The fastest way to get backlinks is to reclaim mentions you’ve already earned (unlinked brand mentions and broken links pointing at your site), then run small, personalized outreach campaigns built around something worth citing. That’s the short version of how to get backlinks in 2026. The longer version is about expectations: only 8.5% of outreach emails ever get a reply, the pages you’re chasing keep earning new links while you work, and half the tactics you’ll read about aren’t worth your hours. This guide covers what to do first, the reply rates to expect at each step, and the 90-day sequence we run for clients at Ardoz Digital.
Key takeaways
- Only 8.5% of link building outreach emails get a reply, and a single follow-up email lifts replies by 65.8%, per a Backlinko and Pitchbox study of 12 million emails.
- Pages ranking #1 on Google add new referring domains at 5% to 14.5% per month, so the number of backlinks needed to compete keeps rising while you build.
- Ahrefs found that 96.55% of all web pages get zero traffic from Google, and pages with more referring domains consistently earn more search traffic.
- The easiest backlinks to get are the ones already half-earned: unlinked brand mentions and old links pointing at pages that now 404.
- Backlinks and brand mentions also influence whether ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews cite a business in their answers.
Why do backlinks still matter in 2026?
GEO gives AI systems clearer, verifiable information about the business and may improve its eligibility to appear in relevant answers. Citations and recommendations are controlled by third-party systems and are not guaranteed. A backlink is simply a link from someone else’s website to yours, and Google treats each one as a rough vote of confidence.
The scale of the problem is bigger than most people realize. Ahrefs studied about 14 billion pages and found that 96.55% of them get zero traffic from Google. Zero. And when the same team looked at pages with no referring domains at all (a referring domain is a unique website that links to you), the odds got brutal: out of roughly 20 million no-backlink pages in their index, only 2,997 pulled more than 1,000 search visits a month. That’s about 1 in 6,671.
Fair warning on the data: correlation isn’t causation, and Ahrefs says so itself. Plenty of pages rank fine without links by targeting low-competition topics. But for any keyword worth real money, the pages at the top almost always have links, and the day-to-day experience of nearly every SEO backs that up.
Start with the links you’ve already earned
Before you send a single cold email, collect the links that already exist in half-finished form. These convert at a far higher rate than any outreach campaign, because the other site already decided to reference you.
Two places to look:
- Unlinked brand mentions. Search Google for “Your Brand Name” -site:yourdomain.com and skim for articles, podcast show notes, and local news stories that name you without linking. A short, friendly email (“thanks for the mention, would you mind linking our name to this page so readers can find us?”) gets accepted more often than any other pitch we send.
- Broken backlinks. Run your domain through a backlink tool (Ahrefs’ free Backlink Checker works) and look for links pointing at pages that now return a 404 error. Redirect the dead page to its closest live equivalent, or ask the linking site to update the URL.
In the audits we run at Ardoz Digital, an established business that’s never done deliberate link building usually has somewhere between a handful and a few dozen of these reclaimable links sitting untouched. It’s the cheapest month of link building you’ll ever do.
How do you write outreach emails that actually get replies?
Personalize the subject line and the body, follow up at least once, and email more than one person at the target site. Those three habits, per the data, roughly double your results.
The benchmark numbers come from a Backlinko and Pitchbox analysis of 12 million outreach emails, and they’re worth pinning above your desk:
- The average reply rate is 8.5%. So if you send 100 emails and hear back from 9 people, you’re not failing. You’re average.
- A single follow-up message boosts replies by 65.8%. Sequences of three or more messages performed best overall.
- Emailing multiple contacts at the same site lifts replies by 93%, and combining multiple contacts with a follow-up sequence lifts them 160% over one email to one person.
- Personalized subject lines get 30.5% more replies, personalized body copy gets 32.7% more, and subject lines of 36 to 50 characters performed best.
- Pitches about guest posts, roundups, and links earned above-average reply rates. Mass infographic pitches earned some of the worst.
Our take: most campaigns don’t die because the email was badly written. They die because the list was lazy. Fifty prospects who actually cover your topic will beat five hundred scraped contacts every time, and you’ll spend less on tools doing it.
Which link building tactics are worth your time?
