How to get free backlinks: the methods, and the hours each one takes

Free backlinks, or free organic backlinks, are links to your site that another site adds without a fee for the placement. What you spend is hours, and the other site decides whether the link goes in and how it is marked.

Below are thirteen ways to get backlinks for free. Each method sets out what it involves, what one named person counted from it where a count exists, the hours it took them, and the free tool to start with, with that tool's limit. The counts are self-reported by the people named, on the dates given. Whichever method you use, the pages worth asking are on your subject and read by the people you want to reach.

1. Ask the sites that link to your competitors

Look up the pages that link to a competitor's page on your subject, and ask the ones that fit for a link to yours.

Pick a competitor page that sits on your subject and already has links; the pages linking to it are the list to work through. The free start is a backlink checker. Ahrefs and Semrush both run free checkers that show a capped list of a domain's top backlinks (limits as checked on 13 September 2026), which is enough to build a first list of pages to ask.

The ask itself is short. Name the page you want to be on, name your page, and give the owner one reason the link helps their readers. The hours are the list and the emails: one look at each linking page, and one short ask for each page that fits. The full workflow is in our post on how to check a competitor's backlinks.

2. Answer journalist requests

A journalist posts a request for comment on a subject. You reply with a quote and your credentials, and the publication decides whether the quote runs and whether it carries a link. A quote can run with a dofollow link, a nofollow link or no link at all.

HARO is one of these services. Under the name Connectively, it closed on 9 December 2024, and the HARO emails resumed on 22 April 2025 as a free newsletter, so the route is open again at no cost.

A reply is a short piece of work: answer the question in a few sentences, give your name and role, and add one line on why you are qualified to comment. Each request comes with a deadline, so the reply is a fast, short answer rather than a long one. Gaurav Tiwari, who publishes gauravtiwari.org, gave his own count writing on 2 July 2026: "I’ve landed 4 links from DR 60+ sites through Qwoted in the past six months, spending about 30 minutes per week on responses. That’s $0 cost per link if you don’t count your time." The count is his own, from his own page.

The hours are the reading and the replies. Our post on HARO backlinks covers the format in detail.

3. Point out a dead link and offer a replacement

Find a page that links to a URL returning 404 or 410, and send the owner your page on the same subject as a replacement. Dead links happen when a page moves or is taken down and the pages linking to it still point at the old URL. The owner gets a fix for a link that sends readers nowhere, and you get the link if they take the swap.

Free tools, read on 4 October 2026: Screaming Frog's SEO Spider is free up to 500 URLs, and the free version of BrokenLinkCheck.com checks up to 3,000 pages.

The email is short: name the page, name the dead URL, and offer your page as the working replacement. Finding the dead link is the quick part. The reply rate on outreach emails is what sets the hours, and our post on broken link building gives two published rates.

4. Ask for a link where you are already named

A page that mentions your brand without a link is a page you can ask. The writer already knows who you are, so the ask is one line: thank them for the mention and ask for it to be linked.

Mentions turn up in reviews, roundups and news pieces, and each one is a page where the writer has already decided you are worth naming. The free start is Google Alerts. Its help page, read on 4 October 2026, says it emails you when new results for a topic such as your name appear, and you can change how frequently the emails come in its settings. Each alert is a page to check for a link.

The hours are the checking and the asking: one look at each page an alert finds, and one short email for each mention without a link. Our post on brand mentions covers how a mention becomes a link.

5. Write a guest post for a site that takes them

Write an article for another site. The site publishes it with a link in the body or the byline, on its terms, and those terms set everything from the subject to the wait.

Of the 22 sites in our list of free guest post sites, 11 state no charge to the author, 3 charge or sit behind paid membership, 1 pays writers, 5 show no route, and for 2 the list found no current guest post page. One of them tells writers to expect two to four months before publication.

The hours are the article plus the wait. The article is real work: a guest post has to fit the host site's audience and its house rules, and the host decides what runs.

Where a site charges for the placement, that is a paid guest post, and Guest Posts are one of the placements we sell. The placements section at the end of this page says what that includes.

6. Be a guest on a podcast

Pitch a host. If the show links guests in its notes, the host places that link and decides how it is marked.

Anna Burgess Yang, who writes about her own guest pitching, said on 10 October 2024 that about nine in ten of her pitches, sent after she has been talking with the host for a while, get a yes. Edward Sturm wrote on 5 January 2025 that he went on 30 podcasts in three months in 2022 through paid matching platforms. Neither gives a count of links. Yang puts what an appearance brings her, the backlink included, against about an hour of her time.

The hours are the pitch, the preparation and the recording. A pitch is a short note that names the show, your subject and what you would talk about, and the preparation is listening to enough episodes to know the format.

Free start, read on 4 October 2026: MatchMaker.fm is free for 30 days and then $15 a month, and its home page calls the trial limited, with 5 free conversation starts.

7. Publish a statistics page

Gather figures on your subject from named sources into one page, with a chart, so writers who need a number cite you. Pick a subject where writers in your niche need numbers: costs, counts, usage, anything a writer would rather cite than compile. The page does the citing work for them: one subject, the figures in one place, and each figure traced to its source.

In the same 2 July 2026 post, Gaurav Tiwari gives three counts for pages of figures. "The links I earned from a single statistics page I built in one afternoon? 47 referring domains over 18 months." He also describes "a data page that took two days to compile from sources like WordPress.org, BuiltWith, and W3Techs." He says it "has earned 34 backlinks from 28 unique domains". The third is a survey: he asked 312 WordPress developers about their hosting, published the findings with the method, and counted 23 backlinks in the first quarter.

