What Are Backlinks in SEO and Why Do They Matter?

Backlinks (aka inbound links) have always been a key ranking signal in SEO, acting like votes of confidence from other websites. Historically, a strong backlink profile could lift a page to the top of Google’s search results. However, recent shifts in Google’s algorithms and emerging AI-driven ranking models have prompted a reevaluation. While some argue their influence is declining, research and expert consensus confirm that high-quality backlinks remain essential, but their nature and impact have evolved.

What Are Backlinks?

Backlinks, also known as inbound links, are hyperlinks placed on one website that direct users to another. From an SEO perspective, these links function as a trust signal. When a reputable website links to your content, it tells search engines that your page is a credible source of information.

Example:

Let’s pretend that you run a sustainable packaging agency. A respected environmental organisation links to a blog post you have written about the importance of sustainable packaging.

The link from that website is good for 2 reasons.

1. The link is relevant to your niche. It’s a placement from a company that has the same values as you do.
2. Your target audience is interested in the environment and will hang around and follow environmental organisations.

Why Are Backlinks Important for SEO?

1. Establishing Authority and Trust

Search engines aim to deliver the most reliable information to users. Backlinks help them assess the credibility of a page. If multiple trustworthy websites refer to your content, it suggests that your page is valuable and reliable.

2. Boosting Search Engine Rankings

Analysis consistently shows that pages ranking #1 have significantly more backlinks. However, Google’s own engineers acknowledge that the relative weight of links has decreased, with 2023–2024 shifts downplaying backlinks in favour of semantic relevance and user signals.

• FYI: Semantic relevance is how well the content’s meaning matches the searcher’s intent, and user signals are audience behaviours, like clicks, that indicate the page’s usefulness.

3. Driving Referral Traffic

Besides their SEO value, backlinks bring real people to your website. When someone clicks a link on another website and lands on yours, that is referral traffic. These users are often highly targeted and more likely to engage with your content, get in touch, or make a purchase.

4. Improving Indexing and Discovery

Search engine crawlers use links to discover and index new content. Backlinks create pathways that help search engines find your pages faster. Especially for newer websites, backlinks from established sources ensure your content is not overlooked during indexing.

5. Understanding Competitor Strategies

By looking at websites that link to your competitors, you can uncover potential linking opportunities that might also be relevant for your business. This process is known as competitive backlink analysis. There are several SEO tools available that allow you to examine your competitors’ backlink profiles and identify where their links are coming from.

One popular paid tool is SEMrush, which provides detailed reports on backlink sources, anchor text, and domain authority. For those looking for a free option, Ahrefs Webmaster Tools allows you to view basic backlink data, while Ubersuggest by Neil Patel also offers a free plan with backlink tracking capabilities.

Types of Backlinks

Understanding different backlink types helps you build a well-rounded SEO strategy.

Dofollow Links

These are standard backlinks that transfer SEO value to your website. When another website links to yours without additional tags, it is usually a dofollow link that helps improve rankings.

Nofollow Links

These links include a special tag that tells search engines not to pass on ranking value. While they do not directly boost SEO, they can still drive traffic and enhance visibility.

Editorial Links

These are naturally placed by other authors who find your content valuable. They often carry the most SEO weight because they result from genuine recommendations.

Guest Post Links

When you contribute articles to other websites, you often include a link back to your own content. This approach helps build both traffic and authority when used appropriately. 

Directory and Resource Links

Links from reputable online directories or curated resource pages may not be as powerful individually, but they contribute to local SEO and increase your website’s discoverability.

Sponsored and UGC Links

Links from sponsored content or user-generated content (UGC) such as comments, are tagged to indicate their origin. These tags prevent them from unfairly influencing rankings, but they can still offer value in terms of traffic and visibility.

What Makes a Backlink High Quality?

Not all backlinks offer the same benefits. The effectiveness of a backlink depends on several key factors:

Relevance:

A backlink from a website related to your industry or content topic carries more SEO weight than one from an unrelated source.

