When people first learn SEO, they hear the word “backlinks” all the time. “You need more backlinks.” “Your competitor has better backlinks.” But what is a backlink, really? And why would a link on somebody else’s website change where your page shows up on Google?
Let me explain it in plain words. By the end of this lesson, you will know what a backlink is, why Google pays attention to links, how Google’s original PageRank idea worked, what “link equity” means, and what Google says about links today. You will also look up the real backlinks to your own site.
What exactly is a backlink?
A backlink is a link on another website that points to a page on your website. If a local news site writes about your bakery and links to your menu page, that link is a backlink for you. From the news site’s side, it is an outbound link. From your side, it is a backlink (some people also say “inbound link” or “incoming link”).
In the page’s code, a normal link looks like this:
<a href="https://example-bakery.com/menu/">fresh sourdough menu</a>There are two parts to notice. The href is the address the link points to. The words between the tags, “fresh sourdough menu,” are the anchor text, which is the clickable text people see. Google’s link guidance says it can generally only follow links written this way, as an <a> element with an href. Anchor text matters because it gives Google a short hint about what the linked page is about.
Here are the words you will hear around backlinks, in simple terms:
| Term | What it means | Simple example |
|---|---|---|
| Backlink | A link from another site to your site | A food blog links to your bakery’s menu |
| Internal link | A link from one of your pages to another of your pages | Your home page links to your menu |
| Outbound link | A link from your site to someone else’s | Your blog links to a flour supplier |
| Anchor text | The clickable words of a link | “fresh sourdough menu” |
| Referring domain | A website that links to you, counted once no matter how many links it has | Ten links from one blog = one referring domain |
| Link equity | The value or “trust” a link can pass to the page it points to | Explained later in this lesson |
Internal links have their own lesson, internal linking: connecting your pages. In this chapter, we focus on links from other websites.
Why does Google care about links from other sites?
Links do two big jobs for Google. The first job is discovery. Google’s crawler moves around the web by following links, the same way you might click from one page to another. Google’s SEO Starter Guide says it mainly finds new pages through links from pages it has already crawled. If nobody links to a page, Google has a harder time finding it. You learned about this in how search engines work.
The second job is trust. Think about how you choose a dentist in a new town. If one neighbor recommends a dentist, that is nice. If your doctor, your colleague and three neighbors all recommend the same dentist, you feel much more confident. Links work a little like those recommendations. When other websites link to a page, they are, in a way, vouching for it.
Google says this directly. On its “How Search works” site, Google explains that one of the factors it uses to judge quality is whether other prominent websites link to or refer to the content, because that is often a good sign the information can be trusted.
In brief: a backlink is like a recommendation. Not every recommendation counts the same, but a page that many trusted sources recommend is easier for Google to trust too.
How did Google’s original PageRank idea work?
When Google started in the late 1990s, most search engines looked mainly at the words on a page. Google’s founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, added a different idea, called PageRank. It looked at the links between pages to estimate how important each page was.
The idea came from academic papers. A research paper that many other papers cite is probably important. And a citation from a famous, widely cited paper means more than a citation from an unknown one. PageRank applied the same thinking to web pages.
Here is a simplified example to make the idea concrete (the numbers are invented, just to show the logic):
- Page A has lots of links pointing to it, so it has a lot of “importance” to share.
- Page A links out to only two pages. Each of those two pages gets a good share of A’s importance.
- Page B also has lots of importance, but it links out to 200 pages. Each of those gets only a tiny slice.
- Page C has almost no links pointing to it, so a link from C passes very little.
So in the original idea, a link was worth more when it came from an important page, and when that page didn’t link out to too many other places. That is the root of the “vote” analogy you hear in SEO.
Is PageRank still used? Yes, but not in its 1998 form. Google’s guide to its ranking systems says PageRank was one of the core ranking systems used when Google first launched, that it has evolved a lot since then, and that it is still part of the core ranking systems. Google also has other systems that look at how pages link to each other to understand what pages are about. What you should not do is chase an exact number. The old public “PageRank score” in the Google Toolbar is long gone, and Google doesn’t publish a PageRank score today.
What is link equity, and how does it flow?
Link equity (old-timers call it “link juice”) is an SEO term for the value a link can pass from one page to another. It is not a Google term or a number you can see. It is just a handy way to think about the PageRank idea.
Picture water flowing through pipes. A strong page is a big water tank. Every link is a pipe. Water flows from the tank into the pages it links to. If the tank has many pipes, each pipe carries less water. Pages that receive lots of water can pass some of it on through their own links, including your internal links.
