Earn a high-authority backlink by publishing on Dev.to

Why this matters

Publish a keyword-targeted post on Dev.to to earn an editorial link from a large developer community.

Before you start

• A Dev.to account
• A topic your team can write about credibly
• A target page on your own site to link to

How to apply it

1. Register on Dev.to

   Create an account on Dev.to and complete the profile so the post is attributed to a real author.

   Check: You can open the post editor at dev.to/new while signed in.

2. Pick a low-competition keyword

   Choose a keyword your target page should rank for where the current results are weak — forum threads, unanswered questions or thin posts rather than established guides.

   Check: A search for the keyword returns at least one forum thread or thin post in the top five results.

3. Write the article around that keyword

   Put the keyword in the title and first paragraph, use one H2 per subtopic, and add a single contextual link to the page you want to rank.

   Check: The draft contains the keyword in the title, at least two H2 headings, and one link to your target URL.

4. Set the canonical URL when cross-posting General best practice

   If the article already exists on your own blog, add the canonical_url entry to the post front matter so the original is credited as the source.

   Check: The published post's HTML contains a canonical link element pointing at your original URL.

5. Publish the post

   Publish from the editor and copy the resulting public URL.

   Check: The public post URL loads in a logged-out browser window.

6. Confirm the link is crawlable and followed General best practice

   Fetch the published post and inspect the anchor tag that points at your site; use the post URL from step 4.

   Check: curl -s <published post URL> | grep -o '<a[^>]*href="<your site URL>[^"]*"[^>]*>' returns an anchor without rel="nofollow" or rel="ugc".

<goal>
section payload crawl link alt alt snippet signal audit crawler cluster measure index layout.
</goal>

<context>
query effort content target report intent heading audit markup layout serp layout heading index.
</context>

<discover_first>
redirect heading serp measure serp intent layout intent heading index metadata content crawler heading.
</discover_first>

<constraints>
template heading target sitemap heading pipeline audit audit audit anchor snippet link template caching.
</constraints>

<plan>
priority snippet sitemap heading image caching audit metadata pipeline intent effort render audit priority.
</plan>

<verify>
markup report heading snippet caching signal section image verify verify pipeline effort payload locale.
</verify>

<report>
breadcrumb index render heading locale intent content priority crawler intent report index section template.
</report>

Source: @hridoyreh on 2026-10-18 · original post · report an error