Are Backlinks Important For SEO?

Last Updated: 31/08/2026

Yes, backlinks are still one of the strongest ranking signals in SEO, though not quite in the way most people assume.

A link from a relevant, trustworthy website tells Google that someone outside your own site vouches for your content, and that vote of confidence still carries genuine weight. What has changed is how much that single signal can do on its own. Links now work alongside dozens of other factors, from content quality to technical performance, rather than as a shortcut around them.

This guide explains why backlinks still matter, what separates a good link from a wasted one, and how to build a profile that helps your rankings rather than putting them at risk. If you want the fuller picture of where links sit within a wider campaign, our SEO services team can walk you through it directly.

What Are Backlinks and Why Do They Exist

A backlink is simply a link from someone else’s website to a page on yours. Google calls them inbound links, most marketers just call them links, and either way the concept hasn’t changed much since PageRank was built around it in the late 1990s. The idea is straightforward. If several reputable sites link to your page, that page is probably worth reading. If nobody links to it, Google has less reason to trust it over a competing page that people are actively referencing.

Where this gets more interesting is in how Google weighs these links today. A single citation from a well established industry publication can do more for your visibility than fifty links from low quality directories. That is a lesson worth learning early, because the instinct to chase volume is one of the most common mistakes business owners make when they start building a backlink profile, something we cover in more depth in our guide to effective link building strategies.

Do Backlinks Still Matter in 2026

Short answer, yes. Google’s own John Mueller has said publicly that although the company uses over 200 ranking factors, links remain among the top few. What has shifted is the context around them. Google’s systems are far better at spotting manipulation now, and content that does not satisfy the person searching will not rank well no matter how many links point at it.

We see this play out regularly. One client had a healthy number of backlinks but was still stuck on page two, mostly because the site’s underlying technical SEO health was letting the content down. Once we fixed the crawl issues and improved page speed, the existing backlinks finally started pulling their weight. Links amplify good SEO, they do not replace it.

This is also why backlinks matter beyond a traditional search results page. As tools like ChatGPT and Google’s AI Overviews pull from the web to generate answers, the role backlinks play in AI powered search is growing rather than shrinking, largely because these systems still lean on which sources other reputable sites consider trustworthy.

What Makes a Backlink Valuable

Not every backlink pulls the same weight. Before spending time chasing links, it helps to understand which qualities actually move the needle and which ones barely register.

If you are new to any of these terms, our beginner’s guide to SEO basics breaks each one down without the jargon.

Backlinks Are One Piece of a Bigger Puzzle

It is worth being honest here. Backlinks are not a silver bullet, and treating them as the whole strategy is a common reason campaigns stall. There is a wider set of trade offs worth understanding, which we lay out in our piece on the pros and cons of SEO as a channel. For online stores specifically, the approach shifts again, since product pages, categories and reviews all interact with your link profile differently, a topic we unpack in our SEO tips for e-commerce websites.

A link is only worth having if the content behind it actually gets read once someone clicks through. There is little point earning a strong backlink to a page that bores the reader within thirty seconds. We wrote about this problem directly in our guide on getting more people to actually read your blog posts, and it is one of the more overlooked parts of a link building campaign.

Follow Links vs Nofollow Links

A follow link passes on what is often called link equity, essentially a share of the linking page’s authority. A nofollow link, marked with a small piece of code, tells Google not to pass that equity along. For years, marketers dismissed nofollow links as pointless. That view is outdated. Google has said it treats nofollow as a hint rather than a strict rule, and nofollow links from high traffic sites such as the BBC or the Guardian still send real visitors your way, which is valuable in its own right.

A natural backlink profile includes both types. If every single link pointing at your site is a follow link with perfectly optimised anchor text, that pattern looks manufactured, and Google’s spam policies exist precisely to catch that kind of behaviour.

How to Build Backlinks Without Falling Foul of Google

There is no trick that replaces consistently useful content, but there are approaches that work reliably when done properly.

