Backlinks that matter, and the ones that don't

An email offers a bundle of "high authority" backlinks for the price of a lunch. A week later a competitor outranks you and someone says it's because they have more links. Both push you towards the same mistake: treating links as a number to grow. A link is a vote, and its value depends on who casts it, where they put it and why. Three tests tell you which links are worth having.

Why a link counts, and what it carries

Google's description of how it ranks results says one factor in judging quality is "understanding if other prominent websites link or refer to the content", and that this "is generally a good sign that the information is trustworthy". A link is evidence that someone outside your business thought your page worth sending readers to, and Google weighs that evidence by how much it already trusts the sender.

A link carries trust, inherited from the linking site and the page the link sits on, and meaning, from the topic of that page and from the anchor text, the clickable words. Google's link best practices say good anchor text is descriptive, concise and relevant to both pages, and that "click here" or a keyword-stuffed phrase is bad anchor text.

Two pieces of folklore get in the way. "Domain authority" is a score from a third-party SEO tool, not a Google signal. And nofollow stopped being a hard instruction in 2019, when Google announced it would treat it as a hint, so a nofollowed link from a site real people read can outweigh a followed one from a site nobody visits.

Test one: the linking page is about your subject

Relevance is judged at the page level before the site level. A link from an article about kitchen renovation to a store selling worktops makes sense to a reader and to Google. A link from a cryptocurrency blog to the same store makes sense to nobody.

Then look at the anchor text. A natural citation uses your brand name, your page title or a plain description. Google's spam policies list "links with optimized anchor text in articles, guest posts, or press releases distributed on other sites" as link spam, so a seller promising the exact keyword you want to rank for is offering the pattern Google hunts for.

Test two: the link sits where a reader would see it

A link inside the body of an article, placed by the writer because it helped the reader, is the kind Google's systems are built to reward. The further a link gets from that, the less it is worth. An author bio is weaker than the body, a sidebar weaker than a bio, and a footer or widget that repeats the link across a site is named in Google's spam policies, which list "widely distributed links in the footers or templates of various sites" and "keyword-rich, hidden, or low-quality links embedded in widgets". A link required by a contract or terms of service is on the same list, unless the site owner is free to add a nofollow or sponsored attribute.

Test three: the source has real readers

The last test is the site itself, and it catches most paid offers. A site worth a link from has readers who arrive from search or from habit, an editorial voice and a consistent subject. Signs the source is hollow:

• It writes about everything, with plumbing, casinos and software side by side.
• Most articles are labelled "sponsored" or "contributed", and the site advertises a price for posts.
• It links out to loans, gambling or pharmaceuticals from unrelated articles.
• It gets little or no organic traffic in any market, whatever its "authority" score says.
• The domain was recently re-registered with unrelated content, which Google's spam policies call expired domain abuse.

Google's policies also name "low-quality directory or bookmark site links". A curated industry directory that real buyers use is fine; one that lists anyone who pays is a listing, not a link.

What Google's spam policies actually forbid

Google defines link spam as links created "primarily for the purpose of manipulating search rankings", and lists the patterns: buying or selling links for ranking, including trading goods, services or free product for a write-up with a link; excessive link exchanges and partner pages that exist only to cross-link; automated link-building programs; advertorials that pass ranking credit; forum comments with optimised links; and low-value content created mainly to manufacture links.

A paid link is not a violation when it carries rel="nofollow" or rel="sponsored"; Google's guidance on qualifying outbound links asks for sponsored on paid placements and ugc on user-generated links such as comments. A newer policy, site reputation abuse, covers third-party content published on a trusted site mainly to borrow its ranking signals, which is what most offers to "place" your article on a big publication are.

Don't panic about spam links you never asked for. Google's disavow documentation says it can usually assess which links to trust without help, that most sites never need the tool, and that it exists for sites with many artificial links that have caused, or are likely to cause, a manual action.

What to take away

• A link is evidence that another site vouches for your page, and Google weighs it by the relevance of the linking page, where the link sits and how much it trusts the source.
• Relevance is judged page by page, and natural anchor text beats the exact keyword you want to rank for.
• Links in the body of real articles on sites with real readers count; footer, widget, directory and paid links mostly don't.
• Paid placements are fine when marked sponsored or nofollow, and you almost never need the disavow tool.

Next

Good links come from being worth citing; the next lesson shows how a small team produces that: Digital PR for small teams.