A webring in general is a collection of websites from around the Internet joined together in a circular structure. When used to improve search engine rankings, webrings can be considered a search engine optimization technique.

To be a part of the webring, each site has a common navigation bar; it contains links to the previous and next site. By clicking next (or previous) repeatedly, the surfer will eventually reach the site they started at; this is the origin of the term webring. However, the click-through route around the ring is usually supplemented by a central site with links to all member-sites; this prevents the ring from breaking completely if a member site goes offline.

Webrings are usually organized around a specific theme, often educational or social. Web rings usually have a moderator who decides which pages to include in the web ring. After approval, webmasters add their pages to the ring by 'linking in' to the ring; this requires adding the necessary HTML or JavaScript to their site.