How to Get Your First Backlinks for a New Website
A step-by-step plan for earning your first backlinks when a website is brand new and has no authority yet — the sources that accept new sites and the order to work through them.
Updated September 2026
The fastest way to get your first backlinks for a new website is to start with sources that accept new sites — relevant directories, your own profiles, and launch communities — then earn a few editorial links by being genuinely useful. You won't rank on links alone at this stage, but early links help search engines discover and trust your site, and they send the first trickle of referral traffic.
Work through these in order
- Relevant directories and leaderboards: submit once, get a permanent listing and often referral traffic. Choose moderated, on-topic ones.
- Your own profiles: add your URL to the accounts you already have — GitHub, LinkedIn, community profiles, your other projects.
- Launch platforms: Product Hunt, BetaList, and niche 'show' communities give you a spike of visits and a few links when you launch.
- Community help: answer real questions on Reddit, IndieHackers, and dev.to, and link only when it genuinely helps.
- One linkable asset: a free tool, a template, or original data gives other people a reason to link to you.
Set expectations
Early links are about discovery and trust, not instant rankings. Keep anchor text natural and varied, don't buy links, and don't blast the same URL across hundreds of low-quality directories — a handful of relevant links plus a site worth linking to beats any shortcut. Then keep publishing and helping; links compound over months, not days.
FreeBacklinks.club is a good first stop: listing is free, the page is indexable and in the sitemap, and the link becomes dofollow once your listing earns a little engagement.