When another website links to a page, it is a little like a person vouching for it. Search engines use links to discover pages and as one signal of how trusted a page is. Off page SEO, the work that happens away from your own site, is mostly about earning these mentions honestly. It is week 8 of the SEO specialisation and a common topic in SEO job interviews.
What a backlink is
A backlink is a link on someone else's website that points to your site. A link from a regional tourism guide, a local news story, or a respected NGO partner tells search engines that real organisations know and trust the business. A link from a random site that lists thousands of unrelated businesses tells them very little.
Quality beats quantity
- Relevance. A link from a farming association to an agro input shop makes sense. A link from a betting site does not.
- Trust. Links from established, real organisations count for more than links from new, empty sites.
- Natural placement. A link inside a genuine article or listing is better than one buried in a list of hundreds.
Links that break the rules
Google's spam policies describe link spam as creating links mainly to manipulate rankings. Buying or selling links for ranking, swapping goods or services for links, or sending a free product in exchange for a write up with a link all count, unless the link is marked as paid. When a link is paid or sponsored, websites should add a label in the link code, rel="sponsored", or rel="nofollow". Comments and forum posts can use rel="ugc", for user generated content. If anyone offers to sell you "100 backlinks for 50 cedis", say no. It wastes money and can harm the site.