By Mehdi HassanWhat is a backlink?
A backlink is a clickable link on a page you don't own that sends readers to a page you do own. If a software review site links to your pricing page, that's a backlink to your pricing page. From the other site's point of view, the same link is an outbound link.
The term matters because links are one of the oldest signals search engines use to judge which pages deserve attention. It sits alongside Domain Authority and entity SEO in our SEO and AEO glossary.
Take a marketplace profile as an example. When a profile like ours on Contra, where we hold a 4.92 rating across 11 reviews, links to designify.design, that link is a backlink: a third-party platform pointing to our domain and confirming the studio behind the profile exists.
Why do backlinks matter for SEO?
Backlinks matter because they help search engines discover your pages and judge how much other people trust them. Google follows links to find new URLs, and a page that many relevant sites cite is more likely to rank than an identical page nobody references.
Not every link carries the same weight. A link from an industry publication that writes about your category counts for much more than a link from a directory that lists every site on the internet. The anchor text, the words that are linked, also tells Google what your page is about.
Link type | What it signals | Worth chasing? |
|---|---|---|
Editorial link in an article | A writer chose to cite you | Yes, the most valuable kind |
Review or listing platform | You're a real, listed business | Yes, for the core platforms in your category |
Partner or integration page | A working relationship | Yes, and it's often easy to ask for |
Paid or swapped links | Nothing Google trusts | No, it breaks Google's spam policies |
Mass directories and comment links | Very little | No |
Do backlinks still matter for AI search?
Backlinks still matter, but they correlate less with AI visibility than plain brand mentions do. In Ahrefs' study of 75,000 brands, web mentions correlated 0.664 with visibility in Google's AI Overviews, against 0.218 for backlinks and 0.326 for Domain Rating.
The practical reading: AI systems seem to care whether the web talks about you, linked or not. A podcast transcript, a Reddit thread or a newsletter that names your product can help even with no link attached. Links remain useful for classic rankings, which still feed AI Overviews, so treat links and mentions as two sides of the same work. The comparison of SEO, AEO and GEO explains where each one fits.
How do you earn backlinks without buying them?
You earn backlinks by publishing something other people need to reference. In B2B, that usually means original numbers, honest price ranges, useful comparison tables or a free tool.
- Publish real prices and comparisons. Writers link to the page that gives the specific answer. Our guide to comparison tables shows the format that gets quoted.
- Claim the platforms in your category. Review sites, marketplaces and integration directories all link to the businesses they list.
- Ask partners. Integrations, agencies you work with and investors' portfolio pages are links you can simply request.
- Give your authors a home. A named expert with an author page gets invited to podcasts and quoted in articles, and both create links and mentions.
Hypothetical example: protecting backlinks during a redesign
For example, suppose a SaaS company has 40 sites linking to its old /pricing-plans URL. The new site moves pricing to /pricing and nobody adds a redirect. Every one of those backlinks now lands on a 404 page, and the credit they passed is lost.
A single 301 redirect from the old URL to the new one keeps that value. This is why a website migration SEO checklist always starts by exporting the pages with the most backlinks.
