How to get Backlinks to Rank a website quickly on #1

We published a brand-new website on September 10, 2023.

On January 18, 2024, the website and the majority of its pages were ranking in positions 1-3.

We went from 0 to 33,500 visitors in just 130 days — in a highly competitive niche.

The reason? Quality Backlinks.

Here are some questions for you:

How do you get backlinks?

How many backlinks should you build?

Is building backlinks good?

How do you get backlinks to your site?

How can you increase backlinks to rank higher?

Are you an SEO professional who wants to build backlinks but isn’t sure what to do or how to do it?

Today, you’ll learn how to get high-quality backlinks.

I’ll share my exact process that helped me create backlinks for my website.

What happened next? The website now ranks number 1 on Google!

Before jumping into my exact process of building backlinks, I recommend you read this guide to learn about link building metrics.

This guide will help you understand the key factors to consider when building backlinks to your website.

Things that complement backlinks

Backlinks are undoubtedly important.

But let’s be clear — backlinks alone can’t guarantee higher rankings.

There are other essential factors that Google considers when determining your website's position in search results.

What are those factors?

1. Keywords and quality content are the backbone of any website.

• Start by finding the right keywords to target. For this, I rely on Ahrefs—no alternatives.
• For content, I use generative AI tools for brainstorming ideas but ensure that all writing is 100% original and crafted by me.

2. Technical aspects like website speed and user experience.

• A fast-loading website with intuitive navigation keeps visitors engaged and improves ranking potential.

3. Your expertise in the website's niche.

• Demonstrating authority and relevance in your field adds credibility and amplifies the impact of backlinks.

When you combine these elements with quality backlinks, you create the perfect recipe for success.

It’s this combination that makes backlinks truly work their magic.

Now, let me show you exactly how I built high-authority backlinks for a brand-new website and helped it achieve the #1 spot on Google.

How to build quality backlinks?

There are different types of backlinks and the majority of them don't work.

The client approached me on September 01, 2023 and shared its idea.

He was a technical person with proper SEO knowledge and wanted me to build backlinks.

The aim was to rank higher. And the website ranked number 1 in just 130 days.

Now, I am going to share the backlinks I created that helped my client win at SEO.

1. Profiles & Reviews

The website was new, so I wanted to ensure it had a natural mix of NoFollow and UGC backlinks to maintain balance in its backlink profile.

Now, let me clarify something upfront: Profile backlinks do not work, and I always advise others to avoid them.

So why did I still build some profile backlinks for this site?

It all came down to the niche. When I analyzed my competitors, I noticed something interesting:

• Almost every competing website had profile backlinks.
• These websites were older, and those profile links were acquired naturally over time.
• I was confident that the competitors didn’t build those links manually; they simply earned them.

However, I didn’t want to wait two years for my site to gain such links naturally.

So, I took a proactive approach.

I filtered through 10-15 high-quality profile and review websites and submitted my website for NoFollow or UGC backlinks.

This strategy allowed me to mimic the natural backlink profile of my competitors while staying ethical and strategic.

The next stop! Social Media….

2. Social Media Profiles

You might think I’m just sharing common knowledge that you already know.

Right? Just hear me out for a moment.

Almost every published website has social media profiles these days—it’s not a groundbreaking idea.

But here’s the catch:

A large number of those profiles fail to capitalize on this opportunity effectively.

Why?

Because many new Facebook, Instagram, or other social profiles never get indexed.

Why does this happen?

• People create these profiles and forget about them.
• There’s no consistent activity or optimization to make them valuable.

For my client, his initial plan was to do the same—create profiles and leave them idle.

But I had a different vision.

Knowing what I would eventually do, I asked him to create profiles on every possible social media platform.

Once the profiles were live, I spent some time optimizing them.

This resulted in natural NoFollow links from these profiles.

By the time I wrapped up this task, it was September 29, and all the pages were indexed successfully.

With the basics set up, I was ready to move on to what I truly enjoy: building authority.

3. Guest posts

Finding quality guest post opportunities manually is becoming increasingly difficult.

Many websites are either inactive or turn out to be link farms.

Why is this a problem?

• Toxic backlinks from such sites can harm your website's rankings.
• They decrease your chances of building a sustainable SEO strategy.

So, I started by thoroughly analyzing my competitors' backlinks.

By filtering through their guest post links, I identified websites where they had successfully published posts.

Here’s why this strategy works:

Looking at competitor backlinks gives you a clear advantage. It shows you what’s already working in your niche.

After reviewing their backlinks, I was confident that I could surpass them once the sandbox period ended.

The Process I Followed:

• I shortlisted 23 websites where my competitors had guest posts.
• I sent a simple, straightforward outreach email to these websites.
• Results? Out of the 23, 21 websites replied—but they all asked for a fee.

Next, I evaluated these websites using Ahrefs to check their organic performance.

I excluded websites that were losing rankings or keywords.

Finally, I selected 15 high-performing websites for publishing my guest posts.

The Content Strategy:

I wrote review-style articles from a third-person perspective.

To ensure my guest posts didn’t come across as promotional, I:

• Gave my content writer all the necessary information.
• Combined ghostwriting with a third-person narrative.

This approach made the articles appear neutral and informative, which helped establish trust and authority.

4. Niche edits

A curated backlink tends to beat all others in terms of providing page rank and link equity.

For niche edits backlinks, I did some manual work and used repute post.

The plan was to build 30+ niche edits in the next 2 months, and I created a total of 41.

