What is a Backlink? (Blogging SEO Basics)

Last Updated June 6, 2025

Backlinks are one of the most valuable aspects of an effective SEO strategy. Backlinks are links from one website to your website, typically using anchor text relevant to the content of the page they’re linking from.

A backlink from an authoritative website can significantly increase your chances of raising your content in organic Google search rankings over time.

What Are Backlinks?

Backlinks, also known as “inbound links,” are links from one website to another. They are essential for SEO as they act as a vote of confidence from one site to another. Search engines use backlinks to assess a website’s credibility and relevance, influencing its ranking in search results. High-quality backlinks from reputable and authoritative websites are particularly valuable, enhancing a site’s visibility and ranking more effectively.

Understanding the Importance of Backlinks

While Google consistently places less emphasis on the importance of backlinks, a strong backlink from a relevant, authoritative website in your niche will always have immense value. It’s a numbers game, and the process of Google’s algorithm is opaque, not providing a ton of information about how to exactly rank higher. However, over the past decade, it’s become clear that while backlinks may be worth slightly less than they used to be, they still hold significant weight.

Strategies for Building Quality Backlinks

To build quality backlinks, focus on strategies like guest blogging. This allows you to authentically build relationships with publishers and get links back to your articles in a slower, tasteful way.

Avoid buying packs of backlinks or investing in strategies that attempt to do this at scale with lower quality. These tactics may hurt you in the long run.

Guest Blogging

Guest blogging involves writing content for other websites in your niche. By providing valuable, relevant content, you can often include a link back to your own website within the article or in your author bio. This not only exposes your content to a new audience but also provides a strong, natural backlink.

Building Relationships with Publishers

Take your time and invest in strategies related to building relationships with other publishers. Reach out to websites in your niche, offer to collaborate, or propose content ideas that would be valuable to their audience. As you build these relationships, opportunities for backlinks will naturally arise.

Conclusion

Accumulating your backlink profile slowly over time will pay off in the long run. While it may take more effort and patience, the benefits of having a strong, natural backlink profile are undeniable. Your content will have a better chance of ranking higher in search engine results, driving more organic traffic to your website.

Backlinks remain a crucial component of a successful SEO strategy. By focusing on quality over quantity and building authentic relationships with other publishers, you can slowly but surely develop a powerful backlink profile that will boost your search engine rankings and help your content reach a wider audience.

Want to learn how to build backlinks in-depth? See our SEO Mastery course for subscribers.

What is a backlink in simple terms?

A backlink is a link from another website that points to your website. When someone links to one of your articles, that link is a backlink.

Search engines see backlinks as a sign of trust. The more high quality, relevant backlinks you have, the more likely your content is to rank higher in Google.

Backlinks are sometimes called “inbound links.” They bring people and search engines from other sites over to your content.

You can learn more about how backlinks work in SEO in the full backlink glossary definition on RightBlogger.

Why are backlinks still important if Google says they matter less now?

Backlinks matter because they act like votes of confidence for your site. When an authoritative site links to you, it tells Google your content is useful and trustworthy.

Even if Google says links are a little less important than before, strong backlinks still help your posts stand out in crowded search results. One high quality backlink from a trusted site in your niche can be worth far more than many weak links.

Backlinks also bring direct referral traffic. Real people click those links and discover your content, join your list, and share your posts.

Over time, a natural backlink profile supports steady, long term growth, instead of quick wins that may not last.

What is the best way to get quality backlinks without getting penalized?

The best way to earn safe, high quality backlinks is to create helpful content and share it with relevant sites in your niche. Focus on value first, not just the link.

Guest blogging is one of the strongest methods. When you write a useful article for another site and they link back to you in the content or author bio, that is a natural backlink. You can learn the basics from the guest blogging glossary page.

You can also build relationships with other publishers. Comment on their work, share their posts, and pitch collaboration ideas that help both audiences.

Avoid buying “link packs” or using spammy link schemes. These can lead to penalties and harm your rankings over time.

How can RightBlogger help me create content that earns backlinks?

RightBlogger helps you publish link worthy content faster, which makes it easier to attract natural backlinks. You can use the AI Article Writer to draft in depth, helpful posts that other sites actually want to link to.

Once you have strong content, you can do targeted outreach. RightBlogger’s Backlinks tool helps you research backlink opportunities so you know which sites might be a good fit to contact.

You can also study your SEO performance and spot what is working. Tools like SEO Reports help you see which posts are gaining traction so you can double down on similar topics.

If you want step by step training, you can go deeper with structured lessons in RightBlogger Courses, including SEO and content strategy.

Should I focus more on backlinks or internal links for SEO?

You need both backlinks and internal links, but they do different jobs. Backlinks send authority from other websites, while internal links help spread that authority across your own site.

If your site is new, you will likely need to work on both at the same time. Internal links make it easier for Google to crawl your site and understand which pages are most important.

As you earn backlinks to a few key articles, strong internal linking helps lift related posts too. This way, one good backlink can help many pages.

To understand how to use links inside your own site, see the RightBlogger guide to internal linking.