Roughly 94% of all content gets zero external links, according to Ahrefs — only about 6% of pages ever earn even one. That statistic is the reason "just publish great content and links will come" is mostly a myth. Great content is necessary, but on its own it usually joins the 94%. Getting backlinks is an active discipline, not a passive reward.
The good news: the methods that work are well established, and you don't need all of them. This guide walks through nine ways to get backlinks, ordered roughly from purely earned to purely bought, with an honest read on the effort and payoff of each — so you can pick the two or three that fit your resources instead of drowning in a list of thirty tactics you'll never run.
Before any tactic: make sure links are your bottleneck
The most common backlink mistake happens before the first link: building links to a page that wasn't ready. Links amplify a page's relevance and quality; they don't create it. If your page has thin content, an intent mismatch, or on-page problems, no volume of links will rank it — you'll spend budget accelerating something that was never going to move.
So the honest first step is diagnosis. If your page is genuinely competitive on quality and intent and just lacks authority, links are your bottleneck — proceed. If it isn't, fix the page first. We cover that judgment in what is link building, and how to size the actual gap in how many backlinks you need.
The 9 methods
1. Create linkable assets (original data, tools, research)
Effort: high · Payoff: high · Risk: none
The most durable way to earn links is to build something genuinely worth citing: original research, a proprietary statistic, a free tool, a definitive guide. Writers need sources, and a novel data point is a citation magnet — one good study can earn links for years, from sites you never contacted.
This is the foundation everything else leans on. It's slow and front-loaded, but it's the only method that produces earned, editorial links at scale and lifts your whole domain. Start here even if you also use faster methods, because it's what makes the faster methods work.
2. Digital PR and journalist outreach
Effort: high · Payoff: very high · Risk: none
Pitch your data or expert commentary to journalists and publications. The links are the strongest there are — authoritative, editorial, and compounding through syndication. It's a program, not a one-off, and response rates are low by nature, so it depends on volume and a few big hits. Best once you have a linkable asset (method 1) to pitch. Full detail in what is digital PR.
3. Guest posting
Effort: medium · Payoff: medium–high · Risk: low (done right)
Contribute a genuinely useful article to a relevant publisher with a natural link back. It's the workhorse of controllable link building: you influence the target page, the anchor, and the timing. The entire value depends on the site being real — genuine traffic, real editorial standards — not a publish-anything farm. Done on quality sites, it's reliable and safe; done cheaply, it's worthless. See how a guest posting service works, and, to do it yourself, how to write a guest post and how to pitch one.
4. Link insertions (niche edits)
Effort: low–medium · Payoff: medium–high · Risk: low (done right)
Get your link added into a publisher's existing, already-ranking article. Often faster to show impact than a guest post, because the host page already has age and equity — there's no new content to write and get indexed. Same quality rules apply: the host site and page must be genuinely real. Compared head-to-head in guest post vs. link insertion.
5. The "linkable mentions" method (reclaim what you're owed)
Effort: low · Payoff: medium · Risk: none
Find places that already mention your brand, product, or data without linking, and ask them to add the link. They already cited you, so the pitch is easy and the success rate is high. Same idea applies to reclaiming lost links (pages that used to link to you and dropped it after a redesign or migration). Low effort, quick wins, entirely legitimate.
6. Broken link building
Effort: medium · Payoff: medium · Risk: none
Find broken outbound links on relevant pages, then offer your equivalent resource as the replacement. You're doing the site owner a favor (fixing their dead link) while earning one. It's real work to find good prospects at scale, but the links are earned and clean, and the pitch has built-in value for the recipient.
7. Resource pages and curated lists
Effort: low–medium · Payoff: low–medium · Risk: none
Genuinely curated resource pages and "best tools for X" lists — the kind a human editor maintains — will sometimes add you if you fit and ask well. The value depends entirely on whether the list is real and relevant; a curated, trafficked list is a good link, a pay-to-list directory is noise. (See which is which in types of backlinks.)
