Key takeaways:

• Quality backlinks are earned and are regarded as relevant when they come from websites within your niche.

• You are more likely to build high-quality backlinks from white-hat link-building techniques than gray or black-hat ones.

• Generating quality backlinks will take longer but drive more traffic to your site in the long run.

• PR campaigns, linkable assets, Connectively, image linking, guest posting, and finding unlinked mentions are all great ways to earn quality backlinks.

High-Quality Backlinks Are ‘Earned’

You will never directly pay for quality backlinks. The owner of the linking website should have chosen to link to your content because it offers value.

Paying for links or manipulating a website owner to insert them is against Google’s rules. By using these tactics, you are trying to trick search engines into thinking that your content is better respected than it is.

Most of the time, Google will simply ignore links that it thinks have been purchased. In some cases, however, it may issue you a penalty.

The only time that you might pay for links is when using a link-building service like ours.

In this case, you have not paid for the link directly. Instead, you have paid for someone to find opportunities to build quality backlinks on your behalf.

High-Quality Links Come from Relevant Sources

Search engines will assess the websites and pages that link to your website to check that the subject matter matches. This is to ensure that the link has been made naturally.

Imagine if your website is about guitar lessons, and you have two links to your home page. One is from a local guitar shop, and another is from a travel blog.

The guitar shop’s website is highly relevant to what you do and would be considered a good quality link by the search engine.

If a backlink is completely irrelevant, like the travel blog one in this scenario, Google may decide that you have purchased it or got it through a link building scheme, in which case it would be ignored.

Quality Backlinks Come from High Authority Sites

Most search engine optimization (SEO) tools like Semrush, Moz, and Ahrefs assign every website an authority score from 1-100.

This rating reflects the website’s reputation as a thought leader or a source of valuable content in its niche or industry.

Authority scores, such as domain authority (DA) or page authority (PA), are primarily based on the number and quality of backlinks your site has.

If you have many backlinks from high-authority websites, Google is likely to rank your website higher on the SERPs.

That’s because these backlinks tell Google’s algorithm that many authoritative sources trust your website.

High authority on its own doesn’t define a quality backlink. There are plenty of websites out there that use their high authority as a way of selling links.

This link trading is against Google’s policy, and any link generated in this way isn’t a quality backlink.

Google will ignore a link if it thinks it isn’t earned or relevant, no matter how high the authority score.

Equally, low authority links are not necessarily poor quality.

If you have earned a backlink from a website that is relevant but has low authority, it will still improve your ranking, but not as much as one from a relevant, high authority site would.

How to Get Quality Backlinks with Link Building

There are a number of ways to get quality backlinks for your website. These include:

1) Generate PR Backlinks Through Campaigns

PR backlinks, sometimes known as PR outreach, are some of the most coveted links in SEO. These links are earned through your public relations efforts.

For example, let’s say you create a compelling story about a study your company conducted. You pitch it to several top-tier news outlets, and one of them publishes an article that links back to your website.

This earned backlink will have a significant impact on your site’s authority because it’s coming from a highly respected source.

Here’s why PR backlinks are so coveted:

✔️ Natural: They’re earned organically without resorting to paid or manipulative tactics.

✔️ Earned from campaigns: They come from engaging, valuable campaigns that grab media attention.

✔️ From high-authority sites: They typically come from reputable news websites and major publications, which gives your site a serious credibility boost.

But there is a downside: these backlinks can be incredibly difficult to obtain.

Journalists and editors are flooded with pitches, which makes it tough to stand out from the crowd. In addition, creating a truly attention-grabbing piece of content requires time and resources.

There’s also no guarantee that your pitch will be successful. Journalists are inundated with great content from businesses, so yours might be rejected even if it’s good.

How to get PR backlinks

Come up with a campaign idea

Think about what makes your business or product special. Is there a unique story or angle that hasn't been covered before? Maybe your company has an inspiring origin, or you've developed a product that solves a common problem in a new way.

Look at what's trending in your industry and whether you can tie your campaign idea to a current event or popular topic.

For example, if there’s a growing interest in sustainable practices, you could highlight your company’s eco-friendly initiatives.

Research publications

First, make a list of publications that are relevant to your industry and have a high authority.

Start by searching on Google for key phrases related to your industry along with terms like "top blogs," "top news sites," or "industry publications."

For example, if you’re in the tech industry, you might search for "top tech blogs" or "best technology news sites."

Look at the first few pages of the search results and compile a list of publications that appear frequently. Then, check their domain authority with tools like Ahrefs, Moz, or Semrush, and prioritize those with high authority.

