What Is a Backlink? Types, Examples and How They Work
What is a backlink? A link on a page of another website that points to a page on yours. Google's SEO Starter Guide (last updated 10 December 2025) says Google “primarily finds pages through links from other pages it already crawled”, and adds: “In many cases, these are other websites that are linking to your pages.” Of the five backlinks we read on live pages on 12 November 2026, four were followed and one carried nofollow.
This guide is for a founder who has been told the product needs backlinks and wants to know what they are before spending anything on them: what backlinks are in SEO, how backlinks work, the eleven types you will run into with who does the work for each, and real backlink examples with their anchor text and rel, each read on the page that carries it. The rel values in HTML have a post of their own.
A backlink is someone else's link to your site. Google uses links to find pages and as one ranking signal among many; whether a given link counts depends on its rel, which the publishing site sets. Directory and launch listings are the kind you can line up by the dozen: SaaS.fyi sells one dofollow backlink with its $99 Premium, while for $29 Submitator files 30 of the 189 directories and launch platforms we submit to, the ones you pick.
What is a backlink in SEO?
What are backlinks in plain terms? The backlink meaning in one line: an <a> element on a page you do not control, whose address is on your domain. That is also the backlink definition SEO tools work from when they count your links. Inbound link and incoming link mean the same thing, seen from your side; for the site that publishes it, the same link is an outbound link. Backlinking, as a verb, is the work of getting them: being cited, getting listed, launching, asking.
A backlink has three parts worth knowing. The href is the address it points at, and it decides which of your pages and which domain get the link. The anchor text is the clickable words, which tell readers and Google what to expect on the other side (the words get a guide of their own). The rel attribute, when there is one, qualifies the link; with none, the link is followed. Here is one backlink as it sits in another site's HTML:
<!-- A page on blog.example.org: a site that is not yours -->
<p>
We moved our invoicing to
<a href="https://yourproduct.com/">YourProduct</a>
in the spring and have not looked back.
</p>
<!-- For yourproduct.com, that <a> is a backlink:
href = the page it points at, on your domain
text = the anchor text, "YourProduct"
no rel = a followed link -->Add rel="nofollow", rel="ugc" or rel="sponsored" to that anchor and it is still a backlink, but one that asks Google not to treat it as a regular link. The markup for every value is set out in our guide to the rel values.
What is a backlink on a website, and what is not one
A backlink to a website is defined by who owns the page it sits on. Your own menu, footer and blog links between your pages are internal links: you write them, you can change them and no SEO tool counts them as backlinks. The moment the same link sits on a page somebody else runs, it becomes a website backlink, and the anchor text, the rel and how long it stays up become that site's decisions. A mention of your product's name without a link is not a backlink either, however flattering the sentence around it.
How do backlinks work?
Links do two jobs for Google. The first is discovery. Google's page on how Search works describes how it learns that a new page exists: “Other pages are discovered when Google extracts a link from a known page to a new page: for example, a hub page, such as a category page, links to a new blog post.” A new product page that nobody links to waits for a sitemap; one that a crawled directory, launch post or article links to has a road in.
The second is meaning. Under the heading “Link analysis systems and PageRank”, Google's guide to its ranking systems says: “We have various systems that understand how pages link to each other as a way to determine what pages are about and which might be most helpful in response to a query.” A link from a page about invoicing tools to your invoicing tool is the kind of connection that sentence describes.
Followed and not followed
A link with no rel, or with values like noopener that concern the browser alone, is followed. A link marked nofollow, ugc or sponsored is qualified, and Google's page on qualifying links says that such links “will generally not be followed.” The publishing site picks the value, link by link and often for a whole section of the site at once, which is why the same kind of backlink can be followed on one site and not on the next. Dofollow and nofollow in detail, with the HTML and the checks, are in our guide to both.
