Types of Backlinks: The Complete Taxonomy (and Which Ones Actually Matter)

Backlinks split along two independent axes: how a link was earned and what HTML attribute it carries once it exists. An editorial link, a guest post link, and a directory listing describe three different ways a link came to exist; dofollow, nofollow, sponsored, and ugc describe what a link’s markup tells Google about it after the fact. Confusing acquisition type with attribute type is the most common mistake in link-building conversations, and it’s the first distinction to sort out before you try to read your own backlink export.

The taxonomy at a glance:

This guide breaks down both axes, then shows which acquisition types are worth pursuing versus which ones exist mainly as risk signals when you audit a profile you already have.

Backlink Types by How They’re Earned

Every earned or built backlink falls into one of a handful of acquisition categories, and which category it falls into determines most of its ranking value. The table below classifies the types most link builders and auditors actually encounter.

Backlink Type	How It Happens	Typical Attribute	Ranking Value
Editorial / contextual	Cited naturally within another site’s content as a source	Dofollow (usually)	Highest
Guest post	You write content for another site in exchange for a link	Dofollow or sponsored, depending on site policy	Conditional on site quality
Resource page / roundup	Listed on a curated “best of” or resource-list page	Dofollow (usually)	Moderate
Business directory / listing	Profile created on an industry or local directory	Dofollow or nofollow	Low, with niche-relevant exceptions
Forum / community	Link dropped in a forum post, comment, or profile	UGC or nofollow	Low to none
Redirect-inherited	A 301/302 redirect points an old URL at your page	Inherits the source page’s attribute	Depends on the source page’s quality
Reciprocal	Two sites agree to link to each other	Dofollow (usually)	Low, devalued at scale
Paid / link scheme	Money changes hands for a link, without disclosure	Should be sponsored, often isn’t	Negative, policy violation

Three of these deserve more detail because they’re misunderstood often enough to cause real classification errors.

Editorial links are what Ahrefs describes as “cited within content as an authoritative source,” and the firm notes they “can often come from high-authority sites and also drive tons of referral traffic.” This is the category every acquisition strategy is trying to approximate, because it’s the one Google can’t easily distinguish from natural citation.

Guest posts carry more nuance than most link builders assume. Backlinko states plainly that “Google has largely devalued links from guest posts” as a category, and recommends: “Only guest post on sites that are VERY picky about what they publish.” A guest post link’s value now depends almost entirely on the editorial standards of the site hosting it, not on the tactic itself.

Directory and business listing links still have a place, but Ahrefs’ own guidance is that “making these at scale on any directory, regardless of the quality, is considered yet another spammy practice.” A handful of relevant, well-moderated directory profiles is a normal part of a profile; dozens of low-quality ones is a pattern that shows up as risk in an audit.

Redirects and Reciprocal Links: The Backlinks You Didn’t Build Yourself

Two acquisition types account for most of the links that land in a profile without any active outreach: redirects and reciprocal exchanges.

When a 301 redirect points at your page from an old URL that used to carry its own backlinks, that equity follows the redirect rather than disappearing, contrary to old SEO folklore. Google’s Search Advocate John Mueller has confirmed as much, stating plainly: “We can forward PageRank through 301 and 302 redirects.” The catch is relevance. As Search Engine Journal reports Mueller explaining, “301-redirecting for 404s makes sense if you have 1:1 replacement URLs, otherwise we’ll probably see it as soft-404s.” A redirect-inherited link is only as good as the page it originally pointed to, and a classification pass that only sees the current destination misses that history.

Reciprocal links, where Site A links to Site B and Site B links back, aren’t automatically a scheme. But Google’s guidance groups “excessive link exchanges” under prohibited link schemes when the arrangement exists “exclusively for the sake of cross-linking” rather than genuine relevance. A few reciprocal links between genuinely related sites are normal. A pattern where reciprocal links make up a large share of a profile is worth a closer look.

Paid Links and Link Schemes: The Category to Flag, Not Chase

Paid links aren’t automatically against the rules. According to Google Search Central, “buying and selling links is a normal part of the economy of the web for advertising and sponsorship purposes,” and that’s fine as long as the links carry rel="nofollow" or rel="sponsored" so they don’t pass ranking credit. What crosses into a link scheme is paying for links designed to pass PageRank without that disclosure. Google defines link spam as “the practice of creating links to or from a site primarily for the purpose of manipulating search rankings,” and lists specific examples: exchanging money for links or posts containing links, using automated programs to create links, and embedding keyword-rich links in widgets distributed across many sites.

This is the category that matters most when you’re classifying an export rather than building new links. A paid or scheme-origin link sitting in a profile without the right attribute is a liability, not an asset, and it’s usually a candidate for a disavow file if the linking domain looks low-quality or irrelevant to the niche.

Attribute Values: How Acquisition Type and Rel Attribute Interact

Every backlink, regardless of acquisition type, carries one of four rel-attribute states: dofollow, nofollow, sponsored, or ugc. These aren’t a second taxonomy competing with acquisition type. They describe what the linking site is telling Google about a link it already decided to create.

The two axes correlate loosely but not perfectly. Editorial links are dofollow by default because the linking site had no reason to restrict them. Guest posts should carry sponsored under Google’s guidelines when compensation was involved, though enforcement is inconsistent, which is exactly why guest-post links are worth checking individually rather than assuming. Forum and comment links are usually ugc or nofollow by platform default, regardless of who posted them. For the full mechanics of when each attribute applies, see our guides to dofollow vs. nofollow links and rel=”sponsored” and rel=”ugc”.

Classifying the Backlinks You Already Have

None of this taxonomy matters if you can’t tell which category a given link in your own profile belongs to. An export from Google Search Console, Ahrefs, or Semrush gives you the URL and often the rel attribute, but not the acquisition type. That takes a manual or semi-manual pass: checking whether a link sits in body content (editorial), a byline bio (guest post), a directory listing, or a forum signature.

BacklinkTower is built for that pass: drop in an export and get an instant read on rel-attribute distribution across the whole profile, then use those flags to decide which links need a closer manual look for acquisition type. Once you’ve found the paid or scheme-origin links that need to go, you can generate a disavow file from the same list.

Once a profile is classified this way, what a healthy backlink profile looks like gives you benchmarks for how much of each type is normal versus a warning sign.

Frequently Asked Questions