Last updated: November 2026.
How to get backlinks safely comes down to four routes: add, ask, earn and buy. DigiFix works the first three, because a paid link that passes ranking credit breaches Google’s spam policies. This guide covers 12 tactics, the outreach templates we actually send, and the checks that decide whether a site is worth approaching.
Key takeaways
- Google names the exact practices it treats as link spam, including buying links, excessive link exchanges and advertorials where payment buys a passing link (Google Search Central, spam policies).
- Buying and selling links is allowed if the link is qualified with rel=”sponsored” or rel=”nofollow”, so the policy is about passing ranking credit rather than about money changing hands (Google Search Central, spam policies).
- Only 8.5 per cent of outreach emails get a reply, measured across 12 million emails sent through Pitchbox for a Backlinko and Pitchbox, analysis of 12 million outreach emails published in April 2019, so the tactic has to survive a low hit rate.
- The same study found a second and third follow up lifted replies from 8.5 to 17.1 per cent, and messaging several contacts at one organisation reached 22.15 per cent (Backlinko and Pitchbox, analysis of 12 million outreach emails).
- Domain Authority is a Moz score, not a Google ranking factor, and Moz describes it as a way to benchmark link strength rather than a metric Google uses (Moz, Domain Authority).
What makes a backlink good?
A backlink is a link from another website to a page on yours. That is the whole definition. What separates a useful one from a worthless one is the site behind it, the page it sits on, and whether a real person would follow it.
Four things decide that. The linking site is relevant to your topic, so a Melbourne bookkeeper linking to a Melbourne bookkeeper makes sense in a way a casino site never will. The page carrying the link gets real traffic, because a link on a page nobody reads passes nothing of value. The link is a normal followable anchor rather than one hidden behind a redirect chain. And the anchor text describes the destination, which is the point Google makes when it asks for descriptive, reasonably concise link text (Google Search Central, link best practices).
Two popular shortcuts are worth retiring now. A high Domain Authority score does not mean a link will help, because Moz built that score to compare sites against each other rather than to predict a ranking outcome (Moz, Domain Authority). And a link from a page with no traffic is decoration. If nobody visits the page, nobody clicks through, and the only thing left is a metric in a report.
| Signal | What good looks like | What to check before you ask |
|---|---|---|
| Relevance | The site covers your topic for the same audience | Read the last three posts. Would your customer read them? |
| Page traffic | The specific page gets organic visits, not just the domain | Check the page in a keyword tool for ranked keywords, not the homepage |
| Link placement | In the body copy, inside a sentence that mentions you | A link in a footer or a widget list is close to worthless |
| Follow status | A normal anchor, or a sponsored tag if money changed hands | View source and look for rel=”sponsored” or rel=”nofollow” |
| Site health | No history of selling links or hosting thin guest posts | Search the site for “write for us” pages and check what they publish |
Five checks we run before approaching a site. The relevance and placement tests matter more than any third party score, which is why they come first. Source: DigiFix, November 2026.
How do links actually happen?
Every link you will ever earn arrives one of four ways. Naming the route is useful because each one carries a different risk profile, and most bad link building is a good tactic pushed into the wrong route.
Add. You control both ends. Your Google Business Profile, your industry association directory, your supplier’s partner page. Low risk, limited upside, and the first thing to fix because it takes a day rather than a quarter.
Ask. A person decides. Outreach, broken link replacement, an unlinked mention request. Medium effort, entirely safe if the ask is honest and the site is relevant.
Earn. A publisher writes about you without being asked, usually because you gave them something worth citing. Slowest to start, strongest when it lands, and the only route that keeps producing without more outreach.
