Hello fellow link builder. I’m sure you’re here because you ran out of ideas to build links naturally, right? Well, it’s good that you found this expert piece of content.
Many are in your shoes, they want to find natural backlink ideas for 2025. But let’s be real, there’s a limit to how far your imagination can get you. You need inspiration—and we’re here to provide it to you.
Read on to get your ideas for your next link building campaigns from two experts who do nothing but that—get natural backlinks.
What makes a backlink natural?
Natural backlinks are all about organic growth in the digital landscape. These links come to your site organically because someone found your content worth sharing. They are not the result of transactions or mutual agreements. Instead, they arise because you’ve created valuable content people want to link to. Whenever you find a link to your content that you didn’t directly solicit, that’s often a natural backlink.
Imagine someone writes an article about clients disputing an invoice. It’s a real problem, but many fail to give you good solutions on how to tackle that problem. If you write a post with a fresh take, people will link to it. Even better, if you add new statistics (for instance from a survey), you’re increasing your chances of receiving natural backlinks.
Characteristics of natural backlinks
One thing that makes natural backlinks less desirable in the eyes of many link builders (who still have no clue about SEO) is that they cannot control the anchor text. Some people are still obsessed with exact anchor matches. For instance, in the above example, they’d really love to get links for “clients disputing invoice.”
Smart link builders know that anchors have to be diverse and natural, and not exactly match your main keyword. That’s a totally different story we won’t cover here, but yes, natural backlinks come—naturally, so you can’t control the anchor. If there’s an actual problem with the anchor, for instance it’s completely wrong, irrelevant, or there are typos, it’s worth asking the publisher to fix the anchor text.
3 reasons you need natural backlinks
Not convinced that natural backlinks are a goldmine? Let us convince you with these reasons.
- Automated link profile growth: Instead of spending money and time building links meticulously, how about you let others do it for free? Yes, natural backlinks are amazing because you get links for free—well, you still have to work for them, but with amazing content, you definitely get more links on autopilot to grow a natural link profile.
- Increased brand awareness: Natural links are a great way of increasing your brand awareness. You’ll be mentioned on websites you might have no access to, hopefully reaching new readers, and getting their interest into your product or service.
- Diversifies your link profile: As mentioned, you don’t have any influence over the nature of the backlinks—which is a good thing. You’ll receive links for different anchors and therefore diversify your link profile positively.
Steal these natural backlink ideas
Enough theory, you’re here for the juicy strategies, so without further ado, let us show you how to get high-quality backlinks the natural way.
Rank top 3 in the SERPs
You must be thinking we’re nuts, but writing amazing content and ranking in the top of the SERPs will get you a lot of links. Here’s why: people are constantly searching for resources to link to, and they usually pick one of the top search results as a source or link to it for more information.
Makes sense, after all, the top results are believed to have the best information. So, by ranking in the top positions, you’ll increase your chances of receiving links.
Create resources or guides
Creating sharable content that stands as a resource establishes authority. Think of guides, infographics or ebooks that are carefully researched and filled with actionable insights. Content like this becomes a reference for others, increasing the probability of people placing a link to your website. To make sure they do, create an embed code and place it under your resource.
Consider the case of Moz, which publishes in-depth SEO guides frequently cited by others. By providing valuable insights, Moz attracts numerous backlinks, enhancing its digital footprint.
Build your brand authority and give quotes
This is a bit of a two-step process because first you need to build your brand with content marketing. Once yourvoice actually matters (and you’re not a self-proclaimed expert), you can start the second step: give your expert advice and be featured in blog posts.
Deian has been doing this for a while, and earned backlinks for Service Provider Pro thanks to authoritative insights from different outlets. The best way to go on about it is to create an author profile on your blog, but also be active on LinkedIn. You don’t just have to post, but also leave comments and engage with communities.
“I’m subscribed to a variety of topics at Help a B2B Writer and regularly check Featured.com for interesting quote requests. Amalya also keeps her eyes out for quote requests in different Slack communities she’s a member of.”
Write guest posts on relevant websites
No, guest blogging isn’t dead yet. What is dead is the terrible way of doing it. We keep seeing recommendations to use search operators to find blogs and websites that accept guest posts.
Guess what: it’s a guest post farm, and a link from it will not help you in the slightest. It will probably damage your link profile.
Be smart and put in the extra effort when it comes to guest posting. Find similar websites to yours, for instance SaaS blogs, and pitch amazing requests. Research their content, find a topic gap, research keywords, and send them an outline.
