SEO
What Are Backlinks? How to Earn Them Without Buying Links
Which links help and which get you in trouble with Google, 8 legit tactics step by step, and how many sites link to the top 10 in the US, Spain and Brazil.
Backlinks are links from other websites that point to yours, and Google still uses them to discover pages and decide which ones deserve trust. The ones that carry the most weight can't be bought: they're earned, and you can earn them without an agency budget.
We measured it in 2026, with DataForSEO: in the US, the top 10 pages for "backlinks" have an average of 849 linking domains each; in Spain, just 34. We also asked ChatGPT, Perplexity and Gemini how to get backlinks for free, and the answers ranged from solid to outdated.
Here's which links help and which hurt, 8 legit tactics step by step, when paying is allowed and how to check your links for free. It's the core of off-page SEO.
On this page
What are backlinks, and why do they still matter?
A backlink is a link from another site to yours. Google uses it to discover your pages and as a signal that they deserve trust.
Backlinks, or inbound links, are hyperlinks published on a domain other than yours that point to one of your pages. Search engines read them as votes: someone found your content useful enough to send people to it. Their value depends on who links, in what context, with what wording, and whether the link is editorial or paid.
What they aren't: internal links between your own pages, brand mentions without a link (though those help your reputation), or a number to inflate. Google explains in its documentation that it uses links to find new pages and to understand their relevance.
Do backlinks help you show up in AI answers?
Indirectly, yes. Google says there are no extra requirements to appear in AI Overviews or AI Mode: regular SEO applies, and links are part of it. AI tools with web search also cite pages they find through search engines, and mentions of your brand on other sites shape what they say about you. We break down what changes and what doesn't in GEO vs SEO.
Quality backlinks: which links help and which hurt
Quality backlinks come from a site related to your topic, sit inside the content, use descriptive anchor text and were placed because someone wanted to.
| Signal | Helps | Hurts |
|---|---|---|
| Topic | A site in your industry or your city | A site with nothing to do with you |
| Placement | In the body, in context | Footer link repeated across 100 sites |
| Anchor text | Descriptive and varied | Your exact keyword every time |
| Origin | Editorial, earned | Paid and unmarked, or mass link swaps |
| Attribute | None, or sponsored if paid | Paid without sponsored |
A link from your state's professional association to your clinic carries more weight than ten from generic directories, even if some tool scores them higher.
Dofollow backlinks vs. nofollow links: what's the difference?
"Dofollow" isn't actually an attribute: it's a plain link with nothing added, which can pass authority. Nofollow links (rel="nofollow") tell Google not to associate your site with the destination. Since 2019 there are two more values: sponsored for paid links and ugc for user-generated content. Google treats all of them as hints, not commands.
How to get backlinks for free: 8 link building tactics Google accepts
To get backlinks for free, you have to give another site a reason to link to you: data, a resource, a relationship or a fix.
That's what link building is: the work of earning links. Free backlinks still cost time, so here's the order we'd follow with a small site:
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Build a resource worth linking to
Original data, a calculator, a template or a local study. Pages that answer a very specific search, like long tail keywords do, are the easiest to cite.
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Reclaim unlinked mentions
Search Google for your brand in quotes and exclude your own site with -site:yourdomain.com. When someone mentions you without linking, email them and politely ask for the link.
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Ask the people you already work with
Suppliers, clients, distributors, your trade association. Many have a partners page and simply never added you because nobody asked.
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Pitch data and expert quotes to journalists
This is digital PR on a small budget. Local and trade press need sources, and one original stat sent to the right reporter can land a link from an authoritative outlet.
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Fix other people's broken links
Find links on sites in your niche that return a 404 and offer a page of yours that does the same job.
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Guest post where your customers read
A handful of sites with a real audience and a link that adds value. No mass campaigns with keyword-stuffed anchors.
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Only join directories people actually use
Professional bodies, associations and respected guides in your industry or city. Google's spam policies list low-quality directories as link spam.
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Track every link in Search Console
Check the Links report monthly and make sure the pages you earn links to are in your XML sitemap and indexed. A link to a page Google doesn't index is wasted.
Buying backlinks: what Google's spam policy says
Buying backlinks to rank violates Google's spam policies. Paying for advertising is fine as long as the link carries rel="sponsored" or nofollow.
Google's spam policies, updated in August 2026, say buying and selling links for advertising is a normal part of the web, as long as those links don't pass ranking credit. Here's what counts as spam and what doesn't:
| Practice | Spam for Google? |
|---|---|
| Paying for an article with a link that passes ranking credit | Yes |
| Paying for an article with the link marked sponsored | No |
| Excessive link exchanges | Yes |
| Forum comments with optimized links | Yes |
| Links from low-quality directories or bookmark sites | Yes |
| Footer links spread across many sites | Yes |
| A supplier linking to you because you work together | No |
At Notablia we accept partnerships with brands we use or would use, and we look at each one case by case. Anyone buying links to climb the rankings is trading a shortcut for the risk of a manual action.
