A backlink (also inbound link) is a link from another website to a page on your site. Search engines read backlinks as a sign that other people consider a page worth pointing to.
At a glance
- Type
- link from another website to your own
- Affects
- discovery of new pages and a relevance signal for Google
- Marking
rel="sponsored",rel="ugc",rel="nofollow"- Visible?
- Search Console Links report (a sample)
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Why do backlinks matter for SEO?
Google says it uses links in two ways. They help it find new pages to crawl, and they serve as a signal when determining how relevant pages are. Google doesn’t disclose how much weight a single link carries.
The anchor text, the clickable text of a link, gives Google context about the target page. Google recommends anchor text that is descriptive, reasonably concise, and relevant to the linked page, and advises against generic phrases like “click here.”
For Google to follow a link, it has to be a standard HTML <a> element with an href attribute. Links that only work through JavaScript events can’t be extracted reliably.
Link attributes: sponsored, ugc, nofollow
The linking site can describe the nature of a link with the rel attribute:
rel="sponsored"for ads and paid placementsrel="ugc"for links in user-generated content such as comments and forum postsrel="nofollow"when no other value fits and the site doesn’t want to be associated with the target or have it crawled from there
Google announced in September 2019 that all three values are treated as hints for ranking. For crawling and indexing, nofollow became a hint on March 1, 2020. Google may therefore decide case by case how it handles a marked link.
Example
A trade magazine covering home energy links to a manufacturer’s rebate calculator:
<a href="https://www.example.com/heat-pump-rebate-calculator/">heat pump rebate calculator</a>
For the manufacturer, this is a backlink with descriptive anchor text. If the article were paid for, the link would need rel="sponsored".
Common mistakes
- Buying links without marking them: Google defines link spam as creating links primarily to manipulate rankings, and buying or selling links for ranking purposes is listed as an example. Paid links are fine when they carry
sponsoredornofollow. - Excessive link exchanges: “link to me and I’ll link to you” arrangements are another example in Google’s spam policies.
- Advertorials with followed links: sponsored articles whose links pass ranking credit fall under link spam as well.
FAQ
How do you find your backlinks? The Links report in Google Search Console lists top linked pages, top linking sites, and top linking text. Google notes it shows a sample, not every link. Third-party SEO tools add data from their own link indexes, each covering only part of the web.
Are backlinks still relevant in 2026? Google’s current documentation still names links as a signal for relevance and as a way to discover pages. How strongly they count compared with other signals is not published.
Can you buy backlinks?
Paid links are a normal part of advertising, according to Google, as long as they are marked sponsored or nofollow. Unmarked paid links violate the spam policies, and according to those policies a site in violation may rank lower or not appear in results at all.
Sources
- Link best practices for Google – Google Search Central (updated Dec 10, 2025)developers.google.com
- Qualify your outbound links to Google – Google Search Centraldevelopers.google.com
- Spam policies for Google web search (link spam) – Google Search Centraldevelopers.google.com
- Evolving 'nofollow' – new ways to identify the nature of links – Google Search Central Blog (Sep 2019)developers.google.com
- Links report – Search Console Helpsupport.google.com
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