Organic Link Building 101: Tips and Best Practices

Organic links are like gold dust. Extremely valuable but difficult to obtain. SEOs see their value, so the competition is greater, making it more difficult for the content to get noticed. Especially, underdogs with limited budgets.

In the article, I will explain why organic backlinks can be more valuable than other types of links and share strategies and best practices that will help you get these highly coveted backlinks.

What is Organic Link Building?

Organic link building, or natural link building, is when you acquire links naturally—without making formal arrangements.

That's what happens when somebody finds your content interesting or valuable and voluntarily links back to it from their page. Sometimes, you don't even know about it and usually have no control over it.

This is how the internet worked before SEOs realized you could improve search engine results by “incentivizing” webmasters to link to their websites.

What are NOT organic backlinks?

Non-organic links are easy to define. They could be:

In practice, however, it's difficult to determine whether the link was acquired organically or not. There's no way of telling if somebody paid for a link insertion or if it’s a genuine editorial link.

Benefits of Organic Link Building

Why is organic link-building such a big deal? Here are the main reasons!

Higher search rankings

Just like any other links, natural backlinks can boost the SERP performance of your website. If somebody links to your website, search engines view it as evidence of its value. The higher the domain authority, the more link juice it passes.

Backlinks also bring referral traffic to your website. If a journalist from a national paper links to your resource from their article, you can be sure they will send thousands of readers your way.

This creates a flywheel effect. The more people link to your site, the higher the rankings. The higher the rankings, the more organic traffic your website gets. And more traffic usually means more organic links.

The challenge? Gaining momentum when you're only starting.

That’s why many SEOs use a hybrid approach. They use transactional techniques to get links that will set the wheel in motion, hoping this will result in more organic link acquisition in the long run.

Sustainable results

While it's possible to replicate the above effect with paid links or link exchanges, organic backlinks tend to have a longer lifespan.

If somebody links to your resource because it offers genuine value to their audience, they're less likely to remove it than links somebody pays for (as long as you update it regularly).

But do you want to know the real kicker?

Organic links make you less vulnerable to algorithm changes.

Remember how effective sitewide links were? Or PBNs? They worked exceptionally until the Penguin update and Google’s crackdown on link-building schemes.

The risk of that happening with links acquired organically is close to zero. Unless Google decides not to use backlinks for ranking at all one day.

Lower investment

Acquiring links organically is cheaper than using other link-building techniques.

Let's face it: link-building is the most expensive SEO process. Our data shows the cost of a single link ranges from $50 to $1000+, depending on your niche and the referring domains that link to you.

Imagine you want to rank in the top 10 for a competitive keyword like "inbound marketing." You need 200+ referring domains, according to Ahrefs. At $50 a pop, that's $10k, and it's just one keyword.

Organic link acquisition can dramatically reduce the bill.

But not to zero. Creating link-worthy content and promoting it (or hiring an agency to do it for you) isn't free.

For example, our "State of Link Building" report cost us around $7-8k to produce.

How to Build an Organic Backlink?

Contrary to what many believe, organic link building doesn't necessarily mean waiting passively for the links to appear. You can still pursue them actively.

Let me take you through the most common tactics and best practices.

Create High-Value Content

High-quality content is the not-so-secret sauce of organic link-building. Journalists and bloggers need a good reason to link to your pages.

But here's the catch:

Creating such content is getting increasingly difficult, and getting it noticed even more so. The internet is flooded with semi-decent AI-generated content that doesn't necessarily add to the discussion but adds noise.

So, how do you create content that cuts through the AI pulp?

Make it relevant by covering trending or evergreen subjects

To attract organic links, a piece of content needs to cover either trending or evergreen topics.

You can find the first ones with tools like Google Trends or its more advanced but paid competitor—Exploding Topics.

The easiest way to find evergreen topic ideas is by analyzing your competitors' content that attracts the most links.

I use the Best by links report in Ahrefs for that.

Here's what it looks like for Backlinko. You can see that Brian Dean's comprehensive list of Google ranking factors is the resource with the highest number of referring domains.

Google ranking factors are no doubt an evergreen topic. The article has been attracting links steadily since it was first published in 2015, with only a slight dip around 2021.

Offer original research or data

Nothing attracts links like a good research report or a stat roundup.

💼 Case in point: Last year, we created the "State of Link Building," where we shared unique insights from 113 SEOs. It's a page with the highest number of backlinks on our website, and quite a few of them are organic.

The reason? It offers valuable data that readers can't find elsewhere.

The main challenge with these kinds of reports is that conducting surveys or extracting and analyzing internal data is incredibly labor-intensive. Our report took a couple of months to produce!

Don't have the resources? Collate stats from reputable sources.

That's what Margarita Loktionova did in her "96 Content Marketing Statistics You Need to Know for 2024", and the article is Semrush's most linked-to resource.

Make it helpful with practical advice and real-life examples

AI is very good at spitting out general advice, so leverage your expertise to stand out.

