Backlinks are also called inbound links or incoming links. From your site's point of view, it is a link coming in from outside; from the point of view of the site that publishes it, it is an outbound link. Links between your own pages are a different matter: they fall under internal linking.
Why backlinks matter
Links play two roles for a search engine. The first is discovery: Google finds most new pages by following links from pages it already knows, which explains why a brand-new site with no inbound links takes time to get crawled. The second is evaluation: PageRank, one of Google's founding algorithms, is based on links. Google stresses, however, that it is only one signal among many others. A link is worth what the linking site and its context are worth, not what the count says.
What makes a good backlink
- Relevance: a link from a site in your industry, in the middle of text about the same topic.
- Trust: a real site with real readers, rather than a network of pages built to sell links.
- Link text: descriptive, natural anchor text that says what you'll find when you click.
- Link type: a normal editorial link passes signals; a link marked
sponsored,ugcor nofollow is treated by Google as a mere hint.
Links that bring little value
Not all links are equal, and some link profiles clearly lack a natural feel. The most common signs of low quality:
- the same keyword-stuffed commercial anchor, repeated from site to site;
- sites unrelated to your business that link to anything and everything;
- networks of mass-produced pages with no readers, whose only purpose is to host links;
- links generated automatically in comments, forums or low-quality directories;
- links in footers or widgets repeated across hundreds of pages.
Lifespan matters too: a link is only worth something as long as the page carrying it exists and stays healthy. An abandoned, hacked or closed publisher site takes your links down with it. To find reliable sites, our comparison of link building platforms is a good starting point; the overall approach is called link building.
Earning lasting links
- Publish resources other people want to cite: studies, original data, practical guides, free tools.
- Reclaim mentions of your brand that don't include a link yet.
- Show up where your audience is: trade associations, real partners, local press, conferences.
- Fix broken links: when sites point to a deleted page, a redirect to the right page recovers those links.
For WordPress: when your site becomes the spam source
Backlinks also have a security side. A hacked WordPress site is often used to host hidden links to shady sites: invisible text in the footer, spam pages generated by the thousands. Your site then carries links for strangers without your knowledge, and this injected content can earn it a manual action from Google or a hacked-site notice in search results. The warning signs and the way out are covered in our article on SEO spam after a hack. In the same spirit, since version 5.3, WordPress marks links in comments with rel="nofollow ugc" to discourage comment spam.