How much do backlinks cost? What a fair price looks like
A backlink costs hours if you earn it and hundreds of dollars if you pay someone to land it. In Editorial.Link's yearly survey of 518 SEO professionals, updated in March 2026, the average price respondents called acceptable for one high-quality backlink was $508.95. Take it with a grain of salt: it's what they'd accept paying, not what everyone pays, and 44 percent of respondents work at agencies that sell this service.
| Route | Cash cost | What you really pay |
|---|---|---|
| Earn it yourself | $0 | About 2 hours a week of outreach and a page worth citing |
| Freelancer or agency outreach | Around $500 per link, per the survey | Someone else's outreach hours |
Sponsored post marked rel="sponsored" | Whatever the site charges for the ad | Traffic and visibility, but no ranking credit |
| Cheap link packs | The lowest price per link | A real risk of a manual action |
Quick math with made-up numbers. If one link costs $509 and your average new customer leaves you $250 in margin, you need three new customers to cover it (509 divided by 250 is 2.04). If the page that gets the link can't sell, the link was an expense, not an investment.
Before paying, ask whether the link would send real readers to a page that sells. If it would, price it like an ad. If you're paying only for authority, you're buying what violates Google's spam policy, as the section above explains.
How to check backlinks for free
To check backlinks to your own site for free, open the Links report in Search Console; for someone else's site, you need a third-party tool.
The Links report shows your most-linked pages, the sites that link to you most and your most common anchor text. Keep two limits from Google's help page in mind: it's a sample, not a complete list, and it doesn't tell you whether a link is nofollow. You can export up to 100,000 rows. Bing Webmaster Tools has its own backlinks report too.
For sites you don't own, you need the third-party tools we compare next.
Free backlink checker: 5 tools compared (and which to use)
A backlink checker tells you which sites link to a given address. No free one shows the full list, so the smart move is to combine two. Here's what five of them offer on their own pages, as of October 2026:
| Tool | Whose site it checks | What it shows for free |
|---|---|---|
| Links report in Search Console | Only yours | A sample of the links Google knows about |
| Ahrefs Webmaster Tools | Any you verify, no limit | Up to 1,000 backlinks at a time |
| Semrush backlink checker | Any site, no sign-up | Total backlinks, referring domains, Authority Score, dofollow share and top backlinks |
| Ahrefs backlink checker | Any site | Referring domains, backlinks, DR and Ahrefs Rank, as a preview of the paid version |
| Seobility | Any site | Top backlinks with anchor text and nofollow status; daily checks are capped |
Every tool crawls the web its own way, so their numbers never match. A made-up example: a dental clinic in Austin sees 18 linking domains in Search Console and 27 in Ahrefs Webmaster Tools. Neither is wrong; each sees a different slice. Keep the combined list and always compare using the same tool from one month to the next.
To spy on competitors, use Semrush or Seobility and keep the domains that link to several rivals at once. That's the link you're missing.
Domain authority: how many backlinks the top 10 really has
Domain authority is a score from tools like Moz or Ahrefs, not from Google. It's useful for comparing sites, not for obsessing over.
What's useful is checking how many domains link to the pages already ranking for your search. We pulled it from DataForSEO, averaging the top 10 results:
| Search | US | Spain | Brazil |
|---|---|---|---|
| backlinks | 849 domains | 34 domains | 21 domains |
| link building | 605 domains | 14 domains | 115 domains |
The lesson: in English, broad SEO terms are a heavyweight fight. A local business is better off targeting specific searches where the top 10 has dozens of linking domains, not hundreds.
How many backlinks do I need?
There's no magic number: it depends on your search. Look at how many domains link to the pages already at the top, like in the table, and pay more attention to their quality than their count.
Act as the PR lead for [your business] in [your city]. Using this original data: [paste it], suggest 3 press release headlines a local news site would want to run, the angle for each, and an 80-word pitch email to the reporter who covers [your industry]. No hype: only what the data actually shows.
Frequently asked questions about backlinks
What is a backlink example?
Say a local newspaper runs a story on a bakery in Portland and, inside the article, links to the bakery's site with the words sourdough bread in Portland. For the bakery, that's a backlink: a link from another domain pointing to its own. For the newspaper, it's an outbound link. If the same paper links to another of its own stories, that's an internal link, which helps too, but it isn't a backlink.
Are backlinks still relevant?
Yes. Google still says it uses links to discover new pages and to understand how relevant they are, and its spam policies would make no sense if links had stopped mattering. What has changed is which links count: Google has gotten much better at ignoring cheap, manipulative ones. A few editorial links from sites in your field now beat hundreds of directory listings, and those same links help you show up when AI tools search the web.
How many backlinks per day is safe?
There's no safe number, because Google doesn't judge links by speed but by how you got them. A viral study can earn hundreds of links in a week without any problem, because they're editorial. Ten paid links a month with keyword-stuffed anchors can trigger a manual action. Instead of counting links per day, ask yourself one question about each link: would it exist if search engines didn't?
What is anchor text?
Anchor text is the visible, clickable wording of a link. Google uses it to understand what the destination page is about, so a descriptive anchor like small business tax guide helps more than click here. The risk sits at the other extreme: if hundreds of links use your exact money keyword, it looks manipulated. A natural profile mixes your brand name, your URL and varied descriptions.
What are toxic backlinks, and should I disavow them?
People call links from spam sites, link farms or unrelated pages toxic backlinks. Almost every site has some, and Google usually just ignores them. The disavow tool in Search Console asks Google not to count specific links, but Google says almost no site needs it. Use it only if you have lots of artificial links that caused, or are likely to cause, a manual action, such as links bought in the past.
Is guest posting still worth it?
Yes, if you do it like an invited expert would: a handful of sites with a real audience in your field, and a link that genuinely helps the reader. Guest posting stops working when it turns into a numbers game. Google's spam policies call out guest posts that carry ranking-credit links or keyword-optimized anchors, especially at scale or when money changes hands. One great article on the right site beats twenty on sites that publish anything.