Link Building

How to Get Backlinks: 14 Tactics That Work in 2023

Joshua Hardwick
Head of Content @ Ahrefs (or, in plain English, I'm the guy responsible for ensuring that every blog post we publish is EPIC).
    Link building isn’t rocket science. There’s no secret club where only an elite few know how to get backlinks. Anyone can do it.

    Here are 14 ways to get backlinks that work in 2023, sorted by effort:

    EffortImpact
    Skyscraper TechniqueHighHigh
    Broken Link BuildingHighHigh
    301 redirect link buildingHighHigh
    Listicle link buildingHighHigh
    HAROHighMedium
    Guest bloggingHighMedium
    Statistics link buildingHighHigh
    Podcast link buildingMediumMedium
    Unlinked mentionsMediumMedium
    Resource page link buildingMediumLow
    Directory link buildingLowLow
    Stockist link buildingLowLow
    Membership link buildingLowLow
    Internal link buildingLowHigh

    Effort: High
    Impact: High
    Best for: Getting links to content

    The skyscraper technique is where you: 

    1. Find link-worthy content.
    2. Create something better.
    3. Ask people linking to the inferior content to link to you instead.

    How to do it

    First, you need to find content with lots of backlinks. Here’s a quick way to do that:

    1. Go to Ahrefs’ Content Explorer
    2. Search for a relevant topic
    3. Set the referring domains filter to 50+
    4. Exclude results from homepages and subdomains
    Finding pages with backlinks in Ahrefs' Content Explorer

    For example, if we search for “long tail keywords,” one result is this blog post with 1.2K referring domains:

    Pages with at least 50 referring domains via Ahrefs' Content Explorer

    The next step is to look at the content and think how to improve it.

    Here are a few ways to do that:

    • Correct inaccurate or outdated information
    • Explain things in more detail
    • Improve the design

    For example, the definition of long-tail keywords on the page we found is inaccurate and hard to read:

    An inaccurate definition of long-tail keywords

    The design is terrible too, with lots of ugly visuals like this: 

    Example of terrible design on the page with lots of backlinks

    Both of these are easy ways you could improve this content. 

    Once you’ve done this, you can find everyone linking to the content you improved and ask them to link to you instead. 

    Here’s how:

    1. Paste the URL of the content you improved into Ahrefs’ Site Explorer
    2. Go to the Backlinks report
    3. Reach out to any site owner you want a link from
    Finding backlinks to the page in Ahrefs' Site Explorer

    Effort: High
    Impact: High
    Best for: Getting links to content

    Broken link building is where you:

    1. Find a dead page with backlinks.
    2. Create your own page on the topic.
    3. Ask people linking to the dead page (with broken links) to link to you instead. 

    It works because people don’t want to send their visitors to broken pages.

    How to do it

    First, you need to find a dead page with backlinks. Here’s an easy way to do this:

    1. Go to Ahrefs’ Content Explorer
    2. Search for a topic
    3. Filter for broken pages only
    4. Filter for pages with 10+ referring domains (linking websites) 
    Broken pages with backlinks in Ahrefs' Content Explorer

    For example, a search for “SEO” finds this page with 225 referring domains (linking websites):

    Example of a broken page with lots of backlinks

    If you click to visit the page, you see a “page can’t be found” warning confirming that it’s broken:

    Example of a dead page

    Judging by the URL of this page (/seo-tips), it used to be a list of SEO tips. To double check, hit the caret next to the URL and click to view it on archive.org. This will show you how the page looked before it disappeared.

    See how the broken page used to look with the archive.org link

    If it makes sense for you to create something similar, do it. You can then reach out to all the people linking to the dead page and pitch your page as a replacement link. You can find these by plugging the dead page’s URL into Site Explorer and going to the Backlinks report.

    Backlinks to the broken page via Ahrefs' Site Explorer

    Pitch your replacement link to these sites once your content goes live.

    Effort: High
    Impact: High
    Best for: Getting links to content

    301 redirect link building is where you:

    1. Find irrelevant 301 redirects
    2. Pitch a suitable replacement to everyone linking to it

    It works for the same reason broken link building works. People don’t want to send their visitors to what are effectively dead pages.

    How to do it

    First, you need to find irrelevant 301 redirects. Here’s how:

    1. Open Ahrefs’ Site Explorer
    2. Change the mode to “https” and enter a site in your industry
    3. Go the Best by links report
    4. Click the “HTTP code” filter and choose “3XX redirects”
    5. Look for irrelevant redirects.
    Finding 301 redirects with backlinks in Ahrefs' Site Explorer

    For example, this post about the history of search engines has 446 referring domains (linking websites) but redirects to a post about search engine marketing:

    Example of an irrelevant 301 redirect with backlinks

    That doesn’t seem relevant, so let’s see how these pages compare.

