Why Are Backlinks Important and How Can You Start Earning Them

The short version: backlinks matter because they're still the clearest signal Google has that other sites trust you enough to point at you, and no amount of clever on-page SEO replaces that. You earn them by becoming worth linking to (data, opinion, a useful tool or resource), not by begging strangers for a favour. One good link from a site Google already trusts will do more for you than fifty weak ones, and I've watched that happen with my own client sites more times than I can count.

What a backlink is doing for your site, in plain terms

A backlink is another website linking to yours. That's the whole definition. But the reason it matters isn't the link itself, it's what the link represents: a vote of confidence from a site that had no financial reason to give you one. Google's own algorithm was built on this idea from day one, back when Larry Page and Sergey Brin at Stanford treated links the way academics treat citations. A page cited by lots of other respected pages is treated as more trustworthy than one nobody references. That's still, more than two decades later, one of the strongest signals in the entire ranking system.

If you want the mechanics of how this plays into actual ranking positions, I've written a full breakdown on how backlinks affect SEO rankings that goes deeper into the algorithmic side. This post is about the earning part, because that's where almost everyone gets stuck.

The bit most SEO advice skips over

Here's what nobody selling you a "link building masterclass" wants to say out loud: most backlink outreach fails, and it's supposed to. I sent 40 personalised outreach emails for a client's guide on remote hiring last year. I got 3 replies. One turned into a link. That's a 2.5 percent success rate, and honestly that's better than most cold outreach campaigns do. If someone promises you a formula that gets 30 percent of editors saying yes, they're either lying or sending so much spam that they're damaging the client's reputation to hit that number.

The uncomfortable truth is that link building, done, is slow and mostly rejection. What works isn't a script or a template, it's making something so citable that people link to it without being asked. I have pages on my own site that have earned links I never pitched, from bloggers and journalists who found the content through a Google search and just linked to it because it answered their question better than anything else did. That's the real game. Outreach gets you a handful of links. Being worth citing gets you links you'll never even see happen.

If you're hunting for sponsored post opportunities, I've listed blogs that accept them.

My own experience earning backlinks the hard way

When I started rebuilding parts of my business after a few rough years, I had to earn backlinks again almost from scratch, the same as anyone starting out. I didn't have a big budget and I wasn't going to pay for links, because paid links that get discovered can get a site penalised, and Google has gotten much better at spotting the pattern.

What worked was three things, in this order:

• I responded to journalist requests through Qwoted and similar platforms with specific, quotable answers rather than generic soundbites. One quote about AI adoption in small businesses landed in a piece on a major business publication. That single link had a Domain Rating above 70 and did more for my site's visibility in three months than a dozen smaller links combined.
• I updated old, ranking-but-stale content with fresh data and a current year, then reshared it. Old pages that already had some authority attracted new links simply because they became worth linking to again.
• I offered a useful free resource, a checklist, and let it exist on the site without gating it behind an email form. Two universities linked to it from their careers resource pages, unprompted, because it was useful and didn't require anyone to hand over personal details to see it.

None of those links came from asking "can you link to me." They came from being useful first and visible second.

Why backlinks are worth the effort at all

Three concrete reasons, and I'll be specific rather than abstract about each one.

Trust transfer. When a site with a strong reputation links to you, some of that trust passes to your page. A link from a well-known industry publication carries more weight than ten links from low-quality directories, because Google weighs the authority of the linking domain, not just the count.

Referral traffic that doesn't depend on Google at all. A backlink from a widely-read article can send real human visitors to your site the day it goes live, regardless of what Google thinks. I've had single mentions in roundup articles send more traffic in a week than three months of organic search.

Discovery by crawlers. Search engines find new pages partly by following links. A brand-new page with zero backlinks can sit unindexed or barely crawled for weeks. A page that gets linked to from an established site tends to get discovered and indexed faster.

If you're wondering whether any of this still matters given how much Google's algorithm has changed, I covered that question directly in whether you need backlinks to rank in 2026, and the short answer is yes, though the type of link that helps has shifted toward relevance and trust rather than sheer volume.

How to start earning backlinks: a step-by-step approach

This is the part people want, so here it is without the padding.

