Where Can You Get Backlinks For Free (The List I Use)

The short version: the best free backlinks come from testimonials on tools you already use, journalist requests through platforms like Connectively (the old HARO), unlinked brand mentions you can turn into links with one polite email, and guest posts on sites that have real traffic. Free directories from 2012 are mostly dead weight now. Free doesn't mean effortless, it means you're paying with time instead of money, and that's a trade worth making if you know where to spend the hours.

More on this here: Free AI Tool Directories to Submit Your Tool to in 2026.

The free backlinks that still work in 2026

I get asked this at least once a week, usually by a small business owner who's just read a headline saying backlinks are still one of Google's top three ranking factors and panicked. So let's be clear about what still works, because half the "free backlink" lists floating around the internet are recycling directory sites that stopped mattering a decade ago.

• Testimonials for tools you use - almost every SaaS company on earth has a testimonials or case study page, and most will link your name and website in exchange for a genuine quote.
• Journalist request platforms - Connectively (formerly HARO), Qwoted, and Featured send out daily requests from reporters looking for quotes, and a good chunk of them come from major outlets.
• Unlinked brand mentions - if a site has already written your name without a link, that's the easiest ask you'll ever make.
• Guest posts on sites with real traffic - not the 500-word "write for us" pages, but genuine industry blogs that would put your piece in front of your buyers.
• Local and industry associations - your Chamber of Commerce, trade bodies, sector membership groups, most of them have a members directory with a link.
• Podcast guesting - almost every podcast has show notes, and almost every show notes page has a link to your site.

If you want to see what you've already got before you go chasing more, run your site through a proper check first. I've written a full walkthrough on how to check your website's backlinks for free, and a separate one showing you how to check your backlinks using Google Search Console, which costs nothing and takes ten minutes.

The testimonial trick (this one's my favourite, and it's underused)

Here's the story. A few years back I was rebuilding a client's B2B site from near zero, and we were both frustrated at how slow link building felt. So one afternoon I sat down and made a list of every single tool the business paid for. Fourteen tools. CRM, email platform, scheduling software, accounting package, the lot.

I wrote one short paragraph of genuine praise for each, nothing fake, all things we'd said out loud in meetings, and emailed the customer success contact at each company asking if they'd like it for their testimonials page in exchange for a link back.

Nine replied. Six said yes within a week. Three of those went live with a dofollow link within a fortnight, and one was on a domain with strong authority because the software company itself had thousands of backlinks pointing at it. Three testimonials, three links, one afternoon of writing. That's a better return than most people get from a month of cold guest post pitching.

Do this with your own tool stack. Look at what you pay for monthly, whether that's your email marketing platform, your invoicing software, your booking system, or your web host, and ask. The worst they say is no.

Journalist requests: the step-by-step

Connectively, Qwoted and Featured all work roughly the same way. You sign up for free, pick your topics, and get emailed requests from journalists looking for expert quotes. Here's how I run it:

• Set up filters for your exact niche, not broad categories, because broad ones bury you in noise.
• Reply within the first two hours if you can, since most journalists take the first three or four decent answers and move on.
• Keep your answer under 100 words and lead with the actual quote, not your bio.
• Include your name, job title and website exactly as you want it published.
• Expect roughly a 5 to 10% hit rate. Out of twenty pitches you'll land one or two.

That success rate sounds low until you realise each hit can be a link from a national outlet or a trade publication your buyers read, which is worth more than fifty directory links combined.

The unlinked mention hunt

Set a free Google Alert for your brand name and your own name. Every time a site mentions you without linking, and this happens more than people think, you have an opening. Send a short email:

"Hi, spotted the mention in your piece on [topic], really appreciated it. Would you mind adding a link through to [page]? Happy to return the favour with a mention of your own if useful." That's it. No begging, no long pitch. I get roughly one link for every three or four of these emails I send, and it costs nothing but the time to write them.

