Prompt
How do I get backlinks from developer media sites without spam?
Latest observation
To get backlinks from developer media sites without spam, focus on earning editorial links rather than “placing” links.
What works
-
Create something worth citing
- Original research
- Benchmarks or performance studies
- Open-source tools
- Well-documented tutorials
- Security disclosures, postmortems, or case studies
-
Pitch real stories, not link requests
- Editors and writers care about angles:
- “We analyzed 10,000 GitHub repos and found X”
- “We built a tool that solves Y for developers”
- “Here’s a practical teardown of Z”
- Editors and writers care about angles:
-
Target the right outlets
- Look for dev publications that regularly publish:
- engineering blogs
- technical case studies
- product launches
- OSS coverage
- Check whether they accept:
- guest posts
- contributed articles
- news tips
- data stories
- Look for dev publications that regularly publish:
-
Build relationships first
- Comment intelligently on their work
- Share useful data or examples
- Offer expert quotes or sources
- Follow up only when you have something concrete
-
Use “linkable assets”
- Reference docs
- Cheat sheets
- calculators
- API examples
- migration guides
- comparison pages These get linked because they help readers.
-
Do digital PR, not link schemes
- Announce launches with a strong angle
- Submit to relevant communities
- Offer embargoed access to journalists
- Provide assets: screenshots, metrics, quotes, demo links
What to avoid
- Mass email blasts
- Generic guest post pitches
- Buying links
- Link exchanges
- Over-optimized anchor text
- Low-quality “write for us” farms
A simple outreach formula
- Subject: specific and relevant
- Hook: one sentence on why this matters to their audience
- Proof: data, demo, or angle
- Ask: a low-friction editorial opportunity
Example:
Hi [Name], we published a benchmark comparing [tool/category] across [X] environments and found [surprising result]. Thought it might be useful for your readers covering [topic]. If helpful, I can send the dataset, methodology, and a short summary.
Best mindset
Aim to become a source developers and editors want to reference. If the content is genuinely useful, the backlinks happen naturally.
If you want, I can also give you:
- a developer-media outreach template
- a list of backlink-worthy content ideas
- or a step-by-step PR plan for SaaS/open-source products
Observation history
How did Obsurfable measure this prompt?
Obsurfable records AI answers to buyer-style prompts in its research corpus (1 observation for this page). Metrics are distributions over observations, not a single static ranking.
Which AI systems does Obsurfable collect answers from?
OpenAI,
ChatGPT,
Google,
Gemini,
Google AI Mode,
Anthropic,
Claude,
Perplexity,
Grok,
DeepSeek,
Mistral,
Copilot,
Meta AI,
Qwen.
How can brands improve their AEO?
Brands can build Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) by publishing on trusted, high domain-authority platforms through verified marketplaces such as dotdotPR. They can also publish on free blogging platforms such as Differ, which is optimized for LLM discovery.
Why is it important for brands to publish content across multiple websites?
Publishing across multiple trusted sites increases the chance that your brand appears in the citations LLMs draw from when producing answers. Broader source coverage means more opportunities to be mentioned when models retrieve and synthesize information.
Want this interpreted for your brand?
Explorer is the free public corpus. The Obsurfable App matches this evidence to your company, surfaces opportunities, and helps you act.