions have been worthless for a decade.
The honest section: methods 18–19
Buying placements. Most of the industry does it and won't say so. Here's the honest version: Google's guidelines prohibit paid links that pass PageRank, and unvetted buying — link farms, PBNs, sites with no organic traffic — is how profiles get burned. But the practical risk lives almost entirely in what you buy, not that you buy. A paid placement on a real site with real traffic and clean outbound linking is indistinguishable from an earned one; a $20 link from a directory of link sellers is a liability. For price context, Ahrefs' guide to getting backlinks pegs a decent link at $200–300 on average and flags $3 links as an obvious red flag — which matches what we see. Full risk breakdown in buying backlinks: the honest guide. If you go this route, demand proof of metrics before payment — it's the entire reason our vetted backlinks process shows you Ahrefs data on every site first.
Scholarship link building is dead. The playbook — create a scholarship, email universities, collect .edu links — was so abused that Google devalued the pattern, and most university scholarship pages went nofollow or disappeared. You'd spend real money (the scholarship) and real time (the outreach) for links that no longer move rankings. Skip it entirely.
Before chasing new links, reclaim the ones you lost
Two moves cost almost nothing and most sites skip both.
Fix your own broken backlinks. Pages you deleted, moved, or renamed may still have links pointing at 404s. Run your domain through a backlink checker, filter for links hitting dead URLs, and either 301-redirect those URLs to the closest live page or ask the linker to update. Every fix recovers link equity you already earned.
Mine competitor backlinks for prospects. A competitor's backlink profile is a pre-qualified prospect list: every site linking to them has already proven it links to businesses like yours. Filter for their broken pages that still hold backlinks and you get broken-link-building targets where your pitch practically writes itself.
What makes a backlink worth getting?
A backlink helps your rankings when it comes from a relevant site with real organic traffic and sits editorially in the content — and it can hurt when it doesn't. Before investing effort (or money) in any placement, check five things:
- Topical relevance — the site covers your subject, or the page does.
- Real organic traffic — the site ranks for keywords itself; traffic charts don't lie the way DR can.
- Editorial placement — the link sits in body copy, not a footer, sidebar, or author bio farm.
- Clean outbound profile — the site isn't linking out to casinos, essay mills, and crypto spam in every post.
- Sensible anchor text — descriptive or branded, not a keyword-stuffed exact match.
One relevant link that passes all five beats ten that fail. Our backlink quality checklist walks through the exact vetting process, metric by metric.
Do backlinks still matter in AI search?
Yes — arguably more visibly than before. AI assistants like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google's AI Overviews cite sources, and the pages they cite skew heavily toward sites with established authority and third-party corroboration. Links and brand mentions on trusted pages are part of how you become a citable source rather than an invisible one. The tactics don't change: the same "best X" listicles, stats pages, and authoritative mentions that earn you rankings are the pages AI systems quote when recommending products. Building links now is also building your presence in AI answers.
Where to actually start
If you have zero links: unlinked mentions, lost-link reclamation, partnerships, testimonials, and a few directories — the warm, cheap wins. Then pick one scalable channel (guest posts or niche edits) and one compounding asset (stats page, tool, or research) and run both consistently.
Set expectations honestly. In Ahrefs' documented outreach campaign, 111 emails produced a 17% link rate — and the author credits much of that to brand recognition, suggesting 5% or lower is realistic for unknown sites. That's not a reason to skip outreach; it's a reason to prospect in volume, personalize the first two lines, and follow up once. Our outreach email guide covers the templates and follow-up cadence that get replies.
FAQ
How long does it take to get backlinks? Warm methods (unlinked mentions, partnerships, testimonials) can land links within days. Outreach-driven methods like guest posting typically take 2–6 weeks from pitch to live link. Compounding assets like research and tools take months to build momentum, then keep producing.
What's the easiest way to get your first backlinks? Unlinked brand mentions, partner and supplier pages, testimonials, and a handful of legitimate industry directories. None require content creation, and all convert at higher rates than cold outreach.
Is buying backlinks safe? It's a spectrum, not a yes/no. Paid placements on real sites with genuine organic traffic carry low practical risk; bulk cheap links from farms and PBNs are how sites earn penalties. The vetting is everything — never pay without seeing traffic and referring-domain data first.
Are link exchanges safe? Occasional reciprocal links between genuinely related sites are normal and harmless. Systematic swapping — "link to me and I'll link to you" at scale, or three-way exchange schemes — creates a detectable footprint that Google's link spam policies explicitly call out. Trade sparingly, only where the link would make sense anyway.
How many backlink methods should I use at once? Two or three, done consistently, beat ten done sporadically. One scalable outreach channel, one compounding asset, plus the cheap warm wins as you find them.
Want the scalable channels handled without the vetting risk? See our pricing — every placement comes with Ahrefs proof before you pay and a 6-month replacement guarantee.