What is a Backlink?. The Complete SEO Developer Course 2023 [Videos].

Backlinks are links from a page on one website to another. If someone links to your site, then you have a backlink from them. If you link to another website, then they have a backlink from you.

For example, these words link to YouTube, so they now have a backlink from us.

In this guide, youll learn:

• Why backlinks are important;
• What makes a good backlink;
• How to check backlinks (to any website);
• How to get more backlinks

1. Rankings

Search engines like Google see backlinks as votes of confidence. Generally speaking, the more votes your web pages have, the more likely they are to rank for relevant search queries.

How do we know? Weve studied link-based ranking factors on a few occasions and always find the same thing: the number of backlinks from unique websites (referring domains) correlates strongly with organic search traffic.

2. Discoverability

Search engines find new content by revisiting pages they already know about to check for new links.

Because search engines revisit popular pages more often than unpopular ones, they may discover your content faster if you get backlinks from popular pages.

3. Referral traffic

Backlinks exist to point people to useful resources. Thats why theyre clickable.

When someone clicks on a link to your website, you get referral traffic.

What makes a good backlink?

Not all backlinks are created equal. Here are some of the many attributes that contribute to a backlinks quality and utility.

Relevance

Google places more value on relevant backlinks because people are more likely to click on them. This is something they talk about in their “reasonable surfer” patent.

What does this mean in real terms? If a plumber has backlinks from two pages, one about cats and one about installing boilers, chances are the latter is most valuable.

This idea also plays out at the domain level.

Readers of plumbing.com are more likely to click on a link to a plumbers website than readers of cats.com.

Authority

Backlinks from strong web pages usually transfer more “authority” than those from weak ones.

Page-level authority is something weve studied a few times, and weve found a clear relationship between it and organic traffic.

SIDENOTE.

 URL Rating (UR) is Connekt Teacher page-level authority metric. Its scored on a scale from 0–100.

That said, backlinks from strong pages dont always transfer more authority.

Googles original patent states that authority is split equally between all outbound links on a web page. So if you have backlinks from two pages and one has more outbound links than the other, then, all else being equal, the link from the page with fewer outbound links transfers more authority.

Are things that simple these days? Probably not. Google has a fair number of patents describing various methods for assigning value to backlinks.

Furthermore, internal backlinks also contribute to a pages authority.

FURTHER READING

• Internal Links for SEO: An Actionable Guide
• A Simple SEO Strategy for 2019 (The Middleman Method)

Traffic

Backlinks from high-traffic pages will usually send you more referral traffic than those from low-traffic pages. Thats obvious. The real question is whether backlinks from high-traffic pages positively affect rankings more than those from low-traffic pages?

This is a question we recently tried to answer. We took the top-ranking pages for 44,589 non-branded keywords and looked at organic traffic to the pages that link to them.

Heres what we found:

Long story short, theres a small but clear correlation between rankings and backlinks from pages with organic search traffic. However, the sheer number of backlinks from unique websites (referring domains) and page-level authority look to be more important.

Placement

Because people are more likely to click prominently-placed links, some links on web pages likely pass more authority than others.

Bill Slawski talks about this in his analysis of Googles updated “reasonable surfer” patent.

1. If a link is in the main content area of a page, uses a font and color that might make it stand out, and uses text that may make it something likely that someone might click upon it, then it could pass along a fair amount of PageRank. On the other hand, if it combines features that make it less likely to be clicked upon, such as being in the footer of a page, in the same color text as the rest of the text on that page, and the same font type, and uses anchor text that doesnt interest people, it may not pass along a lot of PageRank.

Bill Slawski, Founder SEO by the Sea

Consider this when pursuing links. If your link will likely end up in the sites footer, or along with fifty other sites in the sidebar, then put your energy into other opportunities.

Followed vs. nofollowed

Nofollowed backlinks dont usually influence the linked pages rankings—although they can.

Because link building takes time and effort, its best to prioritize getting followed links. Just dont kick up a fuss if you get a nofollowed link. It may still have some SEO value.

