12 Easy Ways to Get Backlinks for a New Website

Want to get backlinks to your new site? The good news is you don’t need domain authority, a big budget or a library of content to earn your first links. You just need to know where to look.

Below are 12 ways to do it, with step-by-step instructions and real results from our own campaigns.

What Are Backlinks?

Backlinks are hyperlinks from other websites that point to yours. Search engines like Google treat backlinks as signals of authority and trust, using them alongside other factors to help evaluate a page’s relevance and ranking potential.

Not all backlinks carry the same weight. Links from relevant, reputable websites are generally more valuable than links from low-quality or unrelated sources. The context surrounding a link, the credibility of the linking page and its relevance to your content can all influence its value.

Why Backlinks Matter for Search and AI Visibility

Backlinks are a key ranking factor in traditional search. In our latest link building study at ListBrew, we found that pages ranking in the top three had nearly 5x more backlinks than pages ranking in positions 4 to 10.

They now also matter for brand visibility in AI answers. The same study found that websites with over 10,000 referring domains averaged 4.36 citations, compared to just 1.5 citations for sites with less than 100 referring domains.

The pattern is clear: the more sources mention and link to your site, the more likely search engines and LLMs will trust your brand and recommend it to users.

Why We’re Qualified to Talk About This Topic

Between January and September 2026, we secured 1,815 do-follow backlinks to Position Digital’s website.

Around 112 of those links come from DR 70+ publications, including Forbes, Backlinko, SE Ranking, Moosend, Writesonic, and many more.

During the same period, we also ran successful link building and digital PR campaigns for our clients:

• 50+ backlinks acquired in 3 months for Resource Guru
• 21 media placements secured in 4 months for Decentriq

In this post, I’ll reveal our exact link building playbook.

1. Get Listed in Relevant Directories

Directory links are often no-follow, meaning they don’t directly pass link authority. But that doesn’t mean you should abandon them.

Having an optimized profile on relevant directories can help search engines and AI systems discover your business, provide accurate brand details, and put your company in front of potential customers.

In fact, a study by Seer Interactive found that brands with no Trustpilot profile have a median AI citation rate of 1%. Brands with even a minimal profile — as few as 1–13 reviews — jump to 53.5%.

This suggests that directory listings can contribute to visibility beyond the traditional value of a backlink.

Industry associations and your local chamber of commerce work the same way. Most publish a member directory that links to members’ websites, and those links come from relevant, established organizations.

How to do it

The key is to choose directories based on relevance and quality, rather than submitting your website to every directory you can find.

For example:

• Local businesses: Prioritize Google Business Profile, Yelp and Tripadvisor where relevant to your location and industry, plus your local chamber of commerce.
• SaaS companies: Submit your product to SaaS directories and relevant review platforms such as G2, Capterra and Product Hunt.
• Professional services: Look for reputable industry associations, professional directories, and specialist business listings.
• Every business: Claim your profiles on the review sites your customers use, such as Trustpilot, and on business databases like Crunchbase.

A few best practices to keep in mind when submitting:

• Prioritize directories with a high domain rating, traffic, and AI visibility first.
• Keep your business information consistent and up-to-date across all platforms.
• Ask early customers or clients to leave positive ratings and reviews.
• Join associations you’d value anyway. Membership costs money, so pick ones whose events, resources or network are useful beyond the link, and check your member listing includes your URL.

2. Reach Out to Your Connections

Your existing relationships are the easiest source of relevant backlinks, because you don’t have to convince a stranger that you’re worth linking to.

That includes:

• Suppliers and partners, who may already have partner directories, customer showcases, testimonials, or case study pages that link to the businesses they work with.
• The tools you use. Many SaaS companies publish customer testimonials and case studies that link to the customer’s website. If your product integrates with another platform, its integration directory or app marketplace is another easy listing.
• People you’ve worked with, including friends, former coworkers and managers, old clients, and alumni groups, who may run blogs, company pages or communities where a mention makes sense.