Buy. Money changes hands for a link. Permitted when the link is qualified, and a policy breach when it is not. This is the route that gets sites into trouble, so it needs a rule rather than a judgement call.
| Route | Who controls it | Typical effort | Risk if done properly |
|---|---|---|---|
| Add | You | Hours | None |
| Ask | The publisher | Days to weeks per link | None, if the site is relevant |
| Earn | The publisher, unprompted | Weeks to months | None |
| Buy | You, with a contract | Hours to arrange | Manual action if the link passes credit unqualified |
The four routes to a link. Three of them are safe by design. The fourth is safe only when the link is qualified, which is a decision you make once and write down. Source: DigiFix, November 2026, policy detail from Google Search Central, spam policies (accessed November 2026).
Want links built without the penalty risk?
We audit the links you already have, show you which ones carry risk, and build the next batch through the add, ask and earn routes.
Which tactics start with people you already know?
Start here because the reply rate is high and the cost is your own time. These four cover most of what an Australian small or mid sized business can do in the first month.
Business profiles and citations
Claim every profile that lists your business: Google Business Profile, Bing Places, Apple Business Connect, and the directories your industry actually uses. In Australia that means the local council business register, your industry association, and vertical directories such as the ADA for dentists or Master Builders for builders.
Most of these are not followable links, so treat them as consistency work rather than link building. The payoff is that name, address and phone match everywhere, which is what local search rewards. The one or two that do pass a link, usually an association member page, are worth chasing properly. Our guide to how to get backlinks for your website covers the local variant in full.
Suppliers, partners and industry associations
Australian example: a Melbourne coffee roaster supplies 40 cafes. Every cafe website has a suppliers or “our beans” page, and most list the roaster with a link. That is 40 relevant links from businesses in the same supply chain, and the ask is a genuine commercial relationship rather than a favour.
The same logic works for an accountant whose clients are law firms, a software vendor whose customers publish case studies, or a freight company listed on its customers’ logistics pages. Write the ask as a one line email with the exact page you want to be added to.
Unlinked brand mentions
Somebody already wrote about you and did not link. That is the easiest win in link building, because the editorial decision is made and you are only asking for a mechanical fix.
Find them by searching your brand name in quotes alongside terms like “review”, “featured” or your suburb. Set a Google Alert for the brand name so new mentions arrive without hunting. Then send one short email naming the page and the sentence, and ask for the link. Australian trade publications and local news sites are the usual sources, and they generally say yes.
Broken link building
Find a page on a relevant site that links to something which no longer exists, then offer your page as the replacement. The publisher has a broken page to fix, which is why this converts better than a cold pitch.
Australian example: a Brisbane accounting firm finds a government grants page linking to a closed scheme, and offers its own guide to the replacement program. The publisher fixes a dead link, the firm gets a link from a page that already ranks. Check the target URL returns a 404 before you write, and check your replacement page actually covers the topic the paragraph promised.
Which tactics work on publishers?
These take longer and cost more, and they are what separates a link profile that grows for years from one that stalls after the easy wins run out.
Guest posts on relevant sites
A guest post is fine. A guest post written to place an optimised anchor in a thin article is the exact practice Google names as link spam, alongside advertorials where payment buys a link that passes credit (Google Search Central, spam policies).
The test is whether the article would be published without the link. Australian example: a Sydney HR consultancy writes for a recruitment industry publication about changes to the Fair Work Act, and the link to its compliance checklist sits in the body because the checklist is genuinely useful. If you cannot describe the article without mentioning the link, do not pitch it.
Digital PR and expert quotes
Journalists need sources, and a named expert with a specific answer gets quoted. Services like Qwoted and the Australian counterpart SourceBottle list open requests; a well argued 100 words sent within an hour of a request often beats a pitch sent a day later.
Australian example: a Melbourne mortgage broker comments on the Reserve Bank cash rate decision for a finance news site. The link comes from being the useful comment, not from asking. This is the highest quality route on the list and the least predictable, which is why it belongs in the mix rather than as the whole plan.
Original data and free tools
Publish a number nobody else has and other sites have to cite you. A survey of 300 Australian small businesses about what they spend on marketing, an index built from your own transaction data, or a calculator that solves one narrow problem.
