Backlink
An incoming hyperlink from one website to another. High-quality backlinks from authoritative, topically relevant sites are a strong ranking signal that helps improve a page's position in search results. Backlinks are categorized as dofollow (passing link equity) or nofollow (signaling editorial endorsement without directly passing ranking power). The value of a backlink depends on the linking domain's authority, the relevance of the linking page, anchor text usage, and whether the link appears within editorial content versus footers or sidebars.
Why It Matters
Backlinks remain one of the strongest ranking factors in search algorithms. They function as votes of confidence from other websites, signaling to search engines that your content is trustworthy and worth surfacing to users. Analysis of over 11 million search results shows that the number-one result on Google has an average of 3.8x more backlinks than positions two through ten. Quality matters more than quantity — a single link from a DA 80 news site often outweighs dozens of links from low-authority directories or blog comments.
Example
A marketing analytics company publishes an original industry benchmark report. It earns 45 backlinks from marketing blogs and news sites citing the data. The report page climbs from position 15 to position 3 for its target keyword within two months. Among those links, 5 come from DA 70+ publications like HubSpot and MarketingProfs, which account for roughly 60% of the ranking improvement. The team then repurposes the data into infographics and social snippets, earning an additional 30 backlinks over the following quarter.
Related Terms
Domain Authority
A search engine ranking score, developed by Moz, that predicts how likely a website is to rank in search results on a logarithmic scale from 1 to 100. It is influenced by the quality and quantity of backlinks, site age, referring domain diversity, and content authority. Because the scale is logarithmic, moving from DA 20 to 30 is significantly easier than moving from 70 to 80. Similar metrics include Ahrefs Domain Rating and Semrush Authority Score, each using slightly different methodologies.
Organic Traffic
Website visitors who arrive through unpaid search engine results rather than ads. Growing organic traffic requires strong SEO practices including quality content, backlinks, technical optimization, and user experience signals like Core Web Vitals. Organic traffic is measured through tools like Google Analytics and Search Console, which break down visits by landing page, keyword, device, and geography. On average, organic search drives 53% of all website traffic across industries, making it the single largest digital traffic source.