Types of backlinks explained: How to drive SEO, traffic, and authority (original) (raw)

Backlinks were once the lifeblood of SEO. While they’re no longer the biggest ranking factor, they still matter—and having the wrong types of backlinks can disrupt your other SEO efforts.

This guide dives into the variety of backlinks that exist. Learn how to target the ones that’ll help you reach your digital marketing goals.

Before jumping into the various types, here’s a quick primer on backlinks.

Simply put, a backlink is any link from another website to your website.

Like all links, backlinks consist of three primary parts:

These parts are marked up in HTML with anchor tags. A backlink to Search Engine Land might look like the following in a webpage’s source code:

Link

A backlink can have other global HTML attributes, such as a class or ID. However, the parts shown above are the most relevant for categorizing backlinks.

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Whether a link is a backlink or an external link is a matter of perspective:

For example, from the perspective of Search Engine Land:

All external links are also backlinks and vice versa. What they’re called depends on the perspective they’re observed from.

There are many kinds of backlinks, and many ways to talk about them.

To make discussing them easier, this guide collects backlinks into four groups based on functions and features of the links:

Each of these groups contain several different types of backlinks. More information about each link type is provided below.

Note the same backlink can be included in multiple groups. For example, an editorial backlink may also be a natural backlink and a follow backlink.

With that in mind, here’s a closer look at the backlinks themselves.

Some backlinks get their names from how web crawlers, browsers, and other tools should treat them.

These backlink types are named according to their values in the rel attribute.

Nofollow backlinks are links that webmasters can use to tell Google to ignore for ranking purposes. In contrast, follow links (sometimes called “dofollow” links) work like a citation for the linked content.

As for why you should care about nofollow and follow backlinks, a very short history lesson is required.

Google’s first ranking algorithm was called PageRank. Basically, PageRank used backlinks to score websites. The value of that score determined where a site would show up in search results. (More on PageRank under “What gives a backlink value?” below.)

Unfortunately, bad actors soon figured out how to manipulate rankings by creating links on forum websites, blog comments, thin content websites, and elsewhere.

Google tried to penalize websites that allowed such links, but it turned into a big game of Whack-a-Mole. New spam sites kept popping up, and Google would try to keep them out of search rankings.

Then, in 2005, Google introduced the concept of nofollow links.

By adding a rel="nofollow" attribute to any backlink, website owners could tell Google to ignore that link for PageRank purposes.

Fast forward to 2019, when Google introduced two other rel values for backlinks: “sponsored” and “ugc” (user-generated content). Information on those relationship-based link types is provided further down.

Timeline

As things stand today, whether a backlink is nofollowed or followed can impact your site’s SEO:

Many sites still use “nofollow” values to indicate sponsored or user-generated content. This is okay, according to Google, as it now treats nofollow links as hints.

For example, the “MX Keys S” link in the following screenshot from an engadget review is a nofollow that directs readers to where they can buy the product:

Engadget Best Keyboard Scaled

The simplified HTML code for the link is:

<a rel="nofollow noopener">MX Keys S</a>

Since follow backlinks can be beneficial to SEO, website owners want to attract as many follow backlinks as possible from reputable websites. Likewise, they want to make sure backlinks from sketchy websites are marked as nofollow.

If you notice that your backlink profile contains both follow and nofollow backlinks, that’s okay. Websites will tend to attract both as they grow and thrive.

Keep reading to learn more about how you can improve your site’s backlink profile and attract the types of links you want.

Pro tip: All the links on a webpage can be treated as nofollow links via an HTTP header instruction or a robots meta tag directive. Be sure to check these possibilities if you think backlinks to your site might be nofollowed on a given page or site.

Although not important for SEO, backlinks can affect how traffic shows up in your website’s analytics.

As the name implies, a backlink prevents referrer information from being included in HTTP headers. It is indicated by a rel="noreferrer" attribute.

This means that visits from links will look like direct traffic in Google Analytics and similar tools.

If you suddenly see a jump in direct traffic, this could be an indication that you received a backlink. You can use a backlink analysis tool to help you hunt down the new link. (See “How do I know if I have a good backlink profile?” below for more details and tool suggestions.)

Another way to group backlinks is by the relationship of the linking page and the content it links to.

Natural or organic backlinks arise when another website links to your content without any direct effort from you.

These backlinks work like a citation or endorsement, recognizing your content as a credible and authoritative resource worth referencing.

The best natural backlinks:

Natural backlinks are great for SEO. They tell Google your content is valuable to an audience beyond just your own website.

