How to Use Passive Link Building to Generate Hundreds of Links

Getting links without needing to pitch anything is the dream.

While it’s not totally hands-off from an outreach perspective, the passive link building approach has spread like wildfire over the past few years.

And there’s a big reason why: it works.

These data-driven posts can bring in relevant, authoritative links over time and supercharge a site’s authority.

In this post, I will show you exactly how to do it and provide some examples of different industries.

• Use keywords that researchers search for when writing—like “[industry] statistics” or “[industry] trends”.
• Trends, market analysis, and even interactive tools or calculators can attract passive links.
• Evaluate SERPs to ensure the top ranking posts get links to determine the keyword’s linkability.
• Use unique data—either uncovered through deep research, proprietary data, or created via surveys to boost linkability.
• Regional data can make outreach even more effective.
• While passive, this strategy greatly benefits from an initial outreach push.
• Refresh statistics and reports yearly to maintain rankings and attracts more backlinks.

What is the Passive Link Building Approach?

Passive link building is when you create an asset or post based on a keyword with high link intent, creating a flywheel that helps the post gain links and rank.

High link-intent keywords are ones that researchers or bloggers search for online when writing their stories when looking for citations.

The most common type of keyword is “statistics” but as you’ll see, this approach is not limited to statistics posts.

You can see trends, tools, and even definitional content getting links over time.

A quick example is our link building statistics post.

The keyword “link building statistics” gets 200 searches per month.

Our post has garnered over 25 highly authoritative, relevant keywords since it was published in June 2024:

As the post gains links, it ranks higher, which helps it gain more links, and the flywheel continues.

Some posts gain hundreds, even thousands of links with this approach, all contributing to the site’s overall authority and helping rank for related keywords.

In the next section of the post, I’ll show you exactly how to do it with your site.

1. Find Your Topic

This is mainly a keyword-driven strategy. (There is one exception and that’s if you are leaning into a new trending topic, which I’ll cover at the end of step 1.)

So, the first step is identifying your keyword.

The keywords that work for this approach are ones that someone would search for when looking for a citation.

The most straightforward approach is to go to Ahrefs Keywords Explorer and type in [Industry] + statistics.

Let’s use something challenging like “trucking statistics.”

The keyword has about 60 visits per month.

(We can somewhat disregard the difficulty because you can still get links even if you aren’t ranking number one in the SERP.)

However, before I get writing, I like to evaluate the SERP to see if the top-ranking posts are actually getting links over time.

Just because search volume exists for a keyword doesn’t always mean writers and researchers cite it in their posts.

For instance, if I search “surfing statistics” I do not see many backlinks generated by the top-ranking posts.

For some, this might not be a deal-breaker. The thinking is that it is better to be the go-to source if someone searches for it, regardless of the search volume.

I typically weigh my options based on the cost to create something like this.

Government agencies or organizations often dominate this kind of SERP, not leaving much room for other brands.

For example, if I search “crime statistics”, I see nothing but authoritative government sources and organizations ranking and getting links:

Back to our trucking example, when I scroll down to the SERP overview in Ahrefs, I see that another brand, truckinfo.net, gets links.

While BLS.gov and the Bureau of Transportation Statistics are ranking, they aren’t dominating the SERP.

So, this feels like a safe post for me to go for.

Alternatives to “Statistics” Posts

Depending on the industry, there are plenty of alternatives to “statistics” keywords.

Remember, you are looking for keywords that a journalist, blogger, or research might search for.

Here is a list to get your creative juices flowing:

• [industry] trends
• [industry] expert insights
• [industry] predictions
• [industry] thought leaders
• [industry] commentary on [current event]
• [industry] expert interview
• [industry] research report
• [industry] survey results
• [industry] market analysis
• [industry] benchmark report
• [industry] whitepaper
• [industry] case study
• [industry] success story
• [industry] best practices
• [industry] examples of innovation
• [industry] real-world applications
• [industry] biggest challenges
• [industry] problems facing [professionals/customers]
• [industry] risks
• [industry] ethical concerns
• [industry] controversies
• [industry] salary
• history of [industry]
• [industry] government regulations
• [industry] customer preferences
• [industry] consumer behavior study
• how people use [industry] products
• [industry] demand trends
• future of [industry]
• [industry] emerging technologies
• next big thing in [industry]
• predictions for [year]
• [industry] in [location]
• [industry] for [specific audience]
• [industry] impact on [group]
• [industry] insights for small businesses

In the examples section below, you’ll see how I built an entire passive link strategy around the “spending habits” keywords.

Tools and Interactive Calculators Work Too

Tools-related keywords make great passive link building assets as well. These provide value and are still typically used by bloggers and even journalists.

