A-Z Glossary of Link Building Related Terms

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 – part of a link that is clickable for the user, usually highlighted in a different

colour and underlined.

AC Rank – standing for “A citation rank” this is a metric used by Majestic SEO to give a value to

a particular page based on the number of domains linking to it. It is measured from 0 – 15

with 15 being the highest.

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 – also known as AgentRank, 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.

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

such as 404, 410 or 503.

Cached page – the version of a web page or document stored by the search engines on their

servers.

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 on pages of a website, can include text, images, videos, audio files

etc.

Crawling – refers to search engines bots (or spiders) that moving around the web, collecting

Deep link – a link that points to any page except the homepage of a domain.

De-indexed - when 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 categories lists of links to websites.

Domain authority – refers to how strong a domain is by looking at the number of quality links

pointing at it. Commonly referring to a metric used by SEOmoz to measure the strength of a

domain, giving it a score between 0 – 100 with 100 being the highest.

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 – a list of links pointing at a single domain.

Link removal – the process of removing links to a domain.

MozRank – a metric used by SEOmoz to determine the strength of a domain based on the

quantity and quality of links pointing at it.

Negative SEO – the practice of building low quality links to a domain that you do not own,

with the goal of reducing it’s organic search rankings.

Nofollow link – a link that is not counted by the search engines in their link graph.

Page authority – the strength of a single page on a domain, commonly referring to a metric

created by SEOmoz which assigns a score between 0 – 100 based on the quantity and quality

of links pointing at it.

PageRank – invented by 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 – refers to the search engines reducing the rankings of a particular page or domain

because of violating their guidelines. Can be manual or algorithmic.

Penguin – a Google update first launched in April 2012 focusing on reducing the rankings of

websites that had been over-optimised.

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 different location to 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.

Toolbar PageRank – The PageRank seen by users, not the actual PageRank of a page. Usually

updated by Google every few months.

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.