Types of backlinks (and which ones actually matter)

Not all backlinks are worth the same. A single editorial link from a respected publication in your field can do more for your rankings than a hundred directory listings or forum comments. Yet most guides bury that distinction under a list of twenty-odd link “types” without telling you which ones actually move the needle. This article fixes that. We will group the main types of backlinks by what they really do, show you concrete examples of each, and explain why dofollow editorial links from relevant sites sit at the top of the pile. The stakes are real: Ahrefs studied roughly 14 billion pages and found that 66.31% have no backlinks at all and 96.55% get no organic traffic from Google. Understanding which links count is the difference between joining the 3.45% that get traffic and shouting into the void.

How to think about backlink types

Search the phrase and you will find listicles promising twenty, thirty, even forty “types of backlinks”. Most of those lists mix three different things: how a link was acquired (guest post, digital PR, directory), where it sits on the page (in-content, footer, sidebar), and what HTML attribute it carries (dofollow, nofollow, sponsored, ugc). All three matter, but they are not equally important, and lumping them together hides the one question that actually decides a link’s value.

That question is simple: does this link pass authority, and does it come from a relevant, trustworthy page where a real editor chose to place it? Everything else is detail. A backlink is essentially a vote for your page, and Google has confirmed that links remain one of its core ranking signals. Ahrefs notes that backlinks are one of Google’s top three ranking factors. So the practical way to read any list of link types is to ask where each one lands on a spectrum from “strong editorial endorsement” to “self-placed and ignored”. The rest of this guide walks that spectrum. If you want the broader strategy around earning them, our the basics of link building covers the full picture, and this primer on what backlinks is a good starting point if the basics are still fuzzy.

The four link attributes: dofollow, nofollow, sponsored and ugc

Before grouping links by how they are earned, you need to understand the attribute that sits in the link’s code, because it governs how Google treats the link in the first place.

Dofollow links

A dofollow link is the default. It has no special rel attribute, and it tells search engines to follow the link and pass authority to the destination. These are the links that can lift your rankings.

Nofollow links

A nofollow link carries rel="nofollow" and asks Google not to associate your site with the linked page. Since 2020, Google treats nofollow as a hint rather than a strict rule, but in practice these links rarely pass meaningful ranking authority.

Sponsored and UGC links

Google introduced two more specific attributes in 2019. The sponsored attribute (rel="sponsored") flags paid or advertising links, and the ugc attribute (rel="ugc") marks user-generated content such as comments and forum posts. Google’s own documentation states that links marked with these attributes will generally not be followed. The takeaway is not that nofollow, sponsored and ugc links are worthless. They send traffic, build awareness and make your profile look natural. But the links that directly help you rank are overwhelmingly dofollow. We cover the nuances in detail in our guide to dofollow versus nofollow links.

The links that actually move rankings

If you only chase one category, make it this one. The links below tend to be dofollow, sit inside the main body of relevant content, and are placed by someone who genuinely decided your page was worth citing.

Editorial links

Editorial links are the gold standard. These happen when a journalist, blogger or researcher links to your page because it adds value to their article, usually as a source, a statistic or a useful resource. Bankrate’s mortgage calculator, for example, earns editorial links from publications like Slate simply because writers find it handy. You cannot buy these outright, which is exactly why Google trusts them. Our deep dive on editorial links explains how to earn them at scale.

Digital PR links

Digital PR links are a deliberate way to earn editorial coverage. You create something newsworthy, such as original research or a data study, and pitch it to journalists. Done well, digital PR produces dofollow links from high-authority news sites that would never accept a cold link request. See our guides to using PR for rankings and pitching journalists for the mechanics.

Guest post links

Guest post links sit slightly lower. When you contribute an article to a relevant industry site, you typically earn a link in the body or author bio. These can be valuable when the host site is genuinely relevant and the link is editorially justified, the standard behind our guest posting services, though Google is wary of thin, mass produced guest posting churned out purely for links. Our guest posting covers how to keep it clean, and we maintain a list of finding guest post sites.

The common thread

What unites all three is relevance and editorial intent. A dofollow link from a respected site in your industry is the single most powerful link type you can earn, which is also why link quality matters more than quantity.

Links that help indirectly

The next group rarely passes strong ranking authority, often because the links are nofollow, sit outside the main content, or are placed by you rather than an editor. They still earn their place in a healthy off-page SEO mix through referral traffic, trust signals and local relevance.

