How to Get Backlinks for a New Website: The Ultimate 2024 Guide

Getting quality backlinks is essential for improving your new website’s search engine rankings and driving organic traffic. However, building backlinks can be challenging, especially when first starting out. This comprehensive guide will teach you proven strategies for garnering backlinks to power your new website’s success in 2024 and beyond.

Backlink Basics: Why Backlinks Matter

Backlinks are inbound hyperlinks from other websites that point back to pages on your site. They are like “votes” that signal search engines your content is valuable. The more quality backlinks you have, the more authority and relevance search engines will assign to your pages. This results in better rankings in search results.

Here are key reasons why backlinks are critical:

Boost SEO rankings: More backlinks → higher domain and page authority → better rankings
Drive referral traffic: Backlinks allow visitors to easily navigate to your site
Increase brand visibility: Backlinks get your brand and content in front of more eyes
Lend credibility: Backlinks make your site appear more reputable and established

While any backlink is good, the best types provide contextual relevance and come from authoritative sites in your niche. We’ll dig into different categories of quality backlinks later.

Now let’s compare some top strategies for scoring backlinks to power your new website.

Backlink Building Strategies Comparison

There are many potential options for getting backlinks, but not all carry the same value or results. This table summarises key differences among popular backlink building tactics:

Strategy	Difficulty	Links Acquired	Link Quality	Scalability
Content Marketing	Medium	Many	High	High
Guest Posting	Medium	Many	Varies	Medium
Link Insertion	Hard	Few	High	Low
Site Submission	Easy	Some	Low	High
Paid Links	Easy	Some	Low	Medium
Link Reclamation	Hard	Some	High	Low
Outreach	Hard	Some	High	Low

As the table shows, content marketing and guest posting tend to provide the best blend of high volume links with good quality at scale. Paid links or site submissions are easier but risk low quality and penalties. Tactics like outreach and reclamation yield good links but are hard to grow.

Now let’s explore the top backlink building strategies in more detail:

1. Content Marketing

Content marketing entails creating high quality, valuable content assets like blog posts, infographics, and videos that readers love. These owned media assets are designed to attract organic links and shares.

For a new website, focusing on long-form, epic content works especially well to fuel backlinks. For example, create pillars and guides running to 5,000+ words or 50-page design assets.

Here are key backlink building benefits of using content marketing assets:

Link magnets: In-depth, insightful content attracts more links and embeds.
Anchor text variety: Natural anchors from recommendations.
Future-proof: Evergreen long-form assets continue accruing links.
Brand awareness: Showcase expertise and thought leadership.

To leverage content for backlinks:

Research trending topics and questions to create content that solves problems and adds value.
Promote your content through social channels, outreach emails, contributor networks, and include it in link roundups.
Conduct competitor research to find sites and pages to target for relevant placement.
Produce ongoing content and repurpose it into multiple formats to continue fuelling links.

Creating remarkable content that gains organic links is challenging but pays dividends long term in the quality and quantity of backlinks accrued.

Content Backlink Opportunities

Here are some top content formats and distribution channels to focus on:

Epic guides and tutorials: Aim for ultra in-depth resources like 50+ page design guides or 10k word tutorial pillars. These attract piles of rolling links. Promote through outbound emails and embeds.
List posts and comparisons: Helpful listicles and comparisons focused on popular questions convert well for backlinks. Pitch to relevant blogs and link roundups.
Tools and calculators: Interactive tools attract backlinks through recommendations and embeds. Reach out to get added in tool roundups.
Data studies and experiments: Publish interesting experiments and data analysis reports tied to current trends and topics to earn media pickup.
Infographics and charts: Visual content converts well for links as it gets frequently embedded. Create big embed codes to make it easy to add to other sites. Outreach to relevant blogs.
Videos: Publish engaging video content like interviews, tutorials or case studies. Upload natively to YouTube and promote through outreach.

The key with content marketing is creating truly awesome assets the bridge knowledge gaps THEN aggressively promoting them through outreach and distribution. This powers a constant flow of backlinks over time.

2. Guest Posting

Guest blogging (or guest posting) involves creating and publishing articles and posts on other high-authority sites in your niche. It is a direct way to earn a backlink from every post.

Guest posts work similar to traditional link building outreach. You strategically connect with site owners and editors in your space to contribute posts to their blogs and websites.