Recommended reading: What Is a Nofollow Link? Everything You Need to Know

Anchor text

Anchor text refers to the clickable words that form a backlink.

Google says that anchor text influences rankings in their original patent.

Google employs a number of techniques to improve search quality including page rank, anchor text, and proximity information.

That said, when we studied the relationship between anchor text and rankings across 384,614 pages, the correlations were weak.

So while anchor text does matter, its not as important as other things.

SIDENOTE.

 If youre building backlinks through outreach, you wont usually have much control over the anchor text used when linking to your site. Thats a good thing. It helps keep things natural and is also a sign that the link youve acquired is of a certain quality. 

How to check backlinks

There are two ways to check a website or web pages backlinks. The first method only works for sites that you own. Use the second to check backlinks to another website or web page.

Checking backlinks in Google Search Console

Google Search Console gives you data about your websites organic search traffic and overall performance. Its free to use—just sign up for a free account and verify ownership of your website.

Once signed in, click “Links” on the sidebar.

The number below “External links” shows the total number of unique backlinks to the website.

Below this are three reports.

• Top linked pages: The most linked pages on your website.
• Top linking sites: The sites with the most backlinks to your website.
• Top linking text: The most frequently used anchors when linking to your website.

If youre new to Search Console, start with the Top linked pages report.

Then click on any URL to see the websites linking to a specific page.

Then click on any website to see which of its pages link to that page.

Checking backlinks using a third-party backlink checker

To check backlinks to a website that you dont own, use a tool like Connekt Teacher free backlink checker.

Just enter a domain or URL, and hit “Check backlinks.”

Youll see the total number of backlinks and referring domains (links from unique websites), plus the top 100 backlinks.

For each backlink, youll see a few details, including:

• Referring page: The page linking to the target.
• Domain Rating (DR): The strength of the linking website.
• URL Rating (UR): The strength of the linking web page.
• Traffic: The total estimated monthly organic search traffic to the linking page.
• Anchor and backlink. The anchor and surrounding link text.

SIDENOTE.

 Our free backlink checker shows only one backlink per domain. 

To see the five most frequently used anchors, check the “Top 5 anchors” report.

To see the five most linked pages, check the “Top 5 pages” report.

SIDENOTE.

 The Top 5 pages report only works if youre analyzing a domain, not a web page. 

To see a full list of backlinks for any page or website, use Connekt Teacher Site Explorer.

How to get more backlinks

There are three ways to get more backlinks: create them, earn them, or build them.

Earning backlinks

This is when people discover your content via search engines like Google, social media, or word of mouth, and choose to link to your page. In order words, earned backlinks are organic.

You can improve your chances of earning more backlinks by creating truly useful content that people should want to link to.

Creating backlinks

This is when you manually add links to your site from other websites. Examples include submitting to business directories, leaving blog comments, and replying to forum threads.

Building backlinks

This is when you reach out to other site owners, editors, or webmasters and ask them to link to your page. For this to work, you need to have a clear value proposition. Thats where link building tactics come in.

Here are a few tried and tested ones:

• Guest blogging: Offer to write a one-off post for another website.
• Broken link building: Find relevant dead links on other sites, then reach out and suggest your working link as the replacement. (You can use our broken link checker to do this.)
• The Skyscraper Technique: Find relevant content with lots of links, make something better, then ask those linking to the original to link to you instead.
• Unlinked mentions: Find unlinked mentions of your brand, then ask the author to make the mention clickable.

Learn more about these tactics and others in the video and posts below.

FURTHER READING

• 9 EASY Link Building Strategies (That ANYONE Can Use)
• Guest Blogging for SEO: How to Build High-quality Links at Scale
• A Simple (But Complete) Guide to Broken Link Building
• A Simple Guide to Turning (Unlinked) Brand Mentions into Links
• How to Get Backlinks: 7 Tactics That Dont Require New Content
• Resource Page Link Building: The Only Guide You Need