what are backlinks

Backlinks, also known as inbound links, incoming links, or one-way links, are links from one website to a page on another website through an anchor text. Search engines like Google view backlinks as votes of confidence and consider them an indicator of how popular a website is with users. Backlinks are important for SEO because they can improve rankings, boost credibility, help Google find new pages, and send referral traffic to a site. The quantity, quality, and relevance of backlinks for a web page are among the factors that search engines evaluate to estimate how important the page is. Pages with a high number of relevant backlinks tend to have high organic search engine rankings. Backlinks are also compared to citations in academic journals and books.