At one point, backlinks were extremely important in SEO. If we go back to 2010 and even all the way into 2016, backlinks were still very heavily weighted in Google’s ranking determination systems. However, as of 2024 and going into 2025, thanks to things like the helpful content processor and EEAT (expertise, experience, authority, and trust), backlinks have become far less important for SEO.
Key Takeaways
- A backlink is a connective reference to two URLs between two websites. If you’ve linked to a website in anything that you’ve written on the internet, you created a backlink.
- For a backlink to be found by Google or other search engine crawlers, it must be publicly accessible.
- The question of whether backlinks are important for SEO is complicated. And can vary based on the website, topic, and more. However, as of 2024 and going into 2025, backlinks are far less important than they ever have been.
Importance of Backlinks for SEO
It’s a pretty heavy debate within the SEO community. Whether “backlinks work or not.” And it’s a complicated thing to answer. The reality is: it depends. Backlinks may matter in some circumstances and in others, they may not.
Before we get into that, let’s address a few things about what backlinks do:
They signal visibility and indexing
In many cases, a backlink will help a search engine crawler find a page. Much like an internal link does on a given website, an external link also allows search engine crawlers to “discover” the internet.
Actually, this is how the original search engine crawler worked. Almost entirely from links on websites which allowed it to index the internet.
They create some credibility
Earning large quantities of backlinks usually indicate “important” websites to search engines. And in their classifiers, gives some idea of what websites are the most important and which are the least important.
However, that does not mean that they have a direct relationship with ranking individual keywords and pages. We’ll get into that in a moment.
They pass some level of authority
There is certainly a light relationship with authority that certain websites and pages pass between each other. However, older metrics like trust flow or citation flow simply don’t work any longer. And are not good measurements for understanding “what’s getting passed” between two pages.
Are Backlinks Important?
This is most likely your real question. And here’s my answer: no they are not. Backlinks, in modern SEO, play a much smaller factor than earning true domain authority and trust of a website through EEAT (expertise, experience, authority, and trust).
And the best way to earn that in 2024 and going into 2025 is to lean into topical authority. Which is the concept of having multiple semantically related topics all connected to each other. But wait… and in our own experience, also raise the bar for the level of new information you’re bringing to that entity (think of this as a noun: a person, a place, a thing).
The more you “raise the bar” (which by the way is in Google’s own patents described as the information gain patent) and do so across multiple pages, you are rewarded with topical authority and domain authority.
Are we saying that backlinks don’t work?
Backlinks are now only supportive components to an SEO strategy. However, the way to win is truly with very helpful pages (Google has essentially told us this). Although, without some backlinks, it’s likely that you won’t be able to compete for highly competitive keywords. Which is why the answer is always: it depends.
Let’s make up a scenario. You want to compete with WebMD. Well, is content alone going to do that? No it’s not. The amount of trust signals that come from links, brand building, history of WebMD in search queries, and more—you simply can’t compete with that.
The answer is always, it depends.
How Are Backlinks Typically Built
There are usually a few forms of link building: purchasing sponsored posts, manual outreach, paid backlinks, guest posting, link swaps, and manual linking. However, many of these strategies don’t work any longer. Let’s quickly discuss what they are.
1. Sponsored posts
By purchasing a sponsored post, most times the purchaser can get a backlink back to the homepage or a specific article.
2. Manual outreach
Someone emails the webmaster or owner of the website and asks for a link to be placed on a resource page or maybe a brand name that isn’t linked. Lastly, sometimes they ask to replace a broken link.
3. Guest posting
A writer or author asks to be published on another website. And in this resource that they are publishing, they often include a backlink to their own website or another website. Or, have an author biography that’s mentioned at the bottom of a page back to the homepage or brand.
4. Link swaps
This is where two webmasters agree to exchange backlinks to each other for the benefit of SEO. This is strictly forbidden by Google.
Why these don’t work
As you can see from the above, there’s one common thing that all of these strategies require. And that’s people answering emails that you send them. The reality is that many people are often very busy, get a number of emails, and the request to put a link on their website just isn’t a task that gets prioritized.
In many cases, this is why Google also deprioritized backlinks. They just didn’t send as much of a quality signal as topical authority does (the actual page content you publish and the quality of it). Topical authority is more widely discussed in SEO now simply because you have more control over it than backlinks (i.e., you aren’t dependent on another person to do the action, you have complete control).
Related: What is Topical Relevance?
Factors That Impact a Backlinks Quality
While many of these factors are considered to be hypothetical and maybe no longer even matter, here are some of the historical factors that people would consider in SEO:
1. Follow or no-follow
Marked on the actual link itself. Someone can be a rel=”dofollow” or rel=”nofollow” on the link itself. Which indicates that there should be no authority passed from the link itself. This is usually done across any link on a domain, not usually done manually.
2. Domain authority of the linking domain
The domain authority (usually measured by Moz’s idea of domain authority) of a domain is hypothetically going to influence your domain authority as a website.
3. Relevancy of the domain
The relevance of the two websites in terms of what they provide or what they discuss. If a website is talking about jobs and links to another website talking about jobs, the concept is that there is more authority in that individual link.
4. Link location on the domain
Where the link is located on the domain. For example, if it’s on the homepage, it will have a lot of power. Or if it is deep within the website and hidden, it will have less importance to crawlers and thus, not pass as much authority.
5. Anchor text
What the link text says. For example, if it includes a keyword or a brand name.
Common Questions About Backlinks
Common questions about backlinks:
Should backlinks be built on individual pages and articles?
In the image below, you can see that the domain Exploding Topics didn’t get zero traffic when it started publishing content. In fact, you can see that the publishing of content was what earned it links.
In short, if you rank, you’ll earn links. And as a result, we fundamentally believe that Google is able to see when you link to a page far before its ranking for anything. Telling the system that it might be SPAM.
While this is our own concept. This has been tested by ourselves many times over the past 3-years. As a result, we don’t recommend building backlinks on individual articles.
Why does every SEO company sell backlinks?
It’s complicated. Generally, they are very expensive to create. And as a result, you’re likely to pay them for it. And in addition, you’re likely very well groomed and sold on the concept that backlinks will help you.
Why this is such a common theme in SEO truly baffles us. There’s quite a bit of evidence that this is an older way of performing SEO. However, most SEO agencies sell backlinks just because it’s very simple to sell. And they may not know how to truly do SEO otherwise.
Can I build no backlinks and rank content?
The reality is, maybe. However, it very much depends on the page that you’re trying to compete against. For example, if there’s search volume for something and zero results Google has to serve up. You can talk about it and Google will be forced to display your page or website.
Or, if you’re trying to rank for something extremely complicated. Like a medical term. There’s very little chance that if your website doesn’t have historical evidence within Google’s systems that you’re a trusted source, that you will rank for that given term.
How can you measure the effectiveness of a backlink?
Aside from the leading indicators that were mentioned before (relevance, anchor text, domain authority, and more), you should be able to measure the effectiveness of a backlink by its movement of your rank position for a given target keyword.
Within 1-3 months you should see upward movement. However, I want to say once more, you can see more immediate movement of a page for a given keyword if you simply perform on-page optimizations for it and submit that to Google.
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This article was fact-checked for the accuracy of the information it disclosed on:
November 23, 2024
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