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How to Get High Quality Backlinks (7 Top Strategies)

Brian Dean

Written by Brian Dean

How to Get High Quality Backlinks

Today youโ€™re going to learn how to get backlinks in 2025.

In fact, the 7 strategies Iโ€™m going to share with you have helped my site rack up 2.4 million total backlinks:

Letโ€™s get right into the techniques.

1. Become a Source For Reporters and Bloggers

Hereโ€™s the deal:

If you want to rank on the first page of Google, you need to build backlinks from authority news sites and blogs.

(Iโ€™m talking about white hat links from authority news sites and blogs.)

Fortunately, this isnโ€™t as hard as it sounds.

All you need to do is use services like Help a B2B Writer (100% free) and Featured.com (freemium).

Help a B2B Writer and Featured.com are like Tinder for public relations.

It connects people that need sources (bloggers and journalists) to people that want links and exposure (you).

And Iโ€™ve personally used them to build white hat backlinks from authoritative news sites:

Entrepreneur โ€“ Backlink from HARO

And Iโ€™m not alone. In fact, I get emails like this from Backlinko readers all the time:

To be clear: this strategy takes work. And itโ€™s not always easy.

But in my experience, itโ€™s one of the best ways to build high-quality backlinks at scale.

With that, letโ€™s dive into the step-by-step process.

First, register as a source.

Next, choose a free or paid plan.

Then, keep an eye out for requests that you can contribute to.

Finally, send the journalist a VERY brief and valuable pitch.

For example:

A while back I saw a request on a now defunct platform, HARO, from someone asking: โ€œWhatโ€™s the difference between graphic design and web design?โ€.

So I submitted this pitch:

HARO pitch

And I got this sweet link from a DR76 university site.

edu backlink

Not too shabby.

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2. Publish โ€œSkyscraperโ€ Content

Iโ€™ve used โ€œSkyscraperโ€ content to build backlinks from authority sites like Entrepreneur.com:

Entrepreneur โ€“ Backlink

Hubspot:

HubSpot โ€“ Backlink

And I even got an editorial link from the GoDaddy blog:

GoDaddy โ€“ Backlink

Yup, youโ€™ve probably noticed that theyโ€™re all linking to the same piece of content: SEO Tools: The Complete List.

Well, my list of SEO tools is a piece of โ€œSkyscraperโ€ content.

And that page has generated 10.2K total backlinks.

But more important than that, as you just saw, many of those links are quality backlinks from authority sites.

The question is:

How can you do the same thing?

Hereโ€™s the step-by-step process:

First, find a piece of content in your industry thatโ€™s already performed well (in terms of backlinks).

The easiest way to do that?

A simple Google search.

Just search for your keywordโ€ฆ

Google search โ€“ "seo tools"

โ€ฆand check out the first page results:

Google SERP โ€“ SEO tools

As you know, backlinks are a super important Google ranking signal.

The number one result in Google has almost 4X more backlinks than-position 2-10

So if a page is ranking on the first page, lots of people have probably linked to it.

Thatโ€™s step #1.

Next, create a piece of content thatโ€™s 5-10x better than what you just found.

For example, I noticed that most of the SEO tools lists out there were pretty short.

So I decided to create something that was 10x better.

Unlike most other lists of SEO tools, my post contained every tool on the market (170+ tools).

SEO tools โ€“ Number of tools

Was this piece of content easy to make? Nope!

But it was worth it. To date, my SEO tools list has been shared on social media 20,777 timesโ€ฆ

SEO tools post โ€“ Social shares

โ€ฆand has backlinks from over 1.08K different domains:

Finally, promote your โ€œSkyscraperโ€ content.

This is key.

Yes, a piece of Skyscraper content already puts you ahead of your competitors.

But to get the most out of your content, you need to actively promote it.

Now:

There are a million ways to promote your content.

So let me show you one quick strategy that works really well for Skyscraper content:

Promote to people that you mention in your post.

For example, I emailed all of the tools that I mentioned in my Skyscraper post. Hereโ€™s the exact script that I used:

Brian โ€“ Outreach email โ€“ SEO tools post

And because I wasnโ€™t pushy or spammy, most people were more than happy to share my content on social media (some of them even linked to it):

Brian โ€“ Follow-up email โ€“ SEO tools post

5. Publish Ultimate Guides

You already know that the only way to move your site to the top of Google is to build high-quality backlinks (and lots of them).

That much is clear.

But HOW do you get other sites to actually link to you?

Ultimate Guides.

Seriously.

For example, hereโ€™s an Ultimate Guide to link building that I published a while back:

Backlinko โ€“ Link building guide

Even though I wrote that guide 6 years ago, it continues to generate links today.

Link Building Guide โ€“ Backlink

Why do Ultimate Guides work so well?

First, comprehensive guides tend to contain A LOT of content on a single page. In fact, my guide to link building is a whopping 4,834 words.

According to lots of SEO ranking factor studies (including ours), long-form content tends to perform better in Google than short articles:

Average content word count of the top 10 results is evenly distributed

Also, ultimate guides cover an entire topic on a single page.

And because your guide is the โ€œgo-toโ€ resource for a topic, people will link to it whenever they write about that topic on their blog:

link to guide

Hereโ€™s exactly how to create an ultimate guide, step-by-step.

1. Your first step is to find a topic for your guide.

This is important.

You want to choose a popular topic that hasnโ€™t been covered to death already.

(In other words: you donโ€™t want to publish the 18th ultimate guide on a topic.)

For example, when I published my link building guide, I noticed the first page of Google had some helpful postsโ€ฆ

link building posts

โ€ฆbut no ultimate guides.

I also considered writing an ultimate guide to SEO. But there were already a thousand guides on that topic:

seo guides

So I went with link building.