Reach out to them

You can use the target publication’s social media pages—such as LinkedIn and Twitter—to find contact information if you can’t find it on their website.

Once you know which publications you want to target, write a concise, engaging pitch that clearly explains the value of your story.

Start with a strong hook to grab the journalist’s attention. For example, "Did you know that our new study reveals surprising trends in eco-friendly consumer behavior?"

Mention something specific about the journalist’s previous work or the publication’s recent articles to show that you’ve done your homework.

If you don’t hear back after a week, send a polite follow-up email. Sometimes a well-timed reminder can make all the difference.

Another way to get PR backlinks is by sending your story to an automated press release service. While your content has a good chance of being published, Google’s algorithms will quickly detect whether or not these types of publishing websites are relevant or high quality.

Being published on these websites will not help you get quality backlinks.

An example of an effective PR campaign

An excellent example is a campaign we created for the Accounting Institute for Success. We created a timeline of tax evasion claims around Donald Trump. This took some intensive research and design work, but it paid off.

At the time, Trump was the President of the U.S., so we were able to build high-quality backlinks from authoritative sites like Slashdot and Mashable.

Good PR campaigns require creativity and perseverance. You might have to try a few ideas that don’t work at first. Read our article on how we achieve getting PR backlinks for more information.

2) Create Linkable Assets

Linkable assets are content or resources that are so good that other websites will want to link to them. This makes them excellent sources of quality links.

Here’s how to create a linkable asset that will earn you backlinks:

Research your audience

Use tools like Google Keyword Planner, Ahrefs, or Semrush to discover what keywords and topics your audience is searching for.

Don’t just look at the relevant keywords—ask yourself which specific problems people are trying to solve with these searches, and think about how you can create content that answers their questions.

You can go a step further by engaging with your audience through surveys, social media, and forums. Ask open-ended questions to understand their pain points and needs.

Analyze competitor links

A link intersect analysis shows you which websites are linking to your competitors but not to you.

Knowing this is valuable because it highlights potential link opportunities with websites that are already interested in content similar to yours.

If these websites find your competitors’ content valuable, there’s a good chance they might link to your content as well, provided it offers equal or greater value.

To perform a link intersect, go to Ahrefs, then go to the "Link intersect" tool:

Enter your competitors' URLs:

Ahrefs will show you all the URLs that are linking to your competitors, but not to you:

Now that you have a list of websites that link to your competitors, it’s time to create content that could get them to link to your website, too.

Come up with a great piece of content

Ask yourself what types of content attract the most links for your competitors. Can you create a similar or improved version of this content?

Think about unique angles or stories that haven’t been covered extensively. Consider creating in-depth guides or innovative tools, or conduct original research.

For example, if you notice an information gap in existing guides on vegan bodybuilding, you could create a detailed guide that covers vegan diets, dedicated workouts for vegans, and success stories.

Look at your competitors' successful linkable assets and think about how you can improve upon them. Update outdated information, add more value, or present it in a more engaging way.

Share your content

Like PR backlinks, linkable asset campaigns involve outreach in order to obtain backlinks.

But this time, you’ll reach out to other blogs and websites rather than publications.

Avoid contacting link farms, PBNs, and other link-building scams, as these won’t result in you quality backlinks.

The websites you contact might ask you for payment for a link. Paying for links is against Google’s guidelines but is standard practice in some industries. It is up to you whether you want to do this.

An example of an effective linkable asset

We managed a great linkable content campaign for a client of ours, Identity Guard.

We researched ideas that would be useful for Identity Guard’s industry and draw significant search traffic.

We came up with the idea of dark web monitoring.

The dark web is a hidden part of the Internet that is not indexed by search engines and accessible only through special browsers like Tor.

Cybersecurity is a hot topic, with frequent news about hacks and data breaches. We quickly realized that dark web monitoring taps into this relevance, and makes it a topic of interest to readers.

3) Attract Image Links

Image link building is a long-term strategy but will attract quality links if done correctly.

Best of all, it’s passive and requires little effort once set up.

Image link building is when you create quality, relevant images that people want to share or use.

For this strategy to be successful, you need to set up your images so that a link to your website is published when someone shares them.

The types of images that people like to share include:

• Infographics

• Logos, badges, and banners

• Product photos

• Graphs, charts, and statistics

• Maps

Here’s how to set up an image link building campaign.

1. Analyze competitor images - keep an eye on what works for your competitors all year round. This will give you a sense of the images that will work for your campaigns.