• Step 1: Audit what you already have that's link-worthy. Look through your existing content for anything with original data, a strong opinion, or a useful tool. That's your starting inventory. Most businesses have at least one page like this already and don't realise it.
• Step 2: Fix or create one citable asset. This could be original research (even a survey of 50 customers counts), a template, a calculator, or a strong contrarian take on something in your industry. Data and opinions get linked to far more than generic "10 tips" posts.
• Step 3: Find where your competitors are getting linked from. You don't need an expensive tool for this. There are free ways to see backlinks pointing at any domain, and I laid out exactly how to track backlinks over time without paying for a tool in a separate guide if you want the specifics.
• Step 4: Pitch journalists and podcast hosts, not just bloggers. Platforms built for connecting sources with journalists (Qwoted, Featured, and similar ones) send daily requests. Respond to five a day for a month. You'll get more replies than you expect if your answers are specific and short, not a paragraph of marketing waffle.
• Step 5: Reach out to sites that already mention your brand or topic but haven't linked. Search for your company name or a key phrase without "site:" restrictions. Unlinked mentions are the easiest links to earn, because the person already thought you were worth naming.
• Step 6: Track what's working and drop what isn't. Give any single tactic a two or three month window before deciding it's failed. Backlinks build slowly and unevenly, in bursts rather than a steady drip.

For a fuller walk-through with more outreach templates and examples, I wrote a whole guide on how to build backlinks the right way that pairs well with this one.

The methods that waste your time

Buying links from marketplaces. Submitting to link directories that exist purely for SEO. Writing guest posts on sites with no real audience just to get a link in the byline. Comment spam on blogs. All of these were common practice a decade ago and Google has spent years getting better at devaluing or penalising exactly this kind of pattern. I've inherited client sites with hundreds of links from low-quality directories, and removing or disavowing them was part of getting the site out of a ranking slump.

If you're running a small business or a marketing side hustle and thinking about this as a service you could offer other people, it's worth knowing that link building is one of the hardest things to deliver consistently, which is exactly why so many agencies fake it with directory submissions. I touched on the realities of starting something like this in Is It Easy to Start Your Own Marketing Business, and link building is one of the services where the gap between "easy to sell" and "hard to deliver well" is widest.

I've also rounded up link building blogs open to guest writers, with what each one wants.

What a healthy backlink profile looks like

Not hundreds of links from the same handful of low-quality sites. A mix: a few strong links from recognised publications, a handful from relevant industry blogs, some from directories or associations that are relevant to your niche, and ideally some from.edu or.gov pages if your content ever gets cited in an academic or government context. Diversity in where links come from matters more than raw count. Ten links from ten different quality domains beats a hundred from one low-value blog network every time.

If you're building a business site from nothing and don't want to burn six months chasing the wrong tactics, I put together a practical version of this exact process in building backlinks for a business site without wasting six months on nothing, which is worth reading alongside this one if you're starting from zero.

You can put your own domain, or a competitor, through the free backlink checker to see referring domains and the dofollow split.

See also High DA Guest Posting Sites That Move the Needle (My Honest List).

For the same question on every other platform, see the creator pay rates guide.

Related: backlinks example.

Related: my guest post marketplace page.

Related: career blogs that accept guest posts.

Frequently asked questions

How many backlinks do I need before I see a difference in rankings?

There's no fixed number. I've seen a single link from a high-trust site move a page from position 15 to the first page within weeks, and I've seen twenty weak links do nothing at all. Quality and relevance matter far more than count.

Are nofollow links worth pursuing at all?

Yes. A nofollow link tells Google not to pass ranking credit directly, but it still sends real traffic, still gets your page discovered by crawlers, and still builds brand recognition. Dismissing nofollow links entirely is a mistake many small business owners make.

How long does it take to build a solid backlink profile from scratch?

Realistically six to twelve months of consistent effort for most small businesses, with the first few links being the slowest to earn and later ones coming faster as your content becomes more visible and gets shared naturally.

Should I ever pay for a backlink?

No, not through paid link marketplaces. Sponsored content with a disclosed nofollow link is different and safe, but paying purely to insert a followed link into someone else's site breaks Google's guidelines and can get either site penalised if it's found.