Here are the prime advantages of guest posting for backlinks:

Contextual relevance: Guest posts allow you to secure niche edits and backlinks.
Diverse anchor text: Vary anchors for links across posts.
Brand visibility: Directly put your brand and site in front of new audiences.

Guest posting takes more effort than other tactics but earns quality links. Follow these best practices for success:

Create value-driven posts: Offer actionable advice and avoid self-promotion.
Research target blogs: Leverage BuzzSumo and Ahrefs to identify relevant, high authority sites related to your topics and keywords. Analyse what types of posts do well.
Personalise pitches: Highlight why your post fits a website specifically and the value it offers to readers.
Follow up diligently: Editors are busy, so follow up multiple times if needed.
Build relationships: Become a repeat, reliable contributor that adds value.

While harder to systematically scale, guest posting remains a top source for direct, editorially-given links. With some hustle, you can continually land great placements.

Guest Post Link Building Opportunities

Here are some specific publication types that work well for new sites to contribute guest posts:

Popular blogs in your niche: Look for widely-read blogs related to your topics with good Domain Authorities. Topically relevant guest posts drive direct links. Pitch contributors at sites like Copyblogger, QuickSprout, SEMrush, Ahrefs, Backlinko, Search Engine Journal, Social Media Examiner, and others.
Link roundups: Roundup style posts collect and link out to many sites and work well for securing backlinks. Build relationships with roundup curators like Neil Patel’s blog, BuzzSumo blog, Sumo Links from Sumo.com, Commucorp Content Roundups, etc.
Targeted niche sites: Find blogs and sites that focus specifically on keywords and topics you want links for. Even small sites provide amazing context. Analyse competitors’ guest posts for ideas.
Industry publications: Getting placements in highly-read online industry magazines builds great links. But they are very competitive to contribute to as an unfamiliar brand.
Marketing blogs: While challenging again, backlinks from the most popular digital marketing blogs like Moz, Search Engine Land, and Search Engine Journal establish amazing credibility.

Leverage a mix of anchor text across guest posts for good diversity. Vary between branded, naked and descriptive anchors.

3. Getting Links Through Outreach

Traditional blogger and webmaster outreach remains a proven tactic for getting backlinks (despite taking heavy time and effort). The concept of outreach link building is simple - you directly connect with owners of websites in your niche to request backlinks to content on your site.

But securing link placements through unsolicited outreach emails takes finesse and persistence. Here are tips to get links through outreach:

Personalise all emails: Demonstrate you know the website and customise why your content fits. Never send spammy templates.
Audit sites for broken links: Use tools like Linkody and Ahrefs to uncover broken pages and offer replacement content.
Make the value clear: Explain exactly why linking to your content benefits their audience and site (don’t focus on you).
Follow up relentlessly: It often takes 6+ emails to get a response, so persist politely through non-replies and gently remind them.

Outreach works best when targeted sparingly to get links from a few high-quality sites versus blasting thousands of emails.

Here is an outreach process that converts:

Start by curating a shortlist of 15-25 websites closely aligned to a specific piece of content you want linked.
Audit their sites for any broken links, 404 errors, or thin content pages you can improve or replace. Also identify their most popular evergreen posts with opportunities to insert related links through outreach.
Write personalised emails pitching your content and explaining exactly why it benefits their audience. Follow up multiple times if needed.

Use this focused, personal approach for converting outreach links versus mass emails. While difficult to scale, it converts editors into quality links.

Outreach Link Placement Opportunities

Consider reaching out for backlinks from these types of sites:

Top content from competitors: Analyse competitor guest posts and outreach targets using Link Intersect and Pitchbox. Replicate their wins!
Niche directories or listings: Find relevant listing websites related to your business type and location and request to get added.
Wikipedia citations: Getting your content links added as citations on Wikipedia is golden! But it requires lots of work conforming to guidelines.
Popular bookmarking or link sharing sites: Have fans and followers bookmark and link to your content from sites like Reddit, Digg, Inbound.org, Growth Hackers, and niche communities. Just tread carefully to avoid spam risks.
Interview/podcast opportunities: Getting featured as an expert guest nets backlinks from show notes. But usually requires established industry credibility.
Haro.com contributor requests: Help journalists and websites find sources for articles. Great way to score media and backlink placements from routine requests.