What are referring domains? Referring domains vs backlinks
A referring domain is a website that links to you, counted once however many links it sends. MDN's lesson on code editors, one of the examples below, links code.visualstudio.com five times on one page: "Visual Studio Code", "install it before proceeding", "Visual Studio Code documentation", "Default keyboard shortcuts reference" and "Find and replace". To Visual Studio Code that page is five backlinks and one referring domain. Search Console counts the same way in its Top linking sites table: “This report shows the root domain of sites with the most links to your site, sorted by count of links.” When you compare your site with a competitor, compare referring domains: a backlink total jumps whenever one site links you from every page it has. How many of each a page needs to rank is worked out in our post on link counts.
What is a backlink profile?
Your backlink profile is the whole set: every backlink, the referring domains behind them, their anchor text and their rel. Search Console's Links report is the free view of it, and Google describes what it holds plainly: “It shows a sample of internal and external links to help you understand your site’s overall link profile.” The same help page adds: “The report doesn’t specify if a link is marked as nofollow”, so the rel is something you read on the linking page. A backlink audit is that profile read with a purpose (lost links, nofollowed ones, unwanted ones), and what to do about unwanted links is in our post on getting rid of them.
Why are backlinks important?
For a new product, the first reason is discovery: links are the main road Google uses to reach pages it has not seen. The second is people. A link on a page with readers is a door, and every directory listing, launch post and resource page is a place where someone looking for a tool like yours can click through. The third is ranking. Google's guide to its ranking systems names “Link analysis systems and PageRank” among them, and links are the input PageRank was built on.
Are backlinks still important in 2026?
Do backlinks still matter in 2026? Google's own pages say yes, with a limit. The ranking systems guide (last updated 10 December 2025) says of PageRank: “How PageRank works has evolved a lot since then, and it continues to be part of our core ranking systems.” The SEO Starter Guide lists PageRank under “Things we believe you shouldn't focus on” and explains why: “While PageRank uses links and is one of the fundamental algorithms at Google, there's much more to Google Search than just links.” Read together: links are still part of how Google ranks pages, they sit beside many other signals, and no count of them guarantees a position.
Types of backlinks: 11 kinds and who does the work
The lists of types of backlinks on page one run from 9 to 30 entries. The table below keeps the eleven a founder meets first and adds the two columns those lists leave out: who does the work, and whether the link is usually followed, taken from our catalog or a page read on 12 November 2026 wherever that could be measured.
Types of backlinks in SEO: 11 kinds, how you get each, who does the work and whether it is followed
| Type | What it is | How you get it | Who does the work | Usually followed? | On this site |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Editorial linkEarned | A writer links your product inside an article, a guide or a review because it helps their reader | Be worth citing: a product, a free tool or data nobody else has | The writer or editor decides; your part is the thing they cite | The publisher's call: MDN's guide left its links unmarked, Wikipedia marked all four of its links to Notion nofollow | What makes a link worth having |
| Press coverageEarned | A journalist or a newsletter links you in a story | News worth reporting, or an answer to a journalist's request | The journalist decides; you or a PR firm pitch | The publication's call | Ten ways to win links, compared |
| Resource pageEarned | A curated page of tools or links on one topic | Ask the page's owner to add you, where your product fits the list | You ask; the page's owner decides | On Let's Encrypt's list of clients, yes: none of its 162 outbound links is marked | Resource pages and broken links |
| Directory listingListed | A page about your product on a directory of software, SaaS or AI tools | Fill in the directory's form; some ask for a badge or sell a paid tier | You, or a submission service | Mostly: 76 of the 113 SaaS, software and AI directories in our catalog are followed on our record | Every directory, with its DR |
