How to Get Backlinks That Stay Live and Followed

Seven methods, and what we measured

And once a link is placed: of 1,186 placed links our audits found on the page and read again 36 to 45 days later, 1,120 (94%) were still there. The last two sections show how to check a link and how to tell whether it stays live.

Where the numbers come from

bklink audits the links people place: a customer uploads the list a vendor or PR distributor delivered, and the audit reads every page — is the link there, and what does its rel attribute say. This guide takes its figures from three dated readings of that record:

• The nofollow study: the latest reading of 4,449 placed links on 3,003 sites, as of 12 October 2026.
• The directories study: 36 of our own listings on 35 launch directories, read on 3 October 2026.
• A new count for this guide (17 October 2026): placed links our audits read twice, weeks apart, and whether the pages they sit on can be indexed.

Disclosure. These are placements our users chose to audit, including our own accounts' — not a random sample of the web. Pages a backlink scan found (mentions nobody arranged) are left out. Our audits record where a link sits, not how it was won, so each method below is matched to the type of site its links land on. Where nothing fits, we say so.

1. Directory and listing sites

You fill in a profile on a directory, marketplace or launch site, and the listing links to your site.

What we measured:

• We read 36 of our own listings on 3 October 2026. 21 (58%) linked back with a followed link, 4 with a nofollow one, and 3 named the product only in content drawn by script. 6 addresses did not show the listing, and 2 directories refused our reader.
• Across audits, 118 links were placed on 79 directory sites. The link was on the page for 51 of them, 39 followed. On 60 (51%) the page answered but carried no link.
• Directory links were the least steady type in our record. Of 35 that our audits found and read again about 5 weeks later, only 14 were still on the page; 21 were not. That is a small group, from 2 campaigns.

What Google says: its spam policies list links from low-quality directory and bookmark sites as an example of link spam (link spam).

How to do it well:

• List where your customers actually look for products like yours.
• Keep the address of your own listing page. A link in a list that changes — new, similar or "alternative" products — leaves the page when the list moves on.
• Open the listing signed out and find your <a href> in the page's source.

Listing by listing: which backlink directories give a followed link.

2. Press releases and digital PR

A press release sent through a distribution service is republished, word for word, across news and syndication sites. Digital PR — a journalist writing about your news or your data — lands on publishers instead.

What we measured:

• On press-release and syndication sites, our audits found 594 placed links on the page. 501 (84%) were nofollow.
• Those copies stayed put. Of 221 read again about 5 weeks later, all 221 were still on the page, and all 83 followed ones were still followed.
• Our audits cannot tell an earned article from an arranged one, so there is no separate figure for digital PR. Links on publishers' pages are under guest posts below.

What Google says: links with optimized anchor text in press releases distributed on other sites are an example of link spam (link spam).

How to do it well:

• Use a release to spread news, not as a source of followed links.
• Keep the anchor text plain: your brand or the page's title.
• Read the rel on a few copies before you count them. The nofollow study breaks this down by type of site.

3. Guest posts and articles on publishers

An article on a news site, magazine or blog, written by you or about you, with a link to your site.

What we measured:

• On publishers' pages, our audits found 1,380 placed links. 696 (50%) were nofollow and 684 were followed. On another 177 pages (8% of 2,158) the link was not there at all.
• Publisher links lasted. Of 678 read again about 5 weeks later, 655 (97%) were still on the page, and 352 of 370 followed links were still followed.

What Google says: links with optimized anchor text in guest posts are an example of link spam, and so are paid articles whose links pass ranking credit. A paid link is within the rules when it carries rel="sponsored" or rel="nofollow" (link spam; qualify your outbound links).

How to do it well:

• Write for sites your customers read, on a topic they cover.
• Ask the editor how links are marked before you write.
• If a company places articles for you, vet the link building company first: ask for live examples and check them.

4. Resource pages

A page that lists useful links on one topic: tools, guides, organizations. You ask the editor to add your page because it belongs on the list.

What we measured: nothing. Our audits do not record how a link was won, and the record holds 14 links on reference sites — too few to report.

How to do it well: pitch only pages where yours fits next to what is already listed, then check the link once it is added.

5. Broken-link building

You find a page that has gone dead but still has links pointing to it, and offer the sites that link to it your page as a replacement.

