What Is a Backlink? 12 Types of Backlinks Explained

A backlink is a link on someone else's website that points to a page on yours. When a blogger cites your study, a newspaper mentions your company, or a directory lists your business — each of those clickable references is a backlink, and together they form one of the strongest signals search engines use to decide where your pages rank.

If you are just starting out with link building, this is the vocabulary lesson that makes everything else make sense. Below we define what a backlink actually is, how it works, and walk through the 12 types of backlinks you will encounter — from the ones worth chasing to the ones worth avoiding.

Backlink meaning: the simple definition

The word breaks down exactly as it sounds: a link that points back to your site from somewhere else on the web. In SEO conversations you will hear the same thing called an inbound link, an incoming link or an external link (from the linking site's point of view).

Technically, a backlink is just a piece of HTML:

<a href="https://yoursite.com/page/">anchor text</a>

Three parts of that snippet matter to search engines: the destination (which page earns the credit), the anchor text (the clickable words, which describe the destination), and any rel attributes (which tell crawlers how to treat the endorsement — more on that in our guide to dofollow vs nofollow links).

Why backlinks matter

Search engines treat backlinks as citations. Just as an academic paper referenced by hundreds of others is probably important, a page referenced by many referring domains is probably worth ranking. Google's founders built PageRank on exactly this idea, and a quarter of a century later links remain a core ranking signal.

A good backlink does three jobs at once:

• Ranking power — it passes authority (often called link equity) to your page, helping it rank higher.
• Discovery — crawlers follow it to find and re-crawl your pages faster.
• Traffic — real readers click it, arriving on your site without any search engine involved.

The 12 types of backlinks explained

1. Editorial backlinks

Earned when a writer independently decides your page is worth citing — no request, no payment. These are the most valuable backlinks in existence because they are genuine endorsements from someone with no stake in your rankings. Original research, statistics and definitive guides attract them.

2. Guest post backlinks

With guest posting, you write an article for another site and include a link back to your own. Legitimate and effective when the host site is real and relevant; risky when done at industrial scale on sites that exist only to publish paid guest posts. For placements on real, editorially run publications, start with our website database — every site on it is vetted for exactly this.

3. Niche edits (link insertions)

A niche edit is a link added into an existing article rather than a new one. Sometimes earned honestly — you point out a resource that improves an old post — and sometimes bought, which puts them in the same risk bracket as any paid link.

4. Resource page backlinks

Resource page backlinks come from pages that exist specifically to list useful resources on a topic — "50 tools for freelance designers" and the like. Highly relevant by definition, and earned by simply asking to be included when you genuinely fit.

5. Directory backlinks

Listings in web directories. A handful of quality ones — industry bodies, local business directories, Google Business Profile citations — are useful, especially for local SEO. Mass submission to hundreds of generic directories is a relic of 2008 and does nothing good.

6. Profile backlinks

Profile backlinks are the website field on your social profiles, forum accounts and community memberships. Nearly all are nofollow and pass little authority, but a consistent set of profile links is a normal part of any real brand's footprint.

7. Comment backlinks

Links left in blog comment sections. Almost universally nofollow and worthless for rankings — and spamming them is one of the oldest ways to make your site look bad. Comment because you have something to say, never for the link.

8. Forum and community backlinks

Forum and community backlinks are shared in Reddit threads, Quora answers, Discord servers and niche forums. Mostly nofollow, but genuinely helpful answers send real visitors — and real visitors sometimes turn into editorial links later.

9. Image and infographic backlinks

With image and infographic backlinks, someone embeds your infographic, chart or original photo and credits you with a link. If you produce visual assets, this is a quiet, steady source of citations — especially for data visualisations journalists can reuse.

10. Press and PR backlinks

Press and PR backlinks come from news coverage: a product launch, an expert quote, a data story picked up by journalists. Among the hardest links to get and the most powerful, because news domains carry enormous authority.

11. Paid and sponsored backlinks

Any link money changed hands for is a paid or sponsored backlink. Google requires these to carry rel="sponsored"; bought links that pass ranking credit violate its spam policies. They exist everywhere in the wild — treat them as advertising spend, never as an SEO strategy.

12. Toxic backlinks

Toxic backlinks come from spam networks, hacked sites, link farms and irrelevant foreign directories. Sometimes they accumulate naturally; occasionally a competitor points them at you deliberately. Modern Google mostly just ignores them, and a disavow file handles the rare serious case.

Backlink examples in the wild

To make it concrete, here is how the same page — say, your guide to home insulation — might earn different backlink types:

• A journalist writing about energy prices cites your cost-savings table — editorial.
• You write "5 winter home myths" for a home improvement blog and reference your guide — guest post.
• A council's "energy efficiency resources" page lists it — resource page.
• Someone answers "how do I cut heating bills?" on a forum and drops your URL — community.

Same destination, four different endorsements — and search engines weigh each differently based on the linking site's authority, relevance and the link's placement.

What separates a good backlink from a bad one

Type is only half the story. Whatever bucket a link falls into, its value comes down to a few questions: Is the linking site trusted? Is it topically relevant to yours? Is the link placed editorially, within content people actually read? Does it use natural anchor text? Does it send any real visitors? A single link that scores well on all five beats a hundred that score on none.

We cover this scoring in depth in the rest of the series — starting with the attribute that changes what a link passes: dofollow vs nofollow, and the currency links actually transfer, link juice.

Frequently asked questions

Are backlinks still important for SEO?

Yes — every major ranking study keeps finding that pages with more referring domains outrank pages with fewer, all else being equal. What has changed is quality: a handful of relevant, editorial links now outperforms thousands of low-grade ones.

How do I see my backlinks?

Google Search Console (Links report) shows a free sample. Ahrefs, Semrush and Majestic maintain the big third-party link indexes and show anchors, dofollow status and estimated authority for each link.

How many backlinks does a new site need?

There is no magic number — it depends entirely on what the sites already ranking for your keywords have. Benchmark the top five results for your target term and aim to close that gap with quality, not volume. Unsure how to read your gap? Ask us — a quick look at your profile costs nothing.