How do you find high quality backlinks? Start with the links you already have and the ones your competitors have, because they show which kinds of sites link in your niche. Then judge each candidate on the page where your link would sit: same topic, real readers, a link in the body text, and a site that links out with care. Finally, give that site a reason to link to you, because a high quality backlink is one another site chose to give. If money changes hands, Google expects the link to carry rel="sponsored" or nofollow.
Last updated 30 October 2026.
What makes a backlink “high quality”
A backlink is one link, on one page, on someone else’s site. So quality is decided on that page, not by a single score for the whole domain. Third-party tools give sites authority numbers, and they can help you sort a long list. But those scores come from SEO tool companies, not from Google, and a site with a big number can still be the wrong place for your link.
In practice, four things decide whether a link is worth having:
- Topic. Does the site publish about your subject, and would its readers care about the page you’re linking to? A travel blog linking to a packing checklist makes sense. The same blog linking to a plumbing firm doesn’t.
- Readers. Do real people visit the page? A simple test: if search engines didn’t exist, would you still want this link, because of the visitors it could send?
- Placement. Is your link in the body of an article, with relevant text around it? Or is it buried in a footer, a sidebar or a list of fifty other links?
- How the site links out. Does it link to good sources when they help the reader, or does every post carry a stack of unrelated commercial links? The second pattern is a warning sign.
Honestly, most people skip the last two checks. They look at a metric, see a big number and stop there.
Step 1: Read the backlinks you already have
The best map of where your next links might come from is the set of sites that already link to you. Google gives you this for free in Search Console’s Links report.
According to Google’s Links report help page, the report lets you “See which of your pages have the most backlinks from other sites”, “See which sites contain the most backlinks to your site” and “See which link text is used in backlinks to your site.” Those three tables answer three useful questions: which of your pages earn links, what kind of sites give them, and what words people use when they link.
Don’t forget the caveats Google lists on the same page. The report “isn’t a comprehensive list of every link on your site.” Some links “may have since been removed, or a page may no longer exist.” And “The report doesn’t specify if a link is marked as nofollow.” So treat it as a sample, not a full audit.
When you’ve read the three tables, write a short profile in plain words. For example: “Our guides earn links, mostly from regional trade blogs and a few local news sites, usually with our brand name as the link text.” That profile is your search brief for the next step.
Step 2: Find more sites like the ones that already link
Now look for sites that match your profile. There are three practical places to look.
Your competitors’ links. The sites that link to a competitor have already shown they’ll link to a business like yours. Paid backlink tools list a competitor’s links, and some link marketplaces have a competitor report too. Look for sites that link to two or three of your competitors; turns out those overlaps are often the easiest conversations, because the editor already covers your topic.
Search for your topic plus a resource format. Searches like “plumbing maintenance checklist” or “bakery starter guide resources” turn up pages that already collect useful links on your subject. If your page is genuinely better or more current than what’s listed, you have a reason to write.
Read where your readers read. The blogs, newsletters and local sites your customers follow are often the right home for a link, whatever their metrics say. Make a list as you browse.
If you’ve ever been tempted to buy a big spreadsheet of “high DA sites”, skip the list and build your own. A list of 30 relevant sites you’ve actually looked at beats 3,000 you haven’t.
Step 3: Check each site before you chase it
Before you spend an hour on outreach, give each site five minutes. Here is a checklist that works whether you plan to earn the link or pay for it.
- Does it have a clear focus? A site that covers every topic under the sun, from cooking to car parts to software, is usually built to sell links, not to serve readers.
- Does it get real visitors from your market? Traffic estimates from SEO tools are rough, but a site with almost no visitors can’t send you any.
- Read three recent posts. Are they written for people, with something specific to say? Or are they thin articles built around a link?
- Look at the outbound links. Count the commercial links in a typical post. If every article links to an unrelated shop, your link will sit in bad company.
- Check the link tag. Use your browser’s “view source” or inspect tool on a page that already links out. Our guide to dofollow vs nofollow links explains what
nofollow,sponsoredandugcmean and why they matter.
Most people miss step 3. Reading three posts tells you more than any score.
Step 4: Give the site a reason to link
Finding a good site is half the job. The other half is having a page that site would want to link to. Google’s guidance on creating helpful content offers questions worth asking about your own page before you pitch it, including “Does the content provide original information, reporting, research, or analysis?” and “Is this the sort of page you’d want to bookmark, share with a friend, or recommend?”
Pages that tend to earn links share one thing: they’re useful to someone other than you. Examples include:
- a short survey of your own customers, with the numbers published;
- a free calculator or template (a bakery’s cake-size-to-servings chart, a plumbing firm’s water-pressure checklist);
- a clear, current guide that answers a question better than the pages that rank for it now;
- photos, data or local knowledge nobody else has.
