A backlink is a link from someone else's page to yours. If a SaaS review blog links to your pricing page, that is a backlink for you. People also call it an inbound link.

Google says: "Google uses links as a signal when determining the relevancy of pages and to find new pages to crawl." (Google Search Central, link best practices, last updated 2025-12-10, read 1 November 2026).

On quality, Google writes that "one of the factors used to determine quality is understanding if other prominent websites link or refer to the content" (Google, How Search works).

So a backlink is one signal among many. It is not a score on its own.

A new SaaS site has few links, so Google finds and trusts its pages slowly. Links from relevant sites help on both counts.

A backlink in a "best X software" list does two jobs. Google can follow it, and readers see your name next to the competitors they are comparing. For Google's AI features, Google says a page must be indexed and eligible to show a snippet, with "no additional technical requirements" (Google Search Central). Google also says SEO best practices remain relevant for its AI features. See listicle placements for B2B SaaS.

  • It sits on a page about your topic, read by your buyers.
  • It uses clear anchor text. Google says anchor text "tells people and Google something about the page you're linking to."
  • It is a normal HTML link (an <a> element with an href) that Google can crawl.
  • It was earned or, if paid, marked as paid.

Yes, if they are marked. Google's spam policies call buying links "for ranking purposes" link spam. They add: "It's not a violation of our policies to have such links as long as they are qualified with a rel="nofollow" or rel="sponsored" attribute value" (Google spam policies, last updated 2026-08-28). See nofollow and rel="sponsored".

What does it look like? (hypothetical example)

A hypothetical example: an HR software blog publishes "Best onboarding tools for remote teams" and links to five vendors. Each vendor gets a backlink from a page its buyers read. The one vendor that paid for its spot has rel="sponsored" on its link, set by the publisher.

  • Domain authority is a score made by an SEO tool company, not by Google. A backlink is the link itself.
  • A nofollow or sponsored backlink still sends readers to you. It tells Google how to treat the link.
  • A brand mention without a link is not a backlink, but readers and AI assistants can still see your name.