4 Suggestions to Earn Links in 2026

One whole pillar of search engine optimization is dedicated to “off-page SEO,” and if you ask any SEO expert what that constitutes, the majority of the conversation is going to be dedicated to backlinks. 

Even in 2026, with AI gaining increasing traction and even absorbing some of Google’s share of search traffic, backlinks can be important. 

As they always have, backlinks from credible domains can increase a website’s domain authority as well as referral traffic. 

In addition to providing your website with “equity,” which signals to search engines that your domain is trustworthy and authoritative, they also help with search engine discovery, as they can serve as a channel by which Google finds and crawls your website. 

Needless to say, even though there may be more of an emphasis on content and other ranking signals in modern SEO strategies, links still have a place, and they can still bring your website additional traffic. 

In other words, good links don’t hurt, and in most cases they will explicitly help. 

With that in mind, here are 4 strategies that will help you earn more links in the coming year, some of which are surprisingly easy to try. 

Ask for Them 

This remains the simplest and most straightforward method of earning backlinks, even if it doesn’t work the vast majority of the time since you’ll basically be cold-calling. 

This technique works best if you have some sort of relationship with the person/creator/domain you’ll be asking or have something to trade (see the next section on guest posting). In eCommerce, there are potential opportunities among your suppliers or distributors. These warm leads are the best place to start. Send your contact an email asking for a link from one of their pages to your website, especially if they supply you, or if the situation is reversed, if they buy your products. 

You can also ask bloggers, forum administrators, and other eCommerce merchants in your vertical for backlinks if they operate in a vertical that’s relevant to yours. 

The best way to knock out a bunch of these is to create an email template and send it out to any of the contacts that you might have if they fit the bill. You will likely get a low response rate, but if you keep at it enough, you might get a lead for a link. 

Now, granted, I recognize that this is the most ineffective way to get backlinks (and the hardest work), so let’s investigate some techniques in which you might have some leverage, and at the very least will have something to offer. 

Pitch a Guest Post for a Link

As I said, it’s best if you have something to offer in exchange for the link. After all, they should be earned. 

One of the best ways to do this is to offer to write a guest post for a domain in your vertical for the opportunity to link back to your own website. Your partner gets free content which will bring them additional visibility, and you get a link back to your website. They don’t have to work for it, either; all they have to do is agree to the guest post. Everyone wins, and all you have to shell out is some good copy and maybe some photography or videos. 

It’s more effort than just asking for links, but at least those you’ll be reaching out to will have a reason to answer you if they are looking for good copy. 

Here are some tips to find domains that might be accepting guest posts in exchange for links: 

• Search “write for us,” “submit,” “guest post guidelines,” “guest posting,” and then adjust the keyword for your industry. So for example, if you operate in the fashion industry, you might want to try “fashion industry guest posting” or “boutique guest posting.” Then see what comes up and pick one of the domains that appeals to you to solicit. 
• When you find some domains that look like they might be open to guest post submissions, make sure you check some of the posts they’ve published recently (and historically). You do not want a link from a website that publishes spam. It can hurt your rankings rather than help. 
• Consider checking the domain authority by using a tool like the domain authority checkers on Moz or Ahrefs. 
• Pick only websites that seem like an authority in your space. You don’t want to publish on a website that has a mashup medley of publications on unrelated topics.
• Check for clear author bios on the website; you also don’t want to be publishing to a content mill. 

Once you select a domain, or a few, you will need to pitch your idea. Whether you’re sending an email to an administrator or you need to submit through a portal on the website, make sure you: 

• Clearly spell out your qualifications for writing on the desired topic, or why you have authority in the space. 
• Pick two or three article ideas you’d like to pitch and include those ideas, along with why you think they would be valuable.
• And, if possible, include links to your other existing writing. 

Also, you should ask in your pitch if the domain is willing to allow you to publish a backlink to your website. If their guidelines don’t allow for that, there’s little value in this for you, since your whole goal here is to build out your backlink profile.

