Summary: Backlinks are links from other websites to yours. Google still uses them as a signal of trust, but far less than it used to, and only when the linking site is relevant and genuine. In 2026, a handful of earned links from sites your customers actually read will do more than hundreds of bought or directory links, which Google now largely ignores or treats as spam.
If you have ever been emailed an offer of “50 high DA backlinks for £99”, you have met the problem with link building. Links still matter to Google, but the ones being sold in bulk are the ones Google has spent a decade learning to discount. This guide explains what backlinks are, how much they still count for, what we see across the sites we work on, and how to earn links that help rather than harm.
Backlinks, also called inbound links, are links from one website to a page on another. To Google they work like a recommendation: if a site it already trusts links to yours, some of that trust passes across. They are the main part of off-page SEO, the work that happens on other people’s sites rather than your own.
Not all links carry the same weight. A link from a relevant, well-regarded site in your industry is worth more than dozens from unrelated or low-quality sites, and Google is explicit that it values quality over quantity.
Links were once the dominant ranking factor. Google’s original PageRank algorithm weighted them heavily, and for years the easiest way to rank was to collect as many as possible, from link farms, directory submissions and reciprocal schemes.
The result is that links still count, but as one signal among many, and only when they look like something a real person chose to add.
We regularly compare link profiles against rankings and organic traffic across the sites we manage, which span ecommerce, healthcare, B2B services and hospitality. We look at referring domains, dofollow links, the domain rating of linking sites, and how each relates to keyword positions and traffic. The pattern has been consistent:
Sites with more referring domains do not reliably get more organic traffic. Dofollow links show a slightly stronger relationship than the total, but the effect is small compared with content and intent.
For keywords already ranking in the top three, we see little direct effect from links; those pages are winning on content and relevance. Where links do seem to help is getting pages indexed and moving them from positions 11 to 50 into the top ten.
Chasing links from high-DR sites, on its own, has not produced reliable gains. Relevance to your topic matters more than the number next to the domain.
The strongest relationship we see with organic traffic is between the content and the intent behind the search. Well-targeted pages outperform heavily linked ones that miss the question.
Our working view is that links now carry something like 15 to 20 percent of the weight in ranking a page, where a decade ago they could have been half or more. That is an estimate from pattern, not a Google figure, and it will vary by sector. The practical conclusion is the same either way: build links to support strong content, not instead of it.
Link building is slow. A profile built this way grows by a few good links a month, and that is the point: it looks like what it is.
Buying links is the shortcut that costs the most. Google’s spam policies name it directly: buying or selling links for ranking purposes is link spam, and so are low-quality directory links, widely distributed footer or widget links, and keyword-rich links in guest posts or press releases. Bought links tend to come from exactly the sites Google ignores, so at best they do nothing and at worst they bring a penalty. If you pay for a placement for genuine advertising reasons, it should carry rel=”sponsored” or rel=”nofollow” so it passes no ranking credit.
If a site has accumulated a large volume of spammy links, perhaps from a previous agency, you can tell Google to ignore them with a disavow file in Search Console: a text file listing the domains or URLs, uploaded through the Disavow Tool. Use it sparingly. Google already ignores most low-quality links on its own, and a disavow file is only worth the risk when there is a clear pattern of manipulation or a manual action to recover from.
There is no number. A page can rank first with a handful of relevant links if the content is the best answer, and fail to rank with hundreds if it is not. Look at what links the pages above you actually have, then aim for relevance rather than a count.
Genuine, curated directories relevant to your sector or area, such as a trade body or a local chamber, can still be worth listing in for the referral and the citation. Mass free directories are not, and Google lists low-quality directory links as spam. We no longer recommend bulk directory submission as a link building tactic.
Not directly, since they are designed not to pass ranking credit, but Google treats nofollow as a hint rather than a rule, and a nofollow link from a relevant site still brings traffic and brand exposure.
Yes. Every package includes a defined level of link building, and we earn links through content and outreach rather than buying them. Details are on our link building services page.
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