How to Get More Backlinks: Build the Asset, Then Do the Outreach

To get more backlinks, you build things worth linking to and then tell the right people they exist. That's the whole game, and everything below is a variation on it: create an asset with genuine reference value (original data, a tool, a definitive guide), then run targeted outreach to the sites, journalists, and creators who would actually cite it. The teams that struggle with links usually skip one half. They either publish great content and never promote it, or they blast outreach with nothing worth linking to on the other end.

Here's the uncomfortable part, and the thesis of this whole guide: the reason most sites don't have enough backlinks isn't a content problem, it's an outreach problem. People read a hundred link-building strategies, publish a decent guide, and then quietly do nothing to promote it because outreach is tedious and feels like begging. So they go looking for one more tactic. There is no missing tactic. There's a pile of link-worthy pages nobody ever pitched. This guide gives you the tactics, but it treats them as what they are: prompts to go do the outreach.

The other thing to internalize before you start: in 2026, one editorially-given link from a relevant, authoritative site is worth more than a hundred you bought or spun up. Google's link spam systems and its site reputation guidance have made low-effort link schemes not just worthless but risky. So the goal isn't "more links" in the raw sense. It's more quality backlinks, the right ones, earned white-hat in ways that survive an algorithm update.

tl;dr:

• The formula is asset + outreach. A link-worthy page plus targeted promotion beats either one alone.
• Quality and relevance beat volume. A few links from authoritative, on-topic sites outperform hundreds of low-quality ones.
• The highest-ROI tactics: original data/research, digital PR, unlinked mention reclamation, and broken-link building.
• Avoid paid links, private blog networks, and mass reciprocal schemes. Google treats these as link spam and they can hurt you.
• Outreach is where most link building dies. It's tedious, personal, and slow, which is exactly the part worth automating.

Why Backlinks Still Matter in 2026

Links remain one of Google's core ranking signals. Google's own Search Central documentation still describes links as a way it discovers pages and understands how the web connects, and its guidance on link spam exists precisely because links carry ranking weight worth protecting. Backlinks work like votes: a link from a trusted, relevant site tells Google that other people find your page credible enough to reference.

The proof that they matter is stark. Backlinko's analysis of 11.8 million Google search results found that the number of domains linking to a page correlated with rankings more than any other factor they measured. And Ahrefs' study of over a billion pages found the flip side: 90.63% of pages get no organic search traffic at all, and a leading reason is that they have no backlinks pointing to them. Links are how most pages get discovered and trusted in the first place.

But the definition of a "good" link has narrowed. Relevance and authority now matter far more than raw count. A link from a respected industry publication in your niche moves the needle; a link from an unrelated directory in another language does nothing, or worse. Note the operative word in that Backlinko finding: referring domains, unique sites, not raw links. Ten links from one site is roughly one vote. Ten links from ten relevant sites is ten votes.

Link-Building Strategies, Ranked by Effort and Authority

Here's the honest trade-off across the main link-building plays. Effort is how much work per link; authority value is how strong the typical link is when the tactic works.

Tactic	Effort	Authority value	Best for
Original data / research study	High	Very high	Earning press and natural links at scale
Digital PR / journalist outreach	High	Very high	Authoritative news and industry links
Unlinked mention reclamation	Low	High	Brands already being talked about
Broken-link building	Medium	Medium-high	Niches with lots of aging content
Resource-page link building	Medium	Medium	Evergreen guides and tools
Guest posting (selective)	Medium	Medium	Relevant, edited industry blogs
Competitor backlink gap	Medium	Varies	Finding proven, replicable link sources
Internal linking	Low	N/A (redistributes)	Passing existing authority efficiently

Start at the top for compounding, durable links, and use the lower-effort tactics to fill in steadily.

The Asset Half: Build Something Worth Linking To

Every tactic below has two moves: make the asset, then pitch it. This section is the easy half. It's the half everyone already does, and it's the half that feels like progress. Do not mistake it for the finish line.

Most content earns zero links because it references other people's work instead of being the thing worth referencing. To flip that, build "linkable assets":

• Original data and research. Survey your audience, analyze your own product data, or aggregate public data into a report. Writers link to statistics, and if you're the source, you own the citation. Backlinko's research into Google's search results is a good example of a single study earning thousands of links over time.
• Free tools and calculators. A simple, genuinely useful tool ranks and attracts links for years because people reference the tool, not just an article.
• Definitive guides. The most complete, clearly-structured resource on a specific topic becomes the default thing people link to when they mention it.