The cost is real and the payoff is compounding, because a citable figure keeps attracting links for years. Australian example: a Melbourne removalist publishing average moving costs by suburb from its own job data. Every property blog writing about moving costs then has a reason to link to the source.
Being listed in best-of lists
Writers compiling “best accountants in Melbourne” or “top 10 CRM platforms” need candidates and evidence. Send them a short fact sheet: what you do, who for, one proof point, and a headshot. Make it easy to include you.
Australian example: a Perth web design studio gets into a local business awards round up by sending the editor its portfolio, client names and a one line differentiator. The pitch is to the person writing the list, not to a generic editorial address.
Skyscraper content
Find a page that earns links from several sites, write something more complete, then tell everyone linking to the original that a better version exists. It only works when yours is genuinely better, and “longer” is not better.
Australian example: a Sydney payroll provider takes a thin article on award interpretation, rebuilds it with the current pay rates, a worked example and a downloadable template, then emails the 12 sites linking to the original. Expect two or three to update. Our link building for SEO guide covers the research step in more detail.
Sponsorships and community events
Sponsor the local footy club, a hackathon, or a charity run, and you get a logo and a link on the organiser’s sponsors page. That is a legitimate link, and Google explicitly allows buying and selling links for advertising and sponsorship as long as they are qualified (Google Search Central, spam policies).
Australian example: a Geelong accounting firm sponsors a junior netball club and appears on the club’s sponsors page. Ask for a normal link on a sponsors page and accept a sponsored tag if the organiser prefers it. Either is fine. What is not fine is paying for a passing link inside an article and calling it sponsorship.
Podcasts and interviews
Every podcast episode gets a show notes page, and most link to the guest. Small Australian industry podcasts are easy to book because they need guests constantly, and one appearance usually produces a link plus a few social posts.
Pitch a specific episode, not yourself. “I can explain why the 2026 award wage changes hit hospitality rosters differently” gets a reply. “I would love to be on your podcast” does not.
Competitor link gap
Export the sites linking to two competitors and not to you. That list is your outreach queue, already filtered for relevance, because a site that links to one Australian accounting firm will consider another.
Sort it by whether the link sits on a real page with traffic, then approach the top 30 with a specific reason. Our 16 best link building tools roundup covers the exports, and enterprise link building covers what changes at scale.
Which of these fits your business?
Most Australian businesses get the best return from two or three of these, not all twelve. We will tell you which ones suit your market and which to skip.
Which tactics are worth your time?
Effort and cost below are for an Australian business doing this in house, with hours meaning your own time and dollars meaning cash outlay. Risk assumes the tactic is done as described, not pushed into a paid placement.
| Tactic | Effort | Cost | Risk | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Business profiles | 4 to 8 hours once | Nil | None | Any local business |
| Suppliers and partners | 2 hours per 10 asks | Nil | None | B2B, trades, wholesale |
| Unlinked mentions | 1 hour per link | Nil | None | Brands with PR history |
| Broken link building | 3 hours per link | Nil | None | Sites with strong guides |
| Guest posts | 6 hours per post | Nil to $300 | High if paid for the link | Expert led businesses |
| Digital PR | 2 hours per pitch | Nil | None | Anyone with a named expert |
| Original data | 20 to 60 hours | $500 to $5,000 | None | Businesses with usable data |
| Best-of lists | 1 hour per pitch | Nil | None | Local service businesses |
| Skyscraper content | 10 to 20 hours | Nil to $800 | None | Content led sites |
| Sponsorships | 1 hour | $200 to $5,000 | Low, if qualified | Local and community brands |
| Podcasts | 2 hours per episode | Nil | None | Founder led businesses |
| Competitor gap | 4 hours to build list | Nil to $200 for tools | None | Competitive markets |
The twelve tactics by effort, cost and risk. Cost figures are planning estimates for an Australian small business, not quotes. Source: DigiFix, November 2026.