How to do it

• List your relationships. Write down your suppliers, technology providers, partners, past employers, former colleagues, old clients, and the alumni groups and communities you belong to.
• Check their websites. Look for customer stories, partner and integration directories, testimonials, case study pages, and team or alumni spotlights.
• Offer a genuine contribution. Write a useful testimonial, share measurable results from using a product, or propose a case study about your collaboration.
• Keep the request casual and specific. Point to the exact page where a mention would make sense and suggest the page it should link to.
• Don’t trade links. Asking a contact to mention you is fine. Agreeing to swap links in bulk is a link scheme under Google’s spam policies.

3. Turn Unlinked Mentions Into Links

An unlinked brand mention is an online reference to your company, product, founder or website that doesn’t include a hyperlink.

A new website won’t have many mentions yet, but it’s worth setting up monitoring from day one so you catch them as they appear.

These mentions represent an opportunity because the author already knows about your brand and has chosen to reference it. A link can make that reference more useful by allowing readers to find the relevant resource directly.

How to do it

• Monitor your brand mentions. Use tools like Alertmouse to set up alerts for your company name, products, founders, and other relevant branded terms.
• Check whether the mention includes a link. Review each result to distinguish linked references from unlinked ones.
• Contact the author or editor. Send a short, personalized request explaining where the mention appears and why linking to your website would be useful.
• Check other places your brand appears. Podcast show notes, YouTube descriptions and image credits often mention a brand without linking to it. If a site uses your photos, charts or logo, ask for a credit link.
• Recommend the most relevant destination. Link to the specific report, product page or resource being discussed instead of automatically suggesting your homepage.

Keep the outreach simple. You’re not asking them to create anything new — you’re just making an existing reference more useful to their readers.

4. Respond to Journalist Requests

Journalists often use expert-request platforms to find credible sources for articles.

Responding to these requests can earn you media coverage, expert mentions and sometimes backlinks from established publications.

For founders, consultants and subject matter experts, this is one way to earn links from publications that would otherwise be difficult to approach.

We’ve seen opportunities from high-authority publications, including DR 90+ websites such as HubSpot, through platforms like MentionMatch, Qwoted, and Featured.

The catch is speed and substance. Journalists receive plenty of pitches, so the responses that stand out are specific, helpful and grounded in genuine experience.

How to do it

• Join two or three request platforms. Set up keyword alerts for your niche, expertise, and industry.
• Build a daily response routine. Spend 15 minutes checking relevant requests and aim to respond promptly, ideally the same day.
• Lead with a specific insight. Provide a data point, practical example, or useful observation from your own experience.
• Answer the question directly. Give journalists a concise, quotable response rather than leading with your product or company description.
• Prepare your spokesperson profiles. Make it easy for journalists to understand each expert’s experience and areas of knowledge.
• Keep a swipe file of your best answers. Many requests are variations on the same question.

Case study

With this approach, we managed to secure backlinks from high-authority sites like HubSpot and Ahrefs.

5. Replace Broken and Outdated Links

Websites link to pages that disappear, resources that stop being updated, and statistics that go out of date. Each one is a chance to suggest your newer page as a replacement.

That could mean replacing:

• Broken links that point to pages that no longer exist.
• Outdated pages and resources, such as guides, templates or lists that haven’t been updated in years.
• Outdated statistics that your newer study or statistics roundup updates.
• Outdated tools. If you run a SaaS company, look for links to tools that have shut down or stopped being maintained, which your product can replace.

Not every opportunity is worth pursuing. The best ones are where your page is genuinely the better resource for the reader.

How to do it

• Find broken and outdated links. Use a backlink analysis tool or website crawler to identify broken outbound links on websites in your industry, and look for pages that still link to old statistics, retired tools or outdated guides.
• Check the original content. If possible, use an archived version of the old page to understand what information it provided.
• Find or create a suitable replacement. Your page should fulfill the same purpose and offer comparable or greater value to readers. If you don’t have one yet, this tactic works best once you’ve published a few useful resources.
• Contact the website owner. Explain where the link appears, why it no longer serves their readers and how your resource could replace it.

6. Publish Statistic Roundups

A statistics roundup compiles the latest data on a topic from credible studies into one page. Writers, journalists and AI engines need numbers to back up their claims, so a well-organized stats page becomes a go-to source they link to.

Unlike original research, you don’t need your own data. You need good sources, time, and the habit of keeping the page up to date.

