Backlink
1 min read · Reviewed 17 Oct 2026
In short
A link to your site from someone else's.
In plain English
A link pointing at your page from another website. Search engines have long treated them as a signal that a page is worth showing, on the theory that people link to things they found useful.
A real example
A trade publication linking to your research because it is the only place that number exists.
Why it matters
Buying them is against every search engine's guidelines and periodically punished. Earning them requires publishing something worth citing, which is a content decision rather than an SEO one.
