What is a backlink?
Short answer
A backlink is a link on someone else's website that points to a page on yours. Search engines treat it as a sign that another site found yours worth pointing to. Backlinks aren't equal: one from a relevant local site that chose to link is worth more than many from sites built to host links.
A backlink is a link on someone else’s website that points to a page on yours. If a chamber of commerce in North County lists a roofing company in its member directory and links to the company’s site, that company has a backlink from the chamber. Search engines read a link like that as a sign that another site found yours worth pointing to, which is why backlinks have been part of SEO for as long as Google has existed.
Why search engines care about links
Because a link works a little like a recommendation. Google’s original ranking method, PageRank, was built on that idea: a page that many other pages link to is probably worth showing. Google still says links are among the things it uses to find pages and to judge them, alongside many other signals. Links are also how its crawler discovers new pages in the first place.
Nobody outside Google knows how much weight links carry for any given search. Anyone who quotes you a percentage is guessing.
Why some backlinks count and others don’t
A backlink’s worth depends on where it comes from and why it exists.
| What differs | Worth more | Worth little or nothing |
|---|---|---|
| The site it’s on | A site real people read, related to your trade or your area | A site that exists only to host links |
| How it got there | Someone chose to link to you | It was bought, swapped, or placed in bulk |
| The words in the link | Your name, or a natural description of what you do | The same keyword phrase repeated across many sites |
| How it’s labeled | An ordinary link | A link marked as sponsored or nofollow, which tells Google not to treat it as an endorsement |
You’ll also see links graded with third-party scores such as domain authority. Those are estimates made by software companies, not numbers from Google.
Backlinks, internal links and citations
A backlink comes from another website. An internal link connects two pages on your own site, and you control it fully. A citation is a listing of your business name, address and phone number in a directory. It may include a link, in which case it’s also a backlink, but its main job is to confirm your business details.
Where a home-service company gets real backlinks
From the relationships the business already has. The usual sources:
- Manufacturers whose equipment you install, on their dealer or installer pages.
- Trade associations you belong to.
- Your local chamber of commerce or business association.
- Suppliers, builders and other trades you work with.
- Local news and neighborhood sites, when you do something worth writing about.
- Schools, teams and charities you really support.
Where money changes hands, as with a sponsorship, the site may label the link as sponsored. That’s what Google asks for, so don’t ask them to remove the label. The link can still send you customers.
All of this is slow, and a list of sites that would plausibly link to a plumber in Vista is short. That’s normal for link building done this way. Buying backlinks in bulk is the shortcut, and a different matter.