Getting backlinks comes down to giving other site owners a genuine reason to link to you. That means either creating content worth citing, filling gaps left by broken or outdated pages, or positioning yourself as a credible source journalists and bloggers already want to quote. Cold outreach with nothing to offer gets ignored. A well-researched data piece, a free tool, or an expert take on a trending story gets linked to without asking.
The strategies below are ordered from highest leverage to lowest. Some require upfront content investment; others are largely operational. None of them are instant, but each one builds a compounding asset rather than a one-time ranking spike.
Why backlinks still matter, and why they matter even more for AI visibility
Backlinks are one of the clearest trust signals Google uses to evaluate whether a page deserves to rank. More important: they are also how AI engines decide which sources to cite. ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews draw heavily from pages that Google already trusts, which means a strong backlink profile is the upstream input to AI citation, not a separate concern.
When a page earns links from authoritative sources, it builds topical credibility. AI systems interpret that credibility as evidence the page is a reliable reference. A brand that is cited frequently in editorial contexts, research roundups, and industry publications is far more likely to appear in an AI-generated answer than one with identical content but zero third-party endorsement. The overlap between “what Google rewards with rankings” and “what AI engines cite” is not coincidental. Both systems are trying to identify trustworthy sources, and backlinks are the closest thing to a public vote of confidence.
This means building backlinks and building AI visibility are the same campaign. You can track whether AI engines are starting to surface your brand with Fokal’s AI visibility monitoring.
How to get backlinks: the core tactics
1. Publish original data or research
Original research earns links because it gives writers something to cite. When a journalist or blogger makes a claim, they need a source. If your page is the source of a verified statistic or study, the link becomes almost automatic.
You do not need a lab or a large budget. Useful approaches include: surveying your own customer base (even 200 responses is publishable), aggregating and analyzing publicly available data from government or industry sources, or running an experiment on your own site and documenting the results. Ahrefs’ Tim Soulo documented one outreach campaign that achieved a 41% response rate on 111 emails when the underlying asset was a high-quality original study, resulting in a 17% link acquisition rate (meaning roughly 19 links from that campaign). Industry benchmarks put a “decent” link acquisition rate above 10%.
2. Use the Skyscraper Technique
The Skyscraper Technique, documented by Brian Dean, works in three steps: find content in your niche that has already earned many backlinks, create a materially better version, and reach out to the sites linking to the original.
The core logic is that every site linking to the existing piece has already demonstrated they care about that topic. Your pitch is not “link to me,” it is “here is a better resource for your readers.” Brian Dean’s original case study showed 17 links from 160 emails, an 11% success rate, with a traffic result of doubling organic traffic to his site within 14 days. An Ahrefs poll of 1,242 SEO practitioners on Twitter and LinkedIn found that 61% believe the technique still works.
The failure mode is treating “longer” as synonymous with “better.” A page that adds 500 words of padding to a 2,000-word original does not earn links. A page that adds a current data set, a clearer structure, or an interactive element that the original lacks does.
3. Broken link building
Broken link building finds dead pages that other sites still link to, creates a replacement, and asks those sites to update their link. The value proposition is clear: you are helping the linker fix a bad user experience. That framing converts better than most cold outreach.
The process: use an SEO tool to identify dead pages with inbound links, assess whether the topic is relevant to your brand, build a comparable page on your own site, and contact each linker. Ahrefs identifies it as one of the five most widely used link building tactics among professionals.
4. Digital PR and data-driven campaigns
Digital PR earns links by generating coverage in publications, news outlets, and blogs. The key difference from standard outreach is that digital PR creates a story rather than pitching a page. Journalists cover things, not URLs.
Formats that perform well include: surveys tied to a trending topic, analysis of a public dataset (government statistics, company filings), and “state of the industry” reports. Amanda Walls’s campaign using vaping-industry data secured links from 72 referring domains. A campaign mapping state tax burdens across the US earned 188 referring domains, according to Ahrefs’ documented case study.
Reactive PR, using services like HARO (Help a Reporter Out) or Featured, is lower effort. Journalists post queries; you respond with expert commentary; you get quoted with a link. This works best for brands where a named founder or senior team member is willing to be cited publicly.
5. Guest posting on relevant sites
Guest posting places your content (and a contextual link back to your site) on another publication’s platform. It remains one of the most common tactics used by SEO professionals, according to Ahrefs’ State of Link Building survey data.
The key qualifier is “relevant sites.” A guest post on a high-authority site in a completely different industry passes little topical value. A guest post on a moderately authoritative site with strong topical alignment is more useful for both rankings and AI citation. Target sites with real editorial standards, genuine traffic, and an audience that would legitimately benefit from your content.
Google prohibits “advertorials or native advertising” that pass ranking credit without a nofollow tag, so avoid paid guest post arrangements that masquerade as editorial content. Earned placements on real editorial sites are the goal.
6. Listicle and roundup targeting
Many “best of” lists and tool roundups accumulate significant backlink profiles because other writers cite them as references. If your brand or product belongs on those lists but is absent, you can pitch for inclusion.
