Backlinks act as third-party endorsements. Google treats a link from a reputable site as a vote of confidence that lifts the target page's authority and ranking potential.
What makes a backlink valuable
- Authority of the linking domain — measured by its own backlink profile.
- Topical relevance — a link from a related site counts more than one from an unrelated site.
- Anchor text — descriptive anchors pass more targeted signal than generic ones.
- Follow status — nofollow, sponsored, and UGC attributes reduce or remove ranking value.
Example
A single link from a major news publication using exact-match anchor text can lift a page from position 15 to the top three on a competitive query within weeks.
How SEM Optimiser reports it
Every discovered backlink is stored with its source URL, target URL, anchor text, follow status, and first-seen date.
Related terms
- Referring Domain
A referring domain is a unique external website that links to your site at least once, regardless of how many individual backlinks originate from it.
- Domain Authority
Domain Authority is a proprietary Moz metric on a 0-to-100 scale that predicts how likely a domain is to rank in search engine results.
- Domain Rating
Domain Rating is a proprietary Ahrefs metric on a 0-to-100 scale that measures the strength of a domain's backlink profile.
- Anchor Text
Anchor text is the visible, clickable text of a hyperlink, and its wording signals to search engines what the linked page is about.