If you’re a beginner in link-building, more often than not, some terms might sound confusing. But don’t worry; we have you covered! Link-building is a massive field; there are a ton of different aspects you need to consider and a lot of terms that you’ll come across for the first time. That is exactly why you need to link-building glossary like this to help you understand all those link-building terms so you know exactly what you’re doing!

This link-building glossary will serve as a beginner’s guide to link-building terms to help you create an effective backlinks strategy for your website! So, let’s get started, shall we?

A

Alternative Text (ALT)

Alt text is something that is used to describe the reason why a particular image is used in a webpage. 

Anchor Text

Anchor text is the clickable part of the text that has a link embedded in it. An anchor text could lead you to an external website as well as an internal web page. Anchor text is often in a different colour, underlined or highlighted in some way or another to draw the reader’s attention.

B

Backlinks

This might be the most common term you come across in link-building. Backlinks are links from another website that point to your website. Backlinks are simply called links, and there are several types of links in the link-building world. 

For more information on how to build quality backlinks, check out our complete guide here.

Broken Links

Broken links, as the name suggests, are links that are no longer working. Broken links don’t point to anything; they either show up as a 404 error or simply a dead web page. Broken links are considered one of the most effective ways to score backlinks for your site!

Brand Mentions

Brand mentions are exactly what they sound like. Online mentions of a brand, in any way, are called brand mentions. Businesses use brand mentions to link to external sites and enhance their visibility and credibility!

C

Crawability

Crawability refers to how easy it is for search engines to read the content of your website and index it. Your site’s content has to be crawlable in order to be indexed by Google; otherwise, your website will never show up in SERPs.

Content Marketing

The process of crafting and sharing relatable content online to market your brand or services is called content marketing. Content marketing can work for anything; you can even use it for marketing your other content to boost its visibility!

D

Domain Authority

Domain authority, or DA, is a score invented by Moz that measures how well a website will do in SERPs. In simpler words, domain authority allows you to predict how high up a particular website will show up when a particular query is run. Domain authority is among the most important factors in link-building. You always need to stick to high-DA websites if you want to practice effective link-building for your brand!

Dofollow Links

As the name suggests, dofollow links are links that signal the search engines to follow wherever those links are leading to. Essentially, all links are dofollow links unless the ‘nofollow’ attribute is used with the link that specifically tells the search engine not to follow that particular link.

E

Editorial Links

Editorial links are the best kind of links! These links are considered the most rewarding sort of links because they’re achieved without reaching out to other websites, and they are the most valuable links in the eyes of search engines. Editorial links are placed after the content is published online. 

Evergreen Content

Evergreen content can be simply termed ‘sustainable content.’ This kind of content can be useful to your website for a considerable period of time.

External Links

As the name suggests, links from another domain pointing to your site are called external links. External linking is the opposite of internal linking, where you simply link your website’s pages with each other.

I

Indexing

Search engines look for information all over the internet and crawl web pages to collect data. The process of storing, analysing and organising of data is called indexing.

K

Keywords

Keywords are words or phrases that are relevant to your content and are popular in your niche. Using these relevant and popular keywords, you can significantly increase the odds of ranking high in SERPs when that particular query is run by a user.

L

Link Profile

The Link profile or backlink profile is sort of a portfolio of all different the links your website has. You have to have a strong backlink profile for other websites to consider building links with your site. It is also necessary to rank high on SERPs.

Link-Building

Not that it needs to be mentioned here, but it wouldn’t be a link-building glossary without link-building being actually in it. Link-building is an SEO growth technique that involves acquiring quality links from other websites to your own and vice versa. Backlinks are basically signals or votes of confidence that a search engine looks for when considering the credibility and importance of your website’s content.

Link Exchanging

Link exchanging is exactly what it sounds like; exchanging your links with other websites’ links in order to amplify your brand’s visibility. Link exchanging doesn’t always have to be between links; you can exchange your link for quality content or an infographic, etc.

Linking Domains

Linking domains are the different domains that your site has links with.

Link Reclamation 

The process of auditing the internet to look for improper mentions of your brand and replacing it with working links is called link reclamation.

Link Schemes

Something you need to stay away from at all costs; link schemes are strategies that websites use to manipulate search engine rankings. Link schemes are black-hat SEO techniques that are frowned upon in the community and can be penalised by Google, and the website might even get deindexed by Google.

O

Outreach

Outreach is the process of reaching out to bloggers and brands to build links with your site. Outreach is like a business proposition that you present to other websites.

Off-Page SEO

A variety of activities to improve your site’s SEO performed outside of your website is called off-page SEO.

On-Page SEO

On-page SEO refers to the activities to enhance your site’s SEO that are done on your own website.

Page Authority

Similar to domain authority, page authority is a measure of how well a particular web page will rank on SERPs.

PageRank

Google uses an algorithm to rank web pages in its SERPs called PageRank. PageRank essentially measures the importance of web pages and ranks them accordingly.

Paid Links

There are various websites that can sell you links for money. Those links are called paid links. Google frowns upon paid links, but if they’re done properly, they’re not detectable.

R

Rankings

Rankings refer to the position of your website in SERPs when a particular search query is run by a user.

Reciprocal Links

Also called link exchange, reciprocal links are links that point to each other.

Redirect

When a user clicks on a link, they’re taken to another website or to an internal web page; this is called redirecting.

S

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

A necessary addition to our link-building glossary is, of course, SEO. The process of optimising your web pages so they have higher odds of ranking high in SERPs is called search engine optimisation. There are a bunch of different ways you can improve your site’s SEO; link-building being one of the most rewarding ones!

Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs)

SERPs are simply the results a user gets after running a search query. SERPs are essentially a list of all the links to various websites. 

Sitemaps

Sitemaps, as the name suggests, are sort of a map of your website that search engines can follow when crawling your website.

Spam

Spam is anything that feels irrelevant, forced, or just unwanted. You need to avoid spam at all costs

Sponsored Links

Link placements that are paid for are called sponsored links. 

Sponsored Content

Blog posts or any type of content that is paid to be posted on a website are called sponsored content.

T

Traffic

Traffic refers to the users visiting your website.

U

Unlinked Mentions

Unlinked mentions are mentions of a brand or a website without an actual link in it.

Unnatural Links

Backlinks that are acquired using black-hat SEO techniques to manipulate SERP rankings are unnatural links.

URLs

Uniform Resource Locators are the addresses of websites. Backlinks are built using URLs.

There’s nothing in our link-building glossary that starts with any alphabet after U, so that’s all!

Conclusion

Link-building can be a hassle to deal with. There’s way too much you need to be careful about a lot of terms you need to be familiar with. This link-building glossary contains all the different link-building definitions you need to get started and to help you understand the importance of link-building! Most businesses opt for link-building agencies to let experienced professionals build quality links for their websites. TheDigitalXperts has over 12 years of experience in building high-quality backlinks for businesses of all niches! Get in touch now and experience unprecedented growth.