Term
Backlinks
Updated · 2 min read · By The ParSEO team
The short answer
Links from other websites to yours, which search engines use as one signal of a page's importance and trust.
A backlink is a link from another site to yours. Search engines use links to discover pages and as one signal among many of relevance and trust; a link from a respected, relevant site counts for far more than many links from unrelated or low-quality sites.
Buying links, swapping them in bulk or creating them in automated schemes breaks Google's spam policies. For small businesses, the honest sources are: directories and associations in your field, local news, partners and suppliers, and content good enough that people link to it on their own.
In practice
In practice, a small business earns its most useful links by being listed accurately in the directories and associations of its trade and city, by being mentioned in local news when it does something notable, and by publishing guides good enough that others reference them. A handful of relevant links is worth more than hundreds of unrelated ones.
Sources
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