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/Backlinks are *essential* if you are an indie hacker!

Backlinks are crucial for SEO

If you are an indiehacker like me, who has just started the journey, You must have been advised by lots of people that backlinks add a lot of value, and yes, they are correct.

What is Backlink?

Backlinks (also known as "inbound links," "incoming links," or "one-way links") are links from one website to a page on another website. Google and other major search engines consider backlinks "votes" for a specific page. Therefore, pages with a high number of backlinks tend to have high organic search engine rankings.

Not every backlink is good.

If a spammy website links you, it won't add value to you. Like in real life, if bad people refer to your business or shop, it's not good for you. Technically, it's called URL rating.

Non-user generated content websites are good for backlinks

If a website has high traffic and content is NOT user-generated, and if you get a backlink from that website, it will positively affect the SEO of your domain. For example, if Techcrunch has an article where they include your link, it extremely good for your website. Unfortunately, these links are hard to get, especially for indie hackers.

If you write an answer on Quora or publish an article on medium (user-generated content), it won't have that high impact.

Again imagine, in real life, if some Influential person refers your business or shop, it is good for your business.

Lots of other Technical Aspects

There are many other technical aspects. e.g., follow nofollow links, etc.

You might have seen an Excel sheet floating with the title 100 places to post your startup, don't submit your startup blindly. Just do—2-minute of research.

How do you check backlinks to your website?

well, go to Ahrefs website


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  1. 3

    Rightly said, Backlinks coming to your site from outside sites indicate to search engines you're a trusted site. 👍

  2. 1

    @yellowuncle great post. I am building backlinkgpt.com. Maybe you or some of the readers find this useful. Try to help people in a structured and scalable way to build backlinks. Still misses a few feature on auto contact discovery and suggesting the best prospects, but hope to release those soon!

  3. 1

    I am a beginner, and I have many difficulties in making backlinks. Is it good for me to just paste my backlink in the comment section?

    1. 1

      Not at all dude. Those backlinks have close to zero value for multiple reasons.

      • They are no follow
      • As the author said, they are user-generated content
      • A lot of these backlinks are not rendered on page when Google sees it because these come like a widget which is rendered post launch.
  4. 1

    nice article but it will be better if you mention any good DA sites which can give backlink for beginner to start

  5. 1

    Have you had success with backlinks on any major websites?

    1. 1

      Yes. But it didn't happen for free. There were three ways we achieved that.

      1. Paid Press Release. It was very costly . As an indiehacker, I can't afford to do that, and we should generally pay for PR only when we have received Product-market fit.
      2. Guest Posts on high-traffic websites in exchange for a valuable service for free.
      3. Paid backlinks channels. Very hard to find good ones.
  6. 1

    Would love to save this so I can keep coming back for reference but it looks like Indie Hackers doesnt let you save posts

  7. 1

    Thanks for reminding us this. Adding to my task list.

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