    If we click the caret next to the redirected URL and click “View on archive.org,” we can see how it looked before the redirect:

    Viewing how the page looked before the redirect using the Wayback Machine
    How the page looked before the redirect

    If we compare this to the page this URL now redirects to, it’s clear that these are two completely different topics:

    How the page looks now

    From here, the plan of attack would be to:

    1. Create content about the history of search engines
    2. Pitch this as a replacement link to people linking to the redirecting URL

    To find people linking to the redirecting URL, plug it into Ahrefs’ Site Explorer and go to the Backlinks report. 

    Effort: High
    Impact: High
    Best for: Getting homepage links

    Listicle link building is where you: 

    1. Find “best of” lists in your industry
    2. Pitch lists where you’re not featured

    How to do it

    Find relevant listicles by typing a query like this into Google:

    • best [business type] in [location] -”[your business name]”
    • best [whatever] -”[your business name]”

    For example, if you run the Omotesando Koffeea coffee shop in London, you’d search this:

    Searching for lists of the best coffee shops that don't mention a particular shop on Google

    Here’s one of the results listing the 50 best coffee shops in London:

    Example listicle of the best coffee shops

    As you excluded your business from the search, you know it isn’t listed here. But you might be able to change this by reaching out to the author to see if they’d be willing to add you.

    Keep these two things in mind when doing this:

    1. Your pitch needs to make sense.
    2. It won’t always make sense to pitch in the first email. 

    For example, if your coffee shop isn’t on this list, it probably means the author has never been to your shop. In which case, they’re unlikely to add you just because you ask them to. You first need to build a relationship.

    In this case, you could send them an invite to your coffee shop and let your coffee/food earn the recommendation.

    Effort: High
    Impact: Medium
    Best for: Getting homepage links

    HARO link building is where you: 

    1. Respond to relevant queries from journalists on HARO (Help A Reporter Out)
    2. Get featured in their articles

    It’s an easy way to earn high-quality backlinks because journalists are soliciting responses from you, not the other way around. 

    How to do it

    Sign up as a source at HARO to begin receiving emails with queries from journalists.

    Here’s an example of one from a journalist at HandicappedPets.com (DR 70): 

    Example HARO request

    One person who replied to this and earned a link was Dr. Jonathan Roberts, a veterinarian at PetKeen.com. 

    Here’s the link to his site in the published article:

    Example of a backlink built with HARO

    Keep these tips and facts in mind when replying to HARO requests:

    • Not all journalists will cite and link to you
    • Prioritize opportunities where the journalist is looking for answers from multiple experts 
    • Only respond to queries where you have relevant expertise

    If you’re wondering why that last point is so important, look at the request below from Business Insider. It clearly states that they’re looking to hear from people who work in elite preschools. Unless this is you, responding to this query will be a waste of time. 

    Example HARO request from Business Insider
    Set up a Gmail filter to find the best opportunities

    In Gmail:

    • Click the search options filter
    • Set the “From” field to [email protected].
    • Set the “Subject” to “[HARO]”
    • Set “Has the words” to keywords you want to monitor (you can use the OR operator to list multiple keywords here)
    Filtering for relevant HARO requests in Gmail

    Hit search and check a few emails to ensure you’re getting relevant results. If all looks good, hit the search options caret again and click “Create filter.”

    Effort: High
    Impact: Medium
    Best for: Getting homepage links

    Guest blogging is where you: 

    1. Find other blogs in your niche
    2. Write posts for them
    3. Get exposure and usually a link in return

    How to do it

    First, find websites that are likely to accept guest posts about your topic. 

    Here’s a quick way to do this: 

    1. Open Ahrefs’ Content Explorer
    2. Enter a related topic and change the dropdown to “In title”.
    3. Filter for English results 
    4. Filter for results with 500+ words
    5. Go to the “Websites” tab
    Finding guest blogging opportunities in Ahrefs' Content Explorer

    This searches billions of pages for content about your topic, then pulls out the top 100 websites by search traffic. 

    Sidenote.
    If you see too many big sites that are out of your reach, set the Domain Rating (DR) filter to <70.

    For example, this site gets an estimated 9K monthly organic visits to pages about “SEO”: 

    Example of a relevant site with traffic

    This content was written by 25 different authors: 

    Lots of authors indicates that the site might be open to a guest post

    It’s likely that some of these are guest bloggers, so this could be a good site to pitch. 

