In short
A backlink is a link from another website to yours. Search engines read it as a signal that somebody considered your page worth pointing at. What matters is not the count but the source: one link from a Swiss trade publication weighs more than a hundred from directories that accept anyone.
The metric that actually counts
Not the number of links but the number of referring domains. Ten links from one website is one sender; ten links from ten websites is ten.
That is why we track referring domains internally as the authority metric — not the backlink total, which looks larger and more impressive in every tool.
Why bought links move the problem rather than solve it
They breach Google's guidelines and are increasingly detectable. The more expensive point is different: a bought link brings no readers. It is a signal without an audience.
Measured across more than 25 million references, 84 percent of citations in AI answers come from editorial sources and 0.3 percent from paid ones (Muck Rack, May 2026). Budget for paid placements is measurably badly spent here.
What works in Switzerland
Your own data. A trade publication links to a number that exists nowhere else — not to an opinion that exists everywhere. For Switzerland that is an advantage: on many digital questions no Swiss survey exists at all.
The second route is belonging: an association, a partner programme, a university, a local event. Those are links that arise as a by-product of actually being part of something.
How we handle it
We do not buy links. We build things worth linking to — and we measure referring domains rather than the backlink total.
Where that lives: SEO and the press page with material for editors.
A term in your quote that nobody explained?
In a strategy call we translate the offer in front of you — even when it did not come from us.