Backlinks Explained: Why Other Sites Decide Your Ranking
Emily Brown
17 followers
What a backlink actually is
It is simply a link on someone else's page pointing to yours. Google treats it as a vote of confidence: if a publication you respect points at your page, your page is probably worth showing to people. The difficulty is that not all votes are counted equally.
Not every link is worth the same
| Type of link | Typical value |
|---|---|
| An editorial link inside a relevant article | High, this is the one worth chasing |
| A mention from a local news or club site | Solid for a brand new site |
| A plain directory listing | Almost nothing for rankings, still useful for customers |
| A sitewide footer or sidebar link | Low, and repetitive patterns look suspicious |
| A paid link with no disclosure | Risky, and a penalty is expensive to recover from |
| Links dropped in comment sections | Worthless |
How to earn your first few, realistically
- Ask people you already work with. Suppliers, clients, partner businesses and industry associations often have a links or partners page and are happy to add you.
- Get involved locally. Sponsoring a junior team, running a clinic or supporting a charity event usually earns a mention on their site.
- Publish something worth citing. A survey of your own customers, a free calculator, a template, a dataset. Anything another writer can reference saves them time.
- Answer journalists and bloggers. Response requests from media outlets are free, and one quoted answer can outperform months of manual outreach.
- Contribute one good guest piece to a site your audience already reads. One substantial article beats ten thin ones.
What you should ignore
Link packages promising thousands of backlinks for a few dollars, buying links outright, and treating third party authority scores as a target rather than a rough yardstick. None of it replicates a link from a page real people visit.
One link from a page that humans actually read is worth more than a hundred links from sites nobody has ever opened.
A quick check before you ask
Before approaching any site, ask whether its readers would genuinely care about your page. Then confirm the linking page is indexed in Google. If the page itself is invisible, the link passes nothing.
Do not overlook your own site
Internal links, the ones between your own pages, are fully under your control. Linking related articles together helps visitors find more of your work and helps search engines understand which pages matter most on your site.
Common questions
What is a backlink actually?
It is simply a link on someone else's page pointing to yours. Google treats it as a vote of confidence: if a publication you respect points at your page, your page is probably worth showing to people. The difficulty is that not all votes are counted equally.
How do you earn your first few, realistically?
- Ask people you already work with. Suppliers, clients, partner businesses and industry associations often have a links or partners page and are happy to add you. 2. Get involved locally. Sponsoring a junior team, running a clinic or supporting a charity event usually earns a mention on their site. 3.
What you should ignore?
Link packages promising thousands of backlinks for a few dollars, buying links outright, and treating third party authority scores as a target rather than a rough yardstick. None of it replicates a link from a page real people visit.
