A backlink is a link from someone else’s website to yours. Google uses links to find pages and treats them as a sign that other sites find yours worth mentioning, which is why paying for them is against its rules. A few links from real, relevant Kenyan sites, such as a trade association, a supplier or a local news page, are worth far more than hundreds from sites nobody visits.

About 110 people a month in Kenya search for “backlinks” (Rank.ke keyword data, October 2026). Most of them want to know two things: how to get them, and how to avoid the ones that cause trouble. This post covers both, with eight ways to earn links in Kenya and a short method for checking your links and a rival’s.

A backlink is a clickable link on another website that takes a visitor to a page on your site. If a Mombasa tour operator’s blog says “we book through [your lodge]” and the words are a link to your page, that is a backlink for you.

Links do two jobs. They bring visitors directly, because people click them. And they help Google discover your pages and judge which ones other sites trust. Google does not publish how much weight a link carries, but it has an entire spam policy about links, which tells you they matter enough to be worth manipulating.

Not all links are equal. Compare these two:

A good link A weak or harmful link
From A real site with visitors, on your subject or in Kenya A site that exists only to hold links
Placed Inside useful content, where a reader would click In a footer or a long list of unrelated links
Why it exists Someone thought your page was worth sharing You paid, swapped or used a tool to create it
Link text Descriptive: “private hospital in Eldoret” Stuffed with a keyword, repeated exactly

Two technical points help you judge what you see:

  • Google generally can only follow links written as a standard <a href> link with descriptive words between the tags. Its guidance on links (opens in a new tab) also says generic text like “click here” tells Google little, and that text should make sense out of context.
  • Links can carry a tag that tells Google not to pass trust. Google asks that paid links be marked rel="sponsored" and links in comments and forum posts rel="ugc". A link with one of these tags is not a problem. It is the honest way to label it.

None of these is fast. All of them are honest, and all of them also help your business in ways that have nothing to do with Google.

  1. Trade and professional bodies. Many associations publish member lists with a website link. Think of the Kenya National Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the Kenya Association of Manufacturers, the Law Society of Kenya or the Kenya Association of Tour Operators. Check whether yours has a member directory and what its rules are for joining.
  2. Suppliers and partners. If you sell a brand’s products or use a company’s service, ask whether they have a “where to buy” or “our partners” page. A hardware shop in Nakuru that stocks a paint brand can ask the brand for a place on its dealer list.
  3. Local news and blogs. Give a journalist or local blogger a real reason to write: a new branch in Kisumu, a community project, a hiring drive, a number worth reporting. Ask them to include your website address.
  4. Universities, colleges and NGOs. Offer a guest talk, a student placement or a case study. A school or college page about a partnership often links to the partner.
  5. Event and speaker pages. If you speak at, sponsor or exhibit at a business fair, the organiser’s page often lists participants with links. Ask for yours. If money buys the placement, expect the link to be marked as sponsored and treat the visibility as the benefit.
  6. Something worth citing. A short, honest study from your own data gets linked. A Nairobi estate agent could publish what it sees in rents by estate each quarter. Do not invent numbers; show how you collected them.
  7. Mentions without links. Search for your business name and see who mentions you without linking. A short, polite message asking them to add the link often works.
  8. Real directories. Choose directories that check their listings, such as industry and chamber directories. Skip anything that accepts every submission and lists thousands of unrelated businesses.

Start with one or two, and keep the details of your name, address and phone number identical to your website and your Google Business Profile. Our guide to SEO in Kenya shows where links fit among the four parts of SEO.

Links are not only a Google matter. When we asked ChatGPT 50 everyday buying questions with the location set to Kenya, the websites it cited were often pages that list or review businesses. For all three agency questions in our data, it cited clutch.co in September and in October. If a page that ChatGPT reads links to you or names you, that is another route to being named. We explain this in why ChatGPT names your competitor and not you and in AI SEO in Kenya.

Google’s spam policies (opens in a new tab) define link spam as creating links to or from a site mainly to manipulate search rankings. The practices it names include:

  • Buying or selling links that pass ranking credit, or trading goods or services for them. Paid links should be marked rel="nofollow" or rel="sponsored".
  • Excessive link swaps: “link to me and I will link to you”, and partner pages that exist only to cross-link.
  • Large-scale article marketing, including guest posts or press releases that carry links with optimised anchor text.
  • Using automated programs or services to create links to your site.

If someone offers hundreds of links for a few thousand shillings, treat that as a warning, not a bargain. Any ranking you get from it is unlikely to last, and a penalty or a drop in rankings can be slow to undo. Never share your website login with a stranger who promises links.

Google also explains how to qualify outbound links (opens in a new tab) on your own site. If you link out to a sponsor or accept comments, use sponsored and ugc.

You cannot improve what you have not looked at. Do this once now, and again each quarter.

  1. List your domain and the two or three rivals that outrank you for your main search.
  2. For each, find out how many different websites link to it. Count sites, not links, because ten links from one site count as one site.
  3. Look at the link text. A natural profile has your brand name, your website address and descriptive words, not the same keyword repeated.
  4. Look for spam signals: links from unrelated foreign sites, sudden jumps, pages in languages your customers do not speak.
  5. For each rival link that is real and relevant, ask yourself whether you could earn one like it. These are your targets.

Check your brand

Rank.ke’s Backlinks and Domain Overview show, for any domain, the referring domains (the different sites linking to it), the link text used, and a spam score, along with a traffic estimate and the searches it ranks for. You can run it on your site first, then on each rival. Each run uses credits, and the button shows the cost before you click. To find rivals you may not know about, Find competitors lists sites that show up for the same searches as yours.

Check your brand on Rank.ke (opens in a new tab), open Backlinks and enter your domain. It takes about two minutes. If you are also writing the pages you want linked to, read our post on SEO content writing.

Try Backlinks on your own brand.

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