Tutorial
Promotion and Backlinks
Where backlinks actually come from: copying competitors' link sources, ranked outreach methods, and a cadence that compounds.
Backlinks do exactly two things, and both matter:
- Speed up crawler discovery — links from regularly-crawled pages lead Google to your new pages faster (the indexing article’s first lever).
- Pass ranking weight — they’re still the primary authority signal separating page one from page three.
A few clarifications before the tactics: nofollow links also help. The old advice to chase only “dofollow” links overstates the difference — nofollow links drive discovery, diversify your profile, and send real visitors. And on anchor text: keyword-rich anchor text is best, but having a link beats not having one. Don’t let perfect anchor text be the enemy of an actual link.
The core tactic: copy your competitors’ backlinks
The highest-leverage link-building method is unglamorous: find where your competitors’ links come from, and get listed in the same places.
- List 5–10 competitors — sites ranking for your target keywords.
- Pull each one’s backlink sources (Ahrefs, Semrush, or similar tools; even free tiers show the top sources).
- Merge the lists and rank sources by how many competitors appear on them.
- Prioritize the sources that appear across multiple competitors — if five rivals all have a link from the same directory, review site, or resource page, that source is proven relevant to your niche and almost certainly obtainable.
This works because it replaces guessing with evidence. Every link on that merged list is a link someone in your niche already earned — the path is walked, you just have to follow it.
Methods, ranked by ease
Directory submissions. The easiest legitimate links. For AI tool sites specifically, AI tool directories are the obvious starting point — there are dozens, submission is usually a form, and the relevance is exact. General startup and web directories come next.
Product Hunt, Hacker News, Reddit. Launch posts and “Show HN” threads earn links from high-authority domains plus real visitors. They take preparation — a good launch post is a craft — but the payoff per hour is high.
Open-sourcing on GitHub. Release something genuinely useful — a tool, a template, a dataset — and the repository itself becomes a link magnet. Developers link to GitHub repos from blog posts, tutorials, and resource lists. This compounds for years.
Building shareable products. Free micro-tools, calculators, templates, and widgets earn links because people share useful things. A small free tool that solves one problem well can outearn months of outreach in links.
Sponsoring open-source projects. Modest sponsorships (GitHub Sponsors and similar) often come with a logo and link on the project’s page. It’s legitimate, it’s cheap, and it supports the ecosystem.
Blog comments. Low value per link, but real: thoughtful comments on relevant blogs occasionally earn links and always earn visibility with the blog’s audience. Never spam.
Listicle outreach. Find “best X tools” articles in your niche and politely pitch your inclusion. Many listicles are actively maintained and welcome suggestions — especially if your tool is genuinely good and free to try.
Paid links — only later, with budget. Buying links is against Google’s guidelines, and cheap link packages are how sites get penalized. If you ever spend money on links, it should be late in the site’s life, with real budget, on genuinely relevant placements — not a $50 “10,000 backlinks” package. (The earlier warning stands: packaged backlink services are a trap.)
Cadence: sprint, then sustain
Link building should start fast and settle into a rhythm:
- First week: execute your top 20–30 actions — directory submissions, competitor-source outreach, launch posts. Front-load the easy wins.
- Then: a weekly quota for 3–4 months. A handful of outreach actions every week, sustained. Link building compounds; sporadic bursts don’t.
The weekly quota matters more than the weekly count. Consistency over quarters is what separates sites with growing authority from sites with a flat profile.
Community cold start
Before SEO kicks in — and it takes months — communities are where your first users come from:
- Reddit: earn karma first by participating genuinely, then post in story format. Redditors punish drive-by promotion and reward honest “here’s what I built and what I learned” posts. Read each subreddit’s self-promotion rules before posting.
- X (Twitter): build in public. Short updates on what you’re shipping, what broke, what you learned. Indie developers are a real audience there.
- TikTok / YouTube Shorts: short demo videos of the tool in action. Screen recordings with a clear before-and-after outperform polished marketing.
One framing note: social traffic is a bridge to SEO, not the destination. Community spikes are temporary; search traffic compounds. Use communities for the cold start — first users, first feedback, first links — while the SEO engine warms up. The goal is always the durable traffic, not the viral spike.
Promotion done right is mostly systematic, not clever: copy what works for competitors, work the easy methods first, keep a weekly cadence, and let communities carry the early days. The final article in this series is about reading the numbers so you know which of it is actually working.
Series: Build Overseas Websites with GeFei | Previous: Ranking and Getting Traffic | Next: Reading Data: Let Numbers Decide
Based on GeFei’s methodology (哥飞): https://github.com/qiayue/opengefei