Passive Link Building Guide: Tips and Strategies

Backlinks have always been and will always be crucial factors influencing website visibility and authority. 

However, sustainable and long-term off-page SEO success requires a combination of both active and passive link building. While passive link building emphasizes the creation of compelling content to naturally attract backlinks, the reality demands a proactive blend of link acquisition strategies. 

In the below article we are going to do a deep dive into passive link building, how it works, what it seeks to accomplish and some of the most effective strategies you can use on your own to acquire links passively. 

Let’s dig in. 

What Is Passive Link Building?

Passive link building, also known as "link earning" or "link attraction," is a strategy aimed at acquiring backlinks to your website without engaging in active outreach efforts.

Unlike traditional link building methods that involve reaching out to other website owners or influencers to request backlinks, passive link building relies on creating valuable and engaging content that naturally attracts links from other websites. 

I’ve always viewed passive link building as the attempt to produce high-quality content that is so compelling and valuable that other individuals and websites are inclined to link to it voluntarily.

It involves a deep understanding of your target audience so that you can create content that provides undeniable value, thereby encouraging others to reference and link to it on their own accord.

The Misnomer of “Passive” Link Building

Now that you know what is meant by “passive” link building, you also need to know that the idea of “passivity” is misleading. 

Why, you ask? Because there is nothing ever truly passive when it comes to search engine optimization, and particularly link building. According to Ahrefs, something like 96+ percent of all pages online get no search traffic. 

The above screenshot is from Ahrefs’ free website traffic checker I searched the keyword “things to do in Galveston” on Google, scrolled down to result number 56, and pasted the URL into Ahrefs’ tool. 

This is the story for over 96 percent of all pages on the web. Billions of pages. 

That means that even if you’ve created that undeniably compelling content, more likely than not, –especially if you’re not an established brand–no one will ever read it. That’s where things like a solid content distribution strategy come into play. 

Why Passive Link Building Is Important

Passive link building is important for a number of reasons. 

The first is that backlinks are immensely important. You need links if you want your pages to rank on Google’s search engine results page. 

The second is that backlink building–actually going out and manually building backlinks through prospecting and outreach–has its shortcomings. It is, of course, a necessary part of your off-page search engine optimization. 

But it is also time-consuming, potentially capital-intensive and, if you don’t know what you’re doing, potentially also damaging SEO. 

That is because Google is against anything that it considers “spam links.” 

Notice how it says “buying or selling links for ranking purposes?” The issue here is that most link building involves some level of monetary exchange–whether it’s a editing or placement fee, or something else. 

This means you need to really know what you’re doing to build links safely. 

How do passive links factor into this equation? Well, passive links are what are widely known as editorial links. We’ve written a really comprehensive guide on editorial links if you want a full breakdown, but, in a nutshell, they are links that are given out freely by site owners and writers while producing high quality content. 

You didn’t ask or pay for them, you acquired them naturally over time because your content was high quality. These are the backlinks that Google looks most favourably upon and the ones that tend to come with the most link juice. 

How to Create Passive Backlinks: 7 Proven Strategies for 2023

Assuming that you fully understand that nothing is truly passive when it comes to increasing your organic traffic unless you’re some big established brand (and even then, nothing is a guarantee), let’s talk about some of the most tried and true ways to build links passively. 

Crafting Shareable Content

Crafting shareable content is the cornerstone of passive link building. That might sound like a captain obvious thing to say, but you would be surprised how many people I see getting this all wrong. 

Shareably content involves creating valuable, engaging, and informative content that naturally attracts backlinks from other websites. The most effective way to make something shareable, in my experience, is to focus on creating content that addresses the needs and interests of your target audience.

This involves conducting thorough audience research and understanding their pain points, you can tailor your content to resonate with them. Whether it's through in-depth guides, case studies, or actionable tips, the key is to provide genuine value that compels others to share and link back to your content.

Companies like Hubspot are great providers of feedback forms and templates:

Another thing most shareable content has in common is its ability to tell a story. By incorporating compelling narratives and real-life examples, you can capture the attention of your audience and evoke emotions that encourage sharing. 

Additionally, leveraging surprising statistics or thought-provoking insights can make your content more share-worthy. Your goal is to create content that people not only find valuable but also feel compelled to share with their own audiences, thus generating passive backlinks organically.

Visual Content for Link Building

Visual content has emerged as a powerful tool for building passive backlinks. By creating visually appealing infographics, data visualizations, and videos, you can convey information in a format that is easy to digest and highly shareable.

Infographics, in particular, are known for their ability to condense complex information into a visually engaging format, making them highly shareable on social media platforms and other websites. Similarly, data visualizations allow you to present data in a visually compelling way, making it more accessible to your audience.

