Backlinks & Authority
Understand why backlinks matter and what makes a link valuable.
A backlink is a link from another website to yours. Backlinks act like votes of confidence and remain one of the strongest ranking signals.
What makes a good link
- Relevance - from a site on a related topic.
- Authority - from a trusted, established domain.
- Editorial - given naturally, not bought or forced.
- Anchor text - descriptive but natural.
Quality over quantity
One link from a respected industry site beats hundreds from spammy directories. Low-quality link schemes can earn a penalty.
Follow vs nofollow
Links can carry a rel attribute: nofollow, sponsored or ugc. These tell Google not to pass full ranking credit.
Example
<!-- A normal editorial link passes authority -->
<a href="https://example.com/pour-over-guide">pour over guide</a>
<!-- Paid or untrusted links should be marked -->
<a href="https://sponsor.com" rel="sponsored">our sponsor</a>
<a href="https://forum.com/post" rel="ugc nofollow">a forum post</a>When to use it
- A startup's domain authority jumps from 12 to 34 after a single mention in a TechCrunch article, lifting rankings for several target keywords by 10+ positions.
- An SEO auditor disavows 200 spammy links from a link-farm network after a manual penalty notice, recovering organic traffic within 60 days.
- A content strategist prioritises earning links from .edu and industry-association domains because their high authority passes more equity than dozens of low-DR blogs.
More examples
Check backlink profile via Ahrefs API
Sorting referring domains by Domain Rating surfaces the highest-authority sources linking to the site — the links that move rankings the most.
# Fetch top referring domains by Domain Rating
curl -s \
"https://apiv2.ahrefs.com/?target=example.com&mode=domain&output=json\
&from=refdomains&order_by=domain_rating_source:desc&limit=10&token=YOUR_TOKEN" \
| python3 -c "
import sys, json
for rd in json.load(sys.stdin).get('refdomains', []):
print(f"DR={rd['domain_rating_source']:3} links={rd['backlinks']:4} {rd['domain']}"
)"Build a disavow file for spammy links
A correctly formatted disavow file tells Google to ignore specified links when calculating your site's authority, removing the risk from toxic backlinks.
# Format: one domain per line, prefixed with 'domain:'
# Upload to Google Search Console -> Links -> Disavow
# disavow.txt
domain:spammy-links-farm.com
domain:low-quality-directory.net
domain:paid-links-network.biz
# Individual URL (use when only one page on a domain is problematic)
https://low-quality-directory.net/link-page/?id=123Monitor new backlinks over time
Tracking new referring domains over a rolling 30-day window shows whether link-building efforts are producing measurable gains in backlink velocity.
python3 - << 'EOF'
import requests, datetime
# Search Console Links API — new links in the last 30 days
# (Simplified: real implementation requires OAuth 2.0)
params = {
"siteUrl": "https://example.com",
"startDate": (datetime.date.today() - datetime.timedelta(days=30)).isoformat(),
"endDate": datetime.date.today().isoformat(),
}
print("Querying backlink changes for:", params["siteUrl"])
print("Period:", params["startDate"], "to", params["endDate"])
# In production: use google-auth + googleapiclient to call the API
EOF
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