How building a large audience replaces manual link building

Executive overview

Most sites build backlinks manually — outreach, pitching, chasing links one at a time. That approach is tedious and doesn't scale.

The alternative: broadcast content to a large audience. If the content is link-worthy, natural backlinks follow without any targeted effort.

Build the audience first; the backlinks come as a byproduct.

The distinction between natural and manual links

• A natural backlink requires no targeted effort toward a specific site or person
• Emailing someone a heads-up about your article — even without asking for a link — is still a manually built link
• Tweeting to your full following and getting a link from a follower is genuinely natural — no specific targeting occurred

How Ahrefs acquires 80% of links naturally

• ~15,000 blog email subscribers
• Built-in in-product notifications reaching tens of thousands of daily users
• Organic social following on Twitter and Facebook
• Paid promotion budget across Facebook, Twitter, Quora, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Instagram
• Every published article reaches a large, relevant audience across these channels

What to do when you don't have an audience yet

• Without a large audience or ad budget, manual link building is unavoidable
• Expect an 80/20 split in reverse: mostly manual, few natural links
• Start building your audience as early as possible
• The sooner you have a large reachable audience, the sooner you can drop tedious manual tactics