For example, here’s a tool to help calculate how much house you can afford:

It helps users calculate their monthly payments based on things like income, debts, and more.

This is cited in high-end news articles all the time:

Calculators and tools usually require more dev work, so they aren’t always a brand’s first choice.

Definitions and Guide Posts

Guide posts and definitional content are in competition with AIO and ChatGPT these days.

That said, there is still an opportunity for in-depth guides that provide information that AI simply doesn’t know.

One thing to consider is by looking at the number of clicks a keyword gets.

If it is higher or close to the search volume, people are interested in clicking through.

The lower the clicks, the more users are getting their answer from things like AIO and featured snippets.

First-Mover Topics

It can sometimes be beneficial to jump a keyword or topic that is trending but doesn’t yet have search volume.

For example, when I spoke with Darren Kingman of Root Digital on our podcast, he told me he helped build this chatGPT statistics post before it even had search volume.

Fast forward a few years, and it has 430 referring domains.

The key to the first mover advantage here is identifying trends before they blow up.

You can do that using a tool like Exploding Topics.

AI Image Enhancer and AI Logo Generator are great tools posts ideas that are “exploding” with interest.

As you can see, there are a lot of posts that can generate passive links.

In this post, I’m going to focus mostly on the statistics post-type passive link building approach.

Now that we’ve identified a keyword let’s discuss finding the data required to build a post.

2. Find Your Data

The best way to ensure your post gets links is by providing data that doesn’t exist anywhere else.

So, when building, I try to find data that:

• hasn’t been listed on posts
• is hard to read
• is hard to find
• all of the above.

I’ll search Google or ChatGPT for relevant studies or data to find this data.

In our trucking industry example, a Google search showed me BLS data about the truck transportation industry.:

When I go to the page, it provides plenty of charts:

Any of these could become data points for my post:

In Jan 2025, the average truck driver earns $31.74 per hour.

I can click through the site to find less obvious information.

Here’s back data on hourly earnings:

Using the above chart, I found that wages have increased 40% in the past 10 years.

That’s an incredible stat that I don’t see anywhere else!

Or Create Your Own Data

The best way to find data that doesn’t exist anywhere else is to create proprietary data via survey.

Using proprietary data dramatically increases the likelihood of getting backlinks.

You can use a low-cost survey tool like Survey Monkey, Pollfish, or YouGov to gather data from the target audience.

Most of those platforms start at around $1 per response.

I like to use Survey Monkey’s Audience Calculator to get estimates.

The more responses you have, and the more targeted the audience demographic, the more expensive.

So, if I wanted to survey 200 people in the transportation industry, my survey would jump from $200 to $4,200.

This may seem steep until you consider the number of links this post will bring in.

If I look at the SERP, I see that the top-ranking posts have hundreds of links. So, even if I only get 10 links, my cost per link for this strategy is $420, which aligns with the price of a digital PR link based on our survey.

Gather Enough Data to Stand Out

I evaluate the SERP to determine how many data points my post needs to rank. Like any listicle post, I try to stay competitive with what is currently ranking.

If every ranking post with links uses 35 stats, I’ll try 40 or 50.

Or, if every ranking post gives 100+, I’ll try to go more direct (like I initially did with my 11 link building statistics post.)

That brings me to my next point.

You may want to “pad” your stats with some external sources to make your post more appealing.

Mix in Data from Various Sources

As I mentioned, I like to use proprietary data for these posts as it helps ensure that my data is the most interesting.

But, I’ll sometimes pad my numbers by pulling in statistics from other trusted sources.

Keeping diverse data sources makes the post more valuable to a researcher because it compiles data from disparate sources into one central post.

So, for the trucking post, I’d want to pull from my survey, BLS, Department of Transportation, and any other sources I might find.

Now that I have data, it’s time to craft the post.

3. Write Your Post

The TL:DR of this section is to list statistics in a blog post. That approach will realistically get you 80% of the way there.

However, there are some best practices for building a post primed for passive link building.

Use Related Keywords as Your Section Header

The post shouldn’t just be one big list.

The idea is to make this valuable for a user who wants to extract a simple statistic.

So, I always like to categorize the data as best I can.

One trick to getting more value from this approach is using semantic or related keywords as section headers.

So, if I went into Ahrefs Keyword Explorer, I could see some related keywords with search volume that I would want to include as section headers:

And the reason we do this isn’t purely SEO (although that’s always a plus).

Search volume tells me what users search for.

So, by leaning on search volume, I am making this more user-friendly and hopefully keeping them from jumping to another site to do more research.

Provide Visuals

The other tip for these data-driven passive link building posts is to use visuals. This has a dual benefit as well.

