You launched. You wrote the landing page copy three times. You got the product working. You told your friends, posted on Twitter, maybe even cried a little.
Then you checked Google Search Console.
Zero impressions. Zero clicks. Google doesn't know you exist.
So you start Googling "how to rank on Google" and every article says the same thing: you need backlinks. But when you ask how to get them, suddenly everyone gets vague. "Create great content." "Build relationships." "Be consistent."
Cool. Thanks. Super helpful.
This post is the one I wish I had when I was starting out. Seven specific strategies for getting backlinks for a new website — most of them free, all of them doable without a PR budget or a domain authority over 10.
Why Backlinks Matter for New Websites (The Short Version)
Google uses backlinks as votes of confidence. When another site links to yours, it's saying: "this is worth reading." The more authoritative the site that links to you, the more weight that vote carries.
For a brand new website, you're starting with zero credibility in Google's eyes. Your content might be great, but without backlinks, Google has no reason to rank it over a site that's been around for five years.
Backlinks do three things for new sites:
- Build domain authority over time — which lifts all your pages, not just the linked ones
- Send direct referral traffic — people actually click links
- Speed up indexing — Google discovers new pages faster when following links
You don't need hundreds of backlinks to start seeing results. For most niches, even 10–20 quality links can start moving the needle. The goal early on isn't quantity — it's getting any credible sites to point at you.
The 7 Best Free Backlink Strategies for New Websites
1. Directory Submissions
This is the fastest way to get your first backlinks, and it's massively underused by founders who think it's "too basic."
Business directories — think Crunchbase, Product Hunt, G2, Capterra, Indie Hackers, and hundreds of niche-specific ones — are legitimate, high-authority sites that link back to you when you create a listing. Many are free. Most take 10–15 minutes to set up.
The problem: there are hundreds of relevant directories, and manually submitting to all of them is a full day's work. Most founders submit to five, feel accomplished, and move on.
The founders who get real traction submit to 80–120 directories systematically. That's not hyperbole — that's the threshold where you start to see meaningful domain authority movement.
Traction Tiger's SEO Foundation playbook includes a 120-directory submission engine that does this for you. Instead of copying and pasting your product description 100 times, you fill it in once and it generates submission-ready listings for every directory on the list.
Start here: Crunchbase, Product Hunt, G2, Capterra, Clutch, Indie Hackers, BetaList, SaaSHub, AlternativeTo, and your industry-specific directories.
2. Guest Posting on Niche Blogs
Guest posting gets a bad reputation because people abuse it. Spammy guest posts on irrelevant sites don't move the needle. But a single guest post on a relevant blog with real traffic can send hundreds of qualified visitors and a meaningful backlink.
The key is targeting the right blogs — ones your customers actually read, not ones with high DA that have nothing to do with your space.
How to find them:
- Google
"[your niche] + write for us"or"[your niche] + guest post" - Look at where your competitors have been featured (use Ahrefs free version or Moz Link Explorer)
- Check who's linking to tools similar to yours
What to pitch:
- A specific post idea, not "I'd like to write something"
- Proof you can write (your own blog posts, previous guest posts)
- Why their audience would care
One good guest post per month compounds fast. After a year, that's 12 backlinks from relevant, real sites — plus the referral traffic from each one.
3. HARO and Journalist Outreach
HARO (Help a Reporter Out) is a free service where journalists send out requests for expert sources. You reply to relevant requests, and if they use your quote, you typically get a backlink from whatever publication they're writing for.
This is how early-stage founders end up in Forbes, TechCrunch, and niche trade publications without paying for PR.
How to use it:
- Sign up at helpareporter.com (free)
- Choose the categories relevant to your business
- Respond to 3–5 queries per week with fast, specific, quote-ready answers
- Keep replies under 200 words — journalists are on deadline, they don't have time to read an essay
The hit rate is low — maybe 1 in 10 responses gets used. But the links you do get are often from authoritative publications, and one link from a DA 70+ site does more work than 20 directory listings.
Similar platforms: Qwoted, Terkel, SourceBottle, JustReachOut.
4. Build Free Tools or Resources (Link Magnets)
The most powerful backlink strategy — and also the most work — is building something genuinely useful that people want to share.
This could be:
- A free calculator (ROI calculator, pricing estimator, etc.)
- An industry benchmark report based on your own data
- A curated resource list (e.g., "The 50 best tools for [your niche]")
- A free template or swipe file
Why this works: People link to tools and resources naturally. They don't link to your about page. When you give them something worth bookmarking, the links come without you having to ask.
For a SaaS product, a free version of a core feature can function as a link magnet. If your main product does X, offer a lightweight "X Lite" for free and watch indie bloggers and niche newsletters link to it.
This is a longer play — it takes time to build and more time to get traction. But a single good link magnet can generate dozens of backlinks over months and years.
5. Reddit and Community Posts With Genuine Value
Reddit has strict rules about self-promotion, and they enforce them. But founders who show up genuinely in communities — answering questions, sharing hard-won lessons, participating in discussions — build real relationships and often earn links organically.
