I’ve caught myself many times not being able to recall an SEO term or acronym even if I have stumbled upon it numerous times. I am writing this article for those, who like me, have a weak memory, and of course, for those who wish to learn about Link Building terminology for the first time.
To start with the most obvious one.
Link Building
Link building is the process of acquiring links to your website from other domains. This can happen naturally by creating either high quality or link bait content. Keep in mind that the world is not an ideal place. Most of the time, links are acquired through outreach campaigns or personal relationships.
Anchor Text
Anchor text is the clickable text on a link. It usually identified with a color similar to the website’s theme. Anchor text is a vital factor in Google’s Algorithm and is regularly used to manipulate rankings.
Authority
Exactly as it happens in the offline world, people or companies have some authority in their field. For example, Einstein had authority in physics. The same happens in the Online (World Wide Web) world. If Einstein had a personal blog about physics, that blog would have high authority in Google’s eyes.
Domain Authority – DA
Domain Authority is a metric invented by the well-known SEO Moz. It is calculated by evaluating the number of backlinks a domain has but also the quality-authority of those backlinks. SEO Experts have used Domain Authority for many years as the most trustworthy metric. Nowadays, the majority of the SEO world trust Aherfs’ Domain Rank, myself included.
Citation Flow – CF
Citation flow invented by Majestic. It is a number of predicting how influential a URL might be based on how many sites link to it.
Domain Rating – DR
Domain Rating is a metric invented by Ahrefs and is used widely from SEO Experts around the world. Same as Domain Authority and Citation Flow, it counts the quantity and quality of links pointed to a domain. At Syndesmos, we trust this metric so much that we price our links based on it.
Broken Link
A link is considered broken when you try to click on it, and the destination page does not exist or returns a 404 error. If a link is broken, then Google will not be able to crawl it. As a result, the link doesn’t pass any SEO value. Broken links can be a huge problem from both a UX and a business perspective. Imagine if you own an affiliate site, and you have a broken affiliate link in your most visited page. It’s a disaster, right?
Deep Link
With the term Deep Link, we refer to a link that points to any page of a website that isn’t the Home page.
Deindexed
When a website is removed from the search engines’ index, it means it’s deindexed. A deindexed website does not pass any link juice whatsoever (???). Google often de–indexes websites that are not made to serve humans or being part of a links scheme such as a PBN network.
Disavow Tool
Disavow Tool was initially launched by Google Search Console to help Webmasters remove links that they think could hurt their website’s performance in SERPs. I don’t recommend using the Disavow Tool unless it’s an emergency. Today, Google’s algorithm has excelled enough to identify and exclude or “not count” low-quality links. I firmly believe there is an auto disavow system in place from Google.
External Link
Every link that points to another domain besides our own is considered an external link.
DoFollow Links
DoFollow link is not an actual link attribute. It was invented by SEOs when Google launched the (rel=”nofollow”) link and it refers to the absence of a nofollow attribute, allowing search engines to crawl them as a result.
Nofollow Link
The Nofollow attribute was first introduced by Google back in 2005. It refers to a link that you tell search engines not to follow by using a special tag (rel=”nofollow”).
UGC link
The UGC (user-generated content) was announced by Google in 2019 and you should use it to mark links from any user-generated content, such as comments.
Sponsored link
Along with UGC, Google announced a sponsored link attribute. Make sure you mark any sponsored/advertising links with it. Or not :).
Footprints
Footprints are patterns identified by search engines such as IPs, domain registrar (not register), themes, etc. Google uses footprints to penalize Private Blog Networks or links created by automation tools, such as GSA.
Guest Posting
Guest Posting is a link building technique in which you exchange a piece of content for a backlink from another website. This, in essence, means that you make an agreement with another website, sending them an article you wrote. In turn they post the article with a link back to your website included. Guest posts are the kind of links we sell at Syndesmos.
Inbound Link
Every link that points to your domain from another domain is considered an inbound link. Basically, a backlink.
Spam links
Spam links are links created by low-quality websites. You can easily identify spam links by spin content or the number of links are placed on the same page. Spam links are the links you are not buying from us.
Linkbait
Linkbait is usually referred to as a piece of content that is created with the intent to acquire links. An example of a linkbait piece of content is the skyscraper technique.
RSOS
RSOS means Reverse Sequence Or Swim and the term was first introduced inside OMG machines. RSOS method suggests that it’s ideal to have your keyword in the URL and Title of the page you are getting the link from.