For most small and mid-sized businesses, the best returns come from reclaimed links, digital PR, and a short list of carefully chosen guest posts. Here’s how the common options compare once you account for the hours they eat:
| Tactic | Effort | Time to first link | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Unlinked mention reclamation | Low | Days | Any business with press or podcast history |
| Broken link fixes | Low | Days | Older sites that have restructured URLs |
| Local links (chambers, sponsorships, suppliers) | Low | 1 to 3 weeks | Local service businesses |
| Podcast guesting | Medium | 2 to 4 weeks | Founders with a story and a point of view |
| Guest posts | Medium | 2 to 6 weeks | Building topical relevance in a niche |
| Digital PR (data and story pitches) | High | 4 to 8 weeks | Businesses with original data or a strong local angle |
| Original research and free tools | High | 2 to 6 months | Sites playing the long game in a competitive niche |
Digital PR deserves a special note. It’s the one tactic on this table where a single hit can return 20 or 30 links from real news sites. It’s also the one that benefits most from existing relationships with journalists, which is why it sits at the core of our digital PR service.
A 90-day example: link building for a Tampa roofing company
Here’s the sequence we’d run for a local service business, using a Tampa roofer as the example. The same skeleton works for HVAC, plumbing, or any trade, and it’s the plan behind most of our home services marketing engagements.
- Days 1 to 30: collect what’s owed. Reclaim unlinked mentions from local news storm coverage, fix broken backlinks left over from the last site redesign, then take the easy local wins: the Tampa Bay Chamber directory, manufacturer “find a contractor” pages (GAF and Owens Corning both maintain them), and any neighborhood association or youth sports team the owner already sponsors.
- Days 31 to 60: build one citable asset. Hurricane season starts June 1 in Florida, and local reporters write the same preparation stories every year. A short, specific resource gives them something to cite: a roof inspection checklist with real cost ranges, or a plain-language explainer on what homeowners insurance actually covers after storm damage.
- Days 61 to 90: pitch it properly. Email the reporters who covered last year’s storms, personalize every note, and follow up once. Per the outreach data above, that follow-up alone should lift replies by about two thirds.
Notice what’s not in the plan: no paid guest post marketplaces, no $40 link packages, no directory spam. A local business that lands 10 to 15 relevant local links in a quarter will usually outrank a competitor sitting on 40 junk links, because relevance beats volume.
How many backlinks do you need to outrank a competitor?
More than they’ll have when you catch up, not more than they have today. That distinction trips up almost everyone who sets a link target.
Ahrefs studied 200,000 top-ranking pages across 10,000 keywords and found that pages holding the #1 spot keep adding followed referring domains at a pace of 5% to 14.5% per month. Their example: a page ranking first with 55 referring domains will likely have between 64 and 83 within three months. So if your plan was “build 55 links,” you were aiming at where the target used to be.
Two useful nuances from that same study. First, the researchers couldn’t find a statistical connection between how fast a page gains links and whether it moves up or down in rankings, which suggests quality and relevance matter more than raw pace. Second, lower-ranking pages gain links more slowly, which is part of why positions one through three are so sticky. The practical move: check the referring domains graph for the current #1 in Ahrefs’ Site Explorer, note its monthly growth, and budget to beat that number with better links rather than just more of them.
Do backlinks help you get cited by ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews?
Yes. GEO gives AI systems clearer, verifiable information about the business and may improve its eligibility to appear in relevant answers. Citations and recommendations are controlled by third-party systems and are not guaranteed. Even Semrush’s current guide to link building frames the work partly as a way to earn citations in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Google AI Overviews.
And unlinked mentions count for more here than they ever did in classic SEO. When your brand keeps showing up next to the same topics (Tampa, roof repair, storm damage), language models start associating you with that category even when nobody added a link. So a digital PR placement that names you without linking isn’t a failure anymore. It’s a citation seed. GEO gives AI systems clearer, verifiable information about the business and may improve its eligibility to appear in relevant answers. Citations and recommendations are controlled by third-party systems and are not guaranteed.
Mistakes we keep seeing (and the fixes)
- Buying cheap guest posts from marketplaces. Those $40 placements live on sites that publish anything, and Google’s link spam systems quietly discount most of them. Fix: put the same budget into one real story pitch or one actually good guest post.
- Exact-match anchor text everywhere. If half your links say “roof repair tampa,” that’s a pattern no natural link profile has. Fix: let the linking site choose the anchor. Brand-name anchors are fine, and safer.
- Chasing authority scores instead of relevance. A DR 70 crypto blog linking to a plumber helps nobody. Fix: judge prospects by topic fit and whether the site has real organic traffic of its own.
- Sending one email and quitting. The data says a single follow-up lifts replies by 65.8%, yet most people never send it. Fix: build the two-touch sequence before you launch, not after.
- Ignoring the links you already have. Site redesigns quietly 404 old URLs and burn years of link equity. Fix: crawl your backlink profile after every migration and redirect anything with links pointing at it.