Authority:

Links from domains with strong reputations (e.g., educational institutions, government websites, or major media outlets) are highly valuable.

Placement:

Links embedded within the main content of a page are more effective than those in sidebars, footers, or comments.

Anchor Text:

Descriptive and natural anchor text improves both usability and SEO, guiding search engines to understand the context of the linked content.

Editorial Integrity:

Links earned based on content merit are more trustworthy than those obtained through manipulation or paid placements.

How to Earn High-Quality Backlinks

• Produce original, data-driven content that naturally attracts links.
• Use broken-link outreach to suggest replacing broken links with your content.
• Publish on reputable websites via guest posts or digital PR, including influencer and media features.
• Participate in link-worthy formats such as HARO, infographics, and research roundups.

How to Monitor and Maintain Your Backlink Profile

A healthy backlink profile is essential for long-term SEO success. Here is how to manage it effectively:

Audit your backlinks regularly

Monitoring your backlink profile is essential for maintaining SEO health. You should regularly check both new links pointing to your website and any lost links—those from websites that previously linked to you but have since removed or changed the link. Losing a high-authority backlink can negatively affect your rankings, so tracking changes over time is key.

Use SEO tools like Moz, Ahrefs, or Semrush to review who is linking to your website and assess the quality of those links. These tools offer detailed backlink reports, including domain authority, anchor text, and spam score indicators.

What Is a Good Link Quality?

Not all backlinks are created equal. For example, a link from a respected industry journal or a well-known blog in your niche carries much more weight than a random link from a low-quality directory. A high-quality backlink typically comes from a website that is:

• Relevant to your industry or topic
• Authoritative, with a high domain rating (DR) or domain authority (DA)
• Trusted, with original content and no history of spam
• Contextual, meaning the link appears naturally within related content
• Well-placed, ideally within the main body of the page rather than the footer or sidebar

Identify and remove harmful links

Backlinks from spammy, irrelevant, or untrustworthy sources can harm your SEO performance. Here’s how you can determine if a backlink is potentially harmful:

• Click through to the linking website and ask yourself: Is this website relevant to my business? Would my target customer ever visit it?
• Use a domain authority checker to evaluate the linking domain’s trustworthiness. A free tool such as Ahrefs’ Website Authority Checker or Moz Link Explorer can help you determine the DA/DR of a linking domain.
• Look out for links from link farms, spam blogs, or low-quality directories, especially if they are using exact-match anchor text excessively.

How to Disavow Harmful Links Using Google Search Console

1. Download your backlink profile from Google Search Console or a trusted SEO tool.
2. Create a .txt file listing the domains or individual URLs you wish to disavow. Use the format:
3. domain:example.com or paste specific links, one per line.
4. Visit the Disavow Tool (requires GSC login).
5. Upload your .txt file and submit it.
6. Google will take your disavow file into account when assessing your website’s backlink profile, although this process may take several weeks.

Free SEO Backlink Audit Tools for Small Businesses

If you are a small business owner or working with a limited budget, several free tools can help monitor and analyse your backlinks:

• Ahrefs Webmaster Tools (free with registration): Provides a solid overview of backlink data, including referring domains, anchor text, and new/lost links.
• Google Search Console: A completely free tool from Google that lets you see backlinks pointing to your website.
• Ubersuggest (by Neil Patel): Offers limited free daily searches for backlink analysis and domain overview.
• SEO Review Tools – Backlink Checker: A basic, browser-based tool that gives instant link data without an account.

Fix Broken Links

A broken link is a hyperlink that points to a webpage that no longer exists or returns an error, such as a 404 page not found. Broken links negatively affect user experience and SEO because they disrupt the flow of information and prevent search engines from crawling your content efficiently.

If external websites are linking to broken pages on your website, you risk losing valuable referral traffic and backlink authority. To maintain the SEO value of those inbound links, you should either restore the missing content or set up proper redirects so that users and search engines are taken to a relevant live page instead.Learn more about redirect best practices for SEO.

