Backlinks are links from other websites to yours. Google uses them to discover pages and as one of its strongest trust signals: a link from a relevant, respected site suggests your page is worth showing. Value depends on the linking site, context and attributes, not the count. Metrics like DR estimate that value but are not used by Google.
Why links still matter
The idea behind links as a ranking signal is old and still sound. When an independent site chooses to link to your page, it is vouching for it in a way you cannot easily fake. Google’s original PageRank was built on that insight, and although the algorithm has grown far beyond it, links remain one of the signals that most separates pages that rank from pages that do not.
They also do a second, more mechanical job. Links are how Googlebot discovers most of the web. A page with links from other sites gets found and recrawled more often than a page that only exists in a sitemap. For a new site, the first few genuine links often matter as much for discovery as for authority.
What makes one link worth more than another
Two links can look identical in a tool and be worth completely different amounts. The factors that matter most are easy to describe and hard to fake.
Relevance. A link from a site about your subject carries more weight than a link from an unrelated one. A gardening blog linking to a gardening tool says something; a casino site linking to the same tool says very little.
The strength of the linking page. A link from a page that itself has links and traffic passes more value than one from a page nobody links to or visits. This is why a mention in a popular article can outweigh links from a dozen forgotten pages.
Editorial placement. A link inside the body of an article, written because the author found your page useful, is the kind Google is trying to reward. Links in footers, sidebars, author bios and sitewide blogrolls are discounted, and links that appear on hundreds of pages of the same site add little beyond the first.
Attributes. Links marked rel=”nofollow”, rel=”sponsored” or rel=”ugc” tell Google not to treat them as endorsements. Since 2020 Google treats these attributes as hints rather than strict rules, so they may still carry some signal, but they are not the links that build authority. Paid links are required to carry sponsored or nofollow under Google’s spam policies.
Most pages have no links at all
It helps to know how rare links are. Large studies of the web keep finding that the overwhelming majority of pages receive no links from other sites and no search traffic. Ahrefs, analyzing billions of pages, found that the vast majority get no organic traffic from Google, and the lack of links is one of the main reasons.
That rarity is why links work as a signal. If every page had dozens, they would tell Google nothing. It is also why the shortcuts are tempting and why Google polices them. Buying links, swapping them in bulk or building networks of sites to link to yourself are all described in Google’s spam policies as link schemes, and they can lead to links being ignored or, in clearer cases, to manual actions.
What DR is, and what it is not
Domain Rating is Ahrefs’ estimate of the strength of a site’s backlink profile, on a scale from 0 to 100. Moz has Domain Authority, Semrush has Authority Score, and Majestic has Trust Flow. They are all attempts to approximate, from outside, something Google calculates internally and does not publish.
Ahrefs is direct about the limits of its own metric: it states that DR is not a Google ranking factor and that Google does not use it. DR correlates with rankings because sites with strong link profiles tend to rank well, but raising DR does not cause rankings to rise. You can see the gap in any search result where a lower DR page outranks a higher one because it answers the query better.
That makes DR useful in specific situations. It is a quick way to compare sites, to judge whether a link prospect is worth pursuing, or to screen expired domains before buying one. It is a poor goal in itself. Tactics that inflate DR without earning real links, such as mass links from low-quality sites built to pass the metric, can push the number up while doing nothing for rankings.
Links that help and links that do not
Some kinds of links reliably help. Editorial mentions in articles on relevant sites. Links from resource pages that genuinely list useful tools or guides. Citations of your original data or research by journalists and bloggers. Links from partners, suppliers and organizations you actually work with.
Others do little. Directory submissions beyond the handful of directories real people use in your field. Comment links, forum signatures and profile links, most of which are nofollow and all of which are easy to create at scale. Sitewide footer links from unrelated sites. Links from sites that exist mainly to sell links, which tend to sit in networks Google already discounts.
And some can hurt. Paid links without the right attributes, large-scale link exchanges, private blog networks and widget or badge links stuffed with keyword anchors all fall under Google’s definition of link schemes.
How to think about links in practice
The most useful way to approach links is to work backwards from why someone would link to you. People link to things that help them make a point, finish a task or save their readers time: data they can cite, tools they can recommend, explanations clearer than anyone else’s. If a page offers none of those, outreach will be an uphill battle. If it offers one of them, outreach becomes a matter of telling the right people it exists.
Measure progress by referring domains from relevant sites and by the rankings and traffic of the pages you are building links to. DR will follow on its own.
Links are one input among several, and our guide to how SEO works puts them in context. If a page has links but still does not rank, check search intent before building more, and keep in mind how long rankings take to settle.
Figures in this article reflect the data available when it was last updated.
Frequently asked questions
How many backlinks do I need to rank? There is no fixed number. It depends on the query and on the pages already ranking for it. Look at the referring domains of the current top results: if they each have a handful of relevant links, a few good ones may be enough; if they have hundreds, you are competing for authority as much as relevance.
Are nofollow links worthless? Not entirely. Google treats nofollow as a hint, so some may be counted, and they still send visitors and help discovery. But they are not the links that build authority, and a strategy based on collecting them is unlikely to move rankings.
Can bad backlinks hurt my site? Google says it is good at ignoring spammy links that point to a site without its involvement. The real risk comes from links you build or buy yourself as part of a scheme. Those can be discounted wholesale or, in clear cases, lead to a manual action.
Should I track DR at all? Yes, as a comparison tool. It is useful for sizing up competitors, screening link prospects and evaluating domains. It is not useful as a target, because it can be inflated without any effect on rankings.
Sources
- Ahrefs, What Is a Good Domain Rating? (With Real Data)
- Google Search Central, Spam policies for Google web search (link spam)
