Backlink Glossary: 40+ Link Building Terms in Plain English
SEO people talk in shorthand, and backlink sellers and tools add their own jargon on top. This glossary keeps definitions short and practical. Where a term has a fuller article on this blog, there's a link.
Core terms
Backlink. A link from another website to yours. Also called an inbound or incoming link. Start with what is a backlink.
Referring domain. A unique website that links to you. One site with 50 links to you is 50 backlinks but one referring domain.
Outbound link. A link from your site to another site.
Internal link. A link between two pages on the same website.
Anchor text. The visible, clickable text of a link. See anchor text explained.
Link profile. The full set of backlinks and referring domains pointing to a site, including their types, anchors and quality.
Link building. Any activity aimed at getting other sites to link to yours, from outreach and PR to paid placements.
Link attributes
Followed (dofollow) link. A normal link with no rel attribute restricting it. Can pass ranking credit. "Dofollow" isn't a real HTML attribute.
Nofollow. rel="nofollow", a hint asking Google not to pass ranking credit. Introduced in 2005 and treated as a hint since 2019.
Sponsored. rel="sponsored", for paid, sponsored or affiliate links. Introduced in 2019.
UGC. rel="ugc", for links in user-generated content like comments and forums. Introduced in 2019.
Value and metrics
PageRank. Google's original algorithm for scoring pages by the links pointing at them. Still part of Google's systems, though the public PageRank toolbar score was retired long ago.
Link equity (link juice). The ranking value passed through links. See link equity explained.
Domain Authority (DA). A 1–100 score created by Moz to predict how well a domain might rank. Not used by Google.
Domain Rating (DR). Ahrefs' 0–100 score of a domain's backlink strength. Also not a Google metric.
Page Authority (PA). Moz's page-level version of DA.
Trust Flow and Citation Flow. Majestic's metrics for the quality and quantity of a site's links.
Spam Score. Moz's estimate of how many features a site shares with sites Moz has seen penalised or banned.
Organic traffic. Visitors from unpaid search results. Third-party tools only estimate it, but it's a useful sanity check on whether a linking site is real.
Placement and types
Contextual link. A link inside the main body text of a relevant page.
Editorial link. A link added because the writer chose to cite you, not because you asked or paid.
Sitewide link. A link that appears on every page of a site, usually in a footer, sidebar or blogroll.
Guest post. An article you write for another site, usually with a link back to yours.
Niche edit (link insertion). A link added to an existing article on another site.
Citation. A mention of a business's name, address and phone number, usually on directories. Central to local SEO.
Web 2.0. Content published on free hosted platforms, often used as Tier 1 or buffer links in tiered campaigns.
Profile link. A link from a user profile page on a forum, platform or social site.
PBN (private blog network). A group of sites built or bought mainly to link to other sites. A well-known link scheme Google acts against.
Expired domain. A domain whose registration lapsed, sometimes re-registered for its leftover backlinks.
Tiered and bulk link terms
Tiered link building. A structure where Tier 1 links point at your site, Tier 2 links point at Tier 1 pages, and Tier 3 links point at Tier 2. See what are tiered backlinks.
Money site / money page. The site or page you actually want to rank and make money from.
Drip feed. Delivering links gradually over days or weeks rather than all at once.
Indexing. The point at which Google adds a page to its index. A link on an unindexed page passes nothing.
Link velocity. The rate at which a site gains or loses links over a period, such as per month.
Risk and cleanup
Link scheme. Google's term for links intended to manipulate rankings, including buying or selling links that pass ranking credit, excessive link exchanges and automated link creation.
Manual action. A penalty applied by a human reviewer at Google, shown in Search Console's Manual Actions report.
Penguin. A 2012 Google algorithm update targeting manipulative links; it now runs as part of Google's core systems.
Toxic backlink. A label some tools use for links they consider risky. Useful as a prompt to check, not as a verdict.
Disavow. A Search Console tool that tells Google to ignore specific links or domains when assessing your site. Mainly for manual actions or known bad link building.
Negative SEO. Attempts to harm a competitor's rankings, for example by pointing spam links at their site.
Link reclamation. Recovering lost links, often by fixing 404s with redirects or asking sites to restore removed links.
Link rot. The gradual breaking of links as pages disappear or move.
Reconsideration request. The request you file in Search Console after fixing the issues behind a manual action.
Where to go from here
Bookmark this page and keep it open the next time you read a backlink report or a link package description. When you see a term you can't explain to a client in one sentence, look it up here, then read the linked article before you spend money on anything that uses it.