Link building for indie hackers works best as a small weekly habit: list every product in a few relevant launch directories, ship one free tool or template people want to cite, write honest build-in-public posts, and trade a few in-content links with peers. Link your own products to each other sparingly, because Google treats cross-linking footers as spam.
You run one paid product, two side projects and a free tool you built on a weekend. Each has its own domain, none has more than a handful of referring domains, and you have about two hours a week for marketing in total. You posted "how do I get backlinks for a brand new website?" somewhere and got told to "create great content." This page is the more specific answer.
Why link building is different for a solo founder
The constraints are time, a portfolio of small sites and no network of investors or PR contacts to lean on.
Time is the budget
A startup with a marketing hire can run outreach every day. You can't, so the methods that matter are the ones that keep earning links after you stop working on them.
Several small products instead of one brand
Many indie hackers run three to ten products on separate domains. That is an advantage (each product can link where it is genuinely relevant) and a risk (identical footer links across all of them form a pattern Google names).
No inherited links
Funded startups get links from investors, accelerators and press. Our guide to link building for startups covers those. A bootstrapped solo founder usually starts with none of them.
How to link your own products without creating a footprint
Link between your products only where a reader would want the link, never as a site-wide block. Google's spam policies list "widely distributed links in the footers or templates of various sites" and "partner pages exclusively for the sake of cross-linking" as link spam.
Contextual links in content
A changelog entry on product A that says "we built the image compression in our other tool, B" is a natural link. So is a help article that recommends your other product for a related job.
A single "other things I make" page
One page listing your products, linked from your personal site or each product's About page, is normal and expected. Twelve identical footer links across twelve domains is not.
Leave nofollow on badges and widgets
If your free tool shows a "made with" badge on users' sites, the same spam policy names "keyword-rich, hidden, or low-quality links embedded in widgets that are distributed across various sites." Keep the badge text to your product name, or add rel="nofollow" to it.
Where indie hackers actually get their first links
Most early links come from listings, from tools people use, and from posts people share.
Launch platforms and product directories
Product Hunt, Indie Hackers product pages, and "alternative to" directories give a new product its first few links and a little referral traffic. Many are nofollow; that is fine, because their value is discovery. Pick the five or six that your users actually browse rather than paying for submission packages.
A free tool or template
A small calculator, generator or checker that solves one problem in your niche gets linked from tutorials and resource lists without outreach. It is the indie hacker's version of a research report: built once, cited for years.
Build-in-public posts with real numbers
Posts sharing revenue, traffic or experiment results get quoted by newsletters and other founders, because original numbers are hard to find. Write them on your own domain, then share them in communities, so the links point to you.
Peer link swaps
Other solo founders in adjacent niches are the most willing link partners you have. A few relevant in-content swaps a month, with sites whose readers overlap with yours, are a fair trade. Backlinkster pairs members for 1-for-1 swaps and each swap is verified by API (how it works).
How much link building is enough?
Enough is when your best pages can compete, not a target number of links. An Ahrefs study published in December 2023 found that 96.55% of pages in its index get zero traffic from Google, and lack of backlinks is one of the main reasons it gives. For a small product, ten to twenty relevant referring domains to the right pages can be the difference between invisible and page one for long-tail searches. That range is an illustration, not a rule: check what the pages ranking for your target keyword have.
A two-hour weekly routine
Short, repeated sessions beat occasional outreach sprints for a solo founder.
| When | Task | Time |
|---|---|---|
| Week 1 | List each product in 2 relevant directories | 2 hours |
| Week 2 | Write one build-in-public post with numbers | 2 hours |
| Week 3 | Ship or improve one free tool page | 2 hours |
| Week 4 | Vet and complete 2 or 3 peer swaps | 2 hours |
Then repeat, and once a month check new and lost links with a free tool. Our guide on how to track backlinks shows a simple setup.
What to skip
Skip anything that costs money per link before you have product-market fit. Bulk link packages, cheap gigs and paid guest posts on sites with no readers rarely move a small product. Our page on whether Fiverr link building is safe explains why.
Frequently asked questions
How do I get backlinks for a brand new website with no budget?
Start with relevant launch directories, a useful free tool or template, and honest posts sharing your numbers. Then trade a few in-content links with founders in adjacent niches.
Should I link all my side projects to each other?
Only where the link helps a reader. A contextual mention or one "things I make" page is fine; identical footer links across all your domains match a pattern Google lists as link spam.
Do Product Hunt and directory links help SEO?
Many are nofollow, so their direct ranking value is small. They help a new product get discovered, crawled and mentioned, which often leads to followed links later.
How long does link building take for a side project?
Expect months, not weeks. Links from tools and posts build up slowly, and Google needs time to crawl them, so judge results over a quarter.
Related: Backlinks for SaaS · How to Get Backlinks for a New Website · Link Exchange for SaaS