    Effort: High
    Impact: High
    Best for: Getting links to content

    Statistics page link building is where you:

    1. Find statistics people are searching for
    2. Publish a data-driven statistics page
    3. Promote the page to rank

    It works because bloggers and journalists regularly search for statistics. When they include them in their posts, they usually link to the source. 

    How to do it

    First, you need to find statistics that people are searching for. Here’s how:

    1. Go to Ahrefs’ Keywords Explorer
    2. Enter broad topics related to your niche
    3. Go to the Matching terms report
    4. Add “statistics” to the “Include” filter
    5. Filter for keywords with a Keyword Difficulty (KD) score above 50
    Finding statistics keywords in Ahrefs' Keywords Explorer

    For example, there are an estimated 600 monthly searches in the US for “SEO statistics.”

    Next, you need to research which statistics are responsible for attracting the most links to the current top-ranking pages. This helps you understand what kinds of statistics to include on your page.

    Here’s the process:

    1. Go to Site Explorer
    2. Enter the URL of a top-ranking page
    3. Go to the Anchors report
    4. Look for popular statistics
    Looking for popular statistics in the Anchors report in Ahrefs' Site Explorer

    For example, one top-ranking page for “SEO statistics” has many anchors mentioning “93%.”  

    From here, you can check the Backlinks report and filter for backlinks with “93%” in the anchor and surrounding text. This will tell you how many backlinks the page earned thanks to this statistic.

    Lots of links thanks to the same statistic

    Repeat this process for more top-ranking pages to build a list of important stats for your page.

    The final step is to promote your page with outreach. This will help build some initial “seed” backlinks to help it rank. Learn how to do that in our full link building case study.

    Effort: Medium
    Impact: Medium
    Best for: Getting homepage links

    Podcast link building is where you: 

    1. Find and pitch podcasts in your niche
    2. Do a podcast interview
    3. Get a link from the episode page

    How to do it

    Search Google for top podcasts in your industry, then check each podcast’s episodes pages to see if they link to their guests.

    For example, if we search for SEO podcasts, one that comes up is Experts On The Wire:

    Finding podcasts on Google

    The website for this podcast has dedicated pages for each episode here

    If we check the most recent episode page, we see that it includes a section with links to the interviewees websites and social media profiles:

    Example of backlinks from podcast episode pages

    Conclusion: They might be a good show to pitch. 

    Found a prolific interviewee in your niche?

    Do this to find even more podcasts to pitch:

    1. Go to Ahrefs’ Site Explorer
    2. Enter the popular guest’s Twitter profile URL (or other social media)
    3. Go to the Backlinks report
    4. Filter for results with “episode” in the referring page title
    5. Pitch relevant podcasts
    Finding the podcasts people have been featured on

    Effort: Medium
    Impact: Medium
    Best for: Getting homepage links

    Unlinked mention link building is when you: 

    1. Find unlinked mentions of your brand online
    2. Reach out and ask them to link to you

    They’re low-hanging fruit in link building because you’re already halfway there. The person is already familiar with your brand so asking them to add a link to the mention is often enough to win the link. 

    How to do it

    First, you need to find your unlinked mentions. You can use Ahrefs’ Web Explorer for this. Just search for [your brand] -outlinkdomain:[yourwebsite].com -site:[yourwebsite].com -intitle:[your brand] 

    For example, if we wanted to find unlinked mentions for Ahrefs.com, we’d search for this: 

    How to search for unlinked mentions in Web Explorer

    This will search billions of pages for those that mention your brand name, but don’t link to you.

    I also recommend adding these filters:

    • Domain Rating: 30+ to remove low authority websites.
    • Language: English to remove those who won’t understand your pitch.
    • First seen: 6 months to remove old pages people don’t care about updating. 
    • One page per domain to remove duplicate websites. 
    • Filter explicit results for obvious reasons. 
    • Exclude subdomains to reduce spammy results. 
    Filtering for specific unlinked mentions

    From there, look through the results for unlinked mentions that make sense to pitch. 

    For example, this page about the difference between domain authority and Domain Rating (one of our metrics) mentions but doesn’t link to us:

    Example of a page with an unlinked mention

    Looking at the page, it seems they recommend using our free website authority checker but don’t link to it: 

    Example of an unlinked mention on a page

    Given how useful the link would be for visitors, it would definitely be worth reaching out and asking the author of this page to link to us. 

    Effort: Medium
    Impact: Low
    Best for: Getting links to content

    Resource page link building is where you:

    1. Find pages that curate and link to resources on a topic
    2. Pitch your resource for inclusion

    It works because the purpose of resource pages is to link to valuable resources.