What we measured: nothing. Our audits do not record how a link was won, so we cannot say how often a replacement is accepted.

How to do it well: offer a page that actually replaces what was lost, not just one on the same topic.

6. Partnerships

Suppliers, clients, integration partners and associations linking to each other: a partner page, a case study, an integration listing.

What we measured: the nearest thing in our record is links placed on company sites, meaning a business's own website. Of 407 links placed on 177 company sites, 245 (60%) were not on the page when the audit read it. Of the 54 that were, 32 were followed. We cannot tell which of these were partnerships.

What Google says: excessive link exchanges, and partner pages made only to cross-link, are examples of link spam (link spam).

How to do it well: link where a real relationship exists, on a page about it, and check the page carries the link once it is published.

7. Tools, data and research

Something others cite: a free tool, a dataset, a study. People link to it because it is the source.

What we measured: nothing yet. This guide is built on two such studies, but we have not counted who links to them.

What Google says: its SEO Starter Guide recommends promoting new content, through social media, communities and word of mouth, so that people find it sooner (SEO Starter Guide).

How to do it well: publish numbers you can defend, date them, and say how they were measured. Read them again later and publish what changed.

How to check a link once it is placed

1. Open the page signed out. It should be public and live, not a preview or a listing waiting for approval.
2. Find your link in the page's source. It should be an <a href> to your site. In the directories study, 3 of 36 listings named the product only in content drawn by script.
3. Read its rel. nofollow, sponsored or ugc ask search engines not to count it (Google Search Central). rel="dofollow" does nothing, because Google defines no such value, yet 327 followed placed links in our record carried it.
4. Check the page can be indexed. A noindex robots meta tag, or a canonical that names another page, asks Google not to index the page (robots meta tag). A robots.txt rule stops Google crawling it, so the link is never read. Of 2,762 placed links whose page our audits read for this, 44 (2%) sat on such a page: 30 carried noindex, 8 were blocked by robots.txt, 6 named another page as canonical.
5. Write down the page's address, the date and the anchor text. You need them to check again, and to ask for a fix.

A backlink audit on bklink reads every link in a list this way and reports what it found, link by link.

How to tell whether a link stays live

A link sits on a page someone else owns. They can edit it, move it or delete it without telling you, so one check is not enough.

What we measured. Our audits found 1,186 placed links on the page from 5 to 14 August 2026, and read the same pages again 36 to 45 days later, from 11 to 20 September 2026:

• Of 601 links that were followed at the first reading, 544 (91%) were still followed. Of the rest, 1 had turned nofollow, 22 had been removed and 34 could not be read.
• Of 585 nofollow links, none had become followed.

By type of site:

Disclosure. These links come from 4 campaigns, and one of them holds 892 of the 1,186. Read the figures as one record over about 5 weeks, not a rule. A page "could not be read" when it blocked our reader or timed out, which says nothing about the link.

How to keep checking:

• Read the page again on a schedule, and keep each reading's date.
• Tell the three failures apart. The link removed while the page still answers; the page gone (404, 410, or a domain that no longer resolves); and the page blocking your reader, which is not evidence either way.
• Watch the rel, not only the link. A followed link that turns nofollow is still on the page.
• Keep the evidence: the date, the status and what the page showed. That is what a site owner or vendor needs to put a link back.

Method and limits

• Link state. Each link's state is its latest audit, or its latest re-check that read the page; later evidence that the page is gone (404, 410, no DNS) makes it dead. A link is on the page when the audit finds an <a href> to the site in the HTML, and followed when it carries none of nofollow, sponsored or ugc.
• Placed links only. Pages a backlink scan found are left out.
• Site type is our classifier's reading of each site's homepage: what the site is mainly for. A site not yet classified is counted on its own.
• Read again means a second reading at least 7 days after the first. In this record every such pair was 36 to 45 days apart.
• Indexability is what the audit's page read last said about the robots meta tag, the canonical and robots.txt (read 23 September to 4 October 2026). It is not a check of Google's index.
• Methods are matched to site types by us. A link on a publisher's page may be a guest post, an earned article or a paid placement; the audit sees only where it sits.
• Dates. Follow shares by site type: 12 October 2026 (nofollow study). Our own listings: 3 October 2026 (directories study). Links read twice, and page indexability: 17 October 2026.