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Link Building Glossary
The vocabulary of link building and SEO, explained without assuming you already know it. Every entry gives you the definition in plain English, and where we have written a full article on the subject you can carry straight on to it.
A
Alt text
The written description of an image, read aloud by screen readers and used by search engines that cannot see the picture. Describe what the image shows and why it is there. An alt attribute stuffed with keywords helps nobody and is obvious to both audiences.
Learn moreAnchor text
The clickable words a link is wrapped in. They tell a reader and a search engine what the page on the other end is about, which is why a page linked as "employment law guide" reads differently from the same page linked as "click here". Over-optimised anchors, where dozens of sites all use the same commercial phrase, are one of the clearest unnatural patterns there is.
Authority
Loose shorthand for how much weight a site or page carries. No search engine publishes an authority number, so every figure you see is a third-party estimate built from links. Useful for comparing two candidates, useless as a target in itself.
Learn moreB
Backlink
A link on somebody else's site pointing at yours. The whole of link building is the work of earning one without paying for the link itself.
Learn moreBlogroll link
A link in a sidebar or footer that appears on every page of a site. Repetition does not multiply its value, and a site-wide commercial link is a pattern that stands out.
Brand mention
Any time your name appears somewhere, linked or not. Unlinked ones are the easiest links to earn, because the writer has already decided you were worth naming.
Broken link building
Finding a dead link on somebody's page, telling them, and suggesting your page as the replacement. It works when your page genuinely covers what the dead one did, and reads as spam when it does not.
Learn moreC
Citation
A mention of a business name, address and phone number in a directory or listing. Often unlinked, and mostly a local search signal rather than a link building one.
Learn moreContent marketing
Publishing things people actually want, so that finding you is the reward rather than the interruption. Link building is what happens when the thing you published is worth pointing at.
Learn moreContextual link
A link inside the body of an article, surrounded by writing about the same subject. Worth more than the same link in a footer or an author bio, because the context is part of the signal.
Learn moreCrawlability
Whether a search engine can reach and read your pages at all. A page nothing links to, or one blocked in robots.txt, can be perfect and still be invisible.
Learn moreD
Digital PR
Earning coverage in the press by giving journalists something worth writing about: original data, a strong opinion, a survey, a tool. Slower and more expensive than outreach, and the links are usually far better.
Learn moreDisavow
Telling Google to ignore specific links to your site. Rarely needed. Modern search engines already discount most junk, and a careless disavow file can throw away links you wanted.
Learn moreDoFollow
Not a real attribute. It is what people call an ordinary link, one with no rel attribute limiting it. It exists as a word only because "nofollow" does.
Learn moreDomain Authority (DA)
Moz's 0 to 100 prediction of how well a domain might rank. A competitor's number, not Google's, and it moves when Moz changes its model rather than when your site changes.
Learn moreDomain Rating (DR)
A 0 to 100 score estimating the strength of a domain's backlink profile. It is a third-party metric, not a Google one, and it can be inflated by links that do nothing for you. Use it to sort a list, never to decide alone.
Learn moreDuplicate content
The same text reachable at more than one address, on your site or across sites. Rarely a penalty, usually just a search engine picking one version and ignoring yours.
Learn moreE
Editorial link
A link somebody chose to add because your page was useful, with nothing exchanged. The kind everything else is trying to imitate.
Learn moreEvergreen content
An article that stays true for years rather than weeks. It earns links for as long as it stays accurate, which is why the maintenance matters more than the launch.
Learn moreExternal link
A link from your site out to somebody else's. Linking out to good sources costs you nothing and is part of how a page reads as trustworthy.
G
Googlebot
The crawler that fetches pages for Google's index. It has a budget for your site, so pages buried behind nothing get visited rarely or never.
Learn moreGuest post
An article you write for somebody else's site, usually carrying a link back to yours. Legitimate when the site would have wanted the article anyway, and a paid link with extra steps when it would not.
Learn moreH
HARO and journalist requests
Services where reporters post what they are writing about and sources reply. A fast route to press links if you answer quickly, specifically, and as somebody who actually knows the subject.
Learn moreI
Internal link
A link from one page of your site to another. Not a backlink, and often the cheapest ranking improvement available, because you control every one of them.
Learn moreK
Keyword
What somebody types into a search box. Worth choosing by what the searcher wants rather than by the volume beside it, because a keyword you can win and a keyword that brings customers are not always the same one.
Learn moreL
Link bait
Something built specifically to be linked to: a free tool, a data study, a definitive reference. The honest version of link building, in that the work goes into the asset rather than the ask.
Learn moreLink building
The work of getting other sites to link to yours. Almost all of it is one motion: find the right person, give them a reason to care, and ask properly.
Learn moreLink exchange
You link to me, I link to you. Small and occasional, it is how the web has always worked. Systematic and at scale, it is a pattern search engines look for.
Learn moreLink farm
A group of sites built for no purpose except linking to each other. Cheap, detectable, and a good way to acquire a problem that outlives the links.
Link juice
Informal name for the ranking value passing through a link. A page with fewer outbound links passes more to each. Not a term anyone at a search engine uses.
Link profile
Every link pointing at your site, taken together: how many, from where, with what anchors, earned how fast. Individual links matter less than whether the whole picture looks like something that happened naturally.
Learn moreLink reclamation
Getting back links you had and lost, or turning mentions of your brand into links. The highest hit rate in outreach, because the other person already knows who you are.
Link scheme
Google's own name for any arrangement whose purpose is to manipulate links: buying, swapping at scale, or automating them. Worth reading their guidelines rather than a vendor's summary of them.