Have a look at the below “Podcasting Stats and Facts” infographic from Ross Media Solutions:

Now look at their backlink report from Ahref’s free backlink checker. 

11 links (64 percent of them dofollow) from 11 linking websites from that one infographic. It’s hard to say how much content promotion they did, but I can guarantee you that many of those are natural links that they got for much cheaper (and safer) than it would have been to build them. 

Videos have also become quite popular as a means of engaging audiences and driving traffic to websites. Whether it's instructional videos, product demonstrations, or behind-the-scenes footage, videos can capture the attention of viewers and encourage them to share your content with others. 

Visual content like images and video perform better than text, and by incorporating visual content into your link building strategy, you can increase the likelihood of attracting passive backlinks from websites that find your content valuable and relevant.

Utilizing Lists and Roundups

Lists and roundups are effective strategies for building passive backlinks by curating valuable content from various sources. 

Creating listicles that compile useful resources, tools, or tips relevant to your audience can attract backlinks from websites looking to reference comprehensive lists in their own content. Similarly, roundups gather insights, opinions, or expertise from industry experts or thought leaders, providing readers with a diverse range of perspectives on a particular topic. 

Take a look at the below project management software roundup article from The Digital Project Manager.

Now have a look at how many links that article has acquired:

Again, I can’t promise that they didn’t do any link building here, but a TON of the 871 backlinks this page has managed to acquire over time were passively built. 

By featuring other experts, content creators, products or services in your roundups, you not only provide valuable information to your audience but also incentivize those featured to share the roundup with their own networks, potentially generating passive backlinks.

What’s more, leveraging lists and roundups can enhance your credibility and authority within your industry. By showcasing a curated selection of high-quality content or expert opinions, you position yourself as a valuable resource for your audience, increasing the likelihood of other websites linking back to your content, which has a snowball effect on your EEAT. 

Finally, see lists and roundups as opportunities for collaboration and networking with other content creators and industry professionals, further expanding your reach and potential for passive link building.

Building a Strong Online Presence

As I’ve mentioned a few times throughout this article so far, if you want to reduce the amount of work required to get people linking to your content, people need to already be aware of you. 

Building a strong online presence is essential for attracting passive backlinks and establishing credibility within your industry. This involves creating and maintaining a professional website, active social media profiles, and engaging with your audience across various online platforms. 

By consistently producing high-quality content and engaging with your audience through comments, shares, and discussions, you can increase your visibility and attract inbound links from other websites.

It’s also a good practice to participate in online communities and industry forums where you can expand your reach and connect you with potential collaborators or influencers who may share your content with their own networks. 

Places like Quora and Reddit are great places to do that. 

Actively contributing valuable insights, advice, or resources to relevant discussions can position you as an authority in your field and attract passive backlinks from websites looking to reference your expertise. 

Just make sure you are following community guidelines and not spamming your website and pages. What’s more, most forum links come with nofollow attributes so even if you are allowed to post links to your site, they have a nofollow attribute on them and they’re not providing any SEO value. 

What they are doing is driving traffic to your site, which may result in someone finding your linkable content impressive or useful enough to provide a dofollow link to. 

Focus on User Goals, Pain Points, Format

This is similar to what you read in the “create shareable content” strategy above, but the intentions are slightly different, so they’re worth exploring. 

Understanding the goals and pain points of your target audience is crucial for creating content that resonates and attracts passive backlinks. 

By conducting thorough audience research, including surveys, interviews, and market analyses, you can gain valuable insights into the challenges, needs, and preferences of your audience. 

Identifying the goals they aim to achieve and the pain points they seek solutions for enables you to tailor your content to address these specific concerns effectively.

Here is a chart of some of the most popular ways that people collect this sort of information: 

You then need to determine the most suitable format for your content based on audience preferences and consumption habits to enhance its shareability and link-building potential. 

Whether it's long-form articles, how-to guides, infographics, videos, or interactive tools, choosing the right format can significantly impact the engagement and perceived value of your content.

I find that after you’ve been in business a while, you should know how your audience prefers to consume content. 

Research the Most Linked Content Online

Researching the most linked content online allows you to identify popular topics and formats that resonate with your target audience and attract passive backlinks. 

Leveraging tools such as Ahrefs, Semrush, and BuzzSumo, you can analyze trending topics, top-performing content, and the backlink profiles of competitors to uncover opportunities for creating link-worthy content.

I use Ahrefs most of the time, so here’s what it would look like using that tool. The below example is using Ahrefs, itself, as the example site. 

The first thing you’d want to do would be to find a list of your organic competitors by searching for your URL in the Site Explorer and then filtering by “top competing domains.”