For example, if you're writing about unlinked brand mentions, show readers your process for finding them using SEO tools and share the templates you use to convert them into links.

Make the text scannable to help users find information

People don't read blog posts; they scan them, looking for the answers to their questions. To make your content linkable, make it scannable.

How do you do it?

• Create high-concept headings that convey the main message of the section so that they can get a gist of the article by reading headings only.

Compare these two:

❌ Use Exploding Topics

✅ Use Exploding Topics to find trending subjects in your industry

Make the article more engaging with high-quality images and videos

Semrush data shows that web pages with seven or more images get 259% more page views, 366% more shares, and 555% more backlinks.

Visuals not only make your articles look better but also easier to digest. We understand texts with visuals 323% better, and readers are 30x more likely to read an infographic than plain text.

Infographics are powerful linkable assets on their own. It isn't uncommon for creators to include somebody else's infographics in the text. And link back to them. I do it all the time.

Same about videos. They make blog content more engaging and increase time on the page by 1.4x, according to Wistia.

Optimize it for search engines

Optimize your content for search to make it easier to discover.

Here's how to do it:

If you're using an SEO optimization tool like Surfer, Clearscope, or NeuronWriter, a high score isn't your ultimate goal. Prioritizing it often leads to poorly written sentences that sound as if a bot wrote them.

Build Free Tools

Free tools that solve user pain points are great organic link magnets.

For example, Ahrefs Free Keywords Explorer is their 4th most linked page, with links from 4.4k unique domains.

If you're in the SaaS space, offering a free tool requires little effort and is an opportunity to showcase your product value.

There are also no-code tools like Softr or Bildr that make it relatively easy to build a simple tool. The challenge is finding a unique problem to solve that your audience would genuinely care about.

Cultivate relationships with fellow marketers and influencers in your niche

Websites don't give links; people do. They also engage with your content and share it with their audiences, increasing its reach.

For example, Ashley Cummings, an amazing writer, shares a handful of her favorite articles with the 2500+ subscribers of her content marketing newsletter, Content Connect. That's a lot of potential readers who might share the articles with their audiences. Or link to them.

Of course, a newsletter editor wouldn't feature your article just because you're mates, but if your content is top-notch, she's more likely to if you’re already on her radar.

Promote your content via outreach

Once you conduct your research and publish the results, share them with bloggers, journalists, and influencers who cover the topic.

You can find them using tools like BuzzStream, Roxhill, or Pitchbox.

This isn't limited to your blog posts or reports. You can promote your product in the same way.

For example, you can search for listicles in which your product isn't included and approach the authors, asking them if you've heard about your product. No? Give them free access to try it out, and let them decide if it's worth including it in the updated version.

Here's a template you can use:

Does outreach still count as organic link acquisition?

The email doesn't encourage them to link to the tool, and free premium trials are a common strategy in SaaS. If they choose to link to it, it's a win.

The harsh reality is that passive organic link acquisition is painfully slow. Even if your content is well-optimized for search, interested readers may never find it, especially if your domain doesn't have strong authority yet.

Broken link building

Broken link-building is another active tactic that you can use to secure links organically.

You look for broken links on websites in your niche, contact the website owner, and suggest your content as a replacement. Broken links spoil the user experience, so it's in their interest to replace them. So you're doing them a favor.

Want to try it?

You can find broken links on individual pages using one of the many Chrome extensions.

Going through a website page by page is tedious and difficult to scale, though.

Solution? Use an SEO tool like Semrush or Ahrefs. Check out our guide to broken link-building to learn how to do it step by step in the latter.

Once you find the site, use LinkedIn or Hunter.io to find the person who manages it, like the editor or webmaster, and ping them a message.

Something like:

Here's the crux:

More often than not, they will ask you for compensation these days. If you oblige, that's not an organic backlink, of course. In fact, this would violate Google's link spam rules.

Is such a link worth pursuing? In my opinion, it isn't, but it’s a tempting shortcut.

HARO link building

Many writers and journalists, even those with years of experience in their niche behind their belts, don't have the practical skills and expertise you have.

Use it to build quality organic links.

The easiest way? Through HARO-like services.

HARO, later called Connectively, was a service where writers could post their questions and requests for expert contributions. If they found your pitch insightful and valuable, they would feature it in their article and link to it.

Cision closed Connectively in December 2024, but there are other similar services:

• Qwoted
• SourceBottle
• Featured
• Help a B2B Writer

Also, keep your eyes peeled for #journorequests on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Here are some best practices for crafting winning pitches:

Final Thoughts

Organic backlinks make your website less susceptible to algorithm changes and your backlink profile more natural.

However, organic link-building is a time-consuming process. Creating valuable content that people would want to link to or building useful tools is never quick, but it takes even longer for people to discover them and link to them.

Search engine optimization and content promotion can speed up the process, and you can build organic links actively by responding to journalist requests or guest posting.

If you'd like to build links organically for your business or clients but don't have the bandwidth, the Editorial.Link team can help. Get in touch!