Link Building & Off-Page

A backlink (also inbound link) is a link from another website to a page on your site.

A deep link is a link that points directly to specific content instead of a start page.

Domain popularity is, as defined by SISTRIX, the number of different domains that link to an analyzed domain at least once.

An editorial link is a link that an editor or site owner places in an article on their own initiative because the linked content helps …

Link popularity describes how many incoming links a page or domain has.

A link profile, also called backlink profile, is the full set of external links pointing to a website or its pages.

Link rot is the gradual decay of hyperlinks over time.

Link velocity is the rate at which a website or page gains new backlinks in a given period, usually counted as new links or new referring …

Lost backlinks are links that a backlink tool found before and does not find any more.

A natural link is a link that a site owner places on their own because the linked content seems useful to their readers.

Outbound links, also called external links, are links that point from a page to a different domain.

A referring domain is a domain that links to a given website or page at least once.

A dofollow link is an ordinary link that carries no rel value such as nofollow, sponsored or ugc.

Link attributes, in an SEO context, are values of the rel attribute on an <a> element that describe how a link relates to its target.

rel="sponsored" is a value of the rel attribute on links.

rel="ugc" is a value of the rel attribute on links.

Co-citation means that two documents, pages or brands are cited together by a third source, without citing each other.

Domain authority is a score that estimates how strong a website's link profile is.

Page Authority (PA) is a metric from the SEO tool vendor Moz.

PageRank is a method for scoring the importance of a web page from the links that point to it.

Trust Flow and Citation Flow are two metrics from the SEO tool vendor Majestic.

TrustRank is a link-based method to separate reputable pages from web spam.

Brand mentions are places on the web that name a brand or domain.

Broken link building is a link building method.

Digital PR is public relations carried out through online channels.

An expired domain is a domain whose registration ran out because its previous owner did not renew it.

A guest post is an article that an outside person or company writes for another website or blog.

Linkbait (also link bait) is content designed so that other sites want to link to it.

Link building is the practice of getting other websites to link to yours.

Link reclamation means restoring backlinks that have disappeared or stopped working.

Outreach in SEO means contacting site owners, bloggers or editors to present content and earn backlinks, mentions or guest posts.

A partial match domain (PMD) is a domain name that contains part of the keywords a site wants to be found for, combined with other words …

Social signals are interactions with content on social networks, such as likes, shares, comments or follower counts.

An article directory is, in SEO, a website where users submit articles and place a link to their own site in the text or author box.

Bad neighborhood is an SEO term for a group of spam sites that a website is connected to through links.

Buying links means giving money, goods or services in return for a link to your site.

Disavowing links means uploading a list of links to Google that Google should ignore when assessing your site.

Google bombing (also Googlebomb) was an attempt to push a page up for a search term by pointing many links with identical anchor text at …

A link exchange, also called reciprocal linking, means two websites agree to link to each other.

A link scheme is a pattern for creating links mainly to influence search rankings.

In SEO, link spam means links to or from a site that exist primarily to manipulate search rankings.

Negative SEO means deliberate attempts to harm the search rankings of another website.

A private blog network (PBN) is a group of websites under common control whose main purpose is to link to one or more target sites to …

Toxic backlinks is a term from SEO tools for incoming links judged harmful to a site, for example links from spam sites or link networks.