Directories: which ones are worth it and which are dead weight

This is where most "free backlink" articles lie to you by omission. They'll hand you a list of forty directories and call it a strategy. Most of those directories are spam farms now, ignored by Google, sometimes actively harmful to sit near. The ones still worth a submission are the ones a human would click through, things like your industry's official trade body, your local Chamber of Commerce, Clutch or a comparable review platform if you're in professional services, and your Google Business Profile, which isn't technically a backlink but does the same job in search.

Skip the generic "submit your site to 500 directories" tools entirely. They were a decent tactic in 2011. They do nothing now and can flag your profile as spammy if too many links arrive from low quality domains at once.

The uncomfortable bit nobody says out loud

Here's the truth agencies don't love admitting: free backlinks aren't free. You're paying with hours instead of invoices, and most of what gets sold to small businesses as a "premium link building package" for £1,500 a month is stuff any competent person could do themselves in an evening with a spreadsheet and some polite emails. I've built links both ways, paid outreach campaigns for clients with bigger budgets and scrappy DIY efforts for clients with none, and the DIY route often produces better links because they're genuine, not templated pitches sent to four hundred sites at once. The catch is time. If your day is already full running the actual business, paying someone to do the outreach can be the right call, and if that's where you're at, it's worth reading what hiring outside help costs before you commit a retainer to it.

Guest posting, done

Real guest posting still earns real links, but it's slower than people want to hear. When I'm pitching a guest post I look for three things: the site has genuine organic traffic (check it through a free tool, not just gut feel), the audience overlaps with mine, and the last published guest post got actual comments or shares, not silence. One accepted pitch on a site with real traffic is worth more than ten accepted pitches on sites nobody reads. If you're building out your own blog as the base for this kind of outreach, I've laid out where you can start blogging for free today and what that costs you further down the line.

A simple 30-day plan

Week one: audit your current backlinks and list every paid tool you use. Week two: send testimonial emails and sign up for journalist request platforms. Week three: run the unlinked mention search and send those emails. Week four: pitch three guest posts to sites with genuine traffic in your niche. Do that once and you'll likely walk away with somewhere between five and fifteen new links, at zero pound spend, depending on how many replies land.

For a fuller map of where the opportunities sit, including the ones I haven't covered here, I put together a longer breakdown of where to find free backlink opportunities for your website, and if you want the wider strategy rather than just the free wins, there's a full guide on how to build backlinks for your business site without wasting six months chasing nothing.

For guest contributors covering this area, read Free Guest Posting Sites List: Where to Get Published in 2026.

For a visual, these backlink examples show exactly what counts.

Related: my diy blogs that accept guest posts page.

Want someone to handle it? Start with my SEO consultant UK page. If you'd like this done for you, see my SEO services page.

Frequently asked questions

Are free backlinks worth anything for SEO?

Yes, but quality matters more than the price tag. A single link from a genuine industry site or news outlet, gained through a testimonial swap or a journalist request, outperforms dozens of links from spammy free directories, and Google's algorithms are well past the point of being fooled by volume alone.

How many free backlinks should I aim for each month?

There's no magic number, and anyone who quotes you one is guessing. What matters more is consistency, five or six well-placed links a month from relevant sites will move the needle further than fifty random ones. For a proper sense of scale, I've written a full answer on how many backlinks a website should realistically have in 2026.

Do nofollow links from free sources help at all?

They still help, just indirectly. Nofollow links from places like Reddit threads, Quora answers or LinkedIn articles rarely pass direct ranking value, but they bring referral traffic, brand mentions, and the kind of visibility that eventually earns you dofollow links from other sites noticing you.

Is it risky to get too many free backlinks at once?

It can be, if they're all coming from the same low quality directory network in a short burst, since that pattern looks unnatural to Google. Spread your outreach across different types of sites over weeks rather than dumping dozens of submissions in a single day.

More on this here: free online booking software.