• Business profile and directory links come from listings on platforms like Google Business Profile, Yelp and industry directories. They seldom boost rankings the way editorial links do, but consistent listings reinforce your business details and matter a great deal for local visibility. If you serve a geographic area, our local link building guide explains how to use these well.
• Social media links from profiles and posts are almost always nofollow. They will not lift your rankings directly, but they drive traffic and brand searches that can lead to genuine editorial links later. Image and video credit links work similarly: when another site uses your infographic or photo and credits the source, you earn a link, though text links generally carry more weight than image links because Google reads the surrounding text for context.
• Press release links announce company news, but Google classifies links in syndicated press releases as unnatural, so they are usually nofollow. They are useful for awareness and referral traffic rather than ranking power. Forum and comment links are user-generated and typically marked ugc or nofollow. Used sparingly to add genuine value to a discussion, they can send relevant traffic. Used to spam links at scale, they become a liability. Whatever the source, the how to use anchor text you use should read naturally rather than being stuffed with exact-match keywords.

None of these will carry a campaign on their own, but a brand with no directory, social or press footprint at all looks oddly thin to a search engine. Treat them as the supporting cast around your editorial links rather than the main act.

Specialist link types worth knowing

A few link types come up often enough to deserve their own note, even though they do not form the backbone of most campaigns.

• .edu and .gov links are widely misunderstood. There is no magic ranking bonus in the domain extension itself. A link from a university or government page is valuable for the same reasons any link is valuable: the page is usually authoritative and relevant. Chasing a .edu link from an unrelated student resources page will do little. Earning one from a relevant department citing your research is genuinely useful.
• Niche edits, sometimes called link insertions, involve adding your link to an existing, already-indexed article rather than a new post. When the placement is relevant and editorially agreed, they can work, but they need more care than earned editorial links because site quality and relevance vary. We compare the trade-offs in niche edits vs guest posts.
• Broken link building and link reclamation are two of the cleanest tactics available. Broken link building means finding dead links on relevant pages and offering your working resource as a replacement, as covered in our broken link building guide. Link reclamation means recovering links you have already earned but lost, for example when a page is moved or a brand mention goes unlinked. Our guide on finding and fixing lost backlinks walks through the process. Both produce contextual, often dofollow links without the exposure of paid placements.

None of these deserve a campaign built around them. Take them when they arise naturally and judge each one on the same criteria as any other link: relevance, editorial context and a real audience behind the page.

Link types that can hurt you

Some links do not just fail to help. They can actively damage your visibility if Google decides you are trying to manipulate rankings.

• Cheap bulk paid links. Links bought by the hundred from low-quality sites that will publish anything breach Google’s spam policies, and the payment need not be cash: gifting a product in exchange for a dofollow link counts too. Where you sponsor content properly, mark the link as sponsored or nofollow and there is no issue.
• Private blog networks. Networks of sites created or bought solely to link to a money site are a well-known manipulation tactic, and Google actively works to detect and neutralize them.
• Large-scale link exchanges. Reciprocal linking in moderation is normal, but systematic “link to me and I will link to you” schemes are flagged as manipulation.
• Spammy comment and forum links. Mass-posted links with keyword-rich anchors are a classic spam signal and add nothing for a reader.

The common thread is intent and scale: links engineered purely to inflate rankings, produced in volume with no editorial judgment behind them, are the ones that attract trouble. If you are unsure about your own profile, see our guide to toxic backlinks and our take on disavowing them, which explains why that tool is no longer needed for the spam Google already ignores.

Building the right mix

No single link type makes a profile. A natural, durable backlink profile is diverse and dominated by earned editorial links, supported by a realistic spread of directory, social and other links that any genuine business would accumulate over time.

Diversity also applies to where links come from. Backlinko’s analysis of 11.8 million search results found that the number-one result has 3.8 times more backlinks than positions two to ten, and that getting links from many different referring domains correlates more strongly with rankings than piling up links from the same handful of sites. In other words, fifty links from fifty relevant sites beat fifty links from one. This is why a dofollow-only profile from a narrow set of domains looks suspicious to search engines: real link profiles are mixed.

The practical approach is to anchor your strategy in earning high-quality editorial links through useful content and digital PR, then let the supporting link types accumulate naturally. If you are not sure how many links you actually need, our guide on how many links you need gives a grounded answer, and our overview of how to get backlinks lays out the tactics. For B2B companies specifically, links for B2B companies and outreach to site owners are usually the highest-leverage routes.

Auditing what you already have

Before chasing new links, find out what types you already hold. A backlink audit tells you the ratio of dofollow to nofollow links, the spread of referring domains, the anchor text distribution, and whether any toxic links need attention. Tools like Google Search Console (free) and dedicated backlink checkers from Ahrefs or Semrush will surface this data.

The point of the exercise is to spot imbalances. If almost all your links are self-placed directory or comment links and you have few editorial links, your profile is thin where it matters most. If a single low-quality domain accounts for thousands of your links, that is a red flag worth investigating. Our step-by-step walkthrough on running a backlink audit covers exactly what to check and how to act on it. For the bigger numbers behind all of this, our roundup of recent research keeps the data current.