2. Use Google Trends - this is a great way to see the kind of image content that people will be interested in sharing.

3. Narrow your search - use tools like Answerthepublic and Keywordtool.io to narrow your list of relevant keywords. Both of these tools have free and paid-for versions.

4. Use keywords with link intent - look up your long-tail keywords on Google and find images that could work for your niche. Find out who links to these images and target these websites with an outreach campaign.

5. Create unbranded images - the people using your images are not interested in promoting your brand. They’ll probably steer clear of branded images, as it will make their content appear as if it’s sponsored by you.

6. Optimize your images - this involves adding relevant titles that include your keywords for image fields. This will help Google understand what the image is. These fields include:

   • Alt text: use this to describe the image

   • Title: a short explanation of the image that includes keywords

   • Image filename: again, use keywords

   • Caption: use this to help website visitors understand your content

Create a URL for your image - this is the essential part: you must create an image URL to link back to your website. We recommend using imgur.com to do this. Read our guide to image link building for more information.

4) Help a Journalist Out With Connectively

One of the easiest and most effective ways to get high-quality links is to use Connectively (formerly HARO).

This is a service that connects journalists who are looking for experts with people who can help answer their questions.

If you provide a journalist with information that helps them write their article, they will include a link to your website when it is published.

This means that links from Connectively responses are relevant and earned.

Connectively is free for sources to register on, and thousands of high-DA websites use it. These sites include big names like GQ, Business Insider, FT, and Vice.

Here’s how it works:

1. Visit the Connectively website and sign up as a source.

2. Search the in-app feed for queries that are relevant to your expertise.

3. Answer them as fully as you can.

4. The journalist in question will get back to you if they decide to use your response or if they want more information.

The key to Connectively success

There are a few downsides to Connectively. First, finding a question that you can respond to can be time-consuming.

Secondly, reporters are usually inundated with responses; there is no guarantee they will choose yours. You can expect to get one link for every 5-10 replies submitted.

Here's how to succeed with Connectively:

• Fast responses - if you respond quickly to a Connectively query, your pitch will land at the top of the journalist’s feed, which means they are far more likely to choose your response. If you leave it for 24 hours, it is likely that 50+ people will have already replied, and the opportunity will be lost.

• Find relevant requests and topics - taking a scattergun approach and answering any question will only waste your time. Focus on questions you can answer with some authority. For example, if you’re a digital marketing agency, you can answer almost any question about marketing, business, entrepreneurship, advertising, management, etc.

• Be concise - don’t write more than 200 words in your response—and don’t start dropping self-promotional links to your social profiles and contributions. The journalist just wants to glean some insight.

• Use actionable and valuable tips - don’t write generic fluff, but provide quotable points of expertise. Tell them about the tools and strategies you use. Begin your response with actionable advice, then explain what you mean.

5) Write Guest Posts

Guest posting involves writing content for another website to gain backlinks to your site.

Websites offer guest blogging opportunities because they give them a supply of new, high-quality content for free. It also helps improve their ranking and authority score because often, blogs will be shared by the person who wrote it.

While it’s technically against Google’s rules if done purely for link-building purposes, it can be highly effective if done with quality and relevance in mind.

However, there are ways to do a guest blog post well and get quality backlinks.

Find the right websites

The first step is to find websites that:

✔️ Have a high domain authority (DA) score: This means the site is trusted by search engines and can pass valuable link juice on to your site.

✔️ Have a guest posting policy: This indicates that the site regularly accepts guest posts and has a structured submission process.

✔️ Have high editorial standards: This ensures that the content published is high-quality, which reflects positively on your backlink.

✔️ Publish original and well-written content: This attracts genuine readers and earns respect from search engines.

An excellent example of this is Hubspot’s blog. Its guidelines are lengthy and stringent. This ensures that only the best, most authoritative content appears on their site.

You can also do a simple Google search to find websites that accept guest posts. Start with queries like:

• Your keyword + “guest post”

• Your keyword + “write for us”

• Your keyword + “submit blog post”

For example, if your niche is digital marketing, you might search for “digital marketing + guest post” or “SEO tips + write for us.”

Come up with a great idea

Next, you need to think of an article the blog owner will want to publish, and visitors will want to read.

Use keyword analysis to see which Google searches are popular for your industry. Think of ideas related to these terms. Research and plan your idea thoroughly. Write down everything you know on the subject.

Next, enrich this information by reading what other people have written. Don’t just look at articles—YouTube videos, Reddit threads, and books are all excellent reference materials.