At the end of november, the DR of the website was 31.

A mix of Follow, NoFollow, UGC backlinks were pointing to this website already.

From traffic’s perspective, the website was still not getting more than 5+ organic clicks a day.

The client asked me about this situation because he was a bit nervous.

I explained to him the strategy I was applying and told him the organic visitors will come soon.

5. Editorial backlinks

December 2023 started, and I had only 15 days to execute this particular area.

Christmas was coming so I wanted to do all things before the holidays started.

I used some of my personal connections and used the guest blogging marketplace by repute post.

The marketplace has a lot of editors and authors so working in this area wasn’t difficult.

The next 15 backlinks which I was to create were going to be extremely crucial.

The make or break kind of situation.

I filtered 15 opportunities, paid to all 15 and got 12 backlinks in return 🙂

You might be thinking of me being crazy here.

But, I did this for a purpose.

Creating editorial backlinks wasn’t the ending part.

I know I’ll need to build a lot more backlinks to push this website to number 1 in Google Search.

I used the remaining opportunities for convincing other high quality websites 😉

I will talk about this a bit later.

During this work, the website got its first push.

First real sign of search rankings and a lot of pages finally ranked against main terms.

This is a screenshot of the website's performance from December 01, 2023 to December 31, 2023.

I resumed working on January 15, 2024 and the website was ready to do wonders.

At that time the website had 37 total pages and a lot of time was appearing on the second page of Google.

After building editorial backlinks the domain rating went to 40.

The website now had 76 referring domains and 212 backlinks in total.

A lot of general review websites started listing this website.

6. Broken backlinks

I shared the backlinks I was creating earlier.

The client asked me about broken backlinks.

Building broken backlinks isn’t my cup of tea. I don’t usually work on this but it is still a very good link building method.

I tried (not by heart) and got two backlinks in return.

I called this campaign off because I knew I could build similar backlinks quickly.

So these were the main things I did to create backlinks for a brand new website.

Talking about the organic progress, the website managed to rank and rank on number 1.

On January 18, 2024, all the main pages and blogs were ranking 1-5 positions against their main terms.

7. Forum backlinks

In between recent Google updates and SERP volatility, forums are back into the action.

I never wrote forums as a link building strategist.

Forums are extremely valuable for branding.

As I was focusing on other high tier backlinks, I manually created forum backlinks.

The purpose was to diversify backlink profile and do some unlinked brand mentions.

I believe this is the best way to use forums in your link building strategy.

8. Web 2.0 backlinks

Web 2.0 backlinks are dead.

But, I wanted a dead man walking.

Ever heard about tier link building?

I wanted to maximize the page rank and link equity coming to my website.

For this, I used guest posting and my own web 2.0 backlinks strategy.

To execute this correctly, I first filtered all the web 2.0 sites on which my pages will be indexed.

I created a few broad niche sites using web 2.0 and got them indexed on Google.

After that, I linked my previous niche edit and guest post backlinks.

This process helped the website in two ways.

The backlinks got crawled and indexed.

The number of backlinks increased that means the page rank will pass even more.

9. Good solid content

The common advice is to create high-quality content for your website so it can naturally attract backlinks over time.

But let’s be honest—this approach isn’t always practical:

• Fewer pages, fewer chances: My client wasn’t planning to create a lot of content for the website.
• Competitive niche: The likelihood of naturally gaining backlinks in a competitive niche was minimal.

So, what did I do instead?

I turned the strategy on its head.

While my competitors were relying on AI-generated content for guest posting and link-building activities, I chose a different path:

Human-Written Content > AI Content

Although AI is advancing rapidly, it still falls short of human creativity when it comes to uniqueness, authority, and topical coverage.

So, I decided to go with human-written content for link building purposes.

What are some other methods to create backlinks?

There are lots of other backlink you can create but they don’t work as per your expectations.

With this website, I wanted to rank quickly.

I had to skip the sandbox period.

As I got above mentioned backlinks, the website didn’t wait for 8 months to start ranking higher.

Instead, it only took 130 days to grab the number 1 position in Google search.

Talking about other backlinks, I don’t recommend building comment backlinks for seo or to buy backlinks on forums.

Forum backlinks do work but you just can’t make it your go-to strategy for building backlinks.

Similarly, just keeping on listing your website on irrelevant websites isn’t good either.

If you want to create high quality backlinks, you need to have a proper strategy.

I mixed good backlinks with average to diversify their nature.

This way Google or other search engines will never be able to find if backlinks are created and not natural.

I worked on this project till April 30, 2024.

Before moving away, I make sure the website will stay where it was.

The reason for leaving was the client didn’t want to scale the website from here.

It means the website will stay at this place and not beyond that.

Although I still have its Google Search Console access, I don’t work on it any more.

And, this is the latest performance of this website.

Wrapping up

Building backlinks is so much easier if you are aware of the process.

Not all types of backlinks work, you have to be precise and watchful.

To create genuine backlinks, study your competitors and industry.

Try to outclass them with quality.

If you’ll try to build the same backlinks as your competitors, you’ll never be able to beat them.

At repute post, we help individuals SEO specialists and webmasters to build high-authority backlinks.

We also offer white label guest posting services and solutions to the SEO agencies.

Being in this industry for a long time, we know which type of backlinks work.

And, the consequences of building toxic backlinks.

If you’re just starting out, this guide will help you learn more.

Just keep learning and do SEO, the right way.