What Are Backlinks and How Do You Earn Them? A Guide to Telling Valuable Links Apart

A backlink is a link from another site to a page of yours. Google reads these links as a kind of reference: the more links a page gets, and the more trustworthy the sources, the more likely it is considered an authority on its topic. That logic has held since the first day of search engines; which links count and which ones hurt has changed a lot over the years. Below you will find which links actually work and how to earn them without getting into trouble.

What a backlink is and why it still matters

Technically a backlink is a link in an HTML page's anchor tag that points to your domain. The linking page is the source, the linked page is the target. For Google the point is not the link itself but the signal it carries: who the source page is, what it writes about, how trustworthy it is and which text the link was given with.

Think of it this way. A single link from a medical school's news page to an orthopedic clinic's site does more than a hundred links dropped into comment boxes. The first is the result of an editorial choice; anyone can do the second themselves, and Google knows it.

Dofollow versus nofollow

If the link tag carries a nofollow, sponsored or ugc attribute, the site owner has told Google they do not vouch for the link. Google leaves itself room on whether to treat these marks as a ranking signal; a nofollow link is not completely worthless, but you should not count on it for rankings. Still, if a nofollow link brings traffic and introduces your brand to the right audience, it is worth having.

Which links are actually valuable?

To estimate a link's value roughly, look at these questions:

• Is the source site related to your topic? A link from a software blog to your e-commerce plugin makes sense; the same link from a recipe site raises suspicion.
• Does the source page get traffic itself? A link on a page nobody reads is usually invisible to Google too.
• Is the link inside the content, or in the footer or sidebar? In-text links are generally treated as more meaningful.
• Is the anchor text natural? The brand name, the page title or 'here' are part of a natural profile. Seeing the same commercial keyword on every link is the mark of manual manipulation.
• How many links from the same site? The tenth link from one site contributes less than the first link from a new one.

When reviewing your link profile, do not fixate on the total link count; look at the number of distinct linking domains. That number says far more about the profile's diversity and health.

Earning backlinks the safe way

The phrase 'earning links' is chosen deliberately. The other side gives the link of their own accord, and for that you have to produce something someone would want to link to. The methods below have worked for years and do not conflict with Google's guidelines.

Content worth linking to

A guide that answers a question in your industry better than anyone else, a study drawn from your own data, a free calculator or a template. If a moving company publishes a long-distance moving cost calculator, bloggers and news sites writing about the topic have a reason to cite it. Nobody cites a generic 'what is moving' piece.

Digital PR and newsworthiness

Local press, trade publications and niche news sites are always looking for content. If there is real news about your company (a new product, a study result, an event), getting it to the right people in the right form brings links. A press release with no news value mostly goes unanswered.

Guest posts, done right

Writing a genuinely useful piece for the readers of a respected site in your field is still a valid method. The problem is that the method has been abused for years: posts written for money or in bulk, on unrelated sites, purely for the link, are among the behaviors Google treats as spam. Writing once a month for a publication your industry reads is not the same as distributing the same templated post to thirty sites.

Broken links and unlinked brand mentions

• Find external links on sites in your industry that no longer work and offer your own page on the same topic. You solve a problem for the site owner too.
• Keep an eye on pages that mention your brand without linking; a polite email usually turns into a link.
• Your suppliers, partners and the associations you belong to usually keep a references or members page. Being listed there is a natural, easy link.

The risks of buying links

Selling and buying links to influence rankings is against Google's spam policies. That includes sales made under the name of sponsored posts without a nofollow or sponsored mark. The consequences you can face:

• Manual action: a notice arrives in Search Console and the affected pages or the whole site are demoted. You have to fix it and submit a reconsideration request.
• Silent devaluation: Google ignores the links it believes were bought. No notice arrives; you simply do not get what you paid for.
• Dependency: bought links are mostly removed after a year or the site shuts down. If your rankings rest on those links, the drop is inevitable.

When weighing the risk, do not rely on the seller's assurance that 'Google will not notice'; look at which site, which page and what neighborhood the link will sit in. If betting, loan and dental clinic links sit side by side on the same page, there is no reason Google would not notice.

For links bought in the past that you now think are hurting, Google has the disavow tool. It is a last resort; if there is no manual action and the links are merely low quality, doing nothing is usually the right call.

How to do a competitor backlink analysis

The fastest way to learn which links can be earned is to look at where your competitors get theirs. A site that links to them can link to you for a similar reason.

1. Pick three to five sites that compete with you on the same keywords. Include sites that are not business competitors but sit ahead of you in the results.
2. Pull each competitor's linking domains with a backlink checker. Look at unique domains and those domains' own traffic, not the total link count.
3. Mark sites that link to more than one competitor but not to you. This intersection list is the warmest set of opportunities: industry directories, resource pages, bloggers who write regularly.
4. Try to work out how each link was earned. Was it cited as a source in a guide, an interview, an event sponsorship? The method shows the route you can follow too.
5. Remove the competitor's obviously bought or spammy links from the list. Imitating a competitor should not mean copying their mistakes.

This analysis also shows the link types you are missing. If all your competitors get links from trade associations and local press and you have none from those sources, the first target is obvious. To compare competitors' overall standing on one screen, domain overview is a sufficient start. In weranklab you can run the backlink check for a competitor's domain as well and read the results next to your own profile; because you pay for what you use, scanning five competitors in one go does not need a separate plan.

Tracking the links you earn

The way to see the effect of link work is to track rankings. When you earn a new link, note the date and watch the change in the target page's keywords for a few weeks. The effect usually shows not immediately but after Google recrawls the source page. How to set up tracking is in the Google rank tracking guide. On the technical side, make sure your old URLs that receive links do not return 404; otherwise the value earned goes to waste. The broken links section of the technical SEO checklist explains that check.

Common mistakes

• Making link count the goal. A target of 'fifty links this month' leads to low-quality links and, usually, to spending money.
• Getting all links to the same page with the same anchor text. A natural profile arrives at various pages with various texts.
• Overdoing reciprocal link deals. Two sites linking to each other is normal; a link ring of a hundred sites is not.
• Spending time on free directories and forum signatures. Most are either nofollow or pages carrying no value at all.
• Neglecting content and only chasing links. If there is nothing to link to, no email will work.