When you write to an editor, keep it short. Say what the page is, why their readers would care, and where it would fit on their site. Then let it go if they say no.
On anchor text, follow Google’s own advice in its link best practices: “Good anchor text is descriptive, reasonably concise, and relevant to the page that it’s on and to the page it links to.” Your brand name or a plain description of the page is fine. Exact-match keyword anchors in articles are the pattern Google’s spam policy calls out.
A worked example: a plumbing firm with 40 linking sites
Here’s a made-up but realistic scenario to show the steps together. A small plumbing firm opens its Search Console Links report and sees links from 40 sites. Its top linked page isn’t the home page; it’s a guide to preventing frozen pipes, with links from 14 of those 40 sites. Most of the 14 are home-improvement blogs and two local news sites, and most link with the guide’s title.
That’s the profile: practical seasonal guides earn links from home-improvement blogs and local news. So the firm searches for home-improvement blogs that link to its two biggest competitors, and finds 22. It checks each with the five-question list above. Nine cover every topic and publish thin posts, so they’re dropped. Five haven’t posted in a year. That leaves eight good candidates.
Next, the firm writes a new guide in the same style, on clearing blocked drains safely, with photos from its own jobs. It pitches the eight blogs and the two local news sites that linked before. Say three of the ten link to it. That’s three links on pages with the right topic, real readers and in-body placement. In practice, three links like that are worth more than thirty from sites nobody reads.
Notice what the numbers say. The firm started with 22 candidates and kept eight after checks, a little over a third. That ratio is normal. Expect to discard most sites you find.
What Google says about buying links
At some point you’ll see a marketplace or agency offering “high quality backlinks” for a fee. Google’s spam policies are plain about this. Link spam is “the practice of creating links to or from a site primarily for the purpose of manipulating search rankings,” and the first example listed is “Buying or selling links for ranking purposes,” including “Exchanging money for links, or posts that contain links.”
Google also says paying for links isn’t banned outright. “It’s not a violation of our policies to have such links as long as they are qualified with a rel=”nofollow” or rel=”sponsored” attribute value to the <a> tag.” In other words, a paid link stays within the policy when it’s labelled. Our guide on whether you should buy backlinks goes further.
If you do look at paid placements, the same quality checks apply, and marketplaces at least let you see the site before you pay. Our Adsy review covers its free Adsy Checker browser extension, which shows whether a site you’re browsing is in its catalogue and at what price. The catalogue filter on Collaborator includes link type (dofollow, nofollow and sponsored), so you can choose a listing that marks links as sponsored. We read both platforms’ pages on 30 October 2026.
Common mistakes when hunting for backlinks
Judging by one number. Authority scores come from third-party tools, not Google. Use them to sort a list, never to make the decision.
Ignoring relevance for size. A link from a huge site about something else rarely helps your readers or your business. A small, focused site often does both.
Using the same keyword anchor everywhere. Google lists “links with optimized anchor text in articles, guest posts, or press releases distributed on other sites” as link spam. Let editors describe your page in their own words.
Chasing links to pages that don’t deserve them. If your page isn’t worth recommending, outreach turns into begging. Fix the page first.
Treating every lost link as a crisis. Links come and go. If a link was a good one, ask the editor about it; if not, let it go. And if you’re worried about bad links pointing at you, read our guide on whether to disavow toxic backlinks before you do anything drastic.
FAQ: finding quality backlinks
How do I find quality backlinks for my website?
Start with Search Console’s Links report to see which of your pages already earn links and from what kind of sites. Then look for similar sites, especially ones that link to your competitors. Check each one for topic, real readers and how it links out before you get in touch.
How do I get high quality backlinks without paying?
Publish something other sites want to point their readers to, such as original data, a free tool or a better guide, and show it to the editors who cover your topic. It’s slower than buying, but the links are given by choice. Google’s spam policy only applies when links are created mainly to manipulate rankings.
How do I make high quality backlinks?
You can’t really make them yourself; another site has to choose to link. What you can make is the page worth linking to, and the short, relevant pitch that puts it in front of the right editor.
Is a high Domain Authority site always a high quality backlink?
No. Domain Authority and similar scores come from SEO tool companies, not Google. A high score on an unrelated site, or a link stuffed into a footer, can still be a poor link. Judge the page where your link would sit.
The short version
- A high quality backlink is one link on a relevant page with real readers, placed in the body text, on a site that links out with care.
- Start with your own Search Console Links report, then look at the sites that link to your competitors.
- Check every site before you pitch it: focus, visitors, recent posts, outbound links and link tags.
- Make a page worth linking to, then pitch it briefly, with descriptive anchor text.
- If you pay for a link, Google expects
rel="sponsored"ornofollowon it.