Backlinks

What backlinks are#

A backlink is a link from another website to yours. Search engines read links as recommendations: when a respected site links to your page, it is a vote of confidence. Backlinks remain one of the strongest ranking signals, and they also send visitors directly.

Not all links are equal. One link from a relevant, trusted site is worth more than hundreds from unrelated or spammy ones.

What the tool shows#

Backlinks in the dashboard has a summary and five tabs.

The summary:

The tabs:

• Backlinks: individual links, with the linking page, the target page, the anchor text, whether the link is dofollow, the linking site's rank and when it was first seen.
• Referring domains: the sites linking to you, how many links each sends and when it first linked.
• Top pages: your pages that attract the most links.
• New and lost: month by month for the last 12 months, links and referring domains gained and lost.
• Link intersect: sites linking to your competitors but not to you. See below.

What makes a good link#

• Relevant: the linking site is about your topic, or a related one.
• Trusted: it has a healthy rank and a low spam score.
• Editorial: someone chose to link because the page is useful, not because they were paid.
• Descriptive anchor text: the link words describe your page.
• Dofollow: it passes ranking credit. Nofollow links still bring visitors and look natural.

Broken backlinks are free wins#

When another site links to a page on your site that no longer exists, that link's value is lost. Fix it by adding a 301 redirect from the broken address to the most relevant live page. It takes minutes and recovers links you already earned.

Reading new and lost#

A steady trickle of new referring domains means your content earns links. A sudden drop can mean a partner site removed links, a page you had links to was deleted, or a site was redesigned. Check lost links from important sites and ask whether they can be restored.

Link intersect: your best prospects#

Link intersect lists sites that link to one or more of your competitors but not to you. They are your warmest link prospects: they already link to pages like yours. For each prospect you see which competitors it links to, its rank and its spam score.

How to use it:

1. Add up to 4 competitors.
2. Sort by the number of competitors each site links to. A site linking to three of them is very likely to consider you too.
3. Open the linking pages. Look for resource lists, reviews, comparison articles and "best of" posts.
4. Contact the site with a short, specific note about why your page belongs there. Offer something useful, such as a better resource, a fresh data point or a correction.

Spam score, calmly#

Every site gets some low-quality links it never asked for. A few spammy links are normal and Google mostly ignores them. Only worry if a large share of your links look manipulative, or if you bought links in the past. Use the spam score to decide which links to look at, not as proof of a problem.

Scope#

Most backlink views accept a scope: a whole domain, the domain with its subdomains, a folder, or one exact page. Use exact page scope to see the links behind one specific article.

Cost#

• Overview, backlinks list, referring domains and history: about 2 credits each. Lists page through results a page at a time.
• Link intersect: about 4 credits, whatever the number of competitors.

From your AI assistant#

• backlinks_overview, backlinks_list, backlinks_referring_domains, backlinks_history and backlinks_link_intersect.

Try: "Find sites that link to beanhouse.com and grindgear.co but not to brewlab.coffee. Keep those with a low spam score, and draft a short outreach email for the best three."