You can see an example of what a natural backlink might look like on Dad or Alive’s blog post about Smuggler’s Notch. In the last paragraph of the post, he includes a followed link to the ski resort’s home page:

Dadalive Backlink 1 Scaled

Gaining natural backlinks should be one of your ongoing content creation goals. The best way to attract these types of links is to develop engaging and helpful content.

Manual backlinks are links to your website acquired through link building efforts.

Essentially, a manual backlink is one that you ask for in some way.

Here are some of the most common methods people use to build manual backlinks.

Outreach

Outreach involves contacting a website owner or admin and asking them to link to your site.

The goal with outreach is to acquire a followed backlink that feels and looks natural, even though you’re technically requesting it.

Requests for such links can vary, such as:

When reaching out to websites to request a backlink, you always want to make sure your request also adds value to the website you’re contacting.

Quote sourcing

If you’re a subject matter expert, you may be able to offer quotes for journalists and other writers to use in their reporting.

Very often, you can include a link to your website as part of the quote.

To be considered as a source, you’ll need to pitch your quote to journalists looking for experts on specific topics. You could pitch to a journalist directly—or you can use a service to help you.

Some of the most popular platforms for pitching quotes include:

Source Of Sources Login Screen Scaled

Other media and PR platforms may include quote pitching as part of their service offering. Finding one that fits your experience and industry can be very helpful for boosting your link building efforts.

There are a host of directories, resource sites, guides, and similar sites that allow website owners to submit links.

Some well-known general directories include:

Here’s an example of what a page of links look like on Curlie:

Curlie Backlinks Scaled

There’s nothing inherently wrong with getting your site or page listed in a directory.

However, if you submit your site to too many directories, Google could think you’re attempting to manipulate search rankings. The search engine could then penalize your website, which would hurt your ability to rank in the search results.

That said, some local or niche websites can help audiences find your page while sending the appropriate signals to Google about topic relevance.

If you plan to submit a link to one of these sites, be sure to diligently research their reputation and reliability first.

Paid backlinks

Paying for backlinks is technically a form of getting manual backlinks. However, paid backlinks should be avoided for SEO purposes, especially if they’re followed links.

See “Sponsored backlinks” below for information on how to properly handle links in paid content.

When two websites have backlinks that point to each other, they’re called reciprocal backlinks. Another term for this is link exchange.

Google’s official stance is that you should avoid excessive link exchanges. Unfortunately, they don’t define “excessive.”

You don’t have to shy away from linking to every site that links to yours. If there’s a legitimate reason for both of you to link to each other, then do so!

For example, as John Mueller once explained in a Google SEO office hours, it’s natural for local businesses with neighboring locations to link to each other’s websites. These types of reciprocal backlinks would not cause any problems.

Another example would be if a speaker has an upcoming event and links to the event website so fans can plan to go. In return, the event website might link to the speaker’s website in event announcements on its blog or from a page with bios about the event’s guests.

What you should never do, however, is engage in an agreement like, “I’ll link to your site if you link to mine.”

You should also avoid more complex reciprocal backlinking schemes like the following:

Gaining a few reciprocal backlinks becomes more likely as your site gets bigger and you have more content. Like natural backlinks, as long as reciprocal backlinks happen organically, you shouldn’t have any issues.

A sponsored backlink is any backlink that involves a trade of value. This includes links in exchange for money, products, services, or any other quid pro quo.

Some of the most common types of sponsored backlinks are:

In 2005, Google introduced “nofollow” to deal with all types of spammy links, including sponsored backlinks. In March 2020, the search engine added “sponsored” and “ugc” as separate link types. (Bing later added support for these values, as well.)

Using “sponsored” to indicate paid backlinks instead of “nofollow” is more specific, because it tells Google why the link should be discounted for SEO purposes.

This means that rel="sponsored" should be added to any backlinks that involve a paid relationship.

A sponsored link might look like this in HTML:

<a href="https://searchengineland.com" rel="sponsored">Search Engine Land</a>

Note that Google has said it’s not necessary to update old nofollow links. Just use the new “sponsored” value going forward where appropriate.

User-generated content (UGC) backlinks

UGC backlinks refer to links created by a website’s users.

Some examples of UGC backlinks include:

While some UGC backlinks can be helpful, historically they’ve been considered spammy.

A UGC backlink looks like:

<a href="https://searchengineland.com" rel="ugc">Search Engine Land</a>

Marking links as “ugc” is an indication that the website owner does not endorse the user-created link. They will typically be ignored by Google and other search engines

As with sponsored backlinks, it’s not necessary to mark old UGC backlinks if they are nofollowed.

