Four link building strategies for existing content

Executive overview

Most pages that fail to rank lack links, not content quality. Waiting until you create new content to think about link building leaves your existing pages to stagnate.

These four tactics find relevant, active link prospects for pages you've already published — without creating anything new.

Backlinks to existing content are easier to earn than most SEOs assume, if you prospect systematically.

Analyse top-ranking competitors' backlink profiles

• Search Google for your target keyword and collect the top 10 URLs.
• Paste each URL into Ahrefs' free backlink checker to see up to 100 backlinks per page.
• In Ahrefs Keywords Explorer, click the backlinks count for any ranking page to open its full profile.
• Set the filter to Group Similar to remove duplicate sidebar and footer links.
• Export results and filter for quality prospects before outreach.
• A strong outreach angle is essential — link the pitch to the specific value your page offers.

Find similar pages outside the top 10

• Google's algorithm weighs more than link count — on-page SEO, content quality, and freshness all factor in.
• Use Ahrefs Content Explorer, search your keyword, and filter to title matches with at least 5 referring domains.
• This surfaces pages covering adjacent angles (e.g. "for women", "for kids") — which can double as inspiration for subsections.
• Pages that have recently lost traffic (visible in the traffic history graph) make strong outreach targets: their linkers may welcome a fresher resource.

Target competitor new backlinks for guest posts

• Standard guest post prospecting often wastes time pitching inactive sites.
• In Ahrefs Site Explorer, open a competitor's domain and go to the New Backlinks report.
• Set the date range to the past 60 days to find recently active sites.
• Filter to: one link per domain, DoFollow links only, link type = blogs.
• The result is a list of proven-active sites open to editorial content.
• Monitor this report continuously to maintain a fresh pipeline of outreach targets.

Resource page link building

• Resource pages curate and link to the best external content on a topic — they exist to link out.
• You can target resource pages on broader topics than your exact keyword (e.g. target "fitness" to earn a link to a half-marathon training article).
• Use Google search operators: inurl:links.html intitle:<broad niche keyword> to surface resource page candidates.
• Use the Ahrefs SEO toolbar to assess domain and page metrics directly in the SERP.
• Set Google to show 100 results per page before exporting via the toolbar for a larger prospect list.