How to get into link roundups

This guide walks through the full workflow: what roundups are, how to find live ones, what to publish before you pitch, the outreach itself, and the realistic numbers you should expect. It sits inside our wider link building playbook, so treat it as the roundup-specific deep dive rather than a general primer.

What link roundups actually are (and why they still work)

A link roundup is a recurring blog post, usually weekly or monthly, where a curator collects the best content published in their niche and links out to each piece. Think "This Week in SEO," "Best Marketing Reads of the Month," or "Friday Favorites." The curator does this every cycle, which means they have a permanent, recurring appetite for fresh content to feature. That is the structural reason roundups are such a reliable link source: the demand never stops, so the same curator can link to you again and again over the years.

Crucially, roundup links are editorially given. The curator chooses what to include based on quality and relevance, with no money or product changing hands. That distinction matters more than ever. Google's spam policies single out "buying or selling links for ranking purposes" and "excessive link exchanges" as link spam, and require any link obtained through payment or commercial arrangement to carry rel="sponsored" or rel="nofollow". A clean roundup feature sits on the right side of that line because it would exist even if search engines did not. As analysis of Google's backlink policy puts it, the real test is simple: would this link exist if rankings did not matter? For a good roundup feature, the answer is yes.

Step 1: Find roundups that are actually still running

The single biggest mistake people make is pitching dead roundups. Thousands of "weekly roundup" series were abandoned years ago, and emailing them is pure waste. Your goal is to build a list of roundups that published an edition recently, ideally in the last 60 to 90 days. Start with Google search operators, which let you target the title and the date at the same time.

Run each query, then apply two filters. First, use Google's Tools > Any time > Past month filter to confirm the series is alive. Second, open the most recent edition and check the date in the post itself, because some sites republish old URLs. Per Outreach Monks, you can widen the net with synonyms: "daily round up," "monthly round up," "notable blog posts," and "favorite blog posts" all pull different curators.

Two faster shortcuts. One, reverse-engineer competitors: drop a rival's URL into a backlink tool and look for referring pages whose titles contain "roundup" or "best of." If a roundup linked your competitor, it covers your niche and may welcome you next. Two, follow hashtags like #linkroundup, #weeklyreads, and #bestof on X and LinkedIn, where curators announce each new edition.

Step 2: Build something a curator would actually choose

Here is the uncomfortable truth most roundup guides skip: the link is not won in the email, it is won in the asset. A curator's reputation rides on what they recommend, so they only link to things their audience will thank them for. Before you pitch, you need a piece that earns its slot. In practice that means one of a few formats that curators reliably feature:

• Original data or a small study with a number people will quote (curators love a fresh statistic).
• A genuinely complete "definitive guide" that goes deeper than what already ranks.
• A free tool, template, or calculator readers can use immediately.
• A strong contrarian or experience-based take that adds a new angle to a tired topic.

If your content is interchangeable with ten other posts, no amount of polished outreach will rescue it. This is also where roundups quietly compound: a single linkable asset can be pitched to dozens of roundups over months, so the time you invest in one great page pays out many times. For a sense of what data-led assets attract links at scale, our link statistics hub is the kind of reference page that curators link to repeatedly.

Step 3: The pitch that gets you featured

Roundup outreach lives and dies on relevance and brevity. The curator is busy and assembling their next edition under deadline. Your job is to make their job easier. A pitch that works has four parts: a specific reference to their roundup, one sentence on what your piece is, one sentence on why it fits their readers, and a clean link. No fluff, no flattery padding, no "I hope this email finds you well."

Personalisation is not a nicety, it is the lever that moves your numbers. Backlinko's analysis of over 12 million outreach emails found that personalised messages received 32.7% more replies than non-personalised ones, yet most senders never personalise. The reference to a specific recent edition does double duty: it proves you actually read the roundup and it tells the curator exactly where your piece would slot in.

Watch your anchor text expectations too. You generally do not get to dictate the anchor in a roundup; the curator writes it, usually as your post title or brand name, which is healthy and natural. If you want to understand why that variety helps rather than hurts, see our guide to anchor text and the anchor text glossary entry.

Step 4: Follow up, and respect the real numbers

Outreach is a volume game with a long tail, and the data is sobering if you expect quick wins. The Backlinko and Pitchbox study of 12 million outreach emails found that only about 8.5% of outreach emails receive any response at all, which is roughly one reply for every twelve emails. That is not a reason to quit; it is a reason to send more thoughtful pitches and, above all, to follow up.

Following up is the highest-ROI thing you can do. The same study found that sending one follow-up boosted replies by 65.8%, and that emailing the same contact multiple times led to roughly twice as many responses. A clean two-touch follow-up, one nudge around day three and another around day seven, captures most of that upside without becoming a pest. Keep follow-ups even shorter than the first email: "Bumping this in case it is useful for your next roundup."

Where roundups fit in a real link strategy

Roundups are a steady, low-risk base layer, not a silver bullet. They tend to produce a stream of contextually relevant links to recently published content, which is great for new pages that need an initial push. What they rarely do alone is move the needle on a competitive head term, because the linking pages are often lower-authority blogs. Pair roundups with higher-authority editorial links for the pages that matter most, and use the link pricing index as a benchmark for what a quality link costs so you do not overpay.

It also pays to combine roundups with adjacent tactics that share the same outreach muscle. Broken link building reuses your prospect list and curator relationships; resource pages give your roundup-featured assets a second, evergreen home. One understanding of how editorial links are earned rather than placed underpins all of them.