If you want the free-only version of this list, read how to build backlinks without a huge budget. If you are deciding what to do after the first 50 links, off page SEO sets the wider context and how to increase domain authority covers what actually moves a third party authority score.
What do outreach emails that get replies look like?
Given that 8.5 per cent of outreach emails get a reply at all, most of this work is about not wasting the send (Backlinko and Pitchbox, analysis of 12 million outreach emails). Three templates below, one per tactic. Change the brackets, keep them short, and never send the same text twice.
Template one, unlinked mention. This one converts best because you are fixing something for them.
Subject: Quick fix on your [topic] piece
Hi [Name],
I read your piece on [specific topic] and the section on
[detail] was the clearest explanation I have seen.
One thing: you mention [Brand] but it is not linked.
Here is the page if you want to add it: [URL]
Either way, thanks for writing it.
[Your name]
[Business], [suburb]Template two, broken link. Name the exact link and the exact replacement.
Subject: Dead link on your [page title] page
Hi [Name],
On [URL] the link to [broken target] returns a 404.
We have a page on the same topic that might work as a
replacement: [your URL]
No worries if you would rather just remove the link.
[Your name]
[Business]Template three, partner or supplier link. Use this one for businesses you already work with.
Subject: Adding us to your suppliers page?
Hi [Name],
We have supplied [product] to [their business] since [year].
If you keep a suppliers or partners page, would you add us?
Here are the details you would need: [URL]
Happy to return the favour on our partners page.
[Your name]
[Business]Three details do most of the work, and the Backlinko study measured all of them. Personalised subject lines returned a 30.5 per cent higher response rate than generic ones, personalised body copy was 32.7 per cent better, and follow ups doubled the response rate (Backlinko and Pitchbox, analysis of 12 million outreach emails). None of that costs money. It costs the ten minutes you were going to save by sending a template unchanged.
What does Google treat as link spam?
Google publishes the list, so there is no need to guess. Its spam policies define link spam as creating links to or from a site primarily to manipulate rankings, and give specific examples (Google Search Central, spam policies). Five of them catch out ordinary businesses rather than dedicated spammers:
- Buying or selling links for ranking purposes, including exchanging money, goods or services for a link.
- Excessive link exchanges, meaning partner pages that exist only for cross linking.
- Advertorials where payment buys an article containing links that pass ranking credit, or links with optimised anchor text in guest posts and press releases.
- Low quality directory or bookmark links, and keyword rich links embedded in widgets distributed across sites.
- Creating low value content primarily to manipulate linking and ranking signals, which is the description most paid guest post networks meet.
The policy is more permissive than most people assume in one specific way. Google states plainly that buying and selling links is a normal part of the web economy for advertising and sponsorship, and that it is not a violation as long as those links are qualified with rel=”sponsored” or rel=”nofollow” (Google Search Central, spam policies). So a paid sponsorship is fine. A paid link that quietly passes ranking credit is not.
The same page of guidance covers your own outbound links. If you were paid in some way for a link, qualify it with sponsored or nofollow, and if users can add links to your site, such as a forum or a Q and A section, add ugc or nofollow to those too (Google Search Central, link best practices).
Not sure if your existing links are a risk?
We check your backlink profile against the practices Google names, flag the ones that need qualifying or removing, and give you a written assessment.
How do you track new links?
Track three numbers, not thirty. Links earned per month, links lost per month, and the share of new links pointing at pages that make you money. The first two are a stock and flow, and the third stops link building drifting into vanity work on blog posts nobody buys from.
Use a backlink tool to pull referring domains rather than total links, because one site can link to you a hundred times and only count once as a relationship. Compare month to month and keep a spreadsheet of what you asked for, so you can tell an earned link from a requested one. 16 best link building tools covers the tooling.
