Backlinks Explained: What They Are and Why They Matter

A backlink is a link from another website to yours. Google's ranking documentation says its systems look at how pages link to each other to work out what a page is about and which pages are most helpful, so links from real, relevant sites are the ones worth having. For a local business, that mostly means recommendations from places your neighbors already trust.

Think of a backlink as word-of-mouth on the internet. When a chamber of commerce site, an industry directory or a local news story links to your page, it is a small public vote that your business is real.

This guide is the starting point for everything on Growrank about authority: what backlinks are, which ones help, which ones can hurt, and how they relate to press releases, brand mentions and the content you publish. It also connects to answer engine optimization (AEO), because the same trust signals feed the answers AI assistants give.

In this guide

• Does a press release help SEO and AI visibility? An honest look at what a distributed press release can and cannot do.
• Backlinks vs brand mentions What counts when a site names your business without linking to it.
• Good backlink vs spam link How to tell the difference before you pay anyone.
• How to write an article that AI will cite The kind of page that earns links and mentions in the first place.

What is a backlink, in plain words?

Google's documentation describes ranking systems that use links between pages. It names PageRank as one of them, calls it one of the core ranking systems from when Google launched, and says it is still part of those systems today. Links are not the only signal, and nobody outside Google knows exactly how much each one weighs. They have been part of the picture from the start.

Here is the simplest way to picture it. Say a plumber in Mission sponsors a youth baseball league, and the league's sponsor page links to the plumber's website. That link is a backlink. So is a link from the local paper's story about the plumber's twentieth anniversary, or from a manufacturer's "find an installer" page. Each one is another website vouching, in public, that this business exists and is connected to real people.

Why do backlinks matter for a local business?

They matter in three places today. The first is regular Google search, where links help Google decide which pages deserve to show up. The second is the map pack, the box of three local businesses above the ordinary results. Google's Business Profile help says local ranking depends on relevance, distance and prominence, and that prominence is partly based on how many websites link to your business and how many reviews you have. You cannot change distance, and relevance comes from your profile. Prominence is the part you build over time.

The third place is newer. AI assistants pull from text across the web when they describe a business, so what other sites say about you, with or without a link, shapes what an assistant can say back. How much weight any assistant gives a link compared with a plain mention is not public, which is why earning both is the safe plan.

Are all backlinks equal?

No. A link from a relevant, real site is worth far more than a hundred from sites that exist only to hold links. A link from the chamber of commerce to a Valley restaurant makes sense to a reader. A link from a page of unrelated "blog" posts in three languages makes sense to nobody, and Google's spam policies exist to deal with that second kind. Here is what a good link usually looks like.

• Relevant. It comes from a site connected to your industry, your city or your suppliers.
• Editorial. A person chose to link because you are useful, not because somebody was paid or asked for a trade.
• Findable. It sits on a real page that Google can find and people can read, because a link only counts if Google can reach the page it lives on.
• Varied. A mix of sources (local organizations, press, partners, vetted directories) looks natural because it is.
• Steady. A few each month is easier to keep up than one big push followed by silence.

Google also lets sites label their links. Its documentation says a link that is an advertisement or paid placement should carry a "sponsored" label, links in comments and forum posts should carry a "ugc" label, and "nofollow" tells Google you would rather not be associated with the page you link to. Labeled links are allowed. Unlabeled paid links are the problem.

Which backlinks can a Valley business realistically earn?

Most of the good ones come from relationships you already have. A short list to start from:

• Your local chamber of commerce and any trade association you belong to. Member pages often link to members.
• Suppliers and manufacturers whose products you sell or install. Many keep a "find a dealer" or "find an installer" page.
• Sponsorships. A youth league, a school event or a charity run usually lists its sponsors with a link.
• Local news and community blogs. A story about a new location, an award or a community project can link to you.
• Directories that check their listings, such as your industry association's member directory. Skip any that accept everyone for a fee.
• Partners you work with. A realtor and a mortgage broker, a wedding venue and a photographer, or a clinic and a physical therapist can list each other because people really use both.

Each of these links exists because of something real: a membership, a purchase, a sponsorship, a story. That makes them slow to collect and hard to fake, which is exactly why they are worth having.

The other source is your own content. A page that answers a real question better than anything else in town, such as what to check on a roof before hurricane season in the Valley, gets cited and linked because it is useful. That idea is covered in AI content that ranks.

What is link spam, and why should you avoid it?

Link spam is a link created to manipulate rankings instead of to help a reader. Google's spam policies list examples, and several of them are what cheap "link packages" tend to sell: exchanging money for links, excessive link swaps ("link to me and I'll link to you"), using automated programs or services to create links to your site, low-quality directory or bookmark site links, and links with optimized anchor text in articles, guest posts or press releases distributed on other sites.

Google says sites that break these policies can rank lower or not appear in results at all, and can receive a manual action, which is a penalty applied after a human review. That is the risk on one side. On the other, links that cost money and sit on pages no reader visits usually add little even when nobody penalizes them.

If a provider promises hundreds of links for a low flat price, ask three questions. Where exactly will the links appear? Can you see the live pages before you pay? Will real people ever read those pages? If the answers are vague, walk away.

Do press releases and articles on other sites count?

They can, with caveats. A press release that real news outlets pick up is a mention on a site people read, and a link from it may or may not carry a label. Google's spam policies call out links with optimized anchor text in press releases distributed on other sites, so a release stuffed with keyword links is a risk, not a shortcut.

What a release can honestly do is put your name, your city and your news on real pages that readers and AI assistants can find. Growrank offers press release distribution to news sites for businesses that have actual news to share, and the honest limits are covered in the press release guide listed at the top of this page.

How do you start this month?

• Find out who already links to you. Google Search Console, a free Google tool, has a Links report that lists the sites linking to yours. You will need to verify that you own the site.
• Claim and correct your listings: Google Business Profile, Bing Places, Apple Maps, Yelp and Facebook. Consistent details matter as much as the links.
• Ask the people you already work with. Suppliers, partners and associations often add a link when asked politely.
• Sponsor something local and check that the sponsor page links to you.
• Publish one page or article that other businesses in your field would want to cite.
• Skip the shortcuts. A steady handful of real links each month beats any package.

Progress here is slow, and that is normal. Nobody can promise that a link will move a ranking or get you named by an AI assistant. The Growrank dashboard tracks the results you care about, including your Google map position each week and the answers from ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity, so you can see whether the work is moving anything. If you would rather have help, Growrank quotes link and authority campaigns individually, and the pricing page shows the dashboard and the done-for-you options.

Frequently asked questions