What are backlinks and how do you get them?

If you have read anything about SEO, you have almost certainly run into the word “backlinks” without anyone stopping to explain what one actually is. This guide fixes that. A backlink is simply a link from one website to another, and few things shape where you appear in search results more reliably. Search engines treat these links as signals of trust, which is why pages with strong backlink profiles tend to rank and the rest stay invisible. Below we cover what a backlink is in plain terms, why search engines count them, how to read the parts of a link, what separates a good one from a harmful one, the main types, how to actually earn them, and the mistakes that trip up most beginners.

What is a backlink?

A backlink is a link on someone else’s website that points to a page on yours. You will also see them called inbound links or incoming links, and they are the same thing viewed from your side of the link. From the perspective of the site doing the linking, the same link is an external or outbound link.

Here is a plain example. Imagine a food blogger writes a post about brewing better coffee at home and, partway through, adds a sentence like “for the science behind decaffeination, see this guide from Healthline.” The words that are clickable carry a link to a page on Healthline. That link is a backlink for Healthline. One website has effectively pointed its readers towards another and, in doing so, told search engines that the Healthline page was worth referencing.

That is the entire concept. A backlink is a connection from one site to another, created whenever a publisher decides a page is useful enough to link to. For a fuller treatment of the topic, our the link building process walks through the strategy end to end.

Why search engines count backlinks

Search engines need a way to decide which of the billions of pages on the web deserve to appear first. Backlinks are one of the oldest and most durable off-page SEO signals they use. The logic is borrowed from academia: if many credible sources cite a piece of work, that work is probably important. Google’s founders built this idea into their original algorithm, PageRank, which treated a link as a vote and gave more weight to votes from pages that were themselves well linked.

The data backs this up. Backlinko’s analysis of 11.8 million search results found that the number one result has 3.8 times more backlinks than positions two through ten. And Ahrefs, studying around 14 billion pages, found a clear correlation between the number of sites linking to a page and the traffic it receives, noting in its search traffic study that most professionals consider it almost impossible to rank for competitive terms without them.

It is worth being precise about what a backlink does and does not do. A link does not guarantee a higher ranking on its own. It contributes a signal that Google weighs alongside content quality, relevance and dozens of other factors. The stakes are high because most pages never get seen at all: Ahrefs found that 96.55% of pages get no organic search traffic from Google, and links are one of the few levers that reliably separate the visible minority from the rest. We unpack the mechanism in more detail in our explainer on the value of backlinks.

The anatomy of a backlink

Not all links are built the same, and a few technical details decide how much weight a backlink carries. Understanding these parts lets you tell a valuable link from a weak one at a glance.

Anchor text

This is the visible, clickable text that the link is attached to. In our coffee example, the anchor text was “this guide from Healthline.” Search engines read anchor text as a clue about the destination page’s topic. Descriptive, natural anchor text helps; stuffing the same keyword-rich phrase into many links looks manipulative and can trigger a penalty. We cover the safe approach in our anchor text.

Dofollow versus nofollow

By default a link passes authority to its destination. A publisher can add a tag to a link telling search engines not to pass that credit, the most common being rel=”nofollow”, along with rel=”sponsored” for paid placements and rel=”ugc” for user-generated content like forum posts. A link without any of these is often called a dofollow link. Nofollow links can still carry value as hints and for referral traffic, but dofollow links from trusted sites do the heavy lifting for rankings. The full distinction is covered in how nofollow works.

Link placement

Where a link sits on a page matters. A link worked into the main body of an article, where a reader is likely to click it, tends to carry more weight than one buried in a footer, sidebar or author bio. An editorially placed mention beats a site-wide footer link.

What makes a backlink good or bad

The single most common beginner mistake is treating all backlinks as equally good. They are not. A useful way to think about it: one link from a respected, relevant publication can be worth more than a thousand links from low-quality pages. Quality and relevance are what separate a link that helps from one that does nothing or actively harms you.

Signals of a good link

A high-quality backlink tends to share the same handful of traits, and once you know them you can judge a link at a glance.

• A trusted source. The linking site is itself authoritative and has a real audience of its own.
• Topical relevance. The page sits close to your subject. A backlink from a well-known health authority pointing to your medical content is far more valuable than one from an unrelated site, because relevance reassures search engines the link is genuine.
• Natural anchor text. The wording describes the destination rather than repeating a target keyword.
• Editorial placement. The link sits inside real content, where a reader is likely to click it.
• A fresh referring domain. The site has not already linked to you many times over, so the link counts as a new vote rather than an echo of an old one.

Few links tick every box. The more of them a link does tick, the more it is worth your time.

Signals of a risky link

A risky backlink shows the opposite traits.

