The best replacement for hard links is soft links.

The best alternatives to hard links are rated as following:
★★★★★  soft links
★★★★★  symbolic links
  symbolic

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Speaking about hard links, one probably shouldn't forget about rsync.

Other search terms related to hard links and their ratings are:
★★★★★ rsync
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Google Trends

Scale is based on the average worldwide traffic of hard links in all years. Click on graph for more.
hard links
soft links
symbolic links