If you’ve spent any time researching SEO, you’ve heard that backlinks matter — a lot. But if you’re new to the field, the mechanics of link building can feel confusing or even intimidating. What exactly is a backlink? Why does Google care about them? And how do you actually get them without breaking any rules?
This guide breaks it all down from the beginning.
What Is a Backlink?
A backlink (also called an inbound link or external link) is simply a hyperlink on one website that points to a page on another website. When Site A links to an article on Site B, Site B has earned a backlink from Site A.
From a user’s perspective, backlinks are navigation — a way to explore related content across the web. From Google’s perspective, they’re something more important: votes of confidence.
Why Google Uses Links as Votes
Google’s original breakthrough in search was the PageRank algorithm, which treated links as endorsements. The core idea: if a page has many other pages linking to it, it’s probably worth reading. And if those linking pages are themselves well-regarded, their endorsement carries more weight.
This logic still underpins how Google evaluates authority today. A page with 500 backlinks from reputable sites will, all else being equal, outrank a page with 5 backlinks — even if the content quality is similar.
Link building, then, is the practice of actively acquiring backlinks to your website to signal authority and relevance to search engines.
Dofollow vs. Nofollow Links
Not all links are created equal. Two of the most important link types are:
Dofollow links pass PageRank (link equity) from one site to another. These are the standard links most sites use by default, and they’re the ones that directly influence your rankings.
Nofollow links include a rel="nofollow" attribute that tells Google not to pass ranking credit. Social media platforms, most blog comments, and many press release sites use nofollow by default.
There are also newer link attributes: rel="sponsored" for paid placements and rel="ugc" for user-generated content. Google treats all three as hints rather than strict instructions.
While dofollow links are generally the goal, nofollow links from high-traffic publications still drive real visitors to your site — and diversifying your link profile with both types looks natural to search engines.
Domain Authority Explained
Domain Authority (DA) is a third-party metric developed by Moz to predict how well a site will rank in search results. Ahrefs has a similar metric called Domain Rating (DR). Neither is a Google metric — Google doesn’t publish a public authority score — but both are widely used proxies.
Both scores run from 0 to 100 on a logarithmic scale. Moving from DR 20 to DR 30 is relatively quick; moving from DR 60 to DR 70 takes significantly more effort.
Your DA/DR rises as you earn more high-quality backlinks from authoritative sites. It’s one of the best signals for gauging your site’s overall competitive strength.
Types of Links Worth Earning
Not all backlinks are equally valuable. Here are the main categories and what they mean:
Editorial Links
These are the gold standard. An editorial link is earned organically — a journalist, blogger, or researcher links to your content because they found it genuinely useful. You can’t buy these; you earn them by publishing content worth citing.
Guest Post Links
You write an article for another website and include a link back to your own site. This is one of the most common deliberate link building tactics. When done on relevant, quality sites with real audiences, it’s both effective and accepted by Google.
Resource Page Links
Many websites maintain “resources” or “tools” pages that curate helpful links for their audience. Getting your content listed on relevant resource pages is a reliable way to earn contextual links.
Directory and Citation Links
These have limited ranking impact but matter for local SEO — ensuring your business name, address, and phone number appear consistently across directories like Google Business Profile, Yelp, and industry-specific listings.
What to Avoid: Black-Hat Tactics
Google’s Webmaster Guidelines are explicit about link schemes they penalize. Avoid these:
- Buying links: Paying cash or goods in exchange for a dofollow link is a direct violation of Google’s policies.
- Private Blog Networks (PBNs): Networks of sites built solely to link to each other. Google actively detects and penalizes these.
- Exact-match anchor text spam: Building hundreds of links with the same keyword-rich anchor text looks manipulative.
- Link exchanges (“I’ll link to you if you link to me”): Occasional reciprocal links are natural; organized schemes are not.
If you’re getting started and want to explore legitimate approaches, the Ahrefs link building guide is an excellent deep-dive resource.
Getting Started: The Right Mindset
The single most important mental shift in link building is moving from “how do I get links?” to “how do I create things other sites want to link to?”
Links are a byproduct of value. Publish original research. Build free tools. Write comprehensive guides. Create content that journalists, educators, and industry writers naturally want to reference — and the links follow.
For a structured plan on tactics that still work in 2026, explore our full overview of link building strategies. And to understand how all of this translates into measurable authority, check out our domain authority guide.
The Long Game
Link building is not fast. Meaningful authority takes months to accumulate. But it also compounds — the links you earn today keep passing authority to your site for years.
Sites that invest consistently in link building build a moat that’s very hard for competitors to overcome. Sites that ignore it find themselves permanently outranked, regardless of how good their content is.
Start small, be patient, and build links the right way.
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