| Launch platform or startup directoryListed | A launch post or a listing on a site that shows new products | Launch on the day the site gives you, or join its queue | You, on launch day; the submission itself can be filed for you | 40 of 76 on our record; Product Hunt tags its links ugc | Launch sites, judged by the link |
| Badge linkListed | A directory listing whose link depends on the directory's badge staying on your site | Place the badge on your site and keep it there | You, or a service that keeps the badge live | Yes while the badge stays: 31 of the 32 catalog directories that require one are followed on our record | Is a badge a link back? |
| Profile linkListed | The website field of your account on a platform | Create the profile and fill in your site | You | Rarely: a GitHub profile's website field carried nofollow me | Free links and what each passes |
| Community or forum postListed | A link in a post or a reply on a forum or a community | Post where the community's rules allow a link | The account holder, inside each community's rules | Rarely: Indie Hackers marks product links nofollow, Hacker News until a story passes about twenty points | Hacker News, Indie Hackers |
| Reciprocal linkArranged | Two sites link to each other by agreement | A link exchange or a partner page | Both site owners | Each site's call | When a link back helps |
| Guest postArranged | An article you write for another site, with a link to yours inside it | Pitch a topic to the site's editor | You write; the site's editor publishes | The site's call | What link sellers offer |
| Link insertion (niche edit)Arranged | A link added to an article that was already published | Agreed with the site's owner | The site's owner edits the page | The site's call | What link sellers offer |
Directory, launch platform and badge rows: our catalog export of 3 November 2026, 189 rows under a category, intercepts excluded (SaaS and software 59, AI 54, launch platforms and startup directories 76). Followed on our record: the admin marks the link dofollow and no census of the directory's listings has flagged it as passing no equity, a record kept per site rather than a recount of every listing. The badge row counts the catalog directories whose admin record requires a badge. Product Hunt, Indie Hackers and Hacker News: their guides on this site. Editorial and resource page rows: the pages in the examples table. Profile row: one GitHub profile read on 12 November 2026, and the GitHub, Gravatar and DEV profiles our free backlink sites post read. The 9 to 30: the counts printed in the titles of the articles among the top 10 results for types of backlinks on Google US, collected 12 November 2026; a video in the same results, about local map listings, is left out. Rows that say "call" depend on the site that publishes the link. The highlighted rows are the ones Submitator files for you.
Three groups of backlink types in SEO: earned, listed and arranged
Sorted by who decides that the link exists, the rows fall into three groups. Earned links are someone else's choice: a writer, a journalist or the keeper of a resource page links you because their page is better for it. Listed links come from places built to hold products and people (directories, launch platforms, profiles, communities), where the site writes the rules and the rel, and the work is filling in what each one asks. Arranged links are agreed between two parties, as in the last three rows.
The listed group is the one a young product can start on before anyone has heard of it, and it is the group our catalog measures: 76 of 113 directories and 40 of 76 launch platforms and startup directories are followed on our record. Google's spam policies carry a line on directory links, and our post on web directories quotes it and gives our answer.
SaaS.fyi: $99 for one dofollow backlink. Submitator: $29 for 30 directories.
SaaS.fyi is one of the 59 SaaS and software directories we submit to, filed on its free tier with the badge kept live. Pick it and 29 more; each gets a description written for its form. 60 for $49, 100 for $79, paid once.
Backlink examples: five real links, read on 12 November 2026
A backlink example is more useful than a definition, so here are five, one of each kind a founder meets first, each pointing at a product anyone would recognise and each read in the HTML of the page that carries it. Google's link best practices, written for the links on your own pages, give the reason to record the words around each one: “the words before and after links matter, so pay attention to the sentence as a whole.”