Get a Link from a Brand Mention 

There are probably plenty of mentions of your brand out there, live on the internet, which don’t include links to your domain, and that’s basically a free opportunity for you to get one. 

Content creators review products, forum users recommend brands to each other, and so on and so forth. There are probably tons of mentions of your products, of your brand, or of something else you sell, that you may not even know about. 

Try this: search for your brand, or one of your products, in Google, and see if you can find anything. If you can, click the link and see if your brand or product mention includes a link. If it doesn’t, that’s where you should start. 

Alternatively, SEMRush offers a brand monitoring app that you can try for free. Once you sign up, you can add branded keywords you want to track, as well as including your domain in the section “Track Backlinks.” 

Once you find brand mentions through the tool, you can determine whether the experience was positive or negative (you don’t want to ask for a link from a content creator or poster that had a bad experience with your brand or products) and whether the domain on which the mention appears is relevant to your industry or has a lot of AI-generated content and seems spammy. 

If those two things check out, you need to reach out to the poster or original creator. 

Send a short email mentioning the post and asking if the creator would be willing to include a link to your domain within the post. Let the creator know that including the link might offer value to his or her readers by giving them an easier avenue to find your domain or products, which can benefit you both. 

Create Good Stuff That People Want to Link to 

This is the hardest suggestion on this list, however it is also likely the most practical in the long term, and the most likely to yield organic results. 

If you produce good content that gets shared and earns links organically, you don’t need to buy links and you won’t need to do any outreach. 

Ultimately, it all takes effort, but if you put effort into drafting good blogs, press releases, videos and even social media content that gets shared, that will save you the effort of actively trying to seek out links. 

Many domains have a natural, organic backlink profile that grows over time simply through brand references and other sorts of links. It takes a lot of effort (just like traditional SEO), but if you invest in good content, you will reap the rewards later on. 

Also, for what it’s worth, good content isn’t just more likely to earn organic backlinks. It is also more likely to increase customer engagement, benefit your SEO and AI optimization, decrease your reliance on paid ads, support your other marketing efforts (like email and social media marketing), boost your brand visibility and conversions, and more. 

So, yeah. There are lots of other reasons besides trying to earn backlinks that investing in good content for your website is a solid idea. 

Bonus Tip: Find and Fix Broken Backlinks 

I have one more tip for you, even though it doesn’t actually earn you any new backlinks. Finding and fixing broken backlinks to your website accomplishes basically the same purpose because broken links not only don’t help your authority and overall SEO, they actually hurt it if you hold all else equal. 

Fortunately, this is relatively easy. Log into your Google Search Console, and on the left-hand side, click on “Pages,” under “Indexing.” 

Here you will see the pages on your website that have various crawler errors. From there you can see which pages have 404 errors, which indicates a broken link. 

Any of these 404 errors that are internal, you should fix on your own, by the way, but the ones we’re looking for here are those that come from other domains. 

Once you identify them, you have a few options. Either the link is broken because you switched the page URL, or the administrator of the other site entered it incorrectly. In either case, reach out to the other website to get the poster to update the link as this will benefit you and that website’s readers, so the admin has a vested interest in answering your request. 

Bonus Tip 2: Let an eCommerce SEO Agency Build Backlinks for You

One of the primary elements of our eCommerce SEO strategies for all clients, regardless of industry, is building backlinks.

Our technical team posts content on third-party domains with links directed back at our clients, building domain authority and increasing ranking for target keywords.

Contact our SEO experts to learn more about how it works and how we can leverage this tactic to the benefit of your online business.

Put Some of These Link Building Strategies into Practice This Year 

As you likely already know, there are numerous benefits associated with a strong backlink profile, including but not limited to higher overall brand credibility and authority, as well as higher visibility through search engines and AI platforms that will bring you qualified leads more willing to convert. 

As with all elements of marketing channels, earning and building backlinks takes work. Start now and be patients, the results will come in with time.