Why backlinks
still matter.

What a backlink is

A backlink is a link on someone else’s site that points to yours. From their side it is an outbound link; from yours it is inbound, or a backlink. The words you click on are its anchor text.

That is all it is. What makes it worth anything is where it sits, and that is most of what these guides are about.

Links are how pages get found

Search engines do not know a page exists until something leads them to it. Google says one of the main ways it discovers new pages is by following links from pages it already knows. A sitemap can tell it about your pages too, but a link from a page it visits often is the surest way in.

For a new site, this is the part that matters most. A good product with nothing pointing at it can wait a long time to be found.

Links are read as a recommendation

The idea behind PageRank, the system Google was founded on, is that a link from one page to another is a kind of vote, and a vote from a page that is itself well linked counts for more. Google’s guide to its ranking systems says PageRank has evolved a lot since then, and that it “continues to be part of our core ranking systems”.

One link from a page people already trust can outweigh many from pages nobody links to.

Links describe the page they point to

Links also tell Google what a page is about. Its guidance on links says the anchor text, and the words around a link, help it understand the page on the other end.

A link that says “a booking tool for illustrators” in an article about taking commissions says a great deal more than a bare URL in a list. It is also why the same link is worth more on a page about your subject than on a page about something else.

Links send people

This is the one benefit that does not depend on any algorithm. A link in an article your buyer is already reading sends you someone who was interested before they arrived.

It is also the only part you can check for yourself: the visits show up in your analytics, and the signups either follow or they do not.

Why being found is worth it

Being findable only matters if being found sends people, and the research says it does. A study of the top 759 US online retailers found that most of the traffic they got from search came from the ordinary, unpaid results rather than ads, and that clicks fell off sharply with every position down the page. The study was funded by a Google grant, which the authors state, and it measured rank, not links.

An eye-tracking study of how people read results found they trust and click higher positions partly because those results are higher. Position earns clicks on its own. Links are one of the things that help a good page earn the position.

Links and AI answers

More people now ask an AI chat or read an AI summary before they click anything. Google says its AI features, such as AI Overviews, link to pages from its search index, and that the usual practices for search apply: there are no extra requirements for appearing in them. A page that is hard to find or hard to trust in search is hard to find there too.

Other assistants that search the web do not publish how they choose sources, so nobody can tell you exactly how a link moves them. What they can use is only what they can find, and the pages that come up for your subject are the pages already being linked to and read.

What changed

Because links were counted, people started manufacturing them: buying them, swapping them, and generating them in bulk. Google’s response has been to discount links that exist only to be counted. Its spam policies name buying links for ranking, excessive link exchanges and links created by automated programs as link spam, and say that sites taking part can rank lower or drop out of results altogether.

The practical consequence is that the number of links you have tells you much less than it used to. Which pages link to you, and why, tells you almost everything.

Four things people get wrong

“More links always help.”

Links that exist only to be counted are the ones Google says it ignores or acts against. A hundred of those can be worth less than nothing.

“Domain Rating is Google’s score.”

DR, DA and similar numbers are estimates made by SEO tool companies from their own crawls. They are not Google’s numbers.

“A nofollow link is worthless.”

Google treats nofollow, sponsored and ugc as hints, and any link still sends readers. One in an article your buyer reads can beat a followed link nobody sees.

“You have to pay for links.”

Paying for a link that passes ranking credit is what Google’s spam policies forbid. The links that last are the ones an editor adds because the page is better with them.

What links cannot do

A link will not rescue a page that does not answer the search. Google uses many signals, and the page itself comes first. In a 2024 talk, Google’s Gary Illyes said links are not among its top three ranking factors and that “we need very few links to rank pages”. Nobody can promise you a ranking, and anyone who does is guessing.

What links can do is help good pages get found, understood and trusted, and bring the right readers along with them. That is worth doing well rather than doing a lot of.

See who links to you today

You do not need a paid tool to start. If your site is in Google Search Console, its Links report shows the sites that link to you most and the pages of yours they link to. Read a few of those pages. Most people find their best links came from a page that simply had a reason to mention them.

So what should you do?

Stop asking how to get more links and start asking which pages would be better for their readers with a link to you.

1. Find the pages your buyers already read. Guides, roundups and articles about the problem you solve, not whole sites.
2. Find the sentence that needs you. A line that already recommends what you make, a list that is missing you, a question you answer.
3. Ask for that, and only that. One short email naming the page and the reason. If there is no reason, there is no email.

That question has a smaller answer, and a much more useful one. The next guide is about telling those pages apart from the rest.