Backlinks Guide

Backlinks are links from one website to another. Search marketers study them because links can support discovery, referral traffic and search engines’ understanding of relationships across the web.

Key points

• Linking domain
• Linking page
• Anchor text
• Link attributes
• Placement context
• Relevance and quality

Use several signals together

A strong evaluation combines relevance, editorial quality, visibility, placement context and the purpose of the link.

Inspect the real page

Third-party metrics summarize aspects of a site; they cannot replace looking at the page where the link will appear.

Apply the same checks when buying

Marketplace listings are starting points. The underlying publisher should still pass the same quality review.

Related guides