Backlink examples: five real links, their anchor text and rel, read on 12 November 2026
| Kind | The page | Anchor text | rel | Where it sits | Links to the product | Followed? |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Editorial link in a guide | Code editorsMDN Web Docs, linking Visual Studio Code | Visual Studio Code | none | A sentence comparing code editors, in a lesson on setting up“You are better off with a fully-fledged code editor like Visual Studio Code (multiplatform, free)” | 5 | Yes |
| Resource page | ACME Client ImplementationsLet’s Encrypt, linking Certbot | Certbot | none | The first entry of a list of clients, under the heading Recommended: Certbot“We recommend that most people start with the Certbot client.” | 1 | Yes |
| Launch platform post | My YC app: Dropbox - Throw away your USB driveHacker News, linking Dropbox | My YC app: Dropbox - Throw away your USB drive | none | The post itself: its title is the anchor, with 104 points under it | 1 | Yes |
| Directory listing | Slack Review 2025 - Features, Pricing, Hacks and TipsProductivity Directory, linking Slack | Visit Website | none | The listing's header, a button under the name and the tagline Where Work Happens, repeated as Link in its details box | 5 | Yes |
| Encyclopedia article | Notion (productivity software)Wikipedia, linking Notion | www.notion.com | mw:ExtLink nofollow | The Website row of the article's infobox | 4 | No |
Each page read with a GET on 12 November 2026 between 17:03 and 17:04 UTC, from the HTML the site served; anchors were read with two methods that had to agree. "Links to the product" counts every anchor on the page whose address is on the product's host. The Hacker News post was published on 4 April 2007; its page links getdropbox.com once more through Hacker News' own from?site= link, which is not counted. On 12 November 2026 http://www.getdropbox.com/ answered with a redirect to https://www.dropbox.com/. A fifth address on the Wikipedia page holds notion.com inside an Internet Archive link and is not counted. Productivity Directory's App Store and Play Store links point at Apple and Google, not at slack.com, and are not counted. Followed means no nofollow, ugc or sponsored in the rel. The products are household names, chosen on purpose.
The publisher writes the rel. MDN names Visual Studio Code in a sentence and leaves the link unmarked; Wikipedia's article on Notion marks all four of its links to notion.com nofollow, the infobox's Website row included. Both are editorial links to a well-known product, and one is followed while the other is not.
One page can be several backlinks. MDN's lesson links Visual Studio Code five times, so a backlink tool counts five links and one referring domain. Let's Encrypt's client list is the classic resource page: 162 outbound links to 65 sites, and its recommendation of Certbot is one plain link among them.
A backlink points at an address. The Dropbox post on Hacker News, from April 2007 and at 104 points, links a page on getdropbox.com; on 12 November 2026 that address answered with a redirect to www.dropbox.com. Hacker News leaves a new story's link nofollow until it passes about twenty points; this one stands at 104, and its link is followed.
A directory listing is a backlink you can apply for. Productivity Directory, one of the directories we submit to, gives Slack a listing page and links slack.com from it five times: the Visit Website button under the name, the Link entry in the details box and three download links. None of them carries a rel, so all five are followed. Each directory sets that for itself, which is why our directory list records the link site by site.
Where to start getting links
Getting backlinks has posts of its own, and this one stays with what they are. Start with where our own sites' strongest links came from, with ten ways to build them and a table ranked by cost; then which free sites give a link, and what it passes; and before any directory, the four tests a directory link has to pass. Backlinks are one part of the work that happens away from your site, beside mentions, reviews and listings, which our off-page post sets out.
Where Submitator fits
Submitator does the two highlighted rows of the table for you. In the dashboard you pick from the 189 directories and launch platforms we submit to (SaaS and software: 59; AI tools: 54; launch platforms and startup directories: 76), each shown with its Domain Rating, and 116 of them are followed on our record. Every site on it got there the same way: one of our submissions went all the way through on it first.
We write the text for each of your picks fresh, to the length that directory's form takes, and complete the form ourselves; CAPTCHAs are handled on our side and never reach you. Where a directory makes its link depend on a badge, the badge comes from one component on your site that serves every badge your picks ask for, and keeping them all live is our job from then on, with no commit per directory. Once your listings are up we push them through IndexMachine, the free indexing ($25 value) on every plan card; there is nothing for you to connect, and which pages get indexed is Google's decision.
Each plan is one payment: 30 directories on Starter for $29, 60 on Growth for $49, 100 on Scale for $79, and All Directories ($149) covers the full catalog along with each directory we add afterwards. Your listings go out on a clock: most directories are delivered in 24 to 48 hours, every directory within 21 days at most. A rejection adds one directory to your selection by default, so you can choose another (All Directories excepted: its selection is already the whole catalog). A refund can be requested within 30 days of purchase, on the conditions our terms set out. So far 580+ startups have gone through Submitator, and our submission statistics count what became of their submissions.