2. Next, outline your ultimate guide.

This is easy.

Just list out subtopics that make up your larger topic.

For example, for my link building guide, I simply listed out subtopics like this:

  • What is link building?
  • Black hat SEO
  • White hat SEO
  • Anchor text
  • Content
  • Email outreach
  • Advanced tips

And many of these subtopics each became sections of my guide:

contents

3. Lastly, write your Ultimate Guide.

And remember:

Donโ€™t be afraid to cover everything there is to know about a topic.

That way, your guide will be seen as the definitive resource.

(And like I mentioned earlier, longer content tends to generate more backlinks, sharesโ€ฆ and higher rankings in Google.)

6. Use Branded Strategies and Techniques

Remember strategy #3 from this guide?

Build links from outdated resources

You might have noticed that I didnโ€™t just outline the strategyโ€ฆ I also named it.

Moving Man Method โ€“ Named strategy

This wasnโ€™t the first time that I mentioned the โ€œMoving Man Methodโ€ in a blog post.

In fact, thanks to naming my strategy, people link to my content on The Moving Man Method fairly often:

backlink

(People even publish entire blog posts about it.)

blog post about named strategy

And those links only happened because I gave my strategy a memorable name.

How about another example?

Ramit Sethi created a strategy for looking like a rockstar at meetings called โ€œThe Briefcase Techniqueโ€œ:

Ramit Sethi โ€“ The briefcase technique

And because Ramit named his strategy, he got a bunch of amazing links:

editorial link

Now that youโ€™ve seen how well this can work, itโ€™s time to cover the specific steps:

Step #1: Develop a Unique Strategy, Tip, or Tactic

This sounds harder than it actually is.

All you need to do is come up with a strategy that has SOMETHING unique about it.

(In other words, the entire strategy doesnโ€™t need to be unique.)

Derek Halpern puts it best:

You may not have unique ingredients, but youโ€™ve got a unique recipe.

And that unique recipe is all that matters.

For example, letโ€™s look at The Moving Man Method.

People have been using broken link building as part of their link building campaigns for years.

So what made my strategy different?

My unique twist was that the links werenโ€™t necessarily broken (as in, they didnโ€™t necessarily show a 404 error).

The links I used for The Moving Man Method technically workedโ€ฆ they were just outdated:

outdated link

And that was unique enough.

Step #2: Next, name your strategy.

I called my strategy The Moving Man Method because youโ€™re helping the site owner โ€œmoveโ€ their link.

Not the most creative name, but it gets the job done.

So yeah, just make sure the name describes what your strategy does.

Other than that, try to use one of these words in your strategy name:

  • Method
  • Technique
  • Approach
  • System
  • Blueprint

You get the idea ๐Ÿ™‚

Step #3: Publish the strategy as part of a blog post.

Your last step is to show people that your new strategy actually works.

How?

Publish your strategy in the form of a blog post. Preferably a case study.

(That way, people have something to link to when they reference your technique.)

For example, hereโ€™s the post I used to announce The Moving Man Method to the world:

backlinko post

In this post, I didnโ€™t just say: โ€œLook at my new strategy. It probably works!โ€.

Instead, I showed people proof that The Moving Man Method works:

contextual backlink

And that 1-2 punch (a branded strategy + proof) is an asset that can result in lots of backlinks.

7. Authority Resource Pages

Resource pages are a link builderโ€™s dream.

Why? Theyโ€™re pages that exist solely to link out to other sites.

Hereโ€™s an example:

resource page example

And hereโ€™s an example of a link that I built from a resource page a while ago:

resource page backlink

You might be wondering

โ€œOK, thatโ€™s great. But how can I get links from resource pagesโ€?

Like every strategy in this post, Iโ€™ll walk you through the step-by-step process:

First, you need to find resource pages.

These can be tricky to find. Very few people call their resource page a โ€œresource pageโ€.

Instead, people tend to describe their pages with terms like:

โ€œhelpful resourcesโ€

โ€œuseful resourcesโ€

โ€œfurther readingโ€

โ€œadditional resourcesโ€

So to find these pages, you just need to search for these termsโ€ฆ plus a keyword.

For example, letโ€™s say you just published an article about link building.

Actually, weโ€™ve published a detailed guide on how to easily ace backlink audits to help attract and build authority resource pages.

Youโ€™d do a Google search using this keyword:

Search string

And within 5 seconds I found this massive list of link building resources:

link building page

Second, now that youโ€™ve found a resource page, itโ€™s time to reach out and (nicely) ask for a link.

Hereโ€™s the email script that I recommend:

To be clear:

This script is just a starting point.

The more you personalize your outreach emails, the more links youโ€™ll get.

But his proven script is a proven outline that you can start with.

Bonus Strategy #2: Send โ€œFeelerโ€ Emails

When it comes to email outreach, you have two options:

Option #1: Ask people for links in your first email

Option #2: Use a โ€œfeelerโ€ email

From running hundreds of link building campaigns, Iโ€™ve found that both approaches can work.

But Iโ€™ve also found that so-called โ€œFeelerโ€ emails increase conversions by 40%+.

So: what are โ€œFeelerโ€ emails?

Feeler emails are messages you send to prospects without asking for a link.

(Youโ€™re โ€œfeeling outโ€ whether or not theyโ€™re receptive to your outreachโ€ฆ before you make a link pitch.)

Hereโ€™s a real-life example:

Mike โ€“ Outreach email

See how Mike doesnโ€™t ask for a link? Instead, he asks the person if theyโ€™d like to see it first.

IF they say โ€œyesโ€, you send them your pitch:

Mike โ€“ Outreach email reply

In Mikeโ€™s case, the โ€œFeelerโ€ email got 40% more responses vs. asking for a link in the first email.

Outreach reply stats

Very cool.