Don’t you love it when someone asks you for the recipe of a meal you made?

Of course you do. So do I!

It’s a major point of pride because it means the food was good.

When you get multiple requests for a recipe you made, it’s even better.

Eventually, these especially good recipes can become almost legendary by word of mouth.

All of a sudden, people start to relate a certain type of meal to your name.

“Oh, you’re going to make lasagna? Amy makes the best lasagna, you have to ask her for the recipe.”

Each of these requests for your recipe is like a little referral. In the end, everyone’s coming back to you for the recipe.

But, as you probably guessed, I’m not here to talk to you about recipes.

I’m here to talk about backlinks. In fact, this is exactly what quality backlinks can do for you. With enough of those little referrals, your website becomes the ultimate source for information in its niche, and more and more people start coming to you for that information.

The question is: How can you get backlinks to your website and start the ball of success rolling?

First, we’re going to see what kind of backlinks you really need. Then we’ll discuss 13 ways for you to get them!

Quality vs. Quantity: What Kind of Backlinks Does Your Website Need?

Recommendations only work if they come from reputable places.

Since each backlink is like a small recommendation, every single one needs to come from a reputable place.

Taking our example above, what if the only people who asked for or recommended your recipe had terrible taste? Obviously, those recommendations would be pretty useless, even if there were a large number of them.

In much the same way, the quality of the backlinks that you get is much more important than the quantity.

So, what’s a quality backlink? In short, it’s a backlink from an authority website that’s relevant to your website’s topic.

I can’t stress enough how important relevancy is.

If your website has backlinks from sites that are totally unrelated, Google and other search engines will view them as spammy.

At the very least, your ranking will go down. At the worst, these “spammy” backlinks may be viewed as cause for penalization against your website—and a penalization will make you nearly invisible in search engines.

This is why buying backlinks and backlink exchanges are so dangerous for your website’s ranking.

So, now that we know how important quality is, I want to show you how to get backlinks that will truly benefit your website. Let’s dive into 13 legit strategies that’ll work like a charm.

How to Get Backlinks Like a Boss with 13 Underused Link Building Strategies

1. Create Value Within Your Website

Before you can get backlinks, you need to have valuable content to offer.

This is the same whether you’re a company selling multiple products or a small affiliate blog. Quality content is essential if you want to get backlinks.

The more content you create, the more people will have to link to. And if that content is actually useful, you’ll find yourself getting backlinks naturally.

In order to create content that people want to link to, though, you need to find the right topics.

One great way to make sure you’re writing about the right topics is to check competitor websites and see what’s doing well there.

There are several tools that you can use to do this.

In order to identify the most popular pages or posts on a website, try using Strongest Subpages Tool. This powerful tool is part of the Link Research Tools package, which does admittedly have a hefty monthly cost.

If you’re trying to stick to a small budget, I’d suggest going to Google with Social Stats. Here, you can search any domain using the Google command site:, and watch as each page is indexed with its social shares right underneath. It’s not as thorough as the Strongest Subpages Tool, but social shares are good indicators of strong pages.

For a more general search of the most popular content in a certain niche, try using EpicBeat. This website allows you to search for the trending topics and best influencers in any niche.

Using the information you find, you can adapt your posts to fit the most popular topics within your niche.

2. Collect Influencer Opinions for a Roundup Post

You’ve probably heard that interviewing influencers is a great way to get authoritative backlinks. Most websites spend an entire blog post on one single interview and, in the end, they get one single backlink from the influencer.

But you don’t need to settle for just one measly backlink.

If you want to get backlinks fast, it’s time to create an influencer roundup.

If you have just one or two simple questions to ask many different influencers, you can get 10 or 20 (or more!) authoritative backlinks just by quoting them in your roundup post.

More than that, you’ll probably find it much easier to get willing interviewees with just one or two simple questions than with an entire blog post’s worth of questions!

Once you’ve created this epic roundup post, send an email to all of your interviewees with the link and delicately mention that they could share it with their followers or link to it on their website, if they’re so inclined.

In the end, you’ll get backlinks from many (if not all) of these influencers, but it won’t stop there.

