Backlink

A backlink is a link on a page of another website that points to a page on your site. It is the definition Google uses in the Links report in Search Console: a link that “links back” to your site.

What is a backlink and why does Google care?

Google uses links as a signal to judge how relevant a page is and to find new pages to crawl (Google Search Central, Link best practices, accessed October 2026). According to the SEO Starter Guide, most of the new pages Google finds every day are found through links. PageRank, one of Google’s fundamental algorithms, relies on links but is only one of many ranking signals (Google Search Central, SEO Starter Guide, accessed October 2026).

Generally Google can only crawl a link that is an a element with an href attribute. The visible text of a link is the anchor text, and Google recommends anchor text that is descriptive, reasonably concise and relevant to the target page. That makes backlinks the part of SEO that lives outside your own site.

Where to see your backlinks

The Links report in Google Search Console shows which sites link to you most, which of your pages get the most links and the most common anchor text (Search Console Help, Links report, accessed October 2026). It is a sample, not every link. Tables are capped at 1,000 rows, and the report does not say which links are nofollow.

Buying backlinks violates Google’s spam policies

Google defines link spam as creating links to or from a site mainly to manipulate search rankings (Google Search Central, Spam policies, accessed October 2026). The examples Google lists include:

• Buying or selling links for ranking: money, goods or services in exchange for links, or sending someone a product so they write about it with a link.
• Excessive link exchanges (“link to me and I’ll link to you”).
• Using automated programs or services to create links.
• Paid articles, advertorials or guest posts with links that pass ranking credit or keyword-stuffed anchor text.
• Links from low-quality directories or bookmark sites, footer links spread across many sites, and forum comments with optimized links.

Google catches violations with automated systems and human review. Sites that violate the policies may rank lower or drop out of results. When Google finds a pattern of unnatural links pointing to a site, it can apply a manual action to part or all of the site. To lift it, you have to ask site owners to remove the links, disavow the ones you cannot get removed and then request a review (Search Console Help, Manual actions report, accessed October 2026).

A “100 cheap dofollow backlinks” package is buying links for ranking. Do not buy it.

Paid links done right: sponsored, ugc, nofollow

Google accepts that links are bought and sold for advertising and sponsorship, as long as they carry rel=”nofollow” or rel=”sponsored” (Google Search Central, Qualify outbound links, accessed October 2026):

• rel=”sponsored” for ads and paid placements. Nofollow is still acceptable, but Google prefers sponsored.
• rel=”ugc” for links in user-generated content such as comments and forum posts (see UGC).
• rel=”nofollow” when the other two do not fit and you do not want Google to associate your site with the linked page.

Paying a KOL or a news site to publish an article with a link to you is also a paid link, so the link needs sponsored.

Example: re-pricing a PR article package (hypothetical)

A shop is offered 20 PR articles at VND 2.5 million each, each with a dofollow link to a product page. The total is VND 50 million.

Done by the rules, the links must be marked sponsored and pass no ranking credit. The package is then only worth it if the articles bring real visitors. At a CPC of VND 5,000, VND 50 million buys 10,000 ad clicks. The 20 articles would need to bring 10,000 visits in total, or 500 each, just to match ads.

Frequently asked questions

Do nofollow backlinks do anything?

They still send readers to your site. Google generally does not follow nofollow links, but the linked page can still be found through sitemaps or other links.

How do I get backlinks without buying them?

Google says links from other sites tend to come naturally over time. You can speed things up by promoting your content through social media, communities, advertising and word of mouth.

If you need a review of your backlink profile or a plan for earning links naturally, see Adtek’s SEO solution.