Your $500 Press Release Is Not the Best Backlink You Can Get
A friend of mine called me last week to tell me about a service he had just paid $500 for.
Five hundred dollars. Five hundred articles. Distributed across a network that includes AP News, Yahoo Finance, Business Insider, and a few dozen other recognizable names. All pointing back to his website. All published within 48 hours.
He was pleased with himself. He asked me what I thought.
I told him it would help. Then I told him what would help more — for free, in thirty minutes, with a permanent result that none of those 500 press releases could match.
He went quiet for a moment. Then he said: "Why does nobody talk about this?"
That is the question this piece tries to answer.
The Thing Most People Miss About Backlinks
Not all backlinks are the same. This is the sentence that changes how you think about everything that follows.
When a search engine crawler visits a page and finds a link to your website, it has to make a decision: does this link count as a vote of confidence, or is it just a reference? The answer depends on one attribute in the HTML of that link: whether it carries a "nofollow" tag.
A dofollow link passes authority. It tells the search engine: this page trusts the page it is linking to. The authority flows from the linking domain to yours. This is what SEO professionals call "link juice" — the accumulated authority of a high-ranking domain transferring, in a small but measurable way, to the page being linked.
A nofollow link passes nothing. It is a reference without endorsement. The crawler sees it, notes it, and moves on. No authority transfers. No ranking benefit accrues. The link exists, but for SEO purposes, it might as well not.
Here is the part that matters for my friend's $500 investment: almost every major social media platform — Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn — makes all outbound links nofollow. This is a deliberate choice to prevent the gaming of search rankings through social link spam. It means that the LinkedIn post announcing your product, the tweet with your website URL, the Facebook page with your link in the bio — none of them are passing authority to your domain.
And many press release distribution networks? Also nofollow. Or published on syndicated pages with so little individual authority that the transfer is negligible.
My friend's 500 articles may help with visibility. They may drive some direct traffic. They will not do what he thinks they will do for his search ranking.
The Wikipedia Edit He Hadn't Thought Of
After I told him this, I gave him one specific instruction.
Go to the Wikipedia page most relevant to what you do. Find a section that is incomplete, outdated, or could benefit from a specific factual reference. Make a legitimate edit — add something accurate, something that improves the page, something an editor would keep. And in the citation for that addition, link to the relevant page on your site.
Wikipedia's domain authority is among the highest on the internet. Its links have historically been nofollow, which limits the direct authority transfer — but Wikipedia's outbound links still carry significant indirect weight through the references and traffic they generate. More importantly, Wikipedia pages are crawled constantly, they appear at the top of search results for almost every topic they cover, and a citation from Wikipedia signals to AI systems that your source is considered authoritative enough to reference.
This is not a trick. It only works if the edit is legitimate. Wikipedia editors are not easily fooled and will revert spam immediately. But if you genuinely have something accurate to contribute to a page in your field — a statistic, a case study, a piece of information that belongs there — you can add it, cite your source, and create a permanent reference from one of the most authoritative domains on the internet.
Free. Thirty minutes. Permanent.
My friend went quiet because he had just paid $500 for the other thing.
Where the Best Backlinks Actually Come From in 2026
The highest-value backlink sources are not where most people are spending their time. Here is where the real authority is, and why.
Crunchbase. If you have a company, you should have a Crunchbase profile. It is free, it is indexed extensively by AI systems when they research companies and founders, and the dofollow links from your profile carry real authority. More importantly, Crunchbase is one of the sources AI assistants consult when generating responses about companies and industries. Your presence there is not just an SEO play — it is an AI visibility play.
GitHub. If your product has any technical dimension — an API, an open-source component, a developer tool — a GitHub repository with a link back to your main site is a high-authority dofollow backlink from one of the most authoritative domains in technology. GitHub is also heavily crawled by AI training systems. Being present there matters.
Product Hunt. A launched product on Product Hunt generates dofollow backlinks and significant referral traffic. It also creates a permanent record that journalists, investors, and AI systems encounter when researching your company. The launch itself generates visibility. The backlink persists long after the launch day traffic fades.
Substack. This is the one that surprises people. Unlike Medium — which marks all outbound links as nofollow — Substack's links are dofollow. If you write a Substack newsletter that links to your website, you are getting link authority from a platform with significant domain authority and growing AI citation presence. Medium's domain authority is higher than Substack's, but Medium's links pass nothing. Substack's links pass something. The less famous platform is the more valuable one, for this specific purpose.
Wikipedia. As discussed. Legitimate contributions only. But the authority is real and the permanence is real.
LinkedIn. Nofollow, so no direct authority transfer. But LinkedIn profiles and company pages rank extremely well in search results, are indexed by AI systems, and create discoverability that has indirect value. The backlink doesn't help directly. The profile's existence in the index does.
Press releases on major outlets. Useful for visibility and brand signals. Often nofollow or published on pages with limited individual authority. Not the SEO silver bullet the distribution services imply. Worth doing for other reasons. Not worth doing primarily for backlinks.
The AI Dimension Nobody Is Accounting For
The backlink conversation in 2026 is not only about Google anymore. AI systems — ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini, Perplexity — are now answering questions that used to go to search engines. And the sources they cite are not identical to the sources that rank in Google.
Crunchbase appears in AI responses about companies. GitHub appears in AI responses about technical tools. Product Hunt appears in AI responses about software products. Wikipedia appears in AI responses about almost everything. These platforms are not just backlink sources — they are the sources AI systems are trained on and retrieve from when generating answers.
This changes the calculation. A Crunchbase profile that does nothing for your Google ranking may still influence whether you appear in an AI-generated response when someone asks about companies in your category. A GitHub repository that generates minimal direct traffic may still train the next generation of AI models to associate your brand with your category.
The platforms worth being on are not just the ones that pass the most link authority to Google. They are the ones that appear in the index AI systems actually use. Crunchbase, GitHub, Product Hunt, Substack, Wikipedia — these platforms show up in AI training data and retrieval in ways that many higher-authority domains do not.
My friend's $500 press release appeared on AP News and Yahoo Finance. Neither of those outlets shows up consistently in AI citation reports. The Wikipedia edit — if done correctly — does.
What To Actually Do
In order of time investment versus impact:
Set up your Crunchbase profile completely, with your website linked. This takes an hour and creates a permanent high-authority reference that AI systems will find when researching your company. Free.
Create a GitHub repository for anything technical your product does. Link back to your main site in the README. Free.
Launch on Product Hunt. Even a modest launch creates a permanent record and a dofollow backlink. Free, with some time investment in the launch preparation.
Write on Substack. Not Medium. The links you include in Substack newsletters are dofollow. Medium's are not. If you are going to write publicly, write where the links count.
Find one Wikipedia page in your field that could genuinely benefit from a contribution you can legitimately make. Make the edit. Cite your source. Free, thirty minutes, permanent.
Then, if you have $500 and want to spend it on distribution: spend it. The press release visibility is real. The brand signals are real. Just don't spend it expecting the backlink authority you're actually looking for.
The best backlinks are not the most expensive ones. They are the ones that exist on the platforms the search engines and AI systems actually use to form their opinion of who you are.
FreeMalta is Malta's first AI-native intelligence platform and an Official OpenAI Select Partner. For more on content strategy and AI search visibility, visit freemalta.com/hub/web-intelligence.