    How to do it

    Run one of these searches in Google to find resource pages:

    • [topic] intitle:resources inurl:resources.html
    • [topic] intitle:resources inurl:links.html

    For example, let’s say you want to build links to a calorie calculator. You might search for diet intitle:resources inurl:resources.html.

    Finding resource pages in Google

    From here, visit each result to check that it’s a resource page and links out to external resources. If it fits the bill, find the email address of the person responsible and pitch your resource. 

    For example, this page has a whole section with links to food planning resources:

    Example of a resource page
    Found a few resource pages linking to the same resource?

    You can reverse-engineer that page’s link profile to find even more resource pages.

    1. Go to Ahrefs’ Site Explorer
    2. Enter the resource’s URL
    3. Go to the Backlinks report
    4. Filter for referring pages with “resources” in the URL
    Finding resource pages in Ahrefs' Site Explorer

    Effort: Low
    Impact: Low
    Best for: Getting homepage links

    Directory link building is where you:

    1. Find relevant directories in your niche or local area
    2. Sign up and add a link

    How to do it

    First, you need to find relevant directories. Here’s an easy way to do that:

    1. Open Ahrefs’ Site Explorer
    2. Enter your homepage and set the mode to “Exact URL”
    3. Go to the Link Intersect report
    4. Add a few competing homepages in the empty fields (set these to “URL” mode too).
    5. Click “Show link opportunities”
    Finding directory link building opportunities using the Link Intersect tool

    This will show you websites linking to one or more competitors’ homepages, but not yours.

    Here are the results for a hypothetical London plumber:

    Examples of directories

    You can usually spot local and niche directories fairly quickly from the domain names, as you can see above. From there it’s just a case of making a profile on the directories and adding your link.

    Effort: Low
    Impact: Low
    Best for: Getting homepage links

    Stockist link building is where you:

    1. List your suppliers
    2. See if the have a ‘stockists’ page
    3. Ask them to add you

    This tactic works best for local businesses stocking local and independent products.

    How to do it

    Start by listing the companies whose products you stock and sell (and also buy from direct).

    Here’s what that might look like if you run a local bakery:

    • Doves Farm
    • Mothernutter
    • Honest Toil
    • Harry’s Nut Butter
    • Fatso
    • Singularity Sauce Co.
    • Blackthorn Salt

    Next, run this search for each brand: [brand name] intitle:“stockists” OR intitle:“where to buy”. If they have a ‘stockists’ page, it should come up.

    For example, here’s one from the Singularity Sauce Co.:

    How to find stockist pages

    This page lists and links to all of their stockists: 

    Example of a stockist page

    If you stock their product and aren’t on this page, it should only take a short email to get there. 

    Effort: Low
    Impact: Low
    Best for: Getting homepage links

    Membership link building is where you:

    1. List your memberships
    2. See if they have a team or advisory board
    3. Ask them to link to you

    How to do it

    First, make a list of all organizations, communities, and clubs you’re a part of. This can be anything from a school parent advisory board to a local charity to a law association.

    Next, find their websites and run this Google search for each one: site:theirwebsite.com intitle:team OR advisory. It should pop up if they have a relevant page.

    Searching for team and advisory pages in Google

    Reach out and request a link where it makes sense.

    Effort: Low
    Impact: High
    Best for: Getting links to content

    Internal link building is where you:

    1. Choose a page you want to build links to
    2. Find contextual internal link opportunities on other pages on your site
    3. Add internal links

    Because you have full control over internal links, they’re a great way to funnel “authority” to the pages that need it. 

    How to do it

    You can find internal link opportunities for free using Ahrefs’ Site Audit. Just sign up for an Ahrefs Webmaster Tools (AWT) account and crawl your site, then: 

    1. Open your project in Site Audit
    2. Go to the Link Opportunities report
    3. Enter your page’s URL in the search box, and switch the dropdown to “Target page.”
    Finding internal link opportunities in Ahrefs' Site Audit

    Hit enter and you should see relevant places on your site to add internal links from.

    For example, here’s an internal link opportunity for our guide to becoming a better writer: 

    Example of an internal linking opportunity
    • Source page: The page it suggests adding the link from
    • Keyword context: The location on the page where it suggests adding the link
    • Target page: The page you entered as the target

    Given that it only takes a second to add internal links, this is a quick win.

    Final thoughts

    Most of these link building strategies aren’t new or exciting, but they work—and that’s what counts. Just don’t try to do them all at once. Start with one, learn from it, perfect your approach, and build from there. You can’t fail with this link building strategy.

    Still not sure where to start? Check out our beginner’s guide to link building