Backlink.

A backlink is a link from another website to your website. It is also called an inbound link or an incoming link. For example, if a Nigerian business publication mentions your company and links to your website, your website has received a backlink from that publication. If a blogger links to one of your guides as a useful source, that is also a backlink. Search engines use links to discover new pages and understand how pages on the web relate to one another. A relevant backlink may also provide context about the subject of the page receiving the link. However, every backlink does not carry the same value. A natural link from a relevant and trustworthy website is generally more useful than many links from unrelated directories, automated websites or spam pages. The words used in the link, known as anchor text, can also help users and search engines understand what the linked page is about. One website can link to your site several times. Each link is a backlink, while the website providing those links is called a referring domain. Backlinks may be earned when people find your content useful, reference your research, mention your business, feature your work, interview you or recommend one of your tools. They can also come from business partnerships, professional directories, guest contributions and digital public relations. Buying large numbers of links, exchanging links only to manipulate rankings or placing links automatically across unrelated websites can violate Google’s spam policies. Backlink building should therefore focus on earning genuine mentions and creating pages that people have a real reason to reference.

Backlinks can help search engines discover a page, understand its subject and evaluate how it connects to other information online. A relevant backlink can also send referral visitors directly to your website, even when it does not significantly affect rankings. Backlinks are only one part of SEO. A website still needs useful content, clear structure, crawlable pages, sensible internal linking and a good user experience. A few relevant links from credible websites can be more useful than hundreds of low-quality or unrelated links.