Free Backlinks: How to Gain More Backlinks for Your Website

1. What characterizes high-quality backlinks?
2. The 7 best sources for free backlinks
3. 11 free backlink tools

Do you want your website to rank high in the SERPs? Then high-quality backlinks are a must-have. But what exactly are strong backlinks? What backlink sources are there? And which free tools can you use to generate them? We answer all these questions in this article.

What characterizes high-quality backlinks?

High-quality backlinks come from websites with high Domain Authority – they enjoy both high reputation and trust among users and search engines. These links create a halo effect, making your website appear as a trustworthy source of information.

There are three main criteria that characterize high-quality backlinks:

• Natural:When we talk about natural backlinks, we mean links that are not bought or used to manipulate Google rankings. Instead, you have to earn natural backlinks through high-quality content, which provides added value to the users.
• Serious: Backlinks not only direct visitors from one website to another, but also transfer authority ("link juice“). As a rule of thumb, backlinks that originate from trusted domains like Der Spiegel or HubSpot are more valuable than those from spam websites.

Notice: To determine the authority of a website, Google has developed its own algorithm called PageRank. This checks the quality and number of backlinks referring to your website. The more high-quality backlinks you get, the higher your PageRank.

• Relevance: Apart from the factors mentioned above, search engines also check the relevance of the forwarding page and the domain. For example, let's assume you have a website on weight reduction. If this was linked on a business news website under "healthy lifestyle", the backlink would score high in page relevance. But since the referring domain focuses on business topics, the link is not relevant for the domain.

Now let's assume that your website on weight loss was also linked on a reputable fitness and lifestyle domain. Since both the referring page and the domain are relevant for your website, the backlink is classified as high-quality here.

The 7 best sources for free backlinks

Buying backlinks violates Google's webmaster guidelines. If you get caught, your website will be penalized or, worse, blocked from the search engine. But how do you get backlinks without paying for them? Below are some ways to generate high-quality backlinks for free:

1. Win free backlinks through blogging

Blogging is one of the most common methods to build free backlinks. You can create detailed guides, reports, and studies on your field of expertise. This type of content usually gets a lot of links as it provides unique information. Another way to win free backlinks is guest blogging. Here you write a post for a higher authority domain and thus can add editorial backlinks to your own website. 

2. Generate free backlinks from reused content.

Did you know that a single post can generate three different backlinks for you? Here is an example of how it works:

• Write a blog post that attracts a lot of visitors using SEO content tools.
• Create a two- to three-minute YouTube video that handles the main ideas of your article and create a SlideShare presentation.
• Then use your social media accounts to promote your YouTube video, SlideShare presentation, and the original article.

Depending on your skills and available time, you can apply this strategy again and again to get free backlinks.

3. Get valuable backlinks from influencers

Influencers are social media users who have made a name for themselves for their expertise in a particular niche. They not only have a considerable reach but also enjoy the trust of their followers. This makes them a perfect source of high-quality backlinks.

To get backlinks from influencers, proceed as follows:

• First, look for suitable influencers in your niche and ask them for interviews. For example, if you have a weight loss website, look for fitness influencers and ask them about their diet plans.
• Based on these interviews, create an article.
• Once this is finished, kindly ask the influencers to link the post in their social media profiles or on their websites.
• If it's a video interview, you can also publish it on YouTube and mention your website in the description to get another backlink.

4. Gain free backlinks from podcast guest appearances

If you're a real language talent, you can also get backlinks through guest contributions in podcasts. For this, you need to look for podcasts in your niche. For example, if you want to advertise your weight reduction website, podcasts focusing on fitness and a healthy lifestyle are the best choice.

Here are tips on how you can accommodate the link to your website in the podcast:

• When mentioning a URL, it should be short and simple, like the name of your domain. Most podcast listeners won't be able to remember a 50-character URL.
• Also ask the podcast host to include backlinks to your website in the podcast show notes. These are blog posts that summarize the podcast episode and provide links to the mentioned resources.

5. Insert links in website comments

Inserting your links in website comments is not only a good way to get backlinks. It can also help you make your business better known and establish yourself as an expert in your industry.

To get high-quality backlinks via website comments, follow these steps:

• Look for a blog post from a respected domain in your industry.
• Get familiar with the content and share your opinion about it.
• Alternatively, you can formulate a question to clear up unclear points of the article.