I am making my posts more appealing and easy for users to understand, and this method allows me to gain links from posts.

For instance, here’s a post from BloggerOutreach.io that uses my data visualization:

I use Canva for most of my graphic design work on BuzzStream and even some data visualizations, though their graphing capabilities are a bit limited.

For our State of Digital PR survey, I used Infogram.

(I mention a few other visualization options in our content marketing tools post.)

Provide Original Sources

Ensuring proper citations is a requirement.

Just because I find a stat somewhere doesn’t mean that’s the original source.

This leads to misinformation and lowers the quality and reliability of your work.

For example, here’s a link we got that is actually a uSERP graphic:

I referenced the graphic in a post of mine so the site errantly linked to us.

This helps no one.

There are some alternative approaches for formatting and writing the passive link building post, which I’ll highlight in the examples section at the end.

Bonus Tip: Provide Regional Data

Although this isn’t always available, adding regional data to a post greatly increases the ability to pitch for links and get the content ranking quickly.

For instance, Bankrate’s Home Ownership Statistics piece includes the states with the highest and lowest homeownership rates.

They also pulled most and least home equity-rich states:

These provide compelling angles for pitching and for the researchers looking for this kind of information.

And it’s not that tough to find, especially with AI helping out.

Say I wanted transportation wage information per state, starting with Kentucky. A quick Google search yields wage data with citations that I can then click on to confirm accuracy.

Then I can visualize a map with a tool like Datawrapper.

So, here’s where stuff gets fun: outreach.

4. Jumpstart Ranking with Outreach

I like to kickoff the passive link building flywheel by pitching the post.

Even if I’m authoritative in the space, this will get the post indexed more quickly and start the flywheel sooner.

I’ve seen a few different link outreach pitch approaches for passive link building assets, but they generally follow the structure outlined in the C.H.A.M.P. Outreach Method.

But before we do that, let’s figure out who we will send this to.

Build an Outreach List

For list building, I typically use a mix of backlinks from similar competitor content and Google Search.

Using the trucking industry statistics post, I’ll walk through an example with Google Search.

For niche industries, I’d start with something generic like “transportation news” to help identify sites that cover transportation-related content:

From here, I’d click through and find authors who may be interested in our list of statistics.

Clicking into Transportation Today, I see Liz Carey listed multiple times, and they seem to be a good fit.

A click on the name brings me to the author page, complete with an email address.

Liz is based in Lexington, Kentucky, which might help me personalize the email a bit if I have unique data for Kentucky.

I’d repeat this process until I have a solid list of journalists or bloggers that I think may be interested in my trucking statistics piece.

Next, I focus on the pitch.

Craft the Pitch

The pitch should focus on a few key stats (and visuals if you’ve got them) and invite the recipient to open the post to see the rest.

Remember, in this example, we also have proprietary data about the transportation industry that we pulled from SurveyMonkey.

Let’s pretend we will craft an email to Liz Carey of Transportation Today News.

The email does a few things:

• Provides value with the new report in the writer’s industry.
• Gives enough data to tell a compelling story.
• Personalizes with a mention of Kentucky

To make this more real, I contacted Emily Campbell-Snida, VP of Content Marketing at Siege Media, to get an example from her and her team.

They created a hybrid piece for Vena Solutions about CAC benchmarks, including fresh data and a calculator.

Here is an example of the pitch that was sent:

She told me, “We pitched this as a comprehensive resource and focused on highlighting the utility of the data analysis, calculator, and templates/visuals.

We also included a variety of image assets that add value that sites could incorporate.”

As I mentioned, this isn’t the only approach to outreach. We have an entire post on email templates.

Can I Still Do Outreach If I Don’t Use Proprietary Data?

In my example above, we used proprietary data as our main hook in the outreach email.

Without proprietary data, it can be difficult but not impossible.

I asked Darren Kingman for some help. He said:

“Actively outreaching an inbound asset requires something to hook into.

The asset itself isn’t designed in a way to generate headlines – it’s a supplement piece.

Therefore, you need to find or create something to supplement into if you are going to send it to journalists.

For us, we’ve done it with pieces like our French Tourism Stats page for a client – where we knew journalists were going to start writing more articles on France/Paris coming up to the Olympics in 2024.

That was also our hook.”

You can see a snapshot of Darren’s email below:

As you can see, it clearly uses the Paris Olympics as the hook.

I’ve also run into this when doing outreach for tools and calculators.

The key is finding either a regional hook, timely hook (like the Paris tourism post), or another newsworthy headline that uses the tool.

Once the outreach is sent, the last step is keeping the content up to date.

