What Is a Backlink and Can You See an Example?

The short version: a backlink is simply a link from someone else's website to yours, and yes, you can see one right now because this very paragraph is about to contain one. Not every backlink is worth having though, and I've watched clients waste hundreds of pounds chasing links that did nothing for their rankings while one unpaid mention from a local newspaper did more good than a year of "link building" ever did.

What a backlink is, in plain English

A backlink is a hyperlink that lives on someone else's website and points to yours. That's the whole definition. If the BBC writes an article about small business grants and links to your accountancy firm's website inside it, that link is a backlink pointing at you. If you write a guest post for a marketing blog and they let you link back to your own site in your bio, that's also a backlink.

Google treats these links as a kind of vote. If ten well-known, well-trusted websites link to your page, Google reads that as a signal that other people find your page worth pointing at, which tends to help you rank. I've written a longer breakdown of what backlinks mean in SEO with a real example if you want the mechanics behind why Google cares at all, but for this post I want to show you one, not just describe it.

Here's an actual backlink you can see right now

Look up a few paragraphs. The words "what backlinks mean in SEO" are underlined and a different colour. That's a backlink. It's a piece of text on this page (called anchor text) wrapped in HTML that tells your browser "when someone clicks this, send them to a different page." That's it. There's no magic to it, no secret code, just a link doing what links have always done since the web began.

Here's a real one from my own site history that I still think about. Back in 2023, a regional business paper in the south east of England ran a piece on female founders rebuilding after difficult years, and one line linked to my site. It was one link, from one page, on one domain. Within about six weeks that page climbed from page three of Google to the first page for a term I'd been trying to rank for since 2021. Meanwhile I had close to 200 links sitting in a directory submission batch from years earlier that had done precisely nothing. One good link outworked two hundred bad ones, and if you take one thing from this post, take that.

What the HTML looks like

If you view the source code of a page (right click, "view page source," or "inspect" on most browsers), a backlink looks like this:

• <a href="https://www.example.com/your-page">anchor text goes here</a>

The href part is the destination web address. The words between the opening and closing tags are the anchor text, the visible clickable words. Some links carry an extra attribute, like rel="nofollow" or rel="sponsored", which tells Google "I'm linking to this but I'm not personally vouching for it." If you want the full picture of what changes that one attribute makes and where people get the code wrong, I've gone through it step by step in how to add a backlink using HTML correctly.

What backlinks look like on a page (not just in code)

Backlinks show up in more shapes than people expect. A few real examples I've dealt with directly:

• A mention in a Forbes contributor article, with my name linked to my company site.
• A quote pulled into a "best marketing tools" roundup, with the tool's name linked to its homepage.
• A link inside a podcast show notes page, pointing back to a guest's website.
• A citation in a university's resource page listing "helpful small business tools," which is a nofollow link but still sends real people to the site.
• A comment left under a blog post, with the commenter's name linked to their own site (usually low value, and Google mostly ignores these).

Some of those pass real ranking weight, some don't pass any at all, and some sit in a grey area. If you've ever stared at a link and thought "does this even count," I've laid out the whole answer, with screenshots and edge cases, in what backlinks look like, with real examples.

Not every link that points at you counts the same

This is the bit people selling "link packages" would rather you didn't dwell on: most backlinks do close to nothing for your rankings. A link from a directory nobody visits, stuffed with a thousand other listings, carries almost no weight. A link bought from a private blog network can get your site penalised. A link from a comment section is usually marked nofollow and mostly ignored by Google's ranking systems. Yet agencies will still sell you "100 backlinks for £99" because the number sounds impressive on an invoice, even though the actual ranking effect is close to zero.

What tends to move the needle is a link from a site Google already trusts, on a page that's topically related to yours, with anchor text that isn't stuffed with keywords, sitting inside real content rather than a footer or a sidebar. That's a much shorter list than "any link at all," and it's why one BBC mention beat 200 directory links for me without even trying.

There's also a distinction worth knowing between a link that technically exists and a link that counts toward your SEO. A paid link marked as sponsored, a link inside a widget you gave away for free, a link on a page Google hasn't even indexed, these all exist as links but don't carry the same weight as an editorial mention. If you want the full list of what counts versus what just looks like it does, that's covered in what counts as a backlink in SEO, with real examples.

How many backlinks do you need

Backlinko's widely cited study of roughly 11.8 million Google search results found that pages sitting in position one tend to have noticeably more referring domains linking to them than pages further down the results. That doesn't mean you need thousands. It means you need the right few. I've seen a page rank on page one of Google with fewer than 15 referring domains, because those 15 domains were relevant, trusted, and pointed at a page that answered the search intent well.

If you're wondering what a realistic target looks like for your own site rather than someone else's case study, I've broken it down by competition level, niche, and site age in how many backlinks you need to rank on Google, and there's a wider look at what's realistic for a whole website (not just one page) in how many backlinks a website should realistically have in 2026.

How to see your own backlinks in under five minutes

You don't need paid software to check whether anyone links to you. Here's the quick version:

• Open Google Search Console (free, just needs your site verified), go to "Links" in the left menu, and look under "Top linking sites." That's your own backlink list, straight from Google.
• Use a free backlink checker, such as Ahrefs' free version or Moz's Link Explorer, and type in your domain. You'll get a smaller sample than the paid tools show, but enough to spot patterns.
• Search Google directly using link:yourdomain.com or search for your brand name in quotes to find unlinked mentions you could ask to be turned into a link.

When I ran this check on my own site last year, I found a link from a university careers page listing me as a recommended follow for small business marketing advice. I hadn't asked for it, hadn't paid for it, and hadn't even noticed it until I looked. That's usually the best kind of backlink, the one you earned by being useful enough that someone else decided to point at you without being asked.

A word on getting more of them without wasting money

The fastest route to backlinks that count isn't a link-building package, it's being quotable. Journalists, bloggers, and podcast hosts link to people who give them something specific to use: a number, a real example, a quote that isn't vague. That's the entire reason my BBC mention happened, someone asked me a direct question and I gave a direct, usable answer rather than a marketing line. If you're weighing up whether it's worth paying someone to sort this for your business rather than guessing, that's exactly the kind of work an AI consultant for small business can help structure, particularly if you're trying to get found by AI answer engines as well as Google, which now reward the same kind of clear, specific content.

Try my free tool that counts a site's referring domains before you post.

Frequently asked questions

What is a backlink in simple terms?

A backlink is a link on someone else's website that points to yours. If Site A has a link that sends visitors to Site B, that link is a backlink for Site B.

Can you see a backlink, or is it just a technical term?

You can see one on almost any content page: it's the underlined, coloured, clickable text that sends you to a different website when you click it. This very post has several inside it, pointing to other pages that cover backlinks in more depth.

Do all backlinks help your Google ranking?

No, and this is where a lot of advice gets it wrong. Links from trusted, relevant sites help. Links from spammy directories, comment sections, or paid link farms usually do nothing, and in bad cases can get your site penalised.

How do I find out who links to my website?

Use Google Search Console's free "Links" report, which shows your top linking sites directly from Google's own data, or run your domain through a free backlink checker like Ahrefs' or Moz's free tools for a broader view.