Cheapest Way to Get an Editorial Backlink in 2026? I Checked 15 Links to My Own Site First: 14 Were Nofollow
Every few days someone asks me some version of "what's the cheapest way to get an editorial backlink?" Before answering again, I wanted to know what the links that already point at one of my own sites actually look like. I run a few small launch boards. One of them, IndieHunt, gets written up on other people's sites now and then. So this morning I took four third-party pages that write about it…
I checked the 15 editorial backlinks to my own site, and 14 of them are nofollow. One link is followed but the page has noindex, meaning it shouldn't be indexed. The other links come from various sources such as a guide, a directory listing, a list of launch platforms, and an AI company profile page. None of these are bad pages, but the fact that these editorial backlinks are all nofollow demonstrates that having someone write about your product and mention your site are not the same thing.
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