The key with direct outreach is taking the time to custom pitch each site and explain exactly why your content enhances their existing pages. Personalisation pays off long run through link rewards.

4. Site Submissions

Submitting your website and new pages to link directories and aggregators represents an easy and free option for picking up some referral traffic and backlinks too.

Listings on reputable, established web directories still provide SEO value, especially for local search visibility. While limited, here are benefits of adding your site to good directories:

Referral traffic stream: Site visitors browse listings and find your site.
Backlink value: Link and brand authority flows through listings, especially on prominent directories.
Locational signals: Helps search engines associate your site with geo areas.

As search algorithms and indexing advanced however, the popularity of general web directories dropped over recent years. But niche and regional directories still boost visibility.

Top Website Submission Directories

Here are well-regarded directories to consider submitting your new website or pages to:

Google My Business - Essential for local search visibility.
Bing Places - Boost local signals for Bing.
Yelp - Leading local business directory.
Yellow Pages - Long-standing local visibility.
Best of the Web - One of the largest web directories submitting to 900+ search engines.
GeekWeek - Tech focused community driven directory.
JoeAnt - Quality and editor reviewed submissions.
LinkCentre - Easy bulk URL submission tool.

Take time to completely optimise and verify all key listings for consistency, accuracy and using your target keywords. This helps boost local SEO signals flowing to your actual site.

For more niche link value, also identify and submit to reputable directories related specifically to your industry or location.

5. Reclaiming Broken Backlinks

Link reclamation represents an underutilised but proven tactic for regaining strong lost backlinks.

The idea is using link tracking tools to uncover broken backlinks pointing to your existing site where the page was deleted or that return 404 errors. You then proactively reach out to inform webmasters and request they update the link or restore your content if possible.

It takes effort but recovers good links. Benefits include:

Link recovery: Fix previously lost links.
Site improvement: Encourages site maintenance from partners.
Ongoing auditing: Tools continuously watch for new broken links.

Best practice tips for reclaiming broken links:

Leverage link tracking: Use Linkedin, Ahrefs, or Majestic to identify lost backlinks.
Filter high value lost links: Prioritise recovering links from quality sites.
Personalise webmaster emails: Be helpful, not demanding in directing them to fix or replace links.
Provide replacement content: Where pages/posts are deleted, offer them new or alternative content to link to.
Monitor regularly: Check for newly broken links every 30-90 days.

Reclamation works great for resurrecting old links as websites naturally change and break stuff over time. While challenging to scale the outreach for large lost link volumes, reclaiming your 10-20 most valuable lost backlinks makes big SEO wins.

6. Buying Backlinks

Purchasing backlinks was once a mainstay tactic. But as Google cracked down on artificial link networks, paid links now risk penalties. Most SEO experts strongly advise against buying links to avoid manual actions.

However, there are select paid opportunities suited for sparking initial links and visibility for an unknown new website:

Paid guest posts: You can directly sponsor or purchase contributor posts on some large, reputable websites to secure niche edits with follow links. Ensure sponsorships are disclosed upfront.
Business directories and citations: Paying for premium local listings provides SEO value by strengthening location and relevance signals.
Paid link roundups or bookmarks: Sponsoring inclusion in an editor’s roundup can help new brands initially test and break into markets. Ensure transparency and limit use.
Retargeting and loyalty rewards: Providing special offers or exclusive deals to existing visitors who link to your content or share your site is common. Just avoid paying solely for raw links and watch volumes.

Because paid links carry weight risks long term, they should be used judiciously for limited trials and small link volumes. Avoid low-quality automated link networks and opacity.

Focus spend on editorial-controlled placements where your links and brand are clearly labelled as sponsorships like paid guest posts, sponsored roundup inserts, or enhanced business listings.

Link Building Tools

Link earning requires rolling hard work. But smart tools help streamline finding link opportunities, tracking placements, and monitoring successes.

Link Building Best Practices

Because some link practices violate Google guidelines or feel manipulative, it’s important to follow proper link building ethics focused on adding value:

PRIME SEO TOOL KIT

Header headings

How to Get Backlinks for a New Website: The Ultimate 2024 Guide

Backlink Basics: Why Backlinks Matter