Backlink
A hyperlink from another site pointing at a page on yours, and still one of the strongest signals search engines use when deciding how much a site deserves to be trusted.
Analogy Mental model
It is a personal referral. When someone tells a friend that a place is worth their time, the weight of that recommendation depends entirely on who is doing the recommending.
In practice What you actually do
Treat links as a portfolio rather than a tally. Set weekly alerts in Ahrefs, Semrush, or Moz for new and lost backlinks, then review three things per link before deciding whether it deserves attention: the referring domain, the page it points at, and the anchor text used.
Where people get burned Pitfalls
One link from a domain with real authority can outweigh a hundred links from sites nobody visits. Chasing volume over relevance is the fastest way to spend a year on outreach and watch nothing move.
This entry was written in English from the Chinese original, not machine-translated. Read the Chinese version →