Backlinks in SEO: quality, relevance and what to avoid

A backlink is a link from somebody else's website to yours. It might be a supplier recommending a business, a local publication covering a project, or an industry body listing its members. Those links can help people discover you and can contribute to how search engines understand a website.

But the number of links is a poor measure of their value. One relevant editorial mention may be more useful than hundreds of automated directory submissions.

Start with the reason a link exists

Ask whether someone would still want that link if search rankings did not exist.

An article about a manufacturing project that links to the manufacturer is useful in context. An industry association linking to an accredited member makes sense. A listing for a genuine local business helps visitors find that business.

By contrast, a link buried in unrelated content, repeated across hundreds of low-quality sites or attached to irrelevant keyword-rich text deserves scrutiny. The source, context and destination matter more than the headline backlink count.

Earning links through real work

The strongest opportunities often come from activities a business is already doing:

• Publish a case study that genuinely explains an interesting project.
• Credit organisations and collaborators appropriately.
• Make useful technical material available to customers or the industry.
• Maintain accurate memberships, trade profiles and supplier listings.
• Give a publication a real story, not a manufactured announcement.

A carefully documented project can create a reason for someone to reference you. There is no need to turn every relationship into an exchange of links.

What about anchor text?

Anchor text is the clickable wording of a link. It should help people understand the destination. Descriptive language such as 'see the venue booking case study' is generally clearer than 'click here'.

Don't insist that every link to your company uses exactly the same commercial phrase. A natural mix of brand names, page titles and ordinary language is to be expected.

Internal links also deserve attention. If an important service page is difficult to reach from your own navigation or related content, that is a straightforward issue you can fix.

Can bad backlinks damage a site?

Google has systems intended to identify and neutralise link spam. A few strange links in a backlink report do not, by themselves, establish that your site is under attack or penalised.

If rankings have fallen, first check technical changes, indexing, competition, content and any messages under Manual actions in Google Search Console. Investigate a link-related cause when the evidence supports it, particularly if there has been significant deliberate link-building that may violate Google's policies.

Google's disavow tool is not a routine tidying exercise. Use it only in the circumstances described in its official guidance, ideally after experienced review. Disavowing harmless links simply because a third-party tool gives them an alarming score can do more harm than good.

If your website has moved domain

Preserve the most relevant link destinations with permanent redirects, and ask important referring sites to update their old addresses. A link to a useful article should lead to the equivalent updated article, not be dumped onto your new homepage.

Audit real referring pages before deciding an old article is worthless. An unremarkable ten-year-old post might still be the destination of a valuable industry citation.

A simple monthly check

Review newly discovered referring domains, important lost links and unexpected spikes. Look for real relevance. Keep a record of outreach, changes to your own content and technical migration work.

The aim isn't to collect the largest number. It's to build a website that others have good reasons to mention.

Relevant services: SEO audits, technical SEO and ongoing SEO.

Further reading: Google's spam policies, including link spam.