A roundup post full of quotes from the big names of the niche is sure to get tons of hits and shares across the internet. That’s an even greater amount of backlinks for you!

But how do you find these influencers online?

There are plenty of tools you could use—like EpicBeat, which I mentioned earlier—but I’m going to highlight one more for you today: Pitchbox.

This tool helps you search the most authoritative publishers in a certain niche or industry. More than that, you can actually use this platform to create customized outreach emails and follow-up emails when getting in contact with everyone!

3. Start a Podcast

I’m sure you’ve heard about the benefits of creating shareable graphics, such as infographics, in order to get backlinks.

In a similar vein, starting a podcast is another way to create shareable content that will ultimately lead to more backlinks for you!

You’ll also be getting automatic backlinks from the website that hosts your podcast. Normally, such websites have a place for you to input your profile, explaining a bit about yourself and your podcast. If you include a link to your website here, it will in most cases count as a backlink as well!

There are plenty of great podcast hosting sites. Buzzsprout is known as one of the big names in the business, making podcasting easy even for beginners. Their price of $12/month gives you 3 hours of podcasting time and 250GB of outbound bandwidth (equal to 20,000 to 40,000 plays) per month.

PodBean is another popular choice, partially because the price per month is only $3 (for the most basic package). This gives you 100 MB of uploads and 100 MB of outbound bandwidth per month. However, for $29 per month, you can do both video and audio podcasts with unlimited uploads and unmetered bandwidth.

4. Don’t Beg, Pay It Forward

People often go out of their way to do something kind for someone who has treated them well in the past.

That’s why, if you want to be successful in your backlinking strategies, it’s important to remember that the emails you send are going to real people. If you give them something, they’ll be more likely to give something back to you.

So, what can you give them? Well, we mentioned that backlink exchanges can be dangerous. However, exchanging links—or perhaps something larger, like product descriptions or reviews—with a site that’s relevant to your niche would be appropriate and helpful for both parties involved.

Passing along free resources, free trials, digital products and even physical products can be a good way to get off on the right foot with someone.

Basically, it’s up to you to look at your prospect and think about what he or she really wants or needs. Taking that extra time will help you get backlinks.

5. Use Social Media to Your Advantage

Social media is a great place to put links to your website (which, hopefully, you’re already doing).

However, spamming social media with your links isn’t exactly the right idea. Instead, placing them in appropriate social media conversations will lead to more shares and better backlinks.

So, how can you do this?

Step #1: Find relevant conversations within your niche on social media.

Here’s another great tool that you can use: It’s called Social Searcher.

This search engine for social media helps you to find relevant posts and conversations for the niche keywords you want to find. You can even set up search alerts that let you know when a new post is online with your keywords. Best of all, you can use these features for free!

Step #2: Start adding links to your site.

If you find a relevant conversation, trying using a link to your site to add value to your post. This is helpful for those you’re talking with, and great for getting backlinks!

For example, you could try answering questions on Quora using points from your blog posts. Then, refer to that specific post in case they want more information.

It’s just as simple as that!

6. Write Content Roundup Posts

Like our influencer roundup posts above, content roundups are another fantastic way to get backlinks while creating a piece of content that’s highly shareable.

This can be done in several ways. For example, some websites like to post a weekly summary of niche-related news on their blog, referencing and quoting other websites in the process. Or, you could create a weekly summary of the best content being produced in your niche.

This is a great way to get backlinks from authority sites.

If you don’t want this to be a weekly endeavor, you could create a more exhaustive content roundup. This could be a small e-book or an extra long blog post that highlights the “best of” content, resources, products, etc.

Again, those you reference in your resource will be happy to link back to you!

But you might be wondering, how can I find that much valuable content to share?

One unexpectedly good tool you can use to find specific and valuable content is StumbleUpon.

By inputting your interests, this platform will come up with content from all around the web that’s relevant to your website. The more you use StumbleUpon, the better its recommendations will be.

Also, if you’re looking for content with specific keywords, you can set up a Google Alert with those keywords. Then you’ll receive emails every time a new piece of content with those keywords is posted online.