Pitch your idea

Once you have created a great piece of content and a list of prospects, it’s time to reach out to website owners.

This is where you sell your idea to the owner of the blog.

Many guest posting strategies fail because outreach attempts either don’t communicate ideas professionally or not enough effort goes into pitching ideas.

Here are a few tips for writing a good outreach email:

1. Introduce yourself and your business and explain why you want to write for the blog (don’t just say you want to get a high-quality backlink!).

2. Explain your idea, including why people will want to read it and the expertise that you will bring to the subject.

3. Explain how you will promote the post. Companies run guest blogs to increase the number of links and traffic going to their web pages. If you explain how you’ll do that, they will be more likely to publish your post.

4. Get an experienced writer. Finally, ensure you get a professional writer with industry knowledge to produce your article. Websites like ProBlogger and Upwork are great places to look for seasoned freelance writers. Produce a detailed brief for the writer you’ve chosen and have a phone call with them to discuss the idea. If your writer is good, they will provide their own ideas and advice—so ask for their input.

Follow up

If you don’t hear back from the blog owner within a week or two after you’ve sent them your pitch, send a polite follow-up email.

If you’re targeting websites with high domain authority and organic traffic, the site owner could be receiving hundreds of outreach emails every week—it’s possible yours slipped through the cracks.

If you don’t hear back after following up, cut your losses and move on to other prospects. Sending multiple follow-up emails can come across as pushy and unprofessional.

6) Find Unlinked Mentions

Unlinked mentions are a great way to build quality backlinks with relatively little effort. This strategy involves finding instances where your website, business, or content is referenced but has not been linked to.

Most of the time, this happens because the website owner forgot, and they are usually happy to add the link when asked.

Here’s an example of an unlinked mention, where the creator of the blog has listed the top cars of 2022 but hasn’t linked back to any of the brands:

Unlinked mentions can be a goldmine for getting high-quality backlinks because they are:

Relevant: Unlinked mentions often occur on websites that are relevant to your niche. These mentions occur naturally and are contextually appropriate, making the backlinks more valuable for SEO.

Natural: This happens when someone mentions your business or content because it adds value. It indicates that your content is seen as an authoritative resource, which is why they chose to reference it in the first place.

Easy to get: Since the mention is already there, getting it linked involves minimal effort compared to other link-building strategies.

Here’s how you can spot unlinked mentions:

1. Go to Google Alerts

2. Set up notifications for your company name, product, or any branded terms.

3. Choose how often you want to be notified.

4. When you receive a notification, go to the page to find out where the site mentioned you and whether or not they linked to you.

5. If the site didn’t link to yours, contact the person who wrote the article and ask for a link.

7) Submit Your Content to Resource Pages

A resource page is a page on a website that curates valuable links and resources on a specific topic.

These pages are designed to provide readers with a one-stop destination for high-quality, informative content related to their interests, for example:

Resource pages are a great source for high-quality backlinks because they often come from reputable websites with high domain authority. Being featured on a well-respected resource page enhances your credibility and authority in your niche.

However, resource pages typically have high editorial standards and only link to the best content. Your content needs to be as good–or better than–the other content listed on the page.

How to submit your content to resource pages

Finding the right resource pages to target is the first step. Use Google search operators to locate these pages. For example, you can use queries like:

• Your keyword + “inurl:resources”

• Your keyword + “intitle:resources”

• Your keyword + “useful links”

Not all resource pages are created equal. Ensure the pages you target have high domain authority and are relevant to your content.

Let’s check the DR score of one of our top search results, Nutshell:

Once you’ve determined that your target resource page is relevant and has a high DR score, have a look at its content and assess whether you have—or can create—content that would be an improvement or adds additional value.

In this example, Nutshell’s page lists digital marketing resources that include:

• Podcasts

• YouTube channels

• Blogs

Once you’ve found or created a piece of content that’s worthy of inclusion, the next step is to reach out to the website owner.

When reaching out to the site owner or editor, make sure your email is personalized and highlights the value of your content. Clearly communicate the value of your link and how it aligns with the existing content they feature.

After your content is featured, engage with any traffic or comments it generates to build relationships within your niche.

Boost Your Ranking on Search Engines

Getting quality backlinks for your website may seem like a lot of work. But the backlinks you create using the techniques in this article will be more effective than those you would generate via blackhat link building strategies or by buying links.

This will benefit your website in the long run, and Google will begin to see it as a trusted source of content that deserves to rank higher in its SERPs. Ultimately, this will drive more traffic to your website.