Off-page SEO glossary

160 link building and off-page SEO terms, each defined in one line.

#

301 redirect: Permanent redirect that passes link signals to the target URL.
302 redirect: Temporary redirect; passes signals if left long enough to be treated as permanent.

A

Above the fold link: Link visible without scrolling, usually weighted higher under reasonable surfer logic.
Advertorial: Paid article styled as editorial; links must carry sponsored or nofollow.
Affiliate link: Tracked link earning commission; should use rel="sponsored".
Algorithmic devaluation: Links ignored automatically without a manual penalty.
Alt text anchor: Image alt attribute acting as anchor text for an image link.
Anchor text: Clickable text of a link.
Anchor text cloud: Visual or tabular breakdown of a site's anchor distribution.
Anchor text ratio: Share of each anchor type in a link profile.
Authority Score (AS): Semrush domain metric combining links, traffic and spam signals.
Authority site: A site widely trusted and cited in its topic.

B

Backlink: Link from another website to yours.
Backlink audit: Review of a link profile for risk and opportunity.
Backlink gap: Domains linking to competitors but not to you.
Backlink profile: The full set of links pointing to a site.
Black hat SEO: Tactics that violate search engine policies.
Blog comment link: Link placed in a comment, usually ugc/nofollow.
Blogroll: Sidebar list of links to other blogs, typically sitewide.
Brand anchor: Anchor text that is the brand name.
Brand mention: Reference to a brand, linked or unlinked.
Branded search: Queries containing a brand name; a demand signal.
Broken link building: Finding dead links and offering your page as a replacement.

C

C-class IP: Third octet block of an IPv4 address, used to spot networks on shared hosting.
Canonical tag: Rel=canonical hint consolidating duplicate URLs and their link signals.
Citation (local): Mention of a business's name, address and phone on another site.
Citation (AI): A source link shown in an AI-generated answer.
Citation Flow (CF): Majestic metric of link quantity influence.
Cloaking: Showing different content or links to crawlers than to users.
Co-citation: Two sites being linked or mentioned together by a third, implying relatedness.
Co-occurrence: Keywords or entities appearing near a brand mention or link.
Competitor link analysis: Studying rivals' backlinks for opportunities.
Content syndication: Republishing content on other sites, ideally with a canonical or link back.
Contextual link: Link inside the main body text, surrounded by relevant content.
Crawl budget: How many URLs a search engine will crawl on a site in a period.
Crawlable link: An `<a href>` link a crawler can follow.

D

Damping factor: PageRank parameter (about 0.85) for the chance a surfer keeps clicking.
Dead link: Link to a URL that no longer resolves.
Deep link: Link to an inner page rather than the homepage.
Digital PR: Earning media coverage and links through newsworthy stories and data.
Directory link: Link from a web or business directory.
Disavow file: Text file telling Google to ignore listed URLs or domains as links.
Disavow tool: Search Console feature for uploading a disavow file.
Dofollow: Informal name for a normal link with no nofollow-type attribute.
Domain Authority (DA): Moz's 1 to 100 domain strength prediction.
Domain Rating (DR): Ahrefs' 0 to 100 measure of a domain's backlink strength.
Doorway page: Page built only to rank and funnel users elsewhere.
Dropped domain: Domain that expired and was deleted, then re-registered.

E

E-E-A-T: Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness; Google's quality framework.
Earned media: Coverage gained editorially rather than paid or owned.
Editorial link: Link given by a publisher's free choice because the content merits it.
Edu link: Link from a .edu domain; valued for trust, not inherently special per Google.
Ego bait: Content featuring people or brands to encourage them to share or link.
Entity: A uniquely identifiable thing (brand, person, place) in a knowledge graph.
Exact match anchor: Anchor identical to the target keyword.
Exact match domain (EMD): Domain name equal to a keyword.
Expired domain: Lapsed domain bought for its existing backlinks.
Expired domain abuse: Google spam policy (2024) against repurposing expired domains to rank low-value content.
External link: Link pointing to a different domain.

F

First link priority: Theory that only the first anchor to a URL on a page counts.
Followed link: Link without nofollow, sponsored or ugc.
Footer link: Link in the page footer, usually sitewide and discounted.
Forum link: Link in a forum post or signature.

G

Generic anchor: Non-descriptive anchor such as "click here".
Google Search Essentials: Google's guidelines, formerly Webmaster Guidelines.
Gov link: Link from a government domain.
Grey hat SEO: Tactics in the ambiguous zone between compliant and violating.
Guest post: Article written for another site, often with a link back.
Guestographic: Infographic offered with a custom intro in exchange for placement.

H

HARO-style outreach: Answering journalist requests for sources (HARO, Qwoted, Featured, Source of Sources) to earn mentions.
Hidden link: Link invisible to users; a spam policy violation.
Homepage link: Link from or to a site's homepage.
Hub page: Page linking out to many relevant resources; in HITS, a good hub points to good authorities.
HITS algorithm: Kleinberg's hubs and authorities link analysis algorithm (1998).