• A spammy or irrelevant source. The site has no real audience, or no connection at all to your subject.
• Low-value placement. The link is dropped into a bulk directory or a comment thread rather than into content someone actually reads.
• Keyword-stuffed anchor text. The same exact-match phrase repeated across many links is a pattern spam systems look for.
• Mass production. The link was churned out by a cheap PBN, a link farm or an automated tool. Google’s link spam policies single out exactly this kind of large-scale, automated link building, which is why bargain link packages so often end in a penalty.

Links like these are described as toxic, and a profile that collects them is worth a periodic audit so you can identify and deal with anything harmful. For a positive checklist of the traits to aim for, see what separates good links.

The main types of backlinks

Backlinks come in several recognizable forms, and knowing them helps you understand which ones to pursue. The categories below are the ones that matter most in practice.

Editorial links

Editorial links are earned when a writer chooses to link to your page because it genuinely adds value to their content. These are the most valuable links you can get, and the hardest to fake.

Guest post links

Guest post links come from articles you write for another website in your field, where a link back to your site sits within the content or your author bio. Done on quality, relevant sites this still works well; done at scale on irrelevant sites it looks spammy.

Business and relationship links

Business and relationship links come from partners, suppliers, trade associations, testimonials and case studies.

Directory and profile links

Directory and profile links come from listings. A few reputable industry directories are worth having, but mass submissions to low-quality directories are exactly the sort of bulk, automated linking that search engines discount.

Digital PR links

Digital PR links are earned when journalists cite you as a source or feature your data, often producing links from major news sites. For a wider taxonomy, see our overview of kinds of backlinks.

How to actually get backlinks

Earning backlinks, which is what link building means in practice, comes down to two things working together: having something on your site worth linking to, and proactively letting the right people know it exists. Hoping links arrive on their own rarely works, because most content never earns a single link in the first place.

The most reliable starting point is to create a genuinely useful resource, whether that is original research, a definitive guide, a free tool or a data study. Publishers cite things that are hard to replicate. From there, outreach turns that asset into links, and a handful of tactics do most of the work.

• Guest posting. Writing for relevant sites in your field, with a link back to your page inside the content.
• Broken link building. Finding dead links on other sites and offering your page as the replacement, an approach we set out in fixing broken links for links.
• Journalist requests. Responding to reporters who are actively looking for expert comment or data.
• Unlinked mentions. Reclaiming the places where your brand is already named but not linked.
• Competitor replication. Studying the backlinks your competitors have already earned and going after the ones you can realistically win.

The reason outreach matters is simple arithmetic: the vast majority of published pages attract no links on their own, so the few that succeed almost always have someone actively promoting them to the right audience.

Each of these has its own playbook, from guest posting to contacting bloggers. We cover the full set in tactics for earning links, and the highest-impact tactic for earning links from major publications has its own guide in PR as a link channel. The thread running through all of them is that you are offering the other site something of value, not simply asking for a favor.

How many backlinks do you need?

There is no universal number, and any source that gives you one is guessing. The honest answer is that the number of backlinks you need depends entirely on how competitive your target keyword is and on how many links the pages already ranking for it have earned.

The practical method is to look at the current top results for the term you want to rank for and study their backlink profiles. If the pages on page one each have links from a few dozen websites, that is roughly the territory you need to reach. If they have hundreds, the bar is higher. The right benchmark is always your actual competition, not a round number pulled from an article. Quality still gates the count, too: a handful of links from authoritative, relevant sites will often move the needle more than a large number of weak ones, so the target is rarely just about reaching a tally.

One more nuance: the number of distinct websites linking to you usually matters more than the raw count of links. Ten links from ten different sites generally do more than fifty links from a single domain, because each new referring domain is a fresh vote. We walk through how to estimate the target for your situation in link volume.

Common beginner mistakes to avoid

Most early link building goes wrong in a handful of predictable ways. Knowing them in advance saves time and protects you from penalties.

• Chasing volume over quality. Bulk links from cheap PBNs, link farms and hundreds of throwaway directories feel productive, but they build exactly the profile Google’s spam systems are designed to catch.
• Buying the cheapest links you can find. Bargain packages sold by the hundred come from the same recycled networks and are what trigger manual penalties. A quality placement on a real, relevant site that people read is a completely different proposition.
• Over-optimizing anchor text. Pointing dozens of links at a page with the same exact-match keyword phrase is a well-known spam pattern.
• Ignoring relevance. A link from an unrelated site does little, no matter how authoritative that site is.
• Expecting instant results. Links take time to be discovered and credited, so treat link building as a steady habit rather than a one-off campaign.
• Neglecting the content first. If a page is not worth linking to, no amount of outreach will fix that.

None of these are difficult to avoid once you can name them. Build the asset first, earn your links from relevant sites with real readers, and let the profile grow at a pace that looks like what it is.