How to do it

• Pick a topic people write about often. Look for subjects where articles regularly cite numbers, and check whether the existing stats pages are thin or out of date.
• Collect statistics from credible sources. Prioritize recent studies, surveys and official data, and record each stat’s source and publication date.
• Make the stats easy to cite. Group them by subtopic, write each one as a clear, one-line finding, and link to the original source.
• Keep it updated. Replace outdated figures and add new studies regularly so your page stays the freshest source on the topic.

Case study

Our AI SEO statistics article has generated over 3,000 backlinks since 2025.

It’s also cited by AI Overviews, despite not ranking on the first page of search results.

7. Create Useful Resources

Another way to attract backlinks naturally without doing any outreach is publishing useful resources: something that people want to download, bookmark, share, and reference.

Think directories, templates, checklists, glossaries of industry terms, industry databases, practical guides and curated collections of useful tools. These assets solve a specific problem for your audience and give other websites a reason to link to them.

How to do it

• Identify a recurring problem. Look at questions your customers ask, tasks they struggle with, and information they repeatedly search for.
• Build a genuinely useful resource. Make it easier to use than existing alternatives through better organization, original information, practical examples, or additional detail.
• Optimize it for discovery. Use a descriptive title, clear headings, accessible formatting, and relevant internal links.
• Keep it up to date. Review links, remove outdated entries, and refresh information as your industry changes.

Case study

We published a list of 260+ SaaS directories in August 2026. The resource has attracted eight backlinks and hundreds of downloads so far.

But more importantly, AI Overview directly recommends and links to our resource in its answer.

8. Compile News and Trends

A regularly updated roundup of news and trends in your industry gives journalists, newsletter writers and bloggers a reliable source to reference. Adding your own commentary, analysis or data gives them a reason to link to you rather than the original announcement.

It can be an effective link building tactic because journalists and publishers often need expert perspectives while a story is still attracting attention.

If your brand can provide a useful explanation or a fresh angle quickly, you have an opportunity to earn coverage and backlinks.

This is particularly relevant in fast-moving industries such as SEO and artificial intelligence, where new product launches, algorithm updates, and research findings regularly create opportunities for expert commentary.

How to do it

• Monitor relevant news sources. Follow industry publications, newsletters, influencers, as well as official company blogs.
• Curate the latest industry news. Compile important developments into a regularly updated news roundup.
• Look for a distinctive angle. Identify opportunities to provide expert commentary, original analysis, or additional data that goes beyond simply reporting the news.
• Publish while the topic is relevant. Timeliness matters, particularly when journalists are actively researching a developing story.

Case study

We published an AI SEO news roundup covering developments in AI-powered search and their implications for marketers.

The page has garnered 42 backlinks and earned a Google AI Overview citation.

9. Get Featured in Newsletters and Link Roundups

Newsletter writers and bloggers who publish weekly link roundups need a steady stream of new things to share. Their whole format is built on linking out, which makes them one of the easiest audiences to pitch.

Many newsletters also publish each issue on their website, so a single mention can send you referral traffic and earn a permanent backlink at the same time.

How to do it

• Find newsletters and roundups in your niche. Search for “[your topic] newsletter” or “[your topic] weekly roundup,” and check which newsletters your competitors have been featured in.
• Prioritize newsletters with a web archive. Issues published on the newsletter’s website, Substack or beehiiv give you a backlink as well as an email mention.
• Give curators something worth sharing. Original data, a useful resource or a timely news roundup gets picked up far more often than a product announcement. Lead with one clear stat or takeaway they can summarize in a sentence.
• Pitch briefly and at the right time. Send a short note with one link and why it suits their readers, a few days before their usual send day.

Case study

Foundation featured our AI SEO news roundup in issue 308 of its weekly B2B marketing newsletter, citing it as the source for a stat on listicle citations in AI answers.

That one mention sent 437 visits to our website, 433 of them on the day the issue went out. Because Foundation also publishes every issue on its blog, the mention is now a permanent backlink as well.

10. Write Guest Posts on Relevant Sites

Guest posting means writing articles for other relevant websites, usually with a link back to your own site. It works best when the goal is reaching the right audience rather than collecting links.

According to our outreach team, most of the work happens before you send a single email. Pitching the right website and the right person matters more than anything else, because if you reach the wrong people, they won’t reply at all.

