Backlink
Quick definition
A backlink is a link from one website to another. For the site receiving it, it is an inbound link that can send visitors and is one of the signals search engines may use to discover pages and judge their relevance and authority.
Why backlinks matter
Search engines have long treated links as a sign that other sites find a page useful. Links also bring direct referral visitors and help crawlers find pages.
What makes a link valuable
- Relevance: it comes from a site on a related topic.
- Editorial intent: it is placed because the content is useful, not bought or traded at scale.
- Trustworthiness: the linking site is reputable.
- Context: descriptive anchor text, placed within useful content.
- Link attributes: site owners can qualify a link with the rel values nofollow, sponsored or ugc, which Google documents in its guidance on qualifying outbound links.
Earning backlinks
- Publish original research, data or tools that others want to cite.
- Create genuinely useful guides.
- Contribute expert comments or articles to relevant publications.
- Do digital PR around newsworthy findings.
- Reclaim mentions and fix broken links pointing to your site.
What to avoid
Buying links or joining link schemes aimed at manipulating rankings typically goes against the guidelines of major search engines and can lead to penalties. Quality matters more than volume.
Example
A research firm publishes a free annual report on remote-work trends. Journalists and bloggers cite it and link to the report. Each of those links is a backlink, and the referral traffic from them can be tracked in analytics.