How to add redirects in WordPress:

• Use a plugin like Redirection or Yoast SEO Premium. Once installed, go to the plugin settings, enter the broken URL in the source field, and the new target URL in the destination field. Save the change, and the redirect will be in place.

How to add redirects in Shopify:

• In your Shopify admin, go to Online Store > Navigation > URL Redirects. Click Create URL Redirect, input the old path and new path, then save. Shopify handles the rest automatically.

How to add redirects in Squarespace:

• Navigate to Settings > Advanced > URL Mappings. In the text box, type the old URL followed by -> and the new URL, ending with 301 for a permanent redirect. Example:
• /old-page -> /new-page 301

Conclusion

Backlinks continue to be a cornerstone of effective SEO, even as search evolves to prioritise content quality and user intent. Google’s own core update guidance emphasises that while backlinks matter, trustworthy content and a great user experience are now just as essential.

While once viewed as the most important ranking factor, recent statements from Google and industry research suggest that backlink signals are no longer as dominant as they used to be. Instead, they now work alongside other key factors like content quality, user experience, and semantic relevance.

That said, high-quality backlinks still serve as important signals of authority, trust, and content value, and they remain a vital part of building organic visibility. By focusing on earning backlinks naturally through original content, strategic outreach, and ethical link-building practices, you create a solid SEO foundation.

As search algorithms continue to advance, the goal remains unchanged: publish valuable content that others want to reference and share. When you do that consistently, backlinks and rankings will follow.

Need help with your websites backlinks?

Hey, we’re Accentuate Agency, a leading UK SEO Agency that works on SEO projects for clients across the UK and globally. Contact us today to arrange a no-obligation discovery call where we can learn more about your project and how we can help.

FAQs About Backlinks

What are backlinks in SEO?

In the context of search engine optimisation, backlinks are hyperlinks from one website that direct users to another website. They serve as signals of trust and relevance in the eyes of search engines.

How to create a backlink for SEO?

There are several effective methods to generate backlinks for SEO purposes. These include writing guest articles for reputable websites and including links to your own content, creating original and shareable resources such as infographics or research findings, submitting your website to well-established business directories, and conducting outreach to request links from websites with related content. Identifying and replacing broken links on other websites with your own content is also a commonly used technique.

What are the three types of backlinks?

Backlinks are generally classified into three categories:

1. DoFollow backlinks: These are standard hyperlinks that pass authority from the linking website to the destination page, contributing positively to search rankings.
2. NoFollow backlinks: These contain a specific HTML attribute indicating that the link should not influence the ranking of the target website. While they do not directly affect rankings, they may still generate referral traffic.
3. User-Generated Content (UGC) and Sponsored backlinks: These types of links are used to identify content that is either submitted by users (such as in comments or forums) or paid for as part of an advertising or sponsorship agreement, in accordance with Google’s link attribution guidelines.

What is the main purpose of using backlinks in SEO?

The primary objective of using backlinks in SEO is to enhance a website’s authority and credibility, thereby improving its visibility in search engine results. Search engines interpret backlinks as endorsements from other websites, which helps determine the relevance and trustworthiness of a given page or domain.

How many backlinks do I need to rank?

There is no universally applicable number of backlinks required to achieve a high ranking, as this depends on several factors including the competitiveness of the target keywords, the quality of the linking domains, and the overall strength of the competing pages. In most cases, a smaller number of high-quality backlinks from authoritative and relevant sources is more effective than a large volume of low-quality links.

What are the top 3 SEO ranking factors?

According to leading industry research and guidance from search engine providers, the three most influential SEO ranking factors are as follows:

1. Content quality: This includes the relevance, accuracy, originality, and comprehensiveness of the page content.
2. Backlink profile: The number, diversity, and authority of external websites linking to the page.
3. User experience: Technical aspects such as page loading speed, mobile compatibility, website security (including the use of HTTPS), and overall usability.