Most people will not say no when they see how much effort you put into your pitch.
Find podcasts and get interviewed
People not only love podcasts because they are a great way to consume content. It’s also one of the best ways to increase brand awareness and advertise.
With podcasts, there are two ways to earn natural backlinks:
- find podcasts in your niche and ask them to feature you
- create your own podcast and ask your guests to link to you
If you have the resources to do both, even better.
Write case studies
Case studies are not only great for social proof, they are also amazing when it comes to building natural backlinks. If you feature your clients in a case study, there’s a good chance they’ll link back to your website. After all, it’s free advertising for them, and they’ll want people to know about it.
Create tools or templates
Everyone loves templates—for good reason. Instead of starting from scratch, you can just use the template and save a lot of time. A good example is the template in our backlink sheet blog post. Deian created it quickly in Google Sheets, and people can just make a copy of it.
Those with bigger resources can create a tool instead. Guess what, our team actually did that, because Backlink Pilot is a side project of Service Provider Pro. Our link building became so big that spreadsheets were no longer cutting it. An internal tool was developed that is now free to use for everyone.
Ready to track your links on autopilot?
Let Backlink Pilot do the heavy lifting. Import your backlinks and our tool will keep its eyes on them.
Offer links for free
Yes, we are not kidding. In a world where everyone wants to exchange backlinks, how about you offer a few for free as a gesture of goodwill. You never know, some people will give you links back when you least expect it—maybe even more than you gave them.
“This works well when you can mention a company or reference other statistics/insights on articles on your site that others have great insights for. A popular way to do this is when an infographic is created that would work well in your article, you can include and add a link underneath. You can then share the article and tag them on socials to give them visibility.”
A side benefit is that you’re able to build relationships with all kinds of people in your niche. Instead of asking for something in return, you give them something for free first. Will everyone reciprocate? Probably not, but some will, and you’ll establish relationships that will last a long time.
Provide original research & data
Conducting original research can earn quality backlinks. Surveys and studies provide unique data, which others in your field will cite. This can be anything from a proper report to an infographic.
The problem with reports is that their data is quickly outdated, so try to create a process that allows you to survey the same people in the following year. You can then publish an updated report and always have fresh data people can link to.
Monitor brand mentions
Tools like Mention.com allow you to keep an eye on brand mentions on Q&A sites, blogs and social media. Every time someone writes about your domain or brand name, you get a notification. Very often, websites don’t link to you, so you can ask them nicely to do it.
While this is not an automated way of generating links, it involves almost no effort other than contacting the website owner.
“Brand mentions are a hidden goldmine for easy link building. When someone’s already talking about your brand, half the work is done! For example, if a blog reviews your product but forgets to link to your site, just reach out and ask—they’re usually happy to help. It’s simple, low-effort, and surprisingly effective.”
Get creative with ego bait
This is a very sneaky digital marketing tactic that involves creating content with the pure scope of attracting someone’s attention. That person is usually an influencer with a large following, so you’re hoping that they’ll react to the post, and link to it.
Besides a natural backlink, you could potentially earn a shout-out on social media, and even establish a direct connection with the influencer. But be warned, don’t bait them with negative news or lies. Try to find something they posted about recently, and create a post that dives deeper into the topic.
Record linkable videos
In-depth videos to problems many people are looking to solve are a great way to earn natural backlinks. The biggest issue is hosting the video content, because if you publish it on YouTube, you won’t get the link. It might make sense to host the videos on a subdomain and earn direct links that way.
The challenge of natural link building
With all the ideas presented above, I hope you’ll be able to build natural links eventually. We say eventually because there is a challenge associated with this technique: it doesn’t work for new websites that easily.
Unless you have a decent brand with lots of high-quality content and people associated with it, most people will not link to you that easily. People are more careful than ever when they link to other websites, so they’ll research your website, make sure you have a strong social media presence, and the writers are not anonymous.
If you’ve already built a strong brand, then don’t hesitate and use this technique on top of other popular ones, such as broken link building, the skyscraper technique, or influencer collaborations.
Embrace natural backlinks
Natural link building should be your main SEO focus. After all, your goal should be to focus on natural backlink profiles that you can build on autopilot. While the good old link exchange is a good tactic, it shouldn’t be the only part of your link building strategy.
Embrace the natural way of attracting natural links and watch your backlink profile diversify.
Written by
