What Are Backlinks and Why Do They Matter?

A backlink is a link from one website to another. When a reputable site links to your page, it passes a signal to search engines that your content is worth referencing. Google originally built its entire ranking system on this idea, treating links as votes of confidence.

Not all backlinks are equal. A link from a well-known, trusted publication in your industry is worth far more than a link from a low-quality directory or a site that exists only to sell links. Quality beats quantity every time.

The concept behind this is called PageRank, Google’s original algorithm for measuring how authoritative a page is based on how many quality pages link to it. While PageRank is just one of hundreds of ranking signals today, the core idea still holds: earn links from trusted sources and your pages become more trusted too.