Backlink types by content type

Another common way to group backlinks is by the type of content where they appear.

As with other backlink types, obtaining natural followed backlinks in these types of content offers the best SEO value.

Editorial content refers to articles and other long-form content that can appear on a website.

Most editorial backlinks will be natural backlinks consisting of:

The best way to gain editorial backlinks is to publish timely, thoughtful pieces on relevant topics in your industry.

For a close-to-home example, a Search Engine Land article announcing a study on Google AI Overviews included a link to the study itself:

Sel The Study Link Scaled

This is a timely, relevant link earned naturally because of the unique and interesting content. The study likely also received links from other sites sharing news related to search engines, AI technology, or digital marketing, and even some general interest news sites.

Farther afield, a Nerdwallet article about car prices has received links from news sites reporting on different aspects of the automobile market, including Cleveland.com, The Daily Dot, and Vox, among others.

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Guest post backlinks

When you include a link to your website in the body of a guest post you wrote for another site, that’s a guest post backlink. These are also sometimes called contributor links.

Guest posting is a great way to earn legitimate manual backlinks. Remember that if you’re paid for the post, however, it should be marked as a sponsored link.

When guest blogging:

For example, Huffpost allows contributor stories like this story about first getting Botox. It includes several links, including two backlinks to homepages related to the author’s experience:

Botox Collage 2 Scaled

Both links are relevant and well placed within the story. Neither are nofollowed, which means they are likely passing value to the websites they link to.

Placing backlinks on profiles you control is a great way to direct search engines (and users) to your main website.

Examples include:

Linkedin Sel About Link Scaled

Although many sites add nofollow to their profile links, they can still be useful for claiming branded search results and driving referral traffic.

In addition to profile links, you can get backlinks in social media posts.

Many social media sites use nofollow in post links. However, linking to your site on social media can help boost traffic as part of a larger marketing effort.

It can also get your content indexed faster. And some social media posts can appear in featured snippets.

Facebook Sel Link Scaled

To get the most out of social media backlinks:

Syndicated backlinks happen when you allow your content to be republished on other sites.

The most common types of syndicated content are:

Backlinks from syndication sites are often nofollowed. For example, this syndicated press release from Empower Brands at PR Newswire includes a nofollow link to the company’s homepage:

Prnewswire Links 1 Scaled

Note: To check if a link is a nofollow link, right click on the link and choose “Inspect” (most browsers) or “Inspect Element” (Safari). A developer tools window will appear, and you can look for rel="nofollow" in the <a> tag for the link. See the “Follow vs. nofollow backlinks” section above for more information.

Google offers guidance to legitimate syndication services on how to avoid article duplication. This ensures your site’s content appears in the search results rather than the syndicated versions on other sites.

If your content is being plagiarized (not syndicated), you may want to consider sending a copyright takedown notice or asking Google to delist the copied content.

Directory websites were big in the early days of the World Wide Web, before search engines helped people find useful content. Now, such directories are not very useful.

In some cases, local directory sites could help people find physical locations for your business.

Before listing on any directories, make sure it’s a reputable site and that your website is relevant to the directory’s audience.

Backlink types by anchor text

Another way to categorize backlinks is based on the anchor text they contain.

Having a backlink profile with a range of anchor texts is healthy and normal.

However, if your website acquires too many backlinks with a particular type of anchor text, you may be in danger of receiving a penalty from Google.

Backlinks that mention your brand are great. They build brand awareness, and point directly to where visitors can find you.

Keep in mind that brand backlinks should point to the most relevant page based on the anchor text.

For example:

Brand mentions are not limited to your website, domain, or company name. They can also refer to products, services, publications, trademarks, or even high-profile individuals (such as a CEO) associated with your brand.

Here’s an example. In this article on Krispy Kreme earnings forecast, Bladen Online links to the company’s executive leadership page when mentioning CEO Josh Charlesworth:

Krispy Kreme Seo Link Scaled

Use tools like Google Alerts or Mention to monitor for news and other content about your brand.

Exact match backlinks are those that use the target keyword for the linked page in the link’s anchor text.

For example, The Plant Native website writes about different types of plants. On its page about wild irises, it includes a link to the LSU AgCenter’s page about a family of irises known as Louisiana Irises using the anchor text “Louisiana Iris”:

Irises Scaled

Note that it’s not always possible to tell what keyword a page is targeting. However, you can often make an educated guess based on the title tag and H1, both of which are “Louisiana Irises” on the LSU AgCenter page.

