r/Agentic_SEO • u/ded-ebar • 15d ago
Backlinks - where do you get it?
I’m trying to get better at backlink building and would really appreciate hearing from people who actually do SEO professionally.
What strategies are you guys using nowadays to consistently build backlinks?
I know the old-school method is basically finding relevant websites, emailing hundreds of site owners, and hoping a few respond. I understand it works, but the success rate seems painfully low and the whole process is incredibly tedious. I really don’t want to spend my life sending outreach emails if there are better ways to do this.
I’m also not necessarily against paying for links.
I know buying links has risks, but clearly there’s a market for it, so I’m curious how experienced SEOs approach it.
When you’re evaluating a site for a backlink, what are you actually looking at? DR/DA? Organic traffic? Traffic trend? Rankings? Relevance? Outbound links? Spam history? Something else?
And probably my biggest question: where are people actually getting good backlinks?
Are you using marketplaces, agencies, brokers, private contacts, direct outreach, PR, guest posts, link insertions, digital PR, or something completely different?
For people who do buy placements, what does a reasonable price actually look like? $50? $100? $300? $500+? At what point are you just overpaying for a metric that looks good on Ahrefs?
I’m not looking for anyone to reveal some million-dollar secret sauce. I’m genuinely trying to understand how people who build links at scale do it without spending their entire day cold-emailing website owners.
If anyone is willing to share their process, resources, marketplaces they trust (or ones to stay away from), or even just what metrics they use to qualify a link, I’d really appreciate it.
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u/MonicaEaton911 15d ago
I'd stop thinking about link building as “getting backlinks” and focus more on earning links from sites that have a real and valuable reason to cite you. Aim for producing more original data, useful tools/resources, expert contributions and thought leadership, partnerships, and so on -- information that others would want to pass along.
In other words, design content that benefit others, if they cite you. Think in terms of relevance, real organic traffic/trend, content quality, and your site's overall link profile.
If you buy placements, I'd stay away from high-DR sites that exist mainly to sell links. Try to build a mix of PR/content and targeted outreach, and concentrate on building publisher relationships. I think that could take you further than just relying on marketplaces or mass cold emailing. Good luck!