In plain English
It's word of mouth for the web. A recommendation from a respected local paper carries weight; a hundred from strangers nobody's heard of carries very little, and some can count against you.
Used in a sentence
“The local chamber of commerce linked to you from their member directory, which is exactly the kind of backlink that helps.”
“Someone offered to sell us a thousand backlinks, and I'm glad we asked before paying.”
In detail
Search engines read links between sites as signals of trust and relevance. A link from a well-regarded, related site, like a trade association, a supplier, a local news story or a client's website, tells Google your business is real and relevant to that topic. The words of the link and the site it comes from both matter.
Quality beats quantity. Buying links or swapping them in bulk is against Google's spam policies and can get a site pushed down in results. The backlinks that last come from being worth mentioning: local partnerships, sponsorships, genuinely useful guides, and listings in the directories your industry actually uses.
Why it matters for your business
Good backlinks help Google trust your site enough to show it, especially in a competitive area.
- Signals that your business is real and relevant
- Brings visitors from sites they already trust
- Builds over time and keeps working
Easy to mix up
A backlink isn't the same as a citation. A citation is a mention of your business's name, address and phone number, with or without a link. Both help local search in different ways.
Related terms
Citation, Organic traffic and Keyword. Or browse the whole glossary.