7. Write Research Papers and Case Studies

The better the content you create, the more shareable it will be.

Creating research papers and case studies might take time, but that makes them incredibly valuable. These are resources that you can use again and again when emailing prospective backlinkers.

When you’re asking someone for a backlink, it’s essential to offer them something worth backlinking to. Research papers and case studies are things that everyone wants to link back to.

Once you’ve gone through the effort of creating a monstrous piece of content like this, you’ll be able to use it again and again when asking for backlinks.

Just make sure that it’s highly relevant to your niche and valuable to those you’re pitching to. Then, you’ll be even more likely to get backlinks!

8. Highlight Up-and-comers

For those who are just starting to see the tip of success, it’s a big deal to be highlighted in a blog post. Any of these up-and-coming blogs or businesses that you mention on your website will automatically link back to that post or page, probably without you even having to ask!

If you do this well, these backlinks could be worth quite a bit for your website in just a short period of time.

So, how do you find up-and-coming blogs and businesses?

Well, for businesses, you can try starting with Forbes’ updated list of America’s most promising companies, or TechCrunch’s page highlighting startup news.

For blogs, a simple Google search will often give you more than you need to know. For example, searching something like “up and coming (niche) blogs” will often give you plenty of results to choose from.

9. Let Your Site Appear in a Portfolio

If your site has been designed by a professional web designer (as it should be), then that web designer would likely be thrilled to show off his handiwork to the world.

Make sure to let your web designer, or any graphic designers who work with your site, know that they can use your website for their portfolio.

10. Network Continuously

When you’re regularly in contact with people in your niche, backlinks will come naturally. For example, think about how often we see Darren Rowse at Problogger referencing Brian Dean at Backlinko or Rand Fishkin at Moz, etc.

These are some of the top influencers in their niche, and they’re constantly talking about each other and using each other as examples and case studies within their own posts.

Likewise, when you’re closely connected to the people in your niche, they’ll be more likely to use and reference your work on their site, as you will with their work.

This is a mutually beneficial relationship that will help both sites get backlinks that are good quality and relevant to their site.

11. Check Competitor Backlinks

It’s always good to keep an eye on your competitors, generally speaking.

But seeing who’s backlinking to their content is a great way to find places that may also backlink to your content!

So, how can you check where the competition’s backlinks are coming from?

The best tool for this is Monitor Backlinks.

This tool was developed to check the backlinks that are on your own website and competing websites—though it does come with nice-to-have additional features like keyword rank tracking, domain authority metrics and more.

Back to the backlinks, this tool will give you a concise view of the places that are linking to competing websites.

Then, you’ll know where to pitch in order to get backlinks!

12. Become a Regular Contributor

Guest posting has always been known as a solid, if not tedious, way to get backlinks.

However, becoming a regular contributor on a relevant website is even better.

In many cases, you can actually get hired to post regularly on websites within your niche. Your writer profile will include a backlink to your website, thus getting you quality backlinks!

This means you don’t need to spend time wandering the internet in search of someone who will accept your guest post. You just need to write consistently for one person, and you’ll have a steady stream of valuable backlinks.

You might even get paid in the process!

Check out places like the ProBlogger job board to find websites that are looking for regular contributors in your niche.

13. Make Your Content Better than Everyone Else’s

Being average won’t get you backlinks. That’s why your content needs to be the best out there.

Using what’s become known as the Skyscraper technique, you can create something that’s better than any other content on that topic.

Start by researching your selected topic. Find out what’s available online. What are the weak points of the content that’s already online? How could you improve upon this article?

Brian Dean at Backlinko suggests that you can improve upon any type of content by making it longer, more thorough, more up-to-date or giving it a better design.

If you can blow the competition out of the water, then you have a valuable piece of content that will be easier to share, and easier to pitch to potential backlinkers.

 

To get quality backlinks, you need to put in a hefty amount of work.

However, the results will absolutely be worth it.

All of the methods we’ve described above are viable now, and they’re darn near sure to get you the results that you want to see. Many of them can even be used in tandem for an even more powerful backlinking strategy.

So, now it’s your turn.

Get out there and start getting backlinks that matter!