Backlink

Backlink explained

A backlink is a link from another website to yours. Links have been part of how search engines judge pages since the early days of Google: a link from a relevant, trusted site is like a recommendation. Links also send real visitors, which is easy to forget.

How it affects trust

Quality matters far more than quantity. A link from your trade association, a local newspaper or a supplier is worth more than many from unrelated directories. Google's spam policies prohibit buying links that pass ranking credit, excessive link exchanges and other link schemes.

Links also tend to follow reputation rather than create it. Businesses that do notable work, support their community and publish genuinely useful guides attract links over time without chasing them.

Risky habits

• Buying link packages, especially "hundreds of backlinks" deals.
• Obsessing over third-party scores instead of relevance.
• Swapping links with any site that asks.
• Forgetting existing relationships, such as suppliers, partners and clubs you sponsor, that might link to you naturally.

A realistic example

A children's nursery runs a free outdoor play morning for local families. The parish website and a local parenting blog mention it and link to the nursery's page. They're genuine, relevant local links earned by doing something worth writing about.

How to review yours

Search Console's Links report shows the top sites linking to you and the pages they link to. Use it to spot pages that have earned links but now return errors. Redirecting those to the right live page recovers value you'd otherwise lose. Third-party tools show more links, but Search Console is free and comes from Google.

Related link terms

• Link building: Earning or acquiring backlinks: quality and relevance matter.
• Anchor text: The clickable text of a link, giving context about the destination.
• nofollow: A link attribute hinting the link should not pass ranking credit in the usual way.
• Digital PR: PR campaigns designed to earn coverage and links from real publications.