Then do the check most people skip: look at what you lost. A link that disappears is usually a page deleted in a site migration or a post taken down, and sometimes it can be recovered with one email. Google treats a permanent redirect as a signal that the target should be canonical, so a 301 is how a moved page keeps its link equity (Google Search Central, redirects). how to increase domain authority explains why chasing a higher third party score is the wrong target here.
What does this look like in practice?
A worked example, because the order matters more than the tactics. A Melbourne professional services firm, 12 staff, 40 referring domains, all from directory listings and two old guest posts. It spends nothing on links and wants to know what six months looks like.
The situation. The site ranks for its own brand name and almost nothing else. Two competitors with 90 and 140 referring domains take the commercial searches. There is no content plan, and nobody has ever asked another site for a link.
What we would do, in order. Weeks one and two, claim and correct every profile so name, address and phone match, and set up brand alerts. Weeks three to six, send 40 unlinked mention and supplier requests using the templates above, expecting 8 to 12 replies. Weeks seven to twelve, publish two guides on questions clients ask before they buy, then run broken link outreach against 30 relevant Australian sites. Months four to six, pitch one piece of original data to trade media and start a podcast circuit of four or five shows.
What waiting costs. At the observed reply rate of 8.5 per cent, a 40 email batch produces roughly three replies, so a campaign that starts a quarter late is a quarter of links behind and does not catch up, because links compound while ads stop the day you stop paying. The competitors’ 90 and 140 referring domains are not static either.
Ready to stop guessing which links are safe?
We build the links and qualify the ones you already have, so a paid placement cannot quietly become a penalty risk.
What do people ask about getting backlinks?
Are paid backlinks safe?
Only if the link is qualified. Google states that buying and selling links is a normal part of the web economy and is not a violation when the links carry rel=”sponsored” or rel=”nofollow”. A paid link that passes ranking credit without qualification is link spam under the same policy, and that is the version that attracts a manual action. If you pay for placement, either accept the sponsored tag or expect the link to be worthless at best.
How many backlinks do I need to rank?
There is no threshold, and any article quoting one is guessing. What matters is how your referring domains compare with the pages already ranking for the term. Pull the top five results for your main keyword, count their referring domains, and treat the median as your target. A local service page might need 15 relevant links, a competitive national term might need 200. Relevance narrows the gap considerably.
Is Domain Authority a Google ranking factor?
No. Domain Authority is a Moz metric, and Moz describes it as a way to benchmark a site against competitors rather than a signal Google uses. It scores on a 100 point logarithmic scale built from Moz own link index, so a DA 30 and a DA 60 are much further apart than the numbers suggest. Use it to compare prospects and track your own trend, not to predict a ranking outcome.
Do nofollow links help SEO?
They help less than a followable link and they are still worth having. A nofollow link from a relevant site sends referral traffic, gets your brand in front of people who write about your industry, and often precedes a followable link later. Google also uses links for discovery regardless of the rel attribute, so a nofollow link still helps a new page get found and crawled.
Can I get backlinks for free?
Yes, and the free routes cover more than most people expect. Business profiles, supplier and partner pages, unlinked mention requests, broken link replacement, podcasts and best of list pitches all cost time rather than money. What they do not cost you is risk, which is the main reason to start there. Paid placement becomes worth considering only once the free routes are exhausted.
How long does link building take to work?
Expect three to six months before rankings move, and longer in competitive markets. Outreach replies arrive within weeks, but Google has to recrawl the linking page and then reassess your page, and one new link rarely moves a competitive term on its own. Judge progress monthly on referring domains and on rankings for long tail terms, not weekly on your main keyword.
DigiFix builds links for Australian businesses through the add, ask and earn routes, and audits profiles that already carry risk. Start with SEO services if you want the whole programme, or see our portfolio for what we have done, about DigiFix for how we work, and the DigiFix blog for the rest of our guides. Our digital marketing services page lists everything else we run.