I

Image link: Link wrapped around an image.
Implied link: Unlinked reference to a site, term from Google's Panda patent.
Inbound link: Same as backlink.
Index tier: Quality or freshness layer of Google's index where a document is stored.
Indexation: Whether a page is stored in a search engine's index.
Infographic link building: Earning links by having others embed an infographic.
Internal link: Link between pages of the same site.

J

Journalist request: A reporter's call for expert sources.

L

Link bait: Content created to attract links naturally.
Link building: The practice of acquiring backlinks.
Link churn: Rate at which links are gained and lost.
Link earning: Attracting links without asking, through merit.
Link equity: Ranking value passed by links.
Link exchange: Two sites agreeing to link to each other.
Link farm: Group of sites built to link to each other or sell links.
Link gap analysis: Finding link sources competitors have and you lack.
Link insertion (niche edit): Adding a link to an existing article, often paid.
Link intersect: Tool report of domains linking to multiple competitors.
Link juice: Informal term for link equity.
Link neighbourhood: The cluster of sites a site links to and from.
Link prospecting: Finding sites that could link to you.
Link reclamation: Recovering lost links or converting unlinked mentions.
Link rot: Gradual death of links as pages disappear.
Link scheme: Older Google term for link spam.
Link spam: Links created primarily to manipulate rankings.
Link velocity: Rate at which a site gains links.
Linkable asset: Content designed to earn links (data, tools, guides).
Linking root domain: Moz term for referring domain.
Local citation: See Citation (local).
Lost link: Backlink that has been removed or whose page is gone.

M

Manual action: Penalty applied by a human reviewer at Google.
Money page: Commercial page you want to rank and convert.

N

Naked URL anchor: Anchor that is the raw URL.
NAP: Name, Address, Phone; consistency matters for local SEO.
Navboost: Google system using historical click data to adjust rankings.
Negative SEO: Attempts to harm a competitor, for example with spam links.
Niche edit: See Link insertion.
Nofollow: Rel value hinting that a link should not pass ranking credit.
Noindex: Directive keeping a page out of the index.

O

Off-page SEO: Optimisation through signals outside your own site.
Orphan page: Page with no internal links pointing to it.
Outbound link (OBL): Link from your site to another.
Outreach: Contacting site owners or journalists to earn links.

P

Page Authority (PA): Moz page-level strength metric.
PageRank: Google's link analysis algorithm scoring pages by links.
PageRank sculpting: Obsolete tactic of nofollowing internal links to concentrate PageRank.
Paid link: Link obtained for money, goods or services.
Parasite SEO: Publishing on a high-authority third-party site to rank; see site reputation abuse.
Partial match anchor: Anchor containing the keyword plus other words.
PBN (private blog network): Network of sites, often on expired domains, built to link to money sites.
Penguin: Google algorithm (2012, real time 2016) targeting manipulative links.
Press release link: Link in a distributed release; should be nofollow.

Q

Q*: Google's internal quality score, largely query-independent, fed by PageRank.

R

Reasonable surfer model: Patent idea that link weight depends on click likelihood.
Reciprocal link: Mutual links between two sites.
Reconsideration request: Request for Google to review a site after fixing a manual action.
Redirect chain: Sequence of multiple redirects between source and final URL.
Referring domain: Unique domain linking to you.
Referring page: Specific page containing the link.
Referral traffic: Visitors arriving by clicking a link on another site.
Rel attribute: HTML attribute describing a link's relationship (nofollow, sponsored, ugc).
Relevance: Topical match between linking page or site and target.
Resource page link building: Getting listed on curated resource pages.

S

Scaled content abuse: Google policy against mass-producing low-value pages.
Seed site: Trusted site used as a starting point for trust or PageRank distance calculation.
SERP: Search engine results page.
siteAuthority: Sitewide authority attribute found in the 2024 Google leak.
Site reputation abuse: Google policy against third-party content exploiting a host's ranking signals.
Sitewide link: Link appearing on every page of a site.
Skyscraper technique: Creating a better version of well-linked content and pitching its linkers.
SpamBrain: Google's AI spam detection system, used for link spam since 2022.
Spam Score: Moz metric estimating penalty likelihood.
Sponsored attribute: Rel="sponsored", marks paid or advertising links.

T

Tiered link building: Building links to the pages that link to you.
Topical authority: Perceived depth of expertise of a site on a topic.
Topical Trust Flow: Majestic metric categorising trust by topic.
Toxic link: Tool label for a link judged risky; not a Google concept.
Trust Flow (TF): Majestic quality metric based on distance from trusted seeds.
TrustRank: 2004 algorithm propagating trust from a hand-picked seed set.

U

UGC attribute: Rel="ugc", marks user-generated links.
Unlinked mention: Brand reference without a hyperlink.
Unnatural links: Google's manual action term for manipulative links to or from a site.
URL Rating (UR): Ahrefs page-level link strength metric.

W

Web 2.0 link: Link from a free publishing platform subdomain or profile.
White hat SEO: Tactics compliant with search engine policies.
Widget link: Link embedded in a distributed widget; must be nofollow if keyword-rich.