That last point is important for beginners. When a strong site links to your blog post, the benefit doesn’t have to stay on that one post. Your internal links can carry some of that value to your service or product pages. That is one reason a well-linked site structure matters. If you want a deeper explanation, read our guide on how link equity flows through links.
A few things can stop or reduce the flow:
- Qualified links. Links marked with
rel="nofollow",rel="sponsored"orrel="ugc"tell Google not to treat them as a normal endorsement. You will learn these in the next lesson. - Links Google can’t crawl. Fake links built only with JavaScript clicks and no real
hrefmay not be followed at all. - Links Google ignores. Google is good at spotting spammy links and simply not counting them.
- Broken links. If a link points to a page that no longer exists, the value goes nowhere, unless you redirect that old URL to a live page.
What does Google say about links today?
This is where many beginners get confused, because there is a lot of old advice online. Here is what Google’s own documentation says, in plain words:
- Links are one signal among many. The SEO Starter Guide reminds readers that Google has many ranking signals and that PageRank is just one of them. Good, useful content usually matters more.
- Links happen naturally over time. Google says other sites linking to you is something that builds naturally, as people find your content useful.
- Manipulating links is spam. Google’s spam policies list “link spam,” such as buying or selling links that pass ranking credit, excessive link exchanges, and using automated programs to create links. Paid links are allowed only when they are qualified with
sponsoredornofollow. - Promotion is fine. Google encourages you to tell people about your content, through social media, community engagement, advertising and word of mouth, so interested people find it. Promoting is not the same as manipulating.
- Anchor text should describe the page. Google’s link guidance asks for short, descriptive anchor text and warns against stuffing keywords into links.
So the lesson is not “get as many links as possible.” It is “become the kind of site people want to link to, then help them find you.” If you want to understand where the line sits between fair and unfair tactics, revisit white-hat vs black-hat SEO. And for a longer read on this topic, see our article what are backlinks and how to get them.
Try it: look up who already links to your site
Most site owners have never looked at their own backlinks. Let me show you how to do it for free with Google Search Console. If you haven’t set it up yet, the lesson on Google Search Console for beginners walks you through it.
- Sign in to Google Search Console and choose your website (the “property”).
- In the left menu, click Links.
- Look at the Top linking sites table under External links. These are the websites that link to you most.
- Open Top linked pages. This shows which of your pages earn the most links from other sites. Often it is the home page, plus one or two useful articles.
- Open Top linking text. This is the anchor text other sites use. Most of it will probably be your brand name or your web address, which is normal.
- Write down three things: your top five linking sites, your top three linked pages, and any linking site you don’t recognize.
Keep in mind that this report shows a sample, not every link, and its tables show up to 1,000 rows. That is fine for a beginner’s check. Paid tools such as Ahrefs or Semrush show more, and our guide on how to check your backlinks compares free and paid options. Don’t panic if you see some odd sites in the list. Every site collects a few strange links. We will cover when (rarely) you need to act in the lesson on bad links.
One useful question to ask yourself: why did these sites link to you? Was it a helpful article, a local listing, a partner, a news story? The answer tells you what kind of content earns links for your business.
Questions beginners ask about backlinks
Is one backlink from a big website better than many from small ones?
Not always. One link from a respected, relevant site can be worth more than dozens of links from weak or unrelated sites. But a steady stream of genuine links from smaller sites in your field also helps. Think relevance and trust first, size second.
Do links from social media posts count as backlinks?
Technically, yes, a link from a social post is a link to your site. But most social platforms qualify those links so they don't pass ranking credit, and Google doesn't treat social shares as a direct ranking boost. Social is still useful for getting your content seen by people who might link to it later.
Can I rank without any backlinks?
For very specific, low-competition searches, yes, especially in local search or for long-tail questions. For competitive topics it is much harder, because the pages you compete against usually have links from trusted sites. Start with the easier searches while you earn links over time.
How many backlinks do I need?
There is no magic number. It depends on how many and what kind of links the pages already ranking for your target search have. Compare yourself with them, and focus on getting better links, not just more of them.
Do internal links count as backlinks?
No. A backlink comes from another website. Links between your own pages are internal links. They still help Google find your pages and understand which ones matter most, which is why they have their own lesson.
Links are recommendations, so quality comes next
Let me sum up. A backlink is a link from another site to yours. Google uses links to discover pages and as one of many signals of trust, an idea that started with PageRank and still lives on in a much more advanced form. Value flows through links, which is why where a link comes from, and where your internal links send it, both matter.
But not every link is a good recommendation. Some help, some do nothing and a few can cause problems. That is exactly what the next lesson covers: what makes a good link (and a bad one). If you would like us to look at your backlink profile with you, you can always ask us for a free quote. No pressure, just keep learning at your own pace.