How to get free backlinks - 8 different ways

I recently gave a talk at the Skyscanner office in Glasgow about how to get great backlinks for free. This blog post is based on this presentation. I go over 8 ways to get backlinks, from quick wins to harder but rewarding techniques. Oh and by the way, I do freelance SEO so you can hire me if your business needs to perform better in search or if you're an SEO who needs mentoring.

There's a little info about backlinks for people new to SEO or you can skip straight to the ways you can get backlinks.

What are backlinks?

Backlinks are links from other websites linking back to yours. You want to get more of them as that signals to search engines like Google (and LLMs like ChatGPT) that your website is useful and worth visiting.

High vs low domain ratings

But backlinks are not created equally. They are judged on their domain rating (DR). Just as a recommendation from Sam Altman for an AI job is going to be far more impactful than one from your mum, a backlink from a website with high domain rating counts for a lot more than one with a low domain rating.  

Domain rating is measured on a scale of 0-100. Newspapers, universities and the most popular websites have very high levels of domain rating because they are seen as very credible. In contrast, new websites or ones without many backlinks have very low levels of domain rating.

Your goal is to get more backlinks for your website but you should also try to get the higher DR ones because these count for a lot more. Otherwise, anyone could make hundreds of cheap websites with no content and link them together (some shady SEOs will do this). 

Do-follow vs no-follow backlinks

An important note - you need to know the difference between do-follow and no-follow links. 

• Do-follow links

They help your SEO and that’s what you want from a backlink because it’s essentially the website linking to you and saying “this website is legit”

• No-follow links

They may help a little bit but they aren’t ideal because it’s as if the website linking to you is saying “this is just a link on my page, don’t view it as  being a good link to visit”

For example, Medium, the blogging website that flourished in the 2010s, has a very high authority of 92 but the links are no-follow so they aren’t very valuable. It's a classic beginner mistake to add links everywhere but not realise these are no-follow links. Also, links from forums are generally no-follow. So this means just adding your links to communities won't help your SEO.

How to get backlinks for free

Here are 8 ways to get do-follow backlinks for free. I’ll start with the easiest ways and then they’ll get progressively harder.

1) Link to your website

Yes, it's a super simple one to start with but lots of big websites with high domain ratings surprisingly offer do-follow backlinks. For instance, you can add your website link to your Bluesky bio and get a free 92 DR backlink. Just make a free Bluesky profile and put your links in your bio.

Another similar example is Kit (affiliate). If you publish a newsletter post publicly it will go on a domain like highsignalnewsletter.kit.com. This gives you a do-follow DR 90 link from Kit.

You can also do with with the website builder Carrd (affiliate), which gives you a 90 DR backlink.

2) Launch your website properly

If you have a tech product, launch your company on sites like Product Hunt, BetaList, HackerNews or Uneed.

You’ll get a free backlink from these high authority sites. Also, if you have a cool product, there’s a good chance that other websites will link to you because lots of media websites report on what does well on places like Product Hunt.

HackerNews is a particularly powerful one. It’s also a great place on get on the radar of programmers and entrepreneurs, who will link to you if they like your post. 

Uneed is a challenger to Product Hunt and features smaller team's products so you're also more likely to be featured here since it's not really on the radar of big software companies.

3) Get included on listicle blog posts

If you have a business, it’s a no-brainer to search for your category. For instance, if you're a plumber I'd search to see if you appear for your city e.g. “plumbers in Edinburgh”. Have a look at what pages are on the first page of Google or are mentioned by ChatGPT.

Then you can just contact these websites and ask to be included. For instance, when I was growing my newsletter for self-taught developers, No CS Degree, I did a Google search for “newsletters for developers”. 

There was a blog post from a software company, RunCloud, that was ranking really well on Google for this term so I contacted them, asked nicely if they could add No CS Degree to their list and lo and behold, I got a backlink. These websites need content so you are helping them here. 

4) Get links from businesses in your industry

I was speaking to a florist recently about SEO. I had a look at the florists that were above her website in Google search results. It turns out that one of her competitors had a backlink from a wedding photographer, which helped them rank higher in search. So if I was a florist, I would give free flowers to photographers in return for a backlink to my website.

Here's another example: a website that teaches people coding has linked to my No CS Degree website, because it contains lots of interviews about learning to code.

Get help with SEO

I can help with SEO audits, keyword research and writing great posts like this one. I also offer 1:1 mentoring for £100/hr.

5) Do interviews 

Interviews are a great way to get a backlink and also, it’s a  free way to promote your business. To be fair, you usually need to have achieved some level of success like raising a round of investment or making a certain amount of revenue. But not always. 

For instance, I interview entrepreneurs who have funded their companies themselves and I share these stories in my newsletter for founders, High Signal. These people get a free backlink and they get to talk about their startup. All they need to do is answer a few questions over email.

Content marketers like me are always looking for more people to interview so shoot your shot and contact publications to be interviewed. You can register your interest in a High Signal interview here. 

Also, lots of interviews get picked up and shared by other newsletters. For instance, I interviewed someone about making a popular local newsletter and that article has been mentioned in other newsletters. A backlink from Substack has a 92 DR so that’s a very high authority backlink to receive.

You can also do interviews on podcasts. These have an added bonus because you get a backlink from the software companies which host the podcasts. For instance, Develop Yourself is a podcast which has interviewed me. They host their episodes on BuzzSprout and because there are links to my projects in the show notes, I get backlinks from BuzzSprout.

And just like with newsletters, other websites will link to your podcast from their website if it’s a good episode. 

6) Get featured in case studies

I once got a backlink from an email software tool I used, EmailOctopus. They were writing a blog post about customers that used their software so they interviewed me and linked back to my No CS Degree newsletter website. 

A nice tip for this - make a list of every company you pay money to each month, ask them if you can do a case study with them and ask for a link. Perhaps you have an accountant who writes about the types of businesses it serves. Ask to be included as an example, provided they link to your website. 

7) Get press coverage 

Press coverage is one of the best ways to get free backlinks. Newspapers and news websites have some of the highest authority backlinks. Here is the domain authority of some UK news websites:

The Guardian: 93

BBC: 93

Financial Times: 92

The Telegraph: 91

The Metro: 88

The Scotsman: 84

The Herald: 82

Getting press coverage is also one of the hardest ways to get links because, understandably, news sites aren’t going to report on your business unless it’s newsworthy.

But there’s a sneaky way to get around this called “side project marketing”. This is basically where you launch something a bit gimmicky that isn't just your main business. For instance, Veed is a video editing software tool. It’s never going to get news coverage for that, because their product isn't newsworthy outside of tech.

But their co-founder Sabba Keynejad got coverage in The Mirror with a clever publicity stunt. He bought Christmas trees in bulk and then sold them to people for a profit. This got his company an 89 DR backlink from one of the main newspapers in the UK. 

Obviously, this isn’t easy to do but all you need is to think of something that you can do to get in the news which will be interesting to readers. For instance, if I was a plumber I’d announce a competition for a free visit to someone and write to newspapers to get my story published. 

8) Vibe code website tools

This could be anything like a Chrome extension, a calculator or something more complex like a dating app. Make it silly. Make it newsworthy. Make it something that has search volume in Ahrefs.

Even something very simple can get backlinks if it's useful. You can use ChatGPT or Claude for free or pay $20 per month. For instance, Charlie made a marketing quotes Chrome extension:

Conclusion

I hope this was useful. I’ve got some other backlink strategies I only give to paying clients. I do freelance SEO in Edinburgh as well as serving clients anywhere else. So if you are interested in my services let me know. I also do 1:1 SEO mentoring online or in-person in Edinburgh.