Further confirmation is provided by images from that page appearing in Google search results for the phrase “Louisiana iris”:

Google Serp Louisiana Iris 1 Scaled

Exact match backlinks tend to be manual links rather than natural links. This is because people who create organic links wouldn’t necessarily know the target keyword for a given page.

If you try to earn manual backlinks with exact match anchor text, make sure the text fits naturally and seamlessly into the existing content. Otherwise, Google may think you’re trying to manipulate links.

Partial match backlinks contain anchor text related to, but not exactly matching, the target keyword for the linked page.

Many natural backlinks use partial match anchor text because the individual creating the link likely doesn’t know the target keywords for the linked page.

In its introduction to wild irises, The Plant Native links to a page listing iris species at World Flora Online:

Irises2 Scaled

The anchor text “hundreds of irises found worldwide” is a partial match because while it includes the probable target keyword of “iris,” that anchor text contains additional phrases, as well.

In practice, partial match anchor text can get even broader than the example above.

For example, it might contain a synonym or a related phrase, rather than all or part of a target keyword. Such backlinks are sometimes called broad match backlinks or related phrase backlinks.

Two other links in The Plant Native iris introduction provide examples:

Irises25 Scaled

A generic backlink is one that uses a general word or phrase without providing any context about what’s at the other end of the link.

A few examples you may have seen include:

And the list goes on.

In a potentially ironic use of generic anchor text, the style guide for Tidyverse (a collection of R programming language modules) recommends avoiding “click here” by backlinking to a Smashing Magazine with the not-recommended anchor text:

Click Here Backlinks Scaled

(The example above is potentially ironic because it could be argued that Smashing Magazine is targeting the keyword “click here.” For the purposes of this guide, assume that even ironic uses of generic anchor text should be avoided when possible.)

Website owners conscious of UX best practices avoid generic anchor text as much as possible, because such text fails to offer any information about where clicking the link will take users.

Descriptive backlink text is not only good for user experience and accessibility. It’s also good for SEO, because it lets Google know why the referring page finds the linked content useful or interesting.

Don’t worry if your backlink profile has some generic backlinks. That’s bound to happen as time goes on and more people link to your site.

However, if you notice a lot of backlinks with generic anchor text pointing to your site, it may be worth reaching out to those websites and asking them to update the link with more indicative text.

A bare URL backlink uses the full URL as the anchor text.

Like so:

<a href="https://searchengineland.com/">https://searchengineland.com/</a>

Bare URLs can look jarring in body text. They’re most commonly used in citations or footnotes.

For example, MedicalNewsToday uses bare URLs in sources for its articles, like this one on foods that lower blood sugar:

Medical News Today Article Review Scaled

These types of backlinks are often good targets for manual outreach. Website owners may be willing to update the URL anchor text to something more relevant, such as a brand mention or at least the domain name without the additional characters.

Image backlinks aren’t text—but they should have alt text.

And Google uses alt text as anchor text for image links.

Engaging images have long been a useful way to get people to link back to your site. Some of the best types of backlink-worthy image content includes:

When encouraging visitors to share images you’ve created, always provide the suggested HTML with your preferred backlink and alt text already included.

Backlinks are important because they demonstrate your expertise, drive referral traffic, and ultimately help your content rank better.

Here’s a little more on the value good backlinks provide.

Google developed the PageRank algorithm in the late 1990s. It’s basically a score given to a webpage based on how many other pages link to it.

PageRank was once a very important element in determining a webpage’s search engine position.

Pagerank

As people became savvier and gamed the PageRank system, Google introduced many other ranking factors.

Yet PageRank is still part of Google’s algorithm and can affect your page’s rank in search engine result pages (SERPs).

This means backlinks still offer some SEO value—even if nobody’s sure exactly how much.

Say a new restaurant opens in your town. Within a few days, you start hearing good things from family, friends, and co-workers about the quality of the food, the skill of the chefs, and the integrity of the staff.

Chances are, you’d want to check this restaurant out.

Similarly, when you gain backlinks from various websites, it shows that you have authoritative, trustworthy content created by an expert.

Note that not every backlink provides EAT value. More below on what constitutes good backlinks and not-so-good backlinks—and what you can do to attract the former rather than the latter.

Referral traffic is valuable. A holistic digital marketing effort will consider referral traffic alongside organic and direct traffic sources.