• Digital PR. Pitch a genuinely useful statistic, survey or resource to journalists and industry writers. This is how most high authority links are earned.
• Guest contributions. Write for publications your customers already read. It only works if the writing stands on its own merit, not stuffed with links.
• Resource and repair links. Find broken links on relevant sites and offer your content as the replacement.
• Community platforms. Reddit threads, forums and niche communities can be a genuine source of relevant links when approached with care, something we go into in our guide on building backlinks through Reddit.
• Paid visibility as a supporting channel. Running a campaign through a Google Ads agency in London or a Facebook Ads agency in London can put your content in front of the people most likely to link to it or share it, which often does more for link building than cold outreach alone.

If you would rather focus on running the business and leave the outreach to someone else, that is exactly the kind of work a proper PPC marketing agency pairs well with, letting paid and organic visibility support each other instead of competing for the same budget.

Common Backlink Mistakes That Can Hurt Your Rankings

Buying links in bulk is still the fastest way to damage a site. Google’s algorithms and its human reviewers are good at spotting paid link patterns, and a manual penalty can wipe out years of organic progress overnight.

Ignoring the occasional irrelevant link is fine. A single stray link from an unrelated site rarely causes harm on its own. A pattern of them, especially from clearly spammy domains, is worth cleaning up using Google’s own disavow tool, though this should be a last resort rather than a routine habit, since Google states most sites never need to use it at all.

Over optimised anchor text is another common trap. If every link uses the exact same keyword phrase, it reads as unnatural to both users and algorithms. And treating link building as a separate activity from everything else rarely works. Backlinks perform best alongside sound keyword research for AI powered search and content people genuinely want to reference, not as a bolt on task handled once a quarter.

A Quick Example From Our Own Work

One client came to us convinced their content simply was not good enough, when the real issue was that almost nobody outside their own website had ever linked to it. Within four months of a focused outreach campaign, alongside the adjustments covered in our piece on why PPC and SEO work better together, their organic traffic nearly doubled, and cost per lead from their LinkedIn advertising campaigns dropped as brand recognition grew alongside it. Backlinks rarely work in isolation, they tend to lift everything else running around them too.

How to Measure Whether Your Backlinks Are Working

Track referring domains rather than raw link counts, since ten links from ten different quality sites beat fifty links from a single low quality one. Google Search Console shows you exactly who links to your site for free, and it is worth checking monthly rather than leaving it untouched for a year. Watch your organic traffic and keyword rankings over the following weeks, since new backlinks typically take four to twelve weeks to influence rankings meaningfully. If you are serious about tracking this properly over time, it is worth reading our guide on getting your website onto page one of Google, which covers the wider set of signals working alongside your links, and our note on whether SEO is something you can realistically manage yourself or whether it is worth bringing in help sooner rather than later.

None of this needs to be complicated, but it does need consistency. A good foundation matters more than any single tactic, which is why we always point people back to the core basics laid out in our guide on getting the most from your SEO strategy before chasing anything more advanced.

FAQs

How many backlinks do I need to rank in the UK?

There is no fixed number. A local plumber in Leeds might rank well with a dozen relevant, local links, while a national ecommerce brand competing for broad terms may need hundreds. What matters more than the count is relevance and consistency over time.

Can too many backlinks hurt my website?

Too many low quality or unnatural links can hurt you, but there is no such thing as too many genuinely earned, relevant links. The risk comes from the pattern looking manufactured, not from the volume itself.

Is it worth paying for backlinks?

Paying for links that pass authority without disclosure breaks Google’s guidelines and risks a manual penalty. Sponsored content and partnerships are fine as long as any paid link carries a nofollow or sponsored attribute.

What is the difference between backlinks and internal links?

A backlink comes from another website. An internal link connects one page on your own site to another. Both matter, but they work differently, and you can find more of these distinctions answered in our common SEO questions answered post.

Do backlinks still matter for local SEO?

Yes. Citations from local directories, coverage in regional publications, and links from other businesses in your area all help local rankings, particularly alongside a properly optimised Google Business Profile.

Get Help Building a Backlink Profile That Actually Works

Backlinks are still one of the clearest signals you can send Google that your website deserves to be trusted, but only when they are earned from the right places for the right reasons. If your content deserves more visibility than it is currently getting, get in touch with our team about our SEO services, and we will give you an honest view of what your site actually needs, no inflated promises included.