Most of us click links without giving them a second thought. A few words take us from one webpage to another. But when someone else’s website sends readers to a page you own, that ordinary link has a particular name: a backlink.
Let’s say you’ve published a guide to taking better photos with your phone. A travel website discovers your tips and adds a link so its readers can see them. Your website has now received a backlink because the link comes from another site.
But look at the same link from the travel website’s perspective. For that website, it’s an external link because it sends readers somewhere else.
It’s still the same link, just described from two different sides. There’s also a practical difference worth understanding: you can choose which external links to place on your own website, while backlinks appear on pages belonging to other website owners.
What Does a Backlink Look Like?
Let’s return to the travel website that discovered your photography guide.
The writer might include a sentence like this:
“Before your next trip, these phone photography tips can help you take better pictures.”
If the words “phone photography tips” are clickable and lead to your guide, you’ve received a backlink.
Those clickable words are called anchor text. They give readers an idea of what they’ll find after following the link.
The link itself appears on the travel website, but its destination is your photography guide. It doesn’t have to point to your homepage. A backlink can lead directly to a particular article, product page, or another page on your site.
Why Can the Same Link Be a Backlink and an External Link?
The difference becomes much easier to understand when you look at where the link starts and where it leads.
| Website Perspective | What the Link Is Called | Why |
|---|---|---|
| The travel website | External link | It sends visitors to another website |
| Your photography website | Backlink | It receives a link from another website |
The travel website has created a connection to yours. Whether you call it an external link or a backlink simply depends on which website you’re looking at.
This is also why a link from one article to another article on your own website is different. That connection is called an internal link because both pages belong to the same website.
Does Every Mention of Your Website Count as a Backlink?
Not necessarily.
Someone could write about your photography website in their article without adding a clickable link. Readers would see your website’s name, but they wouldn’t have a direct link to follow.
That’s an online mention, not a backlink.
If the writer turns your website’s name into a clickable link leading to your page, the mention now includes a backlink.
The distinction is simple, but useful when examining references to your website. Being mentioned somewhere online doesn’t always mean another website has linked to you.
Can You Control Backlinks Pointing to Your Website?
You normally control the links you add to your own website. If you publish an article and link to another resource, you can choose the destination and decide where the link appears.
Backlinks are different because they exist on websites belonging to other people.
For example, the travel writer might decide to link to your photography guide using its title. They could later change the wording or remove the link entirely.
You can ask another website to update a link, but the publisher generally makes the final decision about what appears on its pages.
This doesn’t mean every backlink appears without any communication between website owners. Some links are independently chosen, while others may be suggested or arranged. In either case, the link is hosted on the website providing it.
What Does Receiving a Backlink Mean for Your Website?
At its most basic, receiving a backlink means another website has created a path for its visitors to reach one of your pages.
Someone reading the travel article can click the link and arrive directly at your photography guide, even if they’ve never heard of your website before.
Search engines also use links to discover webpages and as signals when understanding them. However, receiving a backlink doesn’t automatically guarantee higher search rankings.
Backlinks can appear in articles, business directories, discussions, or other places across the web. Their circumstances may differ, but the basic definition remains the same: a backlink is a link from another website pointing to yours.
