Backlink
A backlink is a link on someone else's website that points to yours. It is the same object as any hyperlink — 'backlink' simply names it from the perspective of the site being linked to.
Also called: inbound link, incoming link, external link
Not all backlinks are counted the same way. A link's value to search engines depends on where it sits (a link inside the body of a relevant article carries more weight than one in a footer or a sidebar template), whether the linking page is itself reachable and indexed, what the clickable text says, and whether the link is marked with an attribute that tells crawlers not to pass ranking credit.
Relevance is the part people most often underrate. A link from a modest site whose subject genuinely overlaps yours is usually worth more than one from a large site with no topical connection, because the link makes sense to a reader in the first case and looks arbitrary in the second.
Backlinks are also not permanent. Pages get rewritten, sites get redesigned, articles get pruned — and a link that existed last quarter may be gone. Programs that count links at the moment of placement and never look again systematically overstate what they have.
Common questions
How many backlinks do I need?
There is no target number, and any specific figure is invented. Ranking depends on the competitiveness of the query, the relevance and quality of the linking sites, and everything else about your page — a handful of strong, relevant links routinely outperforms hundreds of weak ones.
Related terms
Link building
Link building is the practice of getting other websites to link to yours, because search engines treat a link from one site to another as a signal that the destination is worth showing to searchers.
Dofollow vs nofollow links
A nofollow link carries a rel="nofollow" attribute telling search engines not to pass ranking credit through it; a dofollow link is simply an ordinary link with no such attribute. 'Dofollow' is informal shorthand — there is no rel="dofollow".
Anchor text
Anchor text is the visible, clickable words of a link. Search engines read it as a description of the page being linked to, which is why it influences what that page is understood to be about.
Link equity
Link equity is the ranking value a link passes from one page to another. It is the modern, less-jocular name for what SEOs long called 'link juice', and it descends from PageRank, Google's original method of scoring pages by the links pointing at them.
Last reviewed 2026-07-30. All glossary terms
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