The pitch is not “add my site to your list.” It is “your readers are looking for X, here is why we belong alongside the other tools you have listed.” Jason Acidre documented one client earning inclusion in “nearly every top-ranking listicle for best dropshipping suppliers” using this approach.
This tactic works especially well for software, tools, and services that have a clear category in which they compete. It is also highly relevant to AI visibility: AI engines frequently surface these roundup pages in response to “best X” queries, so being on the list means being in the answer.
7. Build a linkable asset
A linkable asset is a piece of content designed from the start to attract links. Common formats include: data visualizations (especially map-based), statistics pages that rank for fact-finder queries (“X statistics 2025”), free tools, and comprehensive reference guides.
Statistics pages are particularly effective because they serve a persistent need. Anyone writing about a topic will eventually look for a statistic to cite. Ahrefs documents that statistics-style assets generate an average of 102 referring domains without outreach. The traffic is search-driven; the links follow from visibility rather than direct pitching.
8. Competitor backlink analysis
Your competitors have already done the prospecting work. Use an SEO tool to pull their backlink profiles, identify which sites link to them, and determine whether those sites would also link to you. Sites that have already linked to a competitor in your space have demonstrated topical interest in your category.
This is a targeting shortcut, not a strategy on its own. You still need a compelling reason for each site to link to you (original content, a better resource, a newsworthy story). But the prospect list is already qualified.
What makes a backlink valuable
Not all backlinks contribute equally to rankings or AI citation. The factors that determine value, according to Ahrefs’ documented research and Google’s own guidance, include:
- Authority of the linking site: A link from a site Google trusts heavily passes more ranking value.
- Topical relevance: A link from a site about the same or closely related topic carries more weight than one from an unrelated domain.
- Anchor text: Descriptive, relevant anchor text gives search engines and AI engines context about what your page covers.
- Link placement: Links placed in the editorial body of an article carry more value than footer or sidebar links.
- Link attributes: Google’s documentation notes that links should use standard HTML
<a>elements withhrefattributes to be crawlable. Links markedrel="nofollow"orrel="sponsored"do not pass ranking credit.
Google’s spam policies explicitly prohibit buying or selling links for ranking purposes, exchanging links (“link to me and I’ll link to you”), and using automated tools to create links. These practices risk manual penalties.
How AI engines use backlinks to decide what to cite
Backlinks are not just a Google ranking input. They are the mechanism by which AI engines learn which sources are trustworthy. ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews all operate from a foundation of web data, and that data is heavily shaped by what Google’s crawler has indexed and trusted. A page that has earned editorial backlinks from authoritative sources is indexed more reliably, crawled more frequently, and given higher weight in the underlying training and retrieval systems AI engines depend on.
This creates a direct line: earn real editorial links from credible sources, rank higher in Google, get cited more in AI answers. The dual-benefit of link building is not a marketing talking point. It reflects how the systems actually work.
For brands prioritizing AI visibility specifically, certain link sources carry extra weight. Being cited in Wikipedia (even in a “see also” or talk page context), referenced in academic or government publications, or quoted in major journalism outlets all create citation patterns that AI engines have learned to trust. These are harder to earn but compound significantly.
You can track whether your link-building efforts are translating into AI citations with Fokal’s AI visibility tracking. If your backlink profile is growing but AI citation is not following, the gap usually points to a content quality or topical authority issue rather than a volume problem.
A practical outreach framework
Most link building involves some outreach. Here is a framework that reflects what actually converts, based on documented campaign data:
Qualify prospects tightly. Ahrefs’ Tim Soulo’s approach filtered 180,000 potential prospects down to 2,268 by applying minimum thresholds for domain rating, traffic, and content length. More prospects do not produce more links. Targeted prospects with a strong reason to link do.
Lead with value, not your ask. The pitch should explain what the linker’s readers get from your page, not what you get from their link. If you cannot articulate that in one sentence, the content is not ready to pitch.
Keep emails short. Backlinko’s documented approach recommends under 200 words per pitch. The content earns the link; the email just opens the door.
Follow up once. Resend after five to seven days if you receive no response. A single follow-up is standard practice and appropriate. More than that becomes noise.
Expect roughly 10% conversion. A link acquisition rate above 10% is considered strong. From 100 targeted, personalized pitches, 10 links is a realistic target. Scale the campaign volume to your link velocity goals accordingly.
Internal linking and topical authority
Backlinks are one half of the authority equation. Internal links are the other. A page with strong external backlinks but poor internal linking does not pass its authority efficiently through the rest of your site. Build internal links from high-traffic, high-authority pages on your domain to the pages you most want to rank.
For a deeper look at how internal linking, topical coverage, and external authority work together, see Fokal’s guides on link building strategy and topical authority. For brands running link acquisition campaigns at scale, link building services covers what to look for in an agency or vendor.
The AI SEO hub connects all of these tactics into a unified visibility strategy covering both Google rankings and AI search presence.