No ads, no outreach. The anchor text and the rel of each listing are the directory's to set. SaaS.fyi prints both tiers on its submit page: Free with “Badge required on your site”, Premium at “$99 one-time” with “Dofollow backlink to your site” and “No badge required”. We file it on the free tier and keep the badge live, as one of the 30 your $29 picks.
Sources. Google, each page read on 12 November 2026: How Google Search works (last updated 18 December 2025), the SEO Starter Guide (10 December 2025), A guide to Google Search ranking systems (10 December 2025), Link best practices (10 December 2025), Qualify your outbound links (10 December 2025) and the Links report article in Search Console Help. Examples: see the note under their table. The catalog numbers on this page are computed from our export of 3 November 2026: 189 rows that carry a category, intercepts left out. "Followed on our record" is our admin's dofollow setting minus any directory a census in our directory list has flagged as passing no equity, a record of each site rather than a recount of its listings, and DR is Ahrefs' number as exported. SaaS.fyi: the two tiers on its submit page as read on 12 November 2026; that we file it on the free tier and keep its badge live is our founder's word. Who says what about us: the work on each order (a description per directory, the form filling, CAPTCHAs, one badge component kept running, pushing listings to IndexMachine) and the end-to-end entry rule for the catalog come from our founder; prices, the IndexMachine bonus and the count of startups are printed on our pricing section and home page; our terms hold the 21-day limit, the rejection credit and the 30-day refund window; and the 24 to 48 hour figure for most directories was given by our founder. This page makes no promise of rankings, traffic, indexing, AI mentions or Domain Rating gains. Domain Rating by Ahrefs
FAQ
What is the difference between a backlink and an internal link?
Who controls the page the link sits on. A link from your blog post to your pricing page is internal: both pages are yours, so you write its words and its rel. A backlink sits on a page someone else runs, and its anchor text, its rel and how long it stays up are their decisions. Search Console reports the two in separate tables, and backlink counts leave internal links out.
What is an inbound link?
Another name for a backlink, named from the side of the site it points to: a link on someone else's page whose address is on your domain. The same link is an outbound link for the site that publishes it. Incoming link means the same thing; a link between two of your own pages is internal and counts as neither.
What are Tier 1 and Tier 2 backlinks?
Link building shorthand. A tier 1 backlink points at your own site; a tier 2 backlink points at a page that links to you, such as your listing on a directory. Google finds new pages by following links, so a link to that listing is one more route by which a crawler can reach it. Neither term is Google's.
Does a nofollow link still count as a backlink?
As a link, yes: it sits on another site, points at yours and shows up in backlink tools, usually tagged nofollow. What differs is what it asks of Google. Google's page on qualifying links says of nofollow, ugc and sponsored: "Links marked with these rel attributes will generally not be followed." Search Console's Links report lists links without saying which are nofollow, so read the rel on the page itself.
How can I see the backlinks to my website?
Open the Links report in Google Search Console: it lists the sites that link to you most, sorted by how many links each sends, and the pages on your site they point at. Google calls it a sample rather than every link, and it does not mark nofollow. Backlink tools from SEO vendors run their own crawls of the web, so each one reports a different total.
What is the purpose of a backlink?
Three jobs at once. For the people reading the page, it is a way through to your site. For Google, it is how new pages get found and one of the signals its ranking systems read to judge what a page is about. On a directory or a launch platform, the listing that carries it is also a page buyers browse. None of the three is a promise of rankings or traffic.
Keep reading
Their $99: a dofollow backlink. Our $29: 30 directories.
SaaS.fyi's Premium sells one dofollow backlink on its directory for $99 once. Submitator files 30 directories you choose for $29 and 100 for $79, one payment, a description written for each and every badge kept live.