Learn moreLink velocity
How fast a site gains links. There is no safe number; what matters is whether the pace matches what the site is doing. Fifty links in a week is normal after a launch and odd after nothing.
Learn moreLinkable asset
A page worth linking to on its own merits. Without one, outreach is asking strangers for a favour; with one, it is telling them about something useful.
Learn moreListicle
An article built as a numbered list. Easy to skim, easy to link to a single item within, and easy to pad, which is why most of them are longer than they need to be.
Learn moreM
Manual action
A human reviewer at Google penalising a site, visible in Search Console. Unnatural links are one of the reasons it is issued. Unlike an algorithmic drop, it has to be appealed and lifted.
N
Niche edit
Adding a link into an article that already exists and already ranks. Sold widely, and almost always paid, whatever the seller calls it.
Nofollow
A rel attribute telling search engines not to pass ranking value through a link. Since 2019 Google treats it as a hint rather than an instruction. A nofollow link from a site people actually read is still worth having.
Learn moreO
Off-page SEO
Everything affecting your rankings that does not live on your own site: links, mentions, reviews, reputation. Mostly it means other people talking about you.
Learn moreOn-page SEO
Everything you control on the page itself: the writing, the headings, the title, the internal links, the images. Cheaper than link building and usually the thing left undone.
Learn moreOpen rate
The share of outreach emails opened. A subject line metric, not a success metric: a hundred opens and no replies means the subject worked and the pitch did not.
Learn moreOutreach
Contacting a real person to ask for something: a link, a mention, an interview, a partnership. Everything else in this glossary is a variation on doing it well or avoiding doing it at all.
Learn moreOutreach template
A reusable skeleton for a pitch. Useful for structure, fatal when sent unchanged, because the part that earns a reply is the sentence proving you read their site.
Learn moreP
Page Authority (PA)
Moz's score for a single page rather than a whole domain. Useful for spotting which page on a site is actually the strong one, which is often not the home page.
Learn morePageRank
Google's original algorithm for valuing a page by the links pointing at it. The public score is long gone, the idea underneath it never left.
Learn morePaid link
A link you paid for. Allowed if disclosed with rel="sponsored" and pointless in that case, which is why almost nobody selling them mentions the attribute.
Learn morePBN (private blog network)
A network of sites, usually built on expired domains, existing to link to a main site. It is buying links while pretending not to, and the footprint is exactly what algorithms are built to find.
Learn moreProspecting
Finding the sites and people worth contacting, before any email is written. The step that decides whether a campaign works, and the one most often rushed.
Learn moreR
Ranking
Where your page sits for a given search. It is a position, not a property: the same page ranks differently by query, country and device.
Learn moreReciprocal link
A straight swap: your link for theirs. Two sites that genuinely reference each other is normal. A spreadsheet of arranged swaps is a scheme.
Learn moreRedirect
Sending one address permanently to another, usually a 301. Done properly, links to the old page keep their value. Done in a chain of five, you lose track of what points where.
Referring domain
A unique site linking to you. Fifty links from one domain count as one referring domain, which is why it is a more honest number than a raw link count.
Learn moreRel sponsored
The attribute for a link you were paid for or that is part of an advertisement. Using it correctly is the difference between a disclosed paid link and an undisclosed one.
Learn moreRel UGC
The attribute for links in user-generated content such as comments and forum posts. It tells search engines the site did not vouch for the link.
Learn moreResource page link building
Finding pages that list useful links on a subject and asking to be included. Works when you genuinely belong on the list.
Learn moreS
Search engine optimization (SEO)
Making a site easier to find in search. In practice it is three jobs: something worth finding, a site a crawler can read, and other people willing to point at it.
Learn moreSERP
The search engine results page. Reading the real one before writing tells you what the searcher actually wanted, which is usually not what the keyword suggested.
Learn moreSitemap
A file listing your pages so crawlers can find them. It helps a search engine discover pages; it does not make a page worth indexing.
Learn moreSkyscraper technique
Find a page that has attracted links, write a better one, and ask the sites that linked to the first to link to yours instead. It works when "better" is real and fails when it means "longer".
Learn moreSpam
In link building, anything sent or built at volume with no regard for whether the recipient wanted it. The test is simple: would you be happy for them to know how many identical messages went out.
Learn moreSponsored post
A paid article on somebody else's site. Legitimate as advertising, and its links should carry rel="sponsored", which removes the SEO value most buyers were paying for.
Learn moreT
Toxic link
A vendor word for a link a tool has scored badly. Treat it with suspicion: the score is a guess, and most genuinely bad links are simply ignored rather than held against you.
Learn moreTraffic
People arriving at your site. Worth splitting by where they came from and what they did next, because a thousand visitors who leave immediately are worth less than ten who do not.
U
Unlinked mention
Somebody has named your brand without linking to it. The easiest link you will ever earn, because the writer has already decided you are worth mentioning.
Unnatural link
Google's phrase for a link that exists to manipulate rankings rather than to help a reader. Their definition, not a tool's, and the one that matters.
Learn moreURL Rating (UR)
The page-level version of Domain Rating: an estimate of the strength of the links pointing at one specific page rather than the whole domain.
Learn moreURL structure
How your addresses are built. Short, readable and stable beats clever: every time a URL changes, every link to it has to be redirected or it is lost.
Learn moreKnowing the words is the easy part
The work is finding the right person and asking properly. That is what the engine does on your behalf, one email at a time, from your own mailbox.