The playbook:
- Find the 3–5 subreddits where your customers hang out
- Spend your first month lurking and upvoting to understand the culture
- Answer questions thoroughly — be the most helpful person in the thread
- Only share your own stuff when it's directly relevant and you disclose it
When you do this right, people click through to your profile, find your site, and link to you from their own blogs or newsletters. It's indirect, but it's real.
Same logic applies to Slack communities, Discord servers, and niche forums. Be the most useful person in the room before you try to be the most visible one.
6. "Awesome" Lists and GitHub Roundups
GitHub is full of "Awesome [Topic]" repositories — curated lists of tools, resources, and links maintained by the community. There are Awesome lists for SaaS tools, developer resources, productivity apps, marketing tools, and hundreds of other categories.
If your product fits a category, submit a PR to be included. It takes 15 minutes, and a link from a popular GitHub repo with thousands of stars carries real authority.
How to find them:
- Search GitHub for
awesome [your niche] - Search for
[your niche] resourcesor[your niche] tools list
Beyond GitHub, look for roundup blog posts in your niche. If someone has written "The 20 best [category] tools," they might update it if you reach out with a compelling reason to add you.
The pitch: Keep it short. Explain what your tool does in one sentence, link to it, and make it easy for the list maintainer to say yes.
7. Partnerships and Co-Marketing With Complementary Products
This is the most underrated link-building strategy for B2B SaaS founders.
Find 5–10 products that serve the same customers you do but aren't competitors. Reach out and propose something simple: a joint blog post, a shared resource, a mutual mention in each other's newsletters, or an integration blog post.
Why it works: These are natural backlinks from real businesses in your space. Google likes them. And they often come with actual referral traffic from their audience.
You don't need a massive audience to make this work. You just need to be building something that their customers would genuinely find useful.
Start here:
- List your closest non-competing "neighbors" in the tool stack your customers use
- Find their marketing contact (usually on their website or LinkedIn)
- Pitch a specific, low-lift co-marketing idea — a joint blog post is the easiest starting point
Ready to build your link-building strategy? Traction Tiger turns your product info into a step-by-step growth playbook — including an SEO foundation that covers directory submissions, link building, and more. Build My Free Playbook (takes 60 seconds)
What NOT to Do (Seriously)
A few things that will hurt you more than help:
Buying links. Services that sell "100 backlinks for $50" are selling links from spammy sites on private blog networks. Google knows. You'll get a manual penalty or algorithmic suppression that takes months to recover from.
Private Blog Networks (PBNs). Same problem. Even if they work short-term, the risk isn't worth it for a legitimate business.
Random link exchanges. "I'll link to you if you link to me" — Google's Webmaster Guidelines explicitly flag reciprocal link schemes. The occasional natural reciprocal link is fine. A systematic exchange program is not.
Over-optimized anchor text. If every backlink to your site uses the exact same keyword-rich anchor text, that's a red flag. Natural link profiles have variety — brand names, URLs, generic phrases, and yes, some keywords.
The rule is simple: if a strategy feels like you're gaming the system, it probably is. Stick to links that would make sense to a human reader.
How Long Does Link Building Actually Take?
Honest answer: longer than you want, but faster than you think if you're consistent.
Here's a realistic timeline:
- Weeks 1–2: Directory submissions done. First handful of backlinks visible in Google Search Console.
- Month 1–2: HARO responses going out weekly. First guest post pitch sent. Domain authority starting to tick up (slowly).
- Month 3–6: First guest posts published. A few HARO placements. Community presence building. You'll start to see real keyword movement on lower-competition terms.
- Month 6–12: Compounding starts to kick in. Older links carry more weight. New content ranks faster because your domain has credibility.
The biggest mistake founders make is doing a burst of link building in month one, seeing nothing happen for 30 days, and concluding it doesn't work. SEO is a delayed feedback loop. The work you do in January shows up in April.
Set a minimum viable link-building habit: two hours per week, every week, for six months. That's enough to see real results without making it your full-time job.
How Traction Tiger Fits Into This
Link building is just one piece of the SEO puzzle. Before you spend time chasing backlinks, make sure your technical foundation is solid — site speed, metadata, internal linking, indexing. None of your link building effort matters if Google can't properly crawl and understand your site.
The SEO Foundation playbook on Traction Tiger covers this step-by-step: from technical setup to directory submissions to content strategy. It's designed for founders who want a structured approach without hiring an SEO agency.
The directory submission engine alone covers 120 curated directories — you fill in your product info once, and it generates everything you need to submit to all of them. For most early-stage sites, that single action gets you further than months of ad-hoc link building.
The Bottom Line
Getting backlinks for a new website isn't magic. It's a series of repeatable actions, done consistently, that compound over time.
Start with directories — it's the fastest win. Add HARO and one guest post per month. Show up in communities without being spammy. Build something worth linking to. Partner with complementary products.
Six months of this, and you'll look back at the ghost-town Google Search Console you started with and wonder how the hell you got here.
Don't overthink it. Start this week.
Want a step-by-step SEO foundation built specifically for your product? Traction Tiger gives you a personalized growth playbook in 60 seconds — including the directory list, the content framework, and the link-building roadmap.