The test: would someone writing an article on this topic need to cite you? If not, keep building until the answer is yes. Once the answer is yes, your job isn't done, it's just started. Because a link-worthy asset that nobody knows about earns nothing. Now comes the half that actually gets the links.

The Outreach Half: Where Link Building Actually Dies

Here's the pattern that kills most link-building programs: the asset ships, the author feels finished, and the outreach never happens. Every tactic that follows is an outreach tactic. They differ only in who you pitch and why they'd say yes. The asset is the ticket; the outreach is the trip.

Run Digital PR and Journalist Outreach

Digital PR is link building's highest ceiling. You take a newsworthy angle, usually built on your original data, and pitch it to journalists and editors who cover that beat. When it lands, you get links from high-authority news sites plus the secondary links that follow once a story spreads.

Services like Connectively (the successor to HARO) and Featured let you respond to journalists actively requesting sources. The winning approach is fast, specific, and quotable: a tight expert answer or a genuinely surprising stat, not a paragraph of marketing. A PR pitch reads differently from a link request, it leads with the story, not the ask:

Subject: data on [topic] — [surprising stat] Hi [name] — saw you cover [beat]. We just pulled [dataset] and found [one specific, surprising number]. Happy to send the full breakdown or a quote if it's useful for a piece. No worries if not.

One placement in a real publication is worth more than a month of low-tier guest posts. And this is exactly the kind of outreach that never happens, because writing and sending fifty tailored pitches is a slog nobody schedules time for.

Reclaim Unlinked Mentions

If your brand, product, or research is being mentioned online without a link, that's the easiest link you'll ever get. Someone already decided you were worth naming; they just didn't hyperlink it. Set up alerts for your brand and key products, find the unlinked mentions, and send a short, friendly note asking the author to link the mention to your site. Conversion rates on this are high because you're asking for a small edit, not a favor.

To find them, run a search like "your brand" -site:yourdomain.com -site:twitter.com -site:linkedin.com and scan for pages that name you without linking. Then keep the ask tiny:

Subject: quick fix on your [topic] post Hi [name] — thanks for mentioning [brand] in your piece on [topic]. Would you be open to linking that mention to [URL] so readers can find us? Either way, appreciated the write-up.

That's it. No pitch, no pressure. The small ask is why it converts.

Build Links From Broken Ones

Broken-link building trades a fix for a link. You find a dead page that used to be linked from sites in your niche, create (or already have) a page that replaces it, then tell the sites still linking to the dead URL. You're doing them a favor by flagging a broken link, and offering your resource as the replacement. Tools like Ahrefs and Moz can surface broken pages with lots of referring domains, which is where this tactic pays off.

A good target: a dead resource with 20-plus referring domains from sites in your niche, where your replacement genuinely covers the same topic. A bad target: a broken link with two referring domains from unrelated sites, or one where your "replacement" is a thin sales page. If the swap doesn't actually help the linking site's readers, don't send it. The pitch leads with the favor, not the link:

Subject: broken link on your [topic] page Hi [name] — noticed the link to [dead resource] on [their URL] is 404ing now. We've got a current version covering the same thing here if it's a useful replacement: [URL]. Either way, wanted to flag the dead link.

Get Onto Resource Pages

Plenty of sites maintain "best resources" or "useful links" pages for their audience, and if you have a genuinely useful guide or tool, these pages are a natural fit. Find them with search operators like [your topic] intitle:resources, [your topic] "useful links", or [your topic] inurl:links. Then apply one filter before you pitch: does the page already list things at your quality level, and would your asset be the best or second-best link on it? If yes, a two-line email that names the page and the specific gap you fill gets added surprisingly often. If your asset would be the weakest link on the list, don't send it; you'll just teach the editor to ignore you. The relevance bar is high, which is exactly why these links carry weight.

Guest Post Selectively

Guest posting still works when it's done for the audience, not the link. Write genuinely useful posts for relevant, edited publications your buyers actually read, and treat the link in your bio or a contextual mention as a byproduct, not the reason. What doesn't work, and what Google's link spam policy explicitly targets, is mass guest posting on low-quality sites with keyword-stuffed anchor text. The test is simple: would you pitch this publication if links didn't exist, purely to reach its audience? If yes, it's worth it. If the only appeal is a followed link, you're one algorithm update from a liability. One guest post on a respected industry blog beats fifty on link farms.