6. Set links in forums

Forums like Reddit can also provide you with free backlinks. Here you can include your URL in a forum post, your signature, or your profile page. Forum backlinks not only improve your SEO. They also bring you organic traffic – provided the link is relevant to the topic and enriches the conversation. Besides, some forum posts have a high ranking in the SERPs for certain search queries. Backlinks in these forums can also bring additional traffic to your website.

7. Generate backlinks using web directories

Web directories provide information about websites, businesses, and industry-related content. They arrange the web addresses according to certain criteria, such as alphabetical order. Before there were search engines, these directories were the only way to search the internet for websites.

Below are examples of web directories where you can register your backlinks for free:

• linkheim.de
• favoriten.de
• schlaue-seiten.de
• webwiki.de
• suchnase.de

Additionally, you can also resort to industry books like meinestadt.de, stadtbranchenbuch.de and gelbeseiten.de. Such directories not only help you with link building. They also lead customers directly to your offered products and services.

11 free backlink tools

SEMrush 

Semrush is not only known for its keyword research and traffic analyses, but also for its backlink tool. It enables you to:

• track the backlinks of any domain
• check the status of your backlinks and identify spam links
• discover backlink opportunities
• upload up to 200 URLs from various competitors for comparison

The free trial of SEMrush lasts seven days. Afterwards, you automatically get an upgrade to the paid subscription.

Sitechecker

Sitechecker​​ provides you with two free tools to optimize your link building strategy:

• Backlink Generator: generates an automatic link list of websites.
• Backlink Checker: creates a backlink list that refers to your website.

The paid version also includes a backlink tracker. It identifies backlinks that have a great impact on your ranking in the search results.

Ahrefs

Like Sitechecker, Ahrefs also offers a free backlink checker. It allows you to see the referring domains of a website, the number of backlinks, and the domain rating. The domain rating (Authority Score) reflects the strength of your backlink profile compared to the other websites in your database.

Moz Pro

If you sign up for the free trial of Moz Pro you can set up ten campaigns (where you can track ten websites and three competitors in each campaign). You also get access to the Moz research tools such as the Keyword Explorer and the Link Explorer. The former analyzes keywords based on their search volume. The Link Explorer, on the other hand, examines the backlinks and the Domain Authority of your website and your competitors. 

Majestic Backlink Analyzer

The Majestic Backlink Analyzer is a (free) browser plugin that allows you to check the backlinks of your website. It has three important functions:

• Trust Flow: determines the quality of the backlinks referring to your website.
• Citation Flow: determines the number of links referring to your website.
• Topical Trust Flow: indicates how relevant the topics of your web appearance are compared to the best websites in the database.

SEO Spyglass

SEO Spyglass is your free all-in-one backlink tool. With this, you get:

• a backlink list for each domain
• information about spam links
• a comprehensive analysis of all the links of your website and your competitors.

SE Ranking

The free backlink checker from SE Ranking offers a 360-degree view of your website's backlink profile. The tool not only provides information about the number of domains and backlinks referring to your website but also sheds light on the ratio of dofollow and nofollow backlinks and predicts your website's ability to rank in the SERPs.

Linkminer by mangools

The LinkMiner by Mangools is a free and easy-to-use backlink checker that can help you track your competitors' backlinks. The tool indicates, among other things, the Citation Flow, which measures the “power” of a backlink. It also shows you the number of IPs and domains referring to a certain website.

Seobility 

Also, the SEO tool Seobility features a function to check your backlinks. It provides you with information about the total number of backlinks, the number of referring domains and their Domain Authority. Based on this data, the Seobility then calculates the Domain Authority of your own website.

Sistrix 

Sistrix is especially known for the development of the Visibility Index. This expresses the visibility of a domain in the Google rankings. However, Sistrix also offers a free backlink analysis tool. With this, you can identify and monitor backlinks that refer to your website and your competition.

Nightwatch

Last but not least, the Backlink Tracker from nightwatch offers various ways to track your backlink campaigns. It also gives you information about how these are affecting your visibility and provides you with information about:

• the total number of backlinks
• the backlink quality
• new and lost backlinks

If you need more information about the mentioned tools or want to find the suitable SEO tools for your next campaign based on real user reviews, OMR Reviews is the right place for you.