How to Get Backlinks: 14 Tactics That Work in 2023

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

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

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

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• Correct inaccurate or outdated information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:

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

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

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) 

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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:

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:

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

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:

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

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): 

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:

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. 

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)

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

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

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

This content was written by 25 different authors: 

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

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

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.

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:

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:

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

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: 

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. 

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:

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

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.

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:

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

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”

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

Here are the results for a hypothetical London plumber:

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.:

This page lists and links to all of their stockists: 

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.

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.”

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: 

• 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.