Following that, you’d then want to take your list of competitors and run them through the Link Intersect report (also in the Site Explorer):

Clicking on the numbers under each competitor will show you the kinds of links they’re getting and then you can set about creating the kind of content that attracts/builds the most links:

By understanding the types of content that consistently attract backlinks in your niche, you can tailor your content strategy to emulate successful patterns and capitalize on existing demand. 

Whether it's conducting keyword research to identify relevant topics or studying the content formats that generate the most engagement, incorporating data-driven insights into your content creation process can enhance its effectiveness and link-building potential. 

When you align  your content with the interests and needs of your audience while leveraging proven strategies for attracting backlinks, you can maximize the impact of your passive link-building efforts.

Interview Experts

Interviewing experts in your industry or niche can be a powerful strategy for generating passive backlinks and establishing credibility and authority. People are usually quite interested in reading the expertise and insights of thought leaders, influencers, and professionals in your field. 

Check out the below article from Search Engine Journal which features an interview with Google’s chief Search Advocate, John Mueller: 

Check out the number of backlinks this article has: 

Of course, it’s Search Engine Journal–one of the biggest and most trusted SEO sources on the web–so, of course, people are going to be interested in pretty much anything it publishes, but the interview content approach is a powerful passive link building tactic, regardless.

Write Optimized Content for Low-Competition Keywords

Targeting low-competition keywords in your content can be an effective strategy for attracting passive backlinks and improving your search engine rankings. If you’re going to be one of those rare websites that builds pagerank without strong initial link building, then you need to find SEO gaps. 

By identifying niche topics and long-tail keywords with lower competition levels, you can create content that addresses specific queries and provides valuable insights to your target audience and you avoid the enormous page authority barriers to entry set by the big players–who tend to dominate the search results. 

Optimizing your content around these keywords allows you to rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs) and increase the visibility of your content to potential linkers and readers.

Again, Ahrefs is what I use to do this and it is your best friend here. 

The above keywords–computer, hard drive, imac, laptop, macbook–have been entered into the Keywords Explorer and, beside each, Ahrefs is telling you important metrics like the search volume, number of clicks and the KD (keyword difficulty). 

That’s letting you know how hard it would be for you to rank for that keyword and it’s a function of how many backlinks the highest-ranked sites have (backlinks being the major contributing factor to domain authority).

A KD of 83, for instance, means it’s an extremely difficult keyword difficulty and you’d need to have both serious topical authority and put int some major time and money increasing your pagerank. 

50 KD, on the other hand, is, while still difficult, much lower. Go all the way down to 7, 8, 9, 10 KD and now you’re in the realm of “low competition.”

Once you’ve located keywords where you believe you can compete, you just need to write content around that keyword–paying special attention to search intent–that displays your experience, expertise, authority and trust, improve your odds of success by building links, and you’ve got a good chance of ranking. 

Newsjacking

Newsjacking is another great way you can add high quality, relevant backlinks to your backlink profile.

It involves leveraging current events, trends, or breaking news stories to create timely and relevant content that attracts attention and earns passive backlinks. You can do it by keeping a close eye on news outlets, social media platforms, and industry publications for trending topics or events related to your niche. 

The idea is that you stay ready to capitalize on opportunities to insert your brand or expertise into the conversation. Below is the point in the new cycle where you ideally want to be newsjacking to build passive backlinks: 

Whether it's offering expert commentary, sharing insights, or providing unique perspectives on a trending topic, newsjacking allows you to capitalize on the virality of news stories and attract links from other websites and media outlets.

When executing a newsjacking strategy, it's essential to act quickly and strategically to ensure your content remains timely and relevant. Google News heavily favours new and fresh content.

By crafting compelling content that adds value to the conversation and resonates with your target audience, you can increase the likelihood of your content being shared and linked to by others. 

What’s more, you can increase your odds of making a piece of newsjacking content a success by engaging with journalists, bloggers, and influencers covering the news story, helping increase the visibility of your content and attract additional backlinks from authoritative sources. 

Newsjacking offers a powerful way to leverage current events and trends to generate passive backlinks and enhance your brand's visibility and credibility online.

Wrapping up

In summary, passive link building is a great approach for acquiring backlinks naturally, relying on compelling content rather than active outreach.

Again, while the term "passive" may suggest ease, effective link building demands proactive content creation and distribution. Backlinks remain vital for Google ranking, with passive methods offering a sustainable alternative to traditional, potentially risky approaches, while also helping you futureproof your link building efforts. 

By crafting shareable content, leveraging visual formats, and capitalizing on current events, websites can attract organic backlinks, bolstering authority and credibility.