5. Keep the Post Up to Date

The last step is to update the post at least yearly. This not only helps with ranking because Google looks at data freshness, but it will also help get more links because researchers want fresh data.

In our digital PR SEO impact analysis, we’ve seen some great data showing the impact of refreshing these kinds of reports.

For instance, Orbit Media’s blogging statistics report shows the bump in links they get every year (and they’ve been doing this report for 11 years).

In that time, they’ve amassed over 2.6K referring domains for a keyword that gets 200 searches per month.

That’s about 20 links per month and 236 links per year over those 11 years.

Do All Passive Link Building Assets Need Outreach?

No. Generally, sites with a high domain authority of ~70+ and high industry relevance won’t need many links to get their passive link asset ranking.

However, outreach speeds up the process.

Speed matters for this passive link-building approach…

How Long Does it Take to See Passive Link Building Impact?

You should expect to really see the link gains hit their cruising point around 8~12 months.

If you can get it ranking sooner, you could start seeing gains in 6 months, sometimes as early as 4.

In the next section, we’ll look at some examples of passive link building.

Passive Link Building Examples

There are so many ways to build passive links beyond just statistics posts. I’d tried to pull a broad spectrum to help understand how different brands utilize this approach.

1. Hubspot’s State of Marketing

Hubspot’s strategy is a master class in how this all ties together. First, they start with the State of Marketing Report.

They can then use this to seed their statistics posts, like their marketing statistics (ranks #1, has over 18K referring domains) or their email marketing stats post (ranks #3, has 8.8K referring domains.):

Despite all of the negative press that Hubspot received with a recent traffic dip, they set the standard for content marketing best practices that I follow today.

2. Backlinko’s Clubhouse Stats

In our podcast, Brian Dean told me about creating this Clubhouse Stats post right after the app was gaining popularity but before it had any kind of search volume.

The next day, he got a link from the Guardian. It can happen that quickly.

When I asked Brian how important it is to identify trends early for this approach, he told me:

“It’s actually necessary really, because if you want to do that, use this the strategy of creating content that is designed to get links.

If you are late to the party, it’s going to be hard to get into that flywheel because someone else is already in it, right?

Or multiple other sites are already in it.

So you, a first, that is where like weeks can make the difference between that succeeding or failing.”

3. Stripo’s Templates

As I called out in my bootstrap link building analysis post, Stripo’s email templates have brought in over 450 referring domains since 2018.

Giving things away for free can drastically increase the amount of passive links you receive.

4. Moz’s Title Tag Tool/Guide Post

I use Moz’s title tag checker daily.

But I wanted to highlight this example because it’s not just a tool; it’s also a definitional guide post.

So, it ranks for more keywords, giving it the chance to get on more researchers’ radars for potential citations.

It’s part of an older set of Moz content published back in 2015 but it’s consistently kept up to date and has accrued over 4.5K referring domains over the years.

5. Buffer’s Social Media Calendar

Although technically another template, these Buffer social media calendars have accrued 186 LRD in just two years.

When the templates are ones that users can use within a SaaS product, the template approach also serves as a lead magnet.

6. Smarter Travel’s Ultimate Packing List

Smarter Travel’s Ultimate Packing List has been around since 2018. Since then it has accrued consistent links (currently at 400 LRDs) with just a simple checklist post:

The post is not overly complex, yet it still consistently brings in links.

7. Lexington Law’s Spending Habits Hub

A long time ago, I helped create an American spending habits hub for Lexington Law, a credit repair company.

These are set up like the traditional “statistics” post, but I wanted to highlight the fact that you don’t always need a literal “statistics” keyword.

It’s a type of high-intent keyword that has search volume.

We started with millennial spending habits:

After we saw how well millennial spending was doing (279 LRD), we decided to roll the strategy out to all spending habits keywords.

• Gen Z spending habits has 58 LRD
• Baby boomer has 75 LRD
• Teen spending habits has 23 LRD

Each was a high link intent keyword with search volume.

(The posts, unfortunately, don’t seem to be kept up to date anymore—severely hindering their long-term growth.)

Diversify Your Approach for the Long Term

This is one of the best link building strategies out there for the money.

However, I don’t think it’s the only approach you should take.

The key to a successful link building strategy is diversification. That way, you’ll never have the rug pulled out from under you when Google decides to roll out an algorithm change.

Vince Nero

Vince is the Director of Content Marketing at Buzzstream. He thinks content marketers should solve for users, not just Google. He also loves finding creative content online. His previous work includes content marketing agency Siege Media for six years, Homebuyer.com, and The Grit Group. Outside of work, you can catch Vince running, playing with his 2 kids, enjoying some video games, or watching Phillies baseball.

More Posts by Vince Nero
Website: https://buzzstream.com