A backlink is a link leading from someone else’s site to yours. Google reads it as a recommendation and uses it as one of the strongest authority signals. The value is not in the number but in relevance - 20 links from local, topically related sites carry more weight than 500 from random pages.
Relevance. A link from a site in your industry or your city is worth considerably more than one from an unrelated site. Google looks at what the linking page is about, not only how strong it is.
Domain authority. A link from an established publication carries more than one from a new blog with no visitors. This is what tools report as Domain Rating or Authority Score - a useful estimate, but not a Google metric.
Anchor text. The words inside the link tell Google what the destination page is about. A natural mix of brand, bare URL and descriptive phrases is healthy; a hundred identical anchors look like manipulation.
Position on the page. A link within the body text is worth more than one in the footer or sidebar, because it is more likely to be clicked.
By default every link is "dofollow" and passes some authority. The attribute rel="nofollow" tells Google not to count the link as a recommendation - used for paid links and comments.
In 2019 Google added rel="sponsored" for paid and rel="ugc" for user-generated content, and has treated those markers as hints rather than strict rules ever since. In practice a nofollow link is not worthless, because it still brings visitors and a brand mention.
The easiest source most companies ignore is existing clients and partners. If you built someone a site or delivered a service, a mention in their references is a natural and entirely legitimate link.
Next come local citations - business directories, chambers of commerce, trade associations and maps. These links are not strong individually, but they build local context and NAP consistency.
Content others want to cite is the slowest source and the only one that works by itself. A data study, a free tool or a calculator attracts links for years after publication.
Buying links from site networks is recognisable and carries the risk of a manual penalty. The same applies to mass guest posting and large-scale link exchanges.
Google’s systems today most often simply ignore such links rather than penalising them - meaning you paid for something that does nothing. Penalties arrive when the pattern is obvious.
For a market the size of Bosnia the rule is simple: twenty real local links beat any purchased package.
The number of links on its own says little. What is tracked is how many distinct domains link to you, because ten links from one site are worth far less than ten links from ten different ones.
Tools such as Semrush or Ahrefs show the list of domains, an authority estimate and the anchor texts. Their scores are not Google’s and should not be read as a verdict, but they are useful for comparison against competitors.
The most useful exercise is looking at who links to competitors ranking well. If the same business directory or local portal appears for several of them, that is a source working in your market - and where you submit next.
If you notice links you never sought that look like spam, in most cases nothing needs doing. Google ignores them. The disavow tool is used only when a manual penalty exists, and that is rare.
Profile growth should be gradual. A sudden jump from a handful to hundreds of domains in a short period is a pattern the system reads as a recommendation that was not earned.
Last updated: 17 August 2026
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