What are backlinks

A backlink is any link from another website pointing to yours. Backlinks are the original Google ranking signal (via PageRank) and remain one of the top 3 ranking factors today.

The original premise (PageRank, 1998)

Sergey Brin and Larry Page's insight: a link from site A to site B is site A's vote of confidence in site B. More high-quality votes = higher authority.

The algorithm evolved massively since 1998, but the core idea remains: backlinks are credibility signals.

What makes a backlink "good"

• Relevance, a link from a relevant site (insurance blog → your insurance CRM page) weighs more than an unrelated one
• Authority of the linking page, pages with their own backlinks pass more juice
• Authority of the linking domain, links from high-DR sites weigh more
• Anchor text, the clickable words pass relevance signals
• Dofollow vs nofollow, dofollow passes ranking signals, nofollow typically doesn't
• Context, a link from within article body > a footer link > a navigation link
• First-link-on-page, historically counted more if the same page links multiple times

What makes a backlink bad

• Spammy sites, link farms, PBNs, adult/gambling where inappropriate
• Irrelevant sites, completely off-topic
• Paid links without disclosure, violates Google guidelines
• Exact-match anchor text spam, many links with the same commercial anchor
• Mass low-quality directory submissions

Bad backlinks at best don't help; at worst, they trigger algorithmic penalties or manual actions.

Dofollow vs nofollow (and newer)

• dofollow (default), passes ranking signals
• nofollow, historically "don't pass signals." Now a "hint" that Google may consider
• ugc, user-generated content (comments, forum posts)
• sponsored, paid/sponsored link

Nofollow links still have value: they drive traffic, build brand awareness, and Google uses them as context clues. But for pure ranking signal, dofollow wins.

Anchor text

• Exact match: "best SEO tools" linking to a SEO tools page, strong signal, overused = spam flag
• Partial match: "best tools for SEO practitioners", safer
• Branded: "Samuel Ochoa" linking to a page on my site, natural
• Naked URL: "https://example.com", common, passes some signal
• Generic: "click here", low signal, common

Natural link profiles have a mix, weighted toward branded/generic. Heavy exact-match is the #1 footprint of link-buying operations.

What you can't easily tell from a backlink

• Whether a site paid for it
• Whether it's from a site Google has penalized
• Whether Google even counts it (Google sometimes quietly ignores links without telling you)

The ratio that matters

High-quality backlinks per page + consistent link-earning velocity > total backlink count. A site with 100 great links often outranks one with 10,000 low-quality ones.