A link from another website to yours. Google uses links as one way to discover pages and judge their relevance and importance; links bought to manipulate rankings break its spam policies.
Example
A Pune lifestyle magazine writes about Meera's handloom range and links to her category page. That is a backlink, and a useful one because the site is relevant and real.
How you'll hear it
“We have hundreds of backlinks, but most are from directory spam. Five links from real fashion sites would do more.”
Don't confuse it with
- Internal link: from your own page to your own page.
- Citation (local): a mention of your name, address and phone, which may have no link at all.
Related terms
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Sources
- Backlinks, Moz
- Spam policies for Google web search, Google Search Central