How to do it

• Pick a theme. Plan guest posts around the topics you already cover on your own blog and the services you sell. Our outreach team works to a monthly theme, such as AI search, SaaS or link building, and every guest post pitch that month fits it.
• Target adjacent companies, not competitors. Look for real companies that share your audience and run their own blog. As an SEO agency, for example, we pitch SEO tools rather than other agencies, because we both write for marketers.
• Skip “write for us” sites. In our experience, most are editorial sites that charge for placements, and some belong to private blog networks or link farms.
• Prospect by sub-niche. Search the commercial keywords of the companies you want to reach, like “seo tools,” then break the results into sub-niches such as AI visibility tools, rank trackers and link building tools. Check that each company has an active blog before you add it to your list.
• Pitch topics their competitors rank for. Run a content gap analysis between the prospect and its own competitors, not you, and pitch the topics the prospect is missing. Offer to write the article or co-author it with their team. These tailored topics are how we personalize every pitch.
• Contact the right person. Start with the content team (writers, editors and content managers), then SEO leads, then marketing managers. Go to founders or the C-suite only as a last resort. Tools like Hunter and Apollo help you find their email addresses.
• Send at the right time. Our team sends pitches Monday to Thursday, between 8am and 6pm in the prospect’s time zone, and never on Fridays.
• Follow up once. Two days later, send a shorter version of your pitch that still says what you’re offering and what the prospect gets. If there’s still no reply, move on.
• Keep in touch. When a collaboration ends, stay in contact. A site that published your guest post, or even one that turned you down, can be a partner for your next campaign. A rejection is better than silence, because at least you’ve made a connection.

As Christine from our outreach team puts it: “When you do link building, you’re not necessarily just building links, you’re building connections.”

Writing guest posts on the same topics as your own blog also helps in AI search, because it gives AI engines more sources that connect your brand to the topic.

Case study

I wrote about “Content Refresh” on the Position Digital blog, then wrote guest posts on the same topic on Sitebulb and Surfer SEO.

All three articles are now cited by AI Overviews.

11. Release a Free Open-Source Tool or Plugin

This one is for SaaS and tech companies. A small, genuinely useful tool, such as a plugin, browser extension, code library or template, earns links from the places it’s listed and from the people who use it.

Platforms like GitHub, npm, the WordPress plugin directory and browser extension stores all link to a project’s homepage, and developers often reference useful tools in documentation and curated “awesome” lists.

How to do it

• Solve one small problem. Build something your audience needs that’s related to your product, rather than a stripped-down version of it.
• Publish it where developers look. Release it on GitHub, npm, WordPress.org or an extension store, with your website as the project homepage.
• Document it well. A clear README and a documentation page on your site give people something to link to.
• Submit it to curated lists. Pitch it to relevant “awesome” lists on GitHub and to resource pages in your niche.

12. Co-Host Webinars and Content With Partners

Partnering with a non-competing business lets you borrow its audience and the authority of its website.

A joint webinar, report or guide gives both companies a reason to publish and promote it, and each side’s event page, recap or announcement naturally links to the other.

How to do it

• Pick a partner with an overlapping audience. Look for complementary products, agencies or service providers whose customers match yours but who don’t compete with you.
• Agree on a project with real value. A webinar, joint research report or co-authored guide works best when both sides contribute expertise or data.
• Publish on both sites. Each partner hosts its own event page or recap and credits the other with a link.
• Keep the links editorial. Link because the collaboration is relevant, not as part of a link swap. Google’s spam policies treat excessive link exchanges as a link scheme.

Link Building Shortcuts to Avoid

Some “easy” backlinks do more harm than good. Buying links, swapping links in bulk, private blog networks (PBNs), and keyword-stuffed links in blog comments, forums or press releases all fall under Google’s link spam policies. At best, Google ignores them. At worst, they lead to a penalty.

Partner With Position Digital to Build Links That Matter

Building links is hard. Building links that actually improve your search and AI visibility is even harder.

If you’re looking for a partner that truly understands how the link building game works, Position Digital is the right choice.

We’ve secured thousands of backlinks, earned coverage in established publications, and seen our content and client coverage cited in AI-generated answers.

Explore our link building services to see how we can help you. Or contact us directly today and let’s talk!

How to Get Backlinks FAQs