How to Get Backlinks: 9 Methods That Work, Including Free Ones

Knowing how to get backlinks remains one of the most useful skills in SEO, because links from other sites are still among the signals search engines use to judge authority, and the AIs rely on the same trusted sources when they choose what to cite. This guide covers what a good backlink is, nine methods that work in 2026, which ones are free, what to avoid and how to measure progress.

What makes a good backlink?

A good backlink comes from a relevant, trusted site, sits inside real content, and was placed because the linking page found your page useful. Volume comes last.

A backlink is a link from another website to yours. Not all links are equal. Evaluate each one on five criteria:

Google asks site owners to qualify paid and user-generated links with rel="sponsored", rel="ugc" or rel="nofollow", as explained in its documentation on qualifying outbound links. Those links can still bring visitors and visibility, but they are not editorial votes.

What are the best ways to get backlinks?

Nine methods cover almost every situation, from free outreach to long-term assets.

How do linkable assets and digital PR earn backlinks?

They give journalists, bloggers and other sites a reason to cite you: something they cannot find elsewhere.

A linkable asset is a page designed to be referenced. The formats that work best:

• Original data. A survey, an analysis of your own usage data, an annual benchmark. Journalists and writers need numbers and cite their source.
• Free tools and calculators. A calculator that solves a recurring problem gets linked from resource pages and articles for years.
• Reference guides. The most complete, clearest page on a narrow topic, with diagrams and definitions.
• Templates and checklists. Practical resources that other authors recommend to their readers.

Digital PR then pushes the asset to media and bloggers with a story angle: a surprising number, a local trend, a timely reaction to news. Our guide to digital PR details how to build the pitch and the press list. The work is demanding, but a single article in a major outlet can be worth more than dozens of small links.

How do guest posts and broken links work?

Both rely on offering something useful to another site's editor: an article for their audience, or a fix for a dead link on their page.

Guest articles. Write a genuinely useful article for a site your buyers read, with a link to a relevant page on your site where it helps the reader. Target sites with a real audience in your field and editorial standards, not sites that publish anything for anyone. Our guide to guest posting covers how to find targets and write pitches that get accepted.

Broken link building. Many resource pages link to articles that no longer exist. The method:

1. Find resource pages and articles in your niche.
2. Scan them for dead outbound links with a tool such as our free broken link checker.
3. Check that you have, or can create, a page that covers the same need.
4. Write to the editor: point out the broken link and suggest your page as a replacement.

Editors appreciate being told about a broken link, which makes this one of the friendliest forms of outreach.

How can you get backlinks for free?

Start with the people who already know you: sites that mention your brand, your partners and your customers. These methods cost only time and have the highest acceptance rates.

• Unlinked mentions. Search for your brand name, products and founders. When an article mentions you without a link, a short, polite message asking for one often works.
• Partners and suppliers. Many have a "partners", "customers" or "integrations" page. Ask to be listed, with a link.
• Customer stories. A customer who writes about how they use your product on their own blog will often link to you.
• Journalist requests. Several platforms connect journalists with expert sources. Answer only where you have real expertise, quickly and precisely.
• Directories and profiles. Reputable industry directories, chambers of commerce, Google Business Profile and professional associations. They bring modest authority but strong local relevance.
• Events and talks. Speaking at a meetup or a conference usually comes with a speaker page that links to your site.

Which backlink tactics should you avoid?

Avoid anything that creates links for the sole purpose of manipulating rankings: Google's spam policies list these practices explicitly.

The Google Search spam policies describe link spam, including:

• Buying or selling links that pass ranking signals, for money, goods or services, without a sponsored or nofollow attribute.
• Large-scale "link to me and I'll link to you" arrangements and partner pages created only to swap links.
• Automated programs that create links in comments, forums or profiles.
• Large-scale guest posting with keyword-rich anchor text, purely for links.
• Private blog networks built to point links at a money site.

The risk is a manual action or, more often, links that Google simply ignores, which means money and time spent for nothing. If you are unsure, estimate what a campaign would cost with our link building cost calculator and compare it with the value of the traffic you expect.

Do backlinks help with visibility in the AIs?

Yes, indirectly: ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews lean on sources that are cited across the web, and backlinks are one visible trace of that.

When an assistant builds an answer, it tends to quote pages that rank well and brands that appear repeatedly on trusted sites of the industry. Links and brand mentions on relevant sites therefore serve two purposes at once: they strengthen your classic rankings and they make your brand a more natural candidate for AI answers. Mentions without links count too, which is another reason to invest in digital PR and expert contributions.

How do you measure backlink progress?

Track referring domains rather than raw link counts, and connect the links to rankings and traffic on the pages they point to.

• Referring domains: the number of distinct sites linking to you, and how it evolves.
• Relevance mix: the share of those sites that are in your industry.
• Target pages: which pages receive links and whether their rankings move.
• Anchor distribution: mostly brand and natural phrases, few exact-match keywords.
• Referral traffic: visits that come through the links themselves.

Google Search Console's Links report lists the sites linking to you for free. Expect results to show over months: SEO gains typically appear within two to four months.

Conclusion

Getting backlinks comes down to deserving them and then making sure the right people know about your pages. Build a few linkable assets, use the free methods first (mentions, partners, broken links), add guest articles and digital PR as you grow, and stay away from paid link schemes. Relevance and steadiness win over volume.

If outreach takes more time than you have, Sorank lets you get natural backlinks automatically, placed in real articles on sites in the same niche, one way, alongside the SEO and GEO articles it writes and publishes on autopilot. See how backlink acquisition works or start with a 3-day free trial.