8. Strategic partnerships and co-marketing
Effort: medium · Payoff: medium · Risk: none
Partners, integrations, suppliers, customers, and industry associations often have natural, legitimate reasons to link to you — a partner page, a case study, an integration listing. These links are relevant, real, and frequently overlooked because they require a relationship rather than an outreach template. Audit your existing relationships for links you could simply ask for.
9. Buying placements (guest posts and insertions, on real sites)
Effort: low · Payoff: medium–high · Risk: low to high, depending entirely on quality
You can pay to place guest posts and insertions, which buys back the prospecting and outreach hours and lets you control pace. This is legitimate and effective when the sites are genuinely real — and a liability when they're farms. The determining factor is never "did I pay," it's "is this a site a writer might have linked to anyway." Buy above that bar and paid placements behave like editorial links; buy below it and you're buying risk. The full risk map is in buying backlinks safely.
Which methods should you actually start with?
Nine methods is a menu, not a checklist. Pick based on what you have:
- Time but little budget: methods 1, 5, and 6 (linkable assets, reclaim mentions, broken links). Slow but free and clean.
- Budget but little time: methods 3, 4, and 9 (guest posts, insertions, quality paid placements). You're buying back the hours.
- Building for the long term: methods 1 and 2 (assets and digital PR). The durable, compounding authority play.
- Almost everyone: a blend — one linkable asset in progress (method 1), a steady flow of quality guest posts and insertions (3, 4, 9), and the easy wins (5) picked up along the way.
The mistake is trying to run all nine. Two or three methods, run consistently for a quarter, beat nine run once each.
The rules that apply to every method
Whatever you choose, the same disciplines protect you:
- Relevance over raw authority. A relevant link beats a bigger irrelevant one, every time.
- Real traffic over DR. Judge sites on organic traffic, not a manipulable score. (See what is Domain Rating.)
- Anchor restraint. Keep exact-match anchors a small minority. (See anchor text best practices.)
- Steady pace over spikes. A consistent flow of links looks natural; a sudden burst looks built.
- Patience on measurement. Give links 8–12 weeks to show ranking movement. Judging at week two is the most common self-inflicted wound.
Frequently asked questions
What's the fastest way to get backlinks? Reclaiming unlinked mentions (method 5) and quality paid placements (method 9) are the fastest legitimate routes — the first because the citation already exists, the second because it buys back the outreach time. Both only work if the underlying sites are real.
How do I get backlinks for free? Create linkable assets, reclaim unlinked mentions, do broken-link building, and pitch resource pages — all cost time rather than money. They're slower than paid placements but produce clean, earned links.
How many backlinks do I need to rank? It depends on the competitiveness of your target keyword and your page's current strength. Benchmark against the referring-domain counts of the pages already ranking on page one, rather than a generic number — the calculation is in how many backlinks you need.
Is it safe to buy backlinks? It can be, if you buy placements on genuinely real, relevant, editorially-vetted sites and keep anchors restrained. It's dangerous when you buy from link farms priced by DR. The site quality decides the risk, not the act of paying.
How long until new backlinks affect rankings? Weeks for a link to be crawled and attributed, and typically two to three months for competitive movement to show — so plan on a 90-day horizon and keep acquiring steadily rather than front-loading.
What working with Bazsy looks like
Bazsy covers the controllable methods on this list — quality guest posts and insertions — without the prospecting hours or the farm risk. No calls, no contracts, no minimum spend: add your domain and Optix, our AI orchestrator, matches you against 100k+ vetted sites by niche, real organic traffic, country, and content language. You set the anchor and target on every placement, content is written and published in 5–10 days on average, and every link is verified on delivery and monitored after — with rank tracking so you can watch the target page move.
Browse vetted publishers and pricing on the Bazsy marketplace →
Saurabh is the founder of Bazsy. He has spent 8+ years building links and ranking sites across SaaS, e-commerce, and competitive YMYL niches.
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