How an inbound link works
Every link on the web has two ends. From the publisher’s side it is an outbound link; from yours it is an inbound one, and backlink is simply the more common word for the same thing. When a crawler reads the other site’s page it finds the anchor and the destination, follows it, and records that one page has pointed at another.
Two things travel down that link. The first is people: someone reading the article can click through, which is why a link on a page nobody visits behaves quite differently from one in a well-read piece. The second is a ranking signal — a vote, weighted by how well regarded the linking page itself is, and coloured by the anchor text used to describe you.
Why inbound links matter
Content decides which searches a page could answer. Links are a large part of deciding whether it gets the chance. Between two pages that answer a query equally well, the one cited by other sites in the field is usually the one search engines prefer, because independent citation is hard to fake at scale.
They also do plain, unglamorous work. A link from a site that is crawled often is one of the quickest ways for a new page to be discovered. And a link on a page your buyers actually read sends enquiries whether or not it ever moves a ranking, which is the part of link value that survives every algorithm change.
Where inbound links go wrong
The usual error is counting instead of reading. A tally says nothing about who gave the links, and a handful from respected sites in your sector will outperform a long list scraped together from directories, forum signatures and comment sections. Search engines discount that kind of link, and a pattern of buying them can attract a penalty rather than an increase.
The other error is treating links as the whole job. Links raise a page that already deserves to rank. They do not rescue a thin page, a slow site, or a page that answers a different question from the one being searched.
What to do about it
Start with what you already have. The Links report in Search Console lists the sites pointing at you and the pages they point to, at no cost, and that is the honest baseline before anyone quotes for more. Look for links landing on URLs that now redirect or return an error, because repairing the destination recovers value you have already earned.
Then make being linked to plausible. Original figures from your own operations, a genuinely useful local guide, a calculator, a clear explanation nobody else has bothered to write — each gives a journalist, supplier or trade association a reason to cite you. That is slower than buying, and it is the part of link building that still stands after the next update. In a small market such as Nepal the realistic list of sites worth a link is short enough to write on one page, so work through it deliberately rather than buying volume.