Mine Your Competitors' Backlinks

Your competitors have already done link-building research for you. Run their domains through a backlink tool, export their referring domains, and look for patterns. In a typical export you'll spot three things fast: publications that link to every competitor but not you (pitch them), resource pages that list your rivals and not you (ask to be added), and a study or tool that keeps getting cited (that's the asset shape you should build next). Sort the export by domain rating, filter to links you don't already have, and you've turned proven link sources into a ranked target list, which of course still leaves you the outreach to actually send.

This is the whole point. Every tactic in this section produced a list of people to email. Nothing on that list becomes a link until someone does the outreach, and that's the part worth automating, which is where a backlink agent earns its keep (more on that below).

Then Tidy Up: Internal Links

Internal links don't add new authority, but they redistribute the authority you already have. Point links from your strongest pages to the pages you want to rank, using descriptive anchor text. It's the cheapest SEO win available and most sites do it badly. If you want the outbound-outreach angle on relationship building that underpins good external link building, the same principles that make personalized outreach actually work apply here: specificity and relevance beat volume.

What to Avoid

Some tactics get links fast and get you penalized just as fast. Google's link spam policy explicitly targets:

• Buying or selling links that pass ranking signals (without a nofollow or sponsored attribute).
• Private blog networks (PBNs) and other schemes built only to manipulate rankings.
• Excessive link exchanges ("link to me and I'll link to you") done at scale.
• Automated or spun links and low-quality directory submissions.

The pattern is consistent: if the only reason a link exists is to game rankings, it's a liability. Editorially-given links, ones a real person chose to include because your content earned it, are the only kind worth building a strategy on.

Where This Breaks Down (and How GenSend Helps)

You know the graveyard: a spreadsheet with 200 target sites, half the contact columns blank, a "follow-up?" column nobody has touched in three weeks. Most people cobble outreach together from a VA, a spreadsheet, a contact-finder like Hunter, and a mail-merge tool, then watch the whole chain break at exactly the point that matters, the follow-up.

GenSend is a backlink agent that replaces that stack: it finds relevant sites and the right contact, personalizes each pitch from real context about the site, sends it, and follows up on its own, so you spend your time on the linkable assets and the relationships instead of the manual grind. It doesn't replace your judgment or the quality of your content; it removes the tedious volume work that makes outreach fail. If you've built something people should be linking to, see how the GenSend backlink agent runs the outreach for you.

Frequently Asked Questions

How long does it take to get more backlinks? It varies by tactic. Unlinked mention reclamation and broken-link building can produce links within days once you send outreach. Digital PR and original research often take a few weeks between the pitch and the placement. Building a durable backlink profile that meaningfully moves rankings is a months-long compounding effort, not a one-time push.

How many backlinks do I need to rank? There's no fixed number. It depends on how competitive the keyword is and how strong your competitors' backlink profiles are. The better question is how many relevant, authoritative referring domains you need relative to the pages you're competing with. Run a backlink gap analysis against the current top results to get a realistic target instead of chasing an arbitrary count.

Are backlinks still important for SEO in 2026? Yes. Links remain one of Google's core signals for discovering pages and gauging credibility. What's changed is the emphasis: relevance and authority now matter far more than raw volume, and low-quality or manipulative links can hurt rather than help.

Should I buy backlinks? No. Buying links that pass ranking signals violates Google's link spam policy and can trigger manual actions or algorithmic devaluation. If you pay for a placement, it should carry a sponsored or nofollow attribute. Invest the same budget in creating linkable assets and doing real outreach instead.

What's the easiest way to get quality backlinks? Reclaiming unlinked mentions. If people already reference your brand or work without linking, you're asking for a tiny edit rather than a favor, so acceptance rates are high and the links are relevant by definition. It's the highest-conversion, lowest-effort tactic available to most sites.

What is a backlink agent? A backlink agent is software that automates the prospecting and outreach side of link building: finding relevant sites, identifying the right contact, personalizing each pitch, sending it, and following up. It handles the repetitive volume work so you can focus on creating content worth linking to and building relationships.

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If you take one thing from this guide, take this: the backlinks you're missing are almost never hiding in a tactic you haven't heard of. They're sitting in the pages you already published and never pitched. The asset half is done. The links are one outreach campaign away, and that campaign is the part that never happens on its own.

Getting links is one half of growth; converting the traffic those links send is the other. If you're a founder doing your own SEO, our guide on how to get customers after you build your product covers what happens after the rankings come. And if the outreach is your bottleneck, GenSend runs the prospecting and follow-up for you so the pitches actually get sent.

Adam Petty writes about SEO, outreach, and growth at GenSend, where he works on automating the relationship-building work behind link building. Guidance on Google's policies above reflects public documentation as of 2026 and can change.