Guide · Link building

How to get backlinks the legal way: 7 methods that earn links

By Giovanni Rasulo Updated 20 October 2026 Sources checked October 2026

Short answer

The only scalable way to get many backlinks without paying for them is to give people a reason to cite you: original data, a well-sourced statistics page, a useful free tool, or a strong opinion backed by numbers. Reclaiming links you already earned and partnering with relevant sites add to it. Directories and generic submissions plateau fast. "Legal" here means within Google's link spam policy: buying links that pass ranking credit breaks it, unless they are qualified with nofollow or sponsored.

This is a documented guide, not a test. The rules come from Google Search Central's spam policies and link guidance and its Search Console Links report help, read in October 2026. The methods reflect answers practitioners gave in a recent r/SEO thread on the same question; those are opinions and anecdotes, and we mark them as such. CheaperStack has not run these campaigns and publishes no link counts from them.

First, what "legal" means for links

Nothing here is a question of law: buying links is not a crime. The question is Google's policy. Google defines link spam as creating links to or from a site primarily to manipulate rankings, and its list includes buying or selling links for ranking, excessive link exchanges, automated link creation, low-quality directory or bookmark links, widely distributed footer or template links, and guest posts or advertorials where payment buys links that pass ranking credit. Paid links are acceptable when qualified with rel="nofollow" or rel="sponsored".

Link building methods compared on effort, scale and whether they fit Google's link spam policy
Method	Effort	Scales?	Fits Google's policy?
Statistics page	Medium, then monthly updates	Yes	Yes
Original data or study	High	Yes	Yes
Free tool or calculator	High once	Yes	Yes
Link reclamation	Low to medium	Limited	Yes
Partners and associations	Medium	Limited	Yes, if unpaid
Newsworthy PR	High, often costs money	Some	Yes if earned; paid placements need nofollow or sponsored
Directories	Low	Plateaus	Only relevant, curated ones
Paid links, link farms, PBNs, sitewide footers	Low	Yes, but against policy	No

Policy column from Google's spam policies (updated August 2026). Effort and scale columns are our reading of the discussions and are not measured.

The seven methods

1. A statistics page that writers can cite

Journalists and bloggers need a source for every number they quote, and they search for "[topic] statistics". A clean, dated page that collects the key numbers for your niche can earn links without outreach once it ranks. A workable method:

Search the topic and note what the top pages cover. Many are copied roundups.
Collect about a hundred statistics. For each, find who actually ran the study, such as the survey, the government report or the company data, and link to that primary source, not to the blog that repeated it.
Open every source, confirm the number and the date are on the page, and drop dead links. Wrong numbers destroy trust.
Group the stats into six to ten sections, each answering one question, and put the best numbers first.
Add a short list someone could paste into their own article, and a chart per section, crediting the source.
Update it monthly and change the "updated" date only when you changed something; Google lists faking freshness as a warning sign.

This method comes from a practitioner's answer in the thread. The effect on links is reported, not measured by us, and Google also says citing sources helps establish trustworthiness.

2. Original research

Publishing a study is the strongest option and the most work. Several answers say most blog posts get no links and the ones that do tend to be data. One person reported thousands of links from a published study; treat that as an anecdote, not a benchmark.

3. A free tool or calculator

An interactive calculator related to your service gives people something to reference and share. Look at why your top competitors are linked: a feature or an asset, not just a good post.

4. Reclaim what you already earned

Find your lost links: pages that moved or vanished. Log the 404s, redirect them to the closest live page, and where another site links to a dead URL of yours, send a short note offering the new one. Replies are rare, so the redirect does most of the work.

5. Partners, suppliers and associations

Local news, sponsorships, suppliers, associations and chambers of commerce link for reasons that make sense to their readers. Relevance matters more than the count.

6. Newsworthy PR

PR earns editorial coverage, but agencies cost money, and a link bought for ranking breaks the policy unless qualified. Treat a PR budget as paying for the story, not the link, and note that a category label like "PR" does not make a source a quality link: links work page by page.

7. Directories, in moderation

Startup and business directories can give a small start, but they plateau quickly, and Google lists low-quality directory links as link spam. Choose relevant, curated ones and expect little.

Before you trust a package of "links all over the place"

If a partner got you a big jump in a third-party score, check what was built. Sitewide footer links, private blog networks and link farms can raise Domain Authority or DR without helping rankings, and can bring a manual action. Open the Search Console Links report to see top linking sites and top linking text, remembering that it is a sample of up to 1,000 rows per table and does not show nofollow. The number that matters is organic traffic. Why the score is not a ranking factor is covered in How to improve domain authority.

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. If you sign up through one and later make an eligible purchase, I may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.

Where Rank Math fits

Link building is off-site work, and no plugin does it for you. Rank Math helps protect what you earn: its 404 Monitor logs requests for pages that no longer exist (in Advanced Mode with the referrer), the Redirections module sends them to a live page, and its titles, descriptions and schema make a linked page look right in results. The free plugin covers this. Get Rank Math (affiliate link).

Where GrowGanic fits, and where it does not

A linkable asset needs support: articles around it, answers to the questions it raises, and updates when the data changes. GrowGanic is an autonomous SEO engine: add a domain and it researches the keywords, writes and scores the articles, publishes them to your site or a hosted blog, and tracks the rankings, with content refreshes in the same engine. It is not a link-building tool and has no backlink index, so it will not find link prospects, and the numbers on a statistics page need a human who opens the source. One limit: by GrowGanic's own account, the hosted copy of the free article stays out of Google until the plan is paid; connecting your site or a subdomain before the first article avoids that. Try the free plan (affiliate link).

Who should skip this

Sites with nothing worth citing yet. Directories and outreach will not fix that; build the asset first.
Anyone who needs links this month. Earned links take time, and Google gives no timeline.
Brand-new sites. Start with indexing and a first cluster; see the 90-day plan.

The verdict, by situation

Which link building method to start with by situation
If you are…	Start with
A small site with no budget	A statistics page in your niche, then reclamation
A SaaS or tool site	A free calculator or original data
A local business	Suppliers, associations and local press
An agency client with a suspicious link package	Audit it in the Links report
Tempted to pay per link	Only with rel sponsored or nofollow

Frequently asked questions

Is it illegal to buy backlinks?

Buying links is not illegal, but Google's spam policy lists buying or selling links that pass ranking credit as link spam, and paid links should be qualified with rel nofollow or rel sponsored. 'Legal' here means within Google's rules and your local advertising law, not a criminal question.

What is the best way to get backlinks without paying?

Give people a reason to cite you: original data, a dated statistics page, a free tool or a well-argued opinion backed by numbers. Pages that others need to quote, such as a source for a number, keep attracting links without outreach once they rank.

Do startup and business directories still help?

A little at the start, then they plateau. Google lists low-quality directory and bookmark links as link spam, so submit only to directories that are relevant and curated, and do not expect them to move rankings by themselves.

How do I know if the links an agency built are worth anything?

Check the Search Console Links report and ask what the links are. Sitewide footer links, private blog networks and link farms can lift a third-party score without helping rankings, and Google lists widely distributed footer links as link spam. Organic traffic in Search Console is the number that matters.

How many backlinks do I need?

There is no number. Google's ranking systems work mostly at the page level, so what matters is whether the pages you want to rank have relevant links from sites that choose to cite them. Compare the links to the top results for your keyword.

Sources

Google Search Central's spam policies and link best practices, and its Links report help; plus Rank Math's 404 Monitor documentation. The method details come from practitioners' answers in an r/SEO discussion in October 2026 and are labelled as such. Google updates its policies without notice, so check the current pages.