Backlink
Also called inbound link, external link
A link from one website to a page on another. Search engines treat backlinks as a signal of relevance and trust, weighted heavily by the linking domain rather than by the raw number of links.
A backlink is one page linking to another. The count of backlinks is the least useful way to look at them.
Domains beat links. Five thousand links from one site are worth a fraction of fifty links from fifty sites. This is why every serious link report leads with referring domains rather than with a link total, and why a five-figure backlink count in a sales deck should be read as a five-figure count of footers.
The attribute matters. A link marked rel="nofollow", rel="sponsored" or
rel="ugc" tells search engines not to pass the usual signal, or to treat it as
paid or user-generated. A link report that does not separate them is
overstating.
Placement matters. A link inside the body of a relevant article is a different object from a link in a site-wide footer, even though both are one row in a table.
netweft’s backlink reporting covers the link summary, the individual links, the referring domains and the pages a domain links out to, priced per request rather than per link.
Last reviewed . Also served as markdown at /glossary/backlink.md.