What are backlinks? A plain-English guide for Adelaide small businesses, and the four kinds worth getting.

Short answer: a backlink is a link on another website that sends people to yours. Google uses links to discover pages and as one sign that a page is useful and trusted. For a local business, a few real links from SA sources your customers know are worth more than hundreds of links from sites nobody reads.

What a backlink is, in one minute

When the Gawler business association lists your shop with a link to your site, that’s a backlink. When your tile supplier’s “find an installer” page links to you, that’s a backlink. When a local paper writes about your new premises and links to your website, that’s a backlink too.

Google reads links in two ways:

• As roads. Google finds new pages largely by following links. A page nothing links to is harder for it to find.
• As votes, weighted. A link from a relevant, trusted site counts for far more than a link from a random one. A link from the South Australian trade association for your industry says something about you. A link from a website in a language you don’t speak says nothing.

Google says this in its own documentation: links are one of the signals it uses to work out which pages are useful (SEO Starter Guide). It is one signal among many. It is not the whole game.

Do backlinks matter for a local business?

Yes, but in a different way from how they’re usually sold.

For local searches like “plumber Salisbury” or “paving Gawler”, most of the page is the map box. Google ranks it on relevance, distance and prominence, and its help page says prominence draws on information from across the web, including links, articles and directories (Google Business Profile Help). So links feed into the map result as well as the normal results below it.

But links are rarely the first thing holding a small business back. In our own client work the big early wins came from other fixes. Iron Works Mobile Welding was #3 in the map box for “mobile welding mount barker” from Mount Barker on 5 October 2026, with no Google reviews yet. The work behind that was a page for each service, town pages for the places Sean actually works, and a matched Business Profile. None of it was link building.

The four kinds of backlinks worth getting

We sort links for SA small businesses into four kinds, easiest first. Work up from the bottom. Most local businesses never need to go past the third.

1. Listings

Your business on the directories people in SA actually use, plus your industry association’s member directory if you belong to one. These are the easiest links you will ever get, and they do a second job: they confirm your name, address and phone number match across the web.

• Use the exact same business name, phone and address everywhere, matching your Business Profile.
• Choose quality over quantity. A dozen listings people use beat 300 automated submissions.
• Many listing links are nofollow. That’s fine. The listing still counts as a mention.

2. Relationship links

Links from businesses you already deal with. These are the most underused links in small business, because nobody thinks to ask.

• Suppliers and brands you stock or install. Many have “stockists” or “find an installer” pages.
• Businesses you work alongside. The builder you subcontract for, the venue you cater at, the vet clinic that recommends your grooming.
• Sponsorships. The local footy or netball club’s sponsor page. Sponsor because you want local customers to see you. If the link comes with it, it should be marked as sponsored, and that’s fine.

The ask is one short email: “We’re a [trade] in [suburb] and we use your products every week. Could you add us to your installer list?”

3. Local community and press

Links from local news sites, council and community pages, event listings and local business groups. These are hard to fake, which is why Google values them. They come from doing something local and telling people about it:

• a new premises, a new service or an anniversary worth a story in the local paper;
• a community event you run or support, listed on the event page;
• a free talk or workshop for a local business group;
• a quote or tip for a journalist writing about your trade.

4. Earned by being useful

The hardest kind: people link to you because you published something they want to point others to. For a small business that might be a genuinely useful local guide (“which pavers handle Adelaide clay soil”), a price guide with real numbers, or data nobody else has.

We’re doing this for our own site. Our study of what 19 SA small-business websites are actually found for on Google is original data that journalists and other sites can cite. It’s the kind of page that earns links over time, rather than links you can ask for.

The links to stay away from

Google’s spam policies name the link schemes it acts against. In plain English, avoid:

• Bought links that pass ranking credit, including “link packages” and “guest posts” on sites that exist to sell them.
• Swapping links in bulk (“you link to me, I’ll link to you”) for the sake of the links.
• Automated links from software or services that post your link across forums, comments or directories.
• Networks of sites owned by the same seller, built only to link out.

When a link is paid for, such as an advertisement or sponsorship, Google’s guidance is to mark it with rel="sponsored" or rel="nofollow" (Google Search Central). That keeps it within the rules.

Our own backlinks, honestly

When we checked this site on 6 October 2026, it had 12 referring domains, and 11 of them were flagged as spam. We didn’t build any of them. Spammy sites scrape and link to new websites automatically, and every new site collects some. In real terms that meant no genuine independent links at all: the only real ones came from our parent business, JB Digital Barossa, and websites we built ourselves.

Two lessons from that:

• Don’t panic about junk links you didn’t build. Google says it ignores most spammy links, and that most sites never need its disavow tool.
• Count the links that matter, not the total. A tool that says “12 referring domains” can mean zero real ones. Look at who the sites are.

We’re building this site’s links with the same four steps: listings first, then partners, then local media, and the study above as the useful piece.

How to check your own backlinks for free

1. Open Google Search Console for your site. If it isn’t set up, that’s job one.
2. Go to Links in the left menu.
3. Under External links, open Top linking sites. That’s who links to you, by Google’s own count.
4. Look for the ones that matter: local, relevant, real. Ignore the junk.
5. Write down what’s missing: your association, your main suppliers, your local business group.

Then work through the four kinds above, one ask a week. In a few months you’ll have a set of links most of your local competitors don’t.

On our plans, link work is part of the job rather than a package with a number on it. The Serious plan includes authority building (genuine SA links, mentions and listings), and Growth clients who skip ads get the same share as extra listings and backlinks. See pricing, or start with local SEO.

Frequently asked questions