What are backlinks in SEO? Dofollow, nofollow and referring domains explained

Backlink example

If a local newspaper writes about your bakery and links to yourbakery.com, that link is a backlink to your site. The words that are clickable, such as "award-winning bakery in Pune", are the anchor text.

What are inbound links?

Inbound link is another name for backlink: a link coming in to your site from a different domain. Links between pages on your own site are internal links.

What is a referring domain?

A referring domain is a website that links to you at least once. If one blog links to you fifty times, you have fifty backlinks but only one referring domain. The number of distinct, relevant referring domains is usually a better measure of link strength than the total link count.

What is a dofollow link?

"Dofollow" is the informal name for a normal link with no special attribute. It can pass ranking credit to the page it points to. There is no actual "dofollow" tag; any link without rel="nofollow", "sponsored" or "ugc" counts as followed.

What is a nofollow link?

A nofollow link carries rel="nofollow" in its HTML. It tells search engines not to treat the link as an endorsement. Google also uses rel="sponsored" for paid links and rel="ugc" for user-generated content such as comments, and treats all three as hints rather than strict rules. Nofollow links can still bring visitors and help discovery.

What is link building?

Link building is the work of earning backlinks: business listings, supplier and partner pages, guest articles, digital PR, original data, useful tools and reclaiming unlinked mentions. Safe methods earn links because the page deserves them. See 12 safe ways to get free backlinks.

What are PBN links?

A private blog network (PBN) is a group of sites created or bought only to link to other sites and pass ranking credit. Links from PBNs break Google's spam policies. They can work briefly, but when detected the links are ignored or the site receiving them gets a manual action. Avoid them.

What is backlink analysis?

Backlink analysis is reviewing who links to a site: the referring domains, their relevance and quality, the anchor text and the pages linked to. It is used to find opportunities, compare with competitors and spot risky links. Google Search Console shows your own links for free; tools such as Ahrefs, Semrush and Moz estimate links for any site. A backlink checker is simply a tool that lists those links.

How many backlinks do you need?

Enough relevant referring domains to compete with the pages already ranking for your keyword. Look at the top three results and compare the number of distinct sites linking to them, not the raw counts.

Backlinks in digital marketing

Beyond SEO, backlinks bring referral visitors, build brand awareness and make your business more likely to be mentioned by AI assistants, which learn from what other sites say about you.

Link building is part of our off-page SEO service.