How to Get Backlinks When Nobody Knows You Yet
Most link building advice quietly assumes you already have an audience, a budget, or a name journalists recognize. If you're a new business with none of those, the usual playbook — "create amazing content and promote it" — is not actionable. This is the version for starting at zero.
Start with the links you already have a claim to
Before any outreach, harvest the links that exist because of relationships or facts, not authority. These are the easiest wins on the internet and almost every new business leaves them sitting there:
- Suppliers and manufacturers — many keep a "where to buy" or authorized dealer page. Ask to be listed.
- Partners and vendors — accountants, agencies, contractors you work with often have partner pages.
- Trade associations and chambers — membership usually includes a member directory listing.
- Sponsorships you already do — a local team, event, or charity you support almost certainly lists sponsors.
- Unlinked mentions — search your business name; where someone named you without linking, just ask. The goodwill already exists.
- Alumni, licensing, and certification bodies — professional credentials frequently come with a profile page.
None of this requires authority. It requires a list and an afternoon of emails.
Then earn links you can only get by being local
A national competitor can outspend you everywhere except your own town. Local links are relevant, hard for outsiders to replicate, and reinforce your local SEO at the same time:
- Sponsor a small local event, team, or scholarship — and check that the sponsor page links out
- Offer a genuine expert quote to a local news outlet or community blog
- Host or speak at a local workshop that gets listed on event sites
- Partner with a complementary local business on something worth writing about
Only then go after editorial links
Cold outreach works much better once you have a foundation and something genuinely worth citing. The reliable approach is to give a writer a reason:
- Original data — even a small survey of your own customers is something nobody else has. Journalists link to data.
- Real expertise on the record — respond to journalist requests with a specific, quotable answer, not a paragraph of marketing.
- Broken-link replacement — find a dead resource in your niche, build a better live version, tell the sites still linking to the dead one.
- Genuinely better resource — if the best guide on a topic is thin or outdated, write the one that isn't, then tell the people who link to the old one.
The common thread: you're offering something useful, not asking for a favor. That's the entire difference between outreach that works and outreach that gets deleted.
How many links do you actually need?
There's no universal number — only a comparison. Look at the pages currently ranking for your target keyword and see what they have. For a low-competition long-tail term you may need almost none. For a competitive commercial head term you may need dozens of strong, relevant links, which is why small businesses should start with the terms they can actually win.
What not to do, and why
You will be emailed offers for hundreds of links for a small fee. Don't. Paid links that pass ranking credit violate Google's guidelines, and the vendors selling them produce exactly the footprint Google looks for. The realistic outcomes are wasted money or a penalty that costs more to clean up than the links ever earned. Ten real links beat a thousand fake ones — see which link types count.
Frequently asked questions
How do I get backlinks for a brand new website?
How many backlinks do I need to rank?
Should I buy backlinks?
Keep reading
- 5 Link Building Strategies That Still Work — the broader playbook.
- Types of Backlinks — how to judge whether a link is worth pursuing.
- Local SEO — where local links pay off twice.