Backlink

A backlink is a hyperlink from one website to another. In SEO, backlinks serve as endorsements — each quality backlink signals to search engines that your content is valuable and trustworthy. Backlinks remain one of the strongest ranking factors in Google's algorithm.

For AI optimization, backlinks contribute to domain authority which influences whether AI models consider your content authoritative enough to cite. Pages and domains with strong backlink profiles are more likely to rank in the search results that RAG-based AI systems use for retrieval.

Link quality matters far more than quantity. A single backlink from a DR 80+ publication in your industry is worth more than hundreds of low-quality links. Key quality factors include domain authority, topical relevance, editorial context, and whether the link is from a source included in LLM training data.