In fact, some types of backlinks that aren’t great for SEO purposes can be really good at driving referrals. This includes sponsored backlinks and affiliate link programs, among others.

In addition, backlinks get your brand before new audiences. You never know when someone who’s never heard of your products and services will stumble on a link to your site, but with an organized marketing effort, you can make these kinds of interactions more purposeful and less happenstance

A good backlink profile shows variety, relevance, and growth.

Here are some of the main things you want to see in your profile.

Given all of the different types of backlinks that exist, a robust backlink profile is going to have many kinds of links in it.

Yes, even a few undesirable ones.

There’s no ideal ratio, but at a very broad stroke you want to have:

If you have a robust affiliate program, then you might wind up with a higher percentage of sponsored (or nofollow) links. This is fine as long as they are appropriately marked.

Mixed anchor text

A strong backlink profile has anchor text that’s relevant to both the page where the link lives and the linked page. In practice, you’ll likely see a mix of all the anchor text backlink types mentioned above.

Try to spot any problems you see in anchor text within a single site or across similar sites, such as:

Any or all of these indicate spam or negative SEO tactics.

If you find any of the anchor text problems listed above, you can reach out to the website owner:

As a last resort, you may be able to disavow unnatural links pointing to your website. Note that this option is only available if Google issues a manual action against your site.

Domain diversity

A healthy backlink profile has domain diversity on two different levels.

First, you should see links from a variety of .com and .org sites, as well as newer top-level domains (TLDs) related to your industry. If relevant to your website, you might also get backlinks from .edu or .gov sites.

Secondly, if your audience is tied to a particular country or geographic location, you should make sure you’re getting links from the appropriate country code TLDs (ccTLDs). Examples include .ca for Canada, .uk for the United Kingdom, and .au for Australia.

As mentioned above, the best way to gain domain diversity is to create content that earns natural backlinks and to build manual backlinks from relevant sites.

Content assortment

Backlinks to your site should come from different types of content. However, that content should always be relevant to the linked page on your site.

A site like Search Engine Land gets links from a wide variety of other sites, since SEO and digital marketing are relevant across many industries.

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However, if you own a site related to, say, hydrographic surveying and mapping (NOAA.gov), then the types of content linking to your site is likely to be much narrower.

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Having a few out-of-context backlinks isn’t going to hurt your site. But if you notice a lot of domains linking to yours from outside your industry or content topic areas, it could impact your ability to rank well.

Steady growth

As your site grows, so should the number of backlinks you get.

Search engines tend to reward consistent effort with increased visibility and higher rankings. Maintaining steady growth in backlinks is a good way to show that your site is attracting new attention and staying relevant to the larger online landscape.

While it’s possible to have a piece of content go viral every now and then, repeated backlink spikes could be a sign of spammy behavior. If you notice such spikes, dig deeper to make sure the links are coming from legitimate sites.

And of course, you should never engage in:

Ever since the Panda update, Google’s algorithm has gotten really good at rooting out these techniques and penalizing sites that engage in them.

You can see some information about backlinks with the following tools:

One way to look at the complete backlink profile for a website is to use Semrush’s Backlink Analytics tool.

Simply type in your domain, then click “Analyze.”

Semrush Backlink Analytics Search Sel Scaled

Once the report runs, you’ll be taken to an “Overview” page. At the top you can see summary totals for:

Backlink Analytics Sel Overview Scaled

The “Overview” also provides charts on various aspects of your backlink profile.

For example, you can see the number and percentage of text and image backlinks, as well as how many backlinks are follow, nofollow, sponsored, and UGC.

You can also see charts on where the links are coming from by TLD and country.

Backlink Analytics Sel Backlink Types Scaled

If you want to dig into the data further, you can simply click into more specific reports.

The “Backlinks” tab gives access to details about all of the backlinks found for a domain. You can filter the report by:

Backlink Analytics Sel Backlinks Scaled

The “Anchors” tab provides information about specific anchor text used across your backlink profile. This can help you identify potential outreach opportunities for updating anchor text to better fit context and search intent.

Backlink Analytics Sel Anchors Scaled

The “Referring Domains” tab gives you a combined view of the links coming from different websites.

Backlink Analytics Sel Referring Domains Scaled

There are a lot of other Backlink Analytics features available. Don’t be afraid to dig around and see what other insights you can find.

Maintaining a well-rounded backlink profile takes time and attention. Now that you understand the SEO value of each of these backlink types, you can craft a link building strategy that’ll give your site an extra boost.

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