I'm a bit frustrated with all the BS backlink advice out there.

We’ve tried just about every recommended method, and after a lot of trial and error, here’s what’s actually worked for us and what hasn’t.

The BS Backlink Strategies That Don’t Work (or are not scalable for most people)

Buying Backlinks: We tried this route, but quality backlinks can cost hundreds, and if you’re not generating tons of revenue, it’s not sustainable. We once hired someone who charged $500 just for the outreach, plus $50-100 per link, and the links were questionable at best. Needless to say, we stopped.

Guest Posts: Reaching out to blogs to offer guest posts might sound good, but the reality is that hardly anyone cares.

Broken Link Method: The idea is to find broken links on similar sites, then reach out offering your page as a replacement. We tried it, but no one cared about their broken links enough to update them, and our emails got ignored.

Unlinked Mentions: This involves finding sites that mention your brand without linking to you, and asking them to add a link. We reached out to a bunch of sites, and, again, no one cared.

The Backlink Strategies That Actually Worked (and are scalable)

Our most effective backlinks came from connecting with quality websites in our industry.

Here’s what actually moved the needle:

Networking & Cross-Promotions: We’re in some WhatsApp groups with others in our industry, attend conferences, and connect with people via zoom when possible. Once you build these connections, cross-promotions, like blog posts, backlinks, or newsletter swaps, convert easily.

Creating Listicles: This was a great find! We create listicles like “Top X Tools for [Task relevant to your niche]” without any links initially. Then, we reach out to the companies we’ve featured to let them know they’ve been included. We offer them the chance to secure a link in the listicle in exchange for a backlink to our site. By leading with the free article feature and then pitching the link exchange, we get a much higher response rate. This method consistently yields about a 12% conversion rate. For every 10 companies we reach out to, we secure one backlink exchange. And you don’t need to keep writing new listicles, just replace the companies that did not respond with new ones.

Using apollo . io for Link Exchange Outreach: This involves finding niche sites with similar DR, building a list, importing it to Apollo to fetch the contacts, and setting up an email sequence to reach out automatically offering a simple collaboration and link exchange. Our success rate was about 3%, so 3 backlinks for every 100 sites (we send 50 emails a day). We use a free tool to bulk export lists of sites in the same niche and similar DR (i can share it in the comments). An Apollo subscription costs around 50$ month which makes each backlink quite cheap.

Using RankChase : RankChase is a platform that matches you with quality websites in your niche with similar DR that are also looking for link exchanges. You add your site, and they send link exchange opportunities to your inbox with contact info. The success rate is around 50-60%. For every two matches, we generally get one backlink and you can get a few matches a week. RankChase is free to join but for 30$/mo you get 5x more matches so it is a great way to scale backlinks with little effort and for cheap.

Why Link Exchanges Are Actually Worth It

Some people say that Google does not like link exchanges, but the truth is everyone’s just guessing based on stuff they’ve read. No one really knows exactly how the Google algorithm works. It’s extremely common for niche sites to link to each other, and many are industry partners. We’ve never seen penalties from exchanging relevant, contextual links with high-quality sites, and haven’t met anyone else who has either. Relevant link exchanges was actually suggested by our SEO consultant.

Happy to share more details on any of these methods!