Link building glossary
This section is a quick reference guide for a range of terms used in this book that are specifically related to link building.
Anchor text
The part of a link that is clickable for the user, usually highlighted in a different color and underlined.
Advanced search query
A query that you can use to tell the search engines to return a specific set of results compared to standard keyword searches.
AuthorRank
A value assigned to a document based on the reputation of it’s author, perhaps changing the way that document ranks and the amount of link equity it can pass to other pages. (Also known as AgentRank)
Authority
Often used to describe a website or a person who is influential in their field of work.
Branded keywords
Keywords that include the name of a brand, company, or website.
Broken link
A link that when clicked on or crawled by a search engine returns an error code (e.g., 404, 410, or 503).
Cached page
The version of a webpage or document stored by the search engines on their servers.
Citation flow
Invented by Majestic, Citation Flow is a metric assigned to a URL, designed to predict how influential a URL might be based on how many sites link to it.
Commercial keywords
Keywords that include words that a particular website wants to rank for that are not it’s own brand name.
Content
The information (text, images, videos, audio, etc.) on pages of a website.
Crawling
Refers to search engines bots (or spiders) that move around the web, collect information, and store it in a search index (or database).
Deep link
A link that points to any webpage that is not the homepage of a domain.
Deindexed
When an entire website or a particular page is not in the index of a search engine, usually meaning it will not appear in search results.
Directory
A website that collects and categorizes lists of links to websites.
Disavow tool
Refers to tools available from Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools that allow a webmaster to report links which they don’t trust and don’t want to be counted in the link graph.
Domain authority
Typically, this refers to a metric used by Moz that “predicts” the ability of a domain to rank in search results by giving it a score between 0 and 100, with 100 being the highest.
Domain rating
Used by Ahrefs, Domain Rating is a metric given to a domain on a scale of 0-100, and looks at the quantity and quality of external backlinks to a website.
External link
A link on a domain that points to another domain.
Followed links
Links that the search engines count in their link graph of the web.
Footprints
Often referring to patterns displayed by various links that are similar to each other. Can be used to identify link networks or automated links.
Guest posting
Writing a piece of content for a domain that is not yours and giving it to them in return for a link to the domain that you do own.
HTTP status code
The response code returned to a search engine crawler or web browser when a page is loaded. Most common codes include 200, 301, 302, 404, and 500.
Inbound link
A link from another domain pointing at your domain.
Infographic
A visualization of data or information into an easy to consume form than text content.
IP address
Stands for Internet Protocol address. Every computer connected to the Internet has a unique number assigned to it that is known as an IP address.
Link bait
A piece of content created with the specific purpose of attracting inbound links or attention.
Link building
The process of acquiring links from other domains to your own, usually through some intentional or passive activity.
Link profile
The entirety of links pointing at a single domain.
Link removal
The process of removing links to a domain.
Negative SEO
The practice of building low quality links to a domain that you do not own, with the goal of reducing its organic search rankings.
Nofollow link
A link that you tell search engines not to follow by using a special meta tag (rel=”nofollow”)
Page authority
The strength of a single page on a domain, commonly referring to a metric created by Moz which assigns a score between 0 – 100 based on the quantity and quality of links pointing at it.
PageRank
Invented by Google co-founder Larry Page, this is what Google use to measure the strength of a page, based on the quantity and quality of links pointing at it.
Paid links
Links that are acquiring by exchanging money.
Penalty
An action search engines take to manually reduce the rankings of a particular page or domain for violating its webmaster guidelines. Google’s official name for for a penalty is a Manual Action.
Penguin
A Google algorithm update, first launched in April 2012, focusing on reducing the rankings of websites that had been over-optimized. It is now part of Google’s real-time algorithm.
Reconsideration request
Sent by a webmaster to Google if their website has had a penalty applied to it, in the hope of having that penalty lifted.
Redirect
Used to direct users and search engines to a location that’s different than the link they originally tried to visit. Usually with a HTTP status code of 301 or 302.
Sitewide links
External links that are placed on every (or the majority) of pages on a website. Common examples include blogroll links or footer links.
Spam links
Links that are not editorially controlled, produced in large numbers, and automated by software. Usually add no value for real users.
Trust flow
A metric invented by Majestic, predicting how trustworthy a page is based on how trustworthy sites tend to link to trustworthy neighbours.
Unnatural link warnings
Messages sent by Google to webmasters to inform them of the presence of what they believe to be unnatural (also known as low quality or spam) links.