Andrew Fennell, founder of LinkQuest, a SaaS SEO consultancy, wrote on 20 April 2026 about a UK remote working statistics page he built in July 2022: "This page has generated 707 links to date (and will likely continue to generate more)." On the hours: "I spent about 2-3 days researching and creating the page, and have only had to do one major content update since then."

Each of these is one person's count of one page. The hours are the compiling: one afternoon, two days, and two to three days in the three accounts that give a time.

Free start, read on 4 October 2026: Datawrapper's free plan embeds charts, and removing its attribution is a Pro plan at $21 per user per month excluding VAT. Give the chart an embed code with a credit link, so a site that shows it can carry a link back to your page. For the study of which page formats earn links, see our post on how links accumulate to published pages.

8. Build a free tool

Publish a tool people use and cite. The tool does one job, in the open, and the link is the citation for it: other writers point their readers at something to use.

In the same 2 July 2026 post, Tiwari says of his theme comparison tool: "It’s earned 19 backlinks from “best WordPress themes” roundup posts because authors use it as a comparison resource." The count is his own.

We run a free DA/DR checker. In a July 2026 sample its database held 29,632 checks and 15,357 unique domains, counted since the tool launched in February 2026.

The hours are the build and the upkeep.

9. Ask the owner of a live page to add a line

Find a published list or article on your subject where your page fits, and ask the owner to add one line with a link. The pages to look for are lists and articles on your subject that do not include you: a list of tools, a reading list, a directory of resources. The page already exists, so the ask is small: one line, not a new article.

Felix Vemmer, founder of BacklinkGPT, an outreach tool, published his count for the window 7 July to 25 September 2026. His team pitched 510 sites for three of their own sites, 87 replied, 10 linked, and the median time from pitch to live link was 20 days. "5 of our 10 links were one line added to a live article or list." His table describes those five as "a sentence and a link, usually with a fee". Of those 10 links, 8 were paid and 2 free, and 34 of the 87 replies named a fee, partly because the majority of the pitches said the team was open to paying. The count shows the time to a live link, not a free-link rate.

A related version is the skyscraper technique: publish a better page on a topic that many sites already link to, then ask the sites linking to the old page to link to yours.

10. Exchange links with a related site

Two sites link to each other. That is the whole mechanic: you link to a page on a related site, and that site links to a page on yours.

Our post on reciprocal linking records two descriptive counts. An Ahrefs study of 140,592 domains, on a page updated 11 March 2020, found 73.6% had at least one reciprocal link. A count by AutoBacklinks of 40 sites, on a page last updated 26 September 2026, found 301 of 582 linked pairs went both ways.

Both describe what sites do; neither is a rate to expect for your own pages. The hours are the finding and the asking.

11. Answer questions in forums that allow a link

Each forum sets its own link rule, and the rule decides whether your answer can carry a link at all. Read the rule first, then write the answer the question asks for, and add your link only where the rule allows it.

The hours are the answer. A good answer to a real question is the work; the link is a line at the end of it.

Our post on forum backlinks prints the link rules for Stack Overflow, Quora, WordPress.org and Discourse.

12. Publish on a hosted platform

Publish a page on WordPress.com, Blogger, Medium or Substack and link to your site from it. The platform's editor sets whether the link is marked nofollow: WordPress.com has a "Mark as nofollow" option, and Blogger has an "Add ‘rel=nofollow’ attribute" option.

The page itself is a short article on your subject, written for the people who read that platform, with your link in the body where it fits the text.

The hours are the page you write. Our post on Web 2.0 sites covers the platforms one by one.

13. Claim free business listings

Claim your listing on the directories that list the business and its site. A listing holds the business's name, address, phone number and site URL, and the site URL is the link. Keep those details the same on every listing.

As our post on citation building records, Apple Business is free. With prices read 3 October 2026, Data Axle's free tier covers 1 to 10 listings, BrightLocal's pay-as-you-go citation service starts at $3.20 per listing, and Whitespark packages start at $20. The same post puts Google Business Profile first among the listings to claim.

The hours are the sign-up forms, and each listing is a small, one-off piece of work.

Free methods and placements

Every method above costs hours and leaves the link to the other site. A placement is the other route: a link with a fee, where you choose the target URL and the anchor text. Our Curated Links are links added to articles that are already published, and our Guest Posts are new 750-word-plus articles written in-house and published on real, independently owned websites in your niche. After publication we check that the page is live, that the link is in the body copy, that the anchor and target URL match the order and that the page is indexable, and only then is the URL reported to the dashboard. That is our quality assurance step, and delivered links carry 12-month replacement cover.

Frequently asked questions

How can I get free backlinks?

The thirteen routes on this page: ask the sites that link to your competitors, answer journalist requests, replace dead links, ask where you are already named, write a guest post, appear on podcasts, publish a statistics page, build a free tool, ask for a line on a live page, exchange links, answer questions in forums, publish on hosted platforms and claim business listings. The cost is hours, and the other site decides whether the link goes in. There is no single best way to get backlinks free; the routes with a counted result on this page are journalist requests, statistics pages and free tools.

How long does it take to get a free backlink?

Two counted examples, each from one person. Gaurav Tiwari built a statistics page in one afternoon and counted 47 referring domains to it over 18 months, in a post dated 2 July 2026. Felix Vemmer of BacklinkGPT counted a median of 20 days from first message to live link across 10 links between July and September 2026, though 8 of those 10 were paid, and one of the 2 free links went live 12 days after the first email.

Are free organic backlinks the same as links from a backlink generator?

No. A generator creates pages or profiles that link to you. The methods on this page end in a link another person chose to add.

What is the difference between a free backlink and a paid placement?

The fee, and who chooses the target URL and the anchor text. With a placement, the buyer chooses both.