Glossary

Backlink and authority terms

Links, link types and the authority metrics SEO tools use to score them, defined plainly with examples from real directory listings.

Anchor text: Anchor text is the visible, clickable text of a link. Search engines use it as a clue to what the linked page is about. In a directory listing, the anchor is usually your product name or URL. Natural anchor text varies; a profile full of exact keyword anchors looks manipulated.
Authority Score: Authority Score is Semrush's 0 to 100 metric for a domain's overall quality and SEO strength. Unlike Domain Rating, it combines link power with organic traffic estimates and spam signals, so a site with strong links but no traffic, or a suspicious link profile, scores lower.
Backlink: A backlink is a link on another website that points to a page on yours. Search engines treat backlinks from relevant, trusted sites as a sign that your page is worth ranking, and people use them to discover you. A link from a directory listing to your product is a backlink.
Backlink audit: A backlink audit is a review of all the links pointing to a site, to find what's working, what's lost and whether anything risky needs cleaning up. For most startups it's less about removing bad links and more about spotting lost listings, broken targets and the next link opportunities.
Backlink profile: A backlink profile is the full set of links pointing to a website: how many there are, from how many referring domains, how strong and relevant those sites are, what anchor text they use and what share are followed. SEO tools summarise it; search engines judge whether it looks natural.
Backlinks vs referring domains: Backlinks count every individual link pointing to your site; referring domains count the unique websites those links come from. One site linking to you 500 times is 500 backlinks but one referring domain. Referring domains correlate better with rankings because they measure how many independent sites vouch for you.
Branded anchor: A branded anchor is a link whose clickable text is your brand or product name, like "AgentLaunch" or "Notion". Most natural links use branded anchors, which is why they make up the bulk of a healthy backlink profile. Directory listings almost always use one.
Broken link building: Broken link building is finding links on other sites that point to pages that no longer exist, then offering the site owner a working replacement: your page on the same topic. It helps the site fix a bad link and gets you an editorial link. It works best with genuinely useful content.
Contextual link: A contextual link is a link placed inside the main body text of a page, surrounded by related words, rather than in a navigation menu, sidebar or footer. Search engines use the surrounding text to understand the link, and readers click contextual links more, so they tend to be worth more than boilerplate links.
Digital PR: Digital PR is getting coverage and links from news sites, industry publications and blogs by giving journalists something worth writing about: original data, expert comment, a story or a timely angle. It earns some of the strongest links a site can get, because they're editorial and from high-authority publishers.
Disavow: To disavow links is to ask Google, through a file uploaded in Search Console, to ignore specific links or whole domains pointing to your site. Google describes it as an advanced feature for sites with many spammy, artificial links that have caused or could cause a manual action. Most sites never need it.
Dofollow link: A dofollow link is a normal link with no nofollow, ugc or sponsored value in its rel attribute, so search engines may follow it and count it when ranking the page it points to. "Dofollow" isn't an actual HTML attribute; it just means the link has none of the restricting values.
Dofollow vs nofollow: A dofollow link has no nofollow, ugc or sponsored value in its rel attribute, so search engines may count it for ranking. A nofollow link carries rel="nofollow", asking search engines not to pass credit, which Google treats as a hint. Both send visitors; only dofollow links reliably pass link equity.
Domain Authority: Domain Authority (DA) is Moz's 1 to 100 score that predicts how likely a website is to rank in search results compared with other sites. It's calculated by a machine-learning model mainly from Moz's link data. Like Domain Rating, it's a third-party metric; Google doesn't use it.
Domain Rating: Domain Rating (DR) is Ahrefs' 0 to 100 score for how strong a website's backlink profile is compared with other sites in its index. It's based on how many unique sites link to it with followed links, and how strong those sites are. It's a third-party metric; Google doesn't use it.
DR vs UR: Domain Rating (DR) scores the backlink strength of a whole website; URL Rating (UR) scores a single page, counting both internal and external links to it. Both are Ahrefs metrics on 0 to 100 logarithmic scales. When judging a specific link, the linking page's UR says more than the site's DR.
Editorial link: An editorial link is a link a site owner or writer chose to give because it helps their readers, without payment or a trade. It's the kind of link search engines are designed to reward. Links from reviewed directory listings, press coverage and citations of your data are editorial.
Exact-match anchor: An exact-match anchor is a link whose clickable text is exactly the keyword the target page wants to rank for, like "best CRM for freelancers". A few occur naturally. A profile with many of them, especially from guest posts or paid links, is a classic sign of manipulation in Google's spam policies.
Guest post: A guest post is an article you write for another site's blog, usually with a short author bio linking to your site. Done for the audience, it builds reputation and earns relevant links. Done at scale for keyword-anchor links, Google treats it as link spam and may ignore or penalise the links.
Internal link: An internal link is a link from one page on your site to another page on the same site. Internal links help search engines find pages, understand how they relate and decide which ones matter most, and help visitors move to what they need next. Every important page should be linked from other relevant pages.
Journalist requests: Journalist requests are queries from reporters looking for expert sources, sent through services that collect them and pass them to subscribers. Help a Reporter Out (HARO) was the best-known one. Answering quickly with a specific, quotable reply can earn a quote, a mention and sometimes a link.
Link building: Link building is the work of getting other websites to link to yours, to earn search rankings, referral traffic and credibility. Legitimate methods include directory listings, creating content people cite, PR, guest contributions and partnerships. Buying links, link exchanges at scale and private blog networks break Google's spam policies.
Link earning: Link earning means getting links without asking for them, because your page is the best source on something: original data, a useful tool, a clear definition, a well-known product. It's the opposite of link building through outreach. Earned links keep coming as long as the page stays useful and current.
Link equity: Link equity is the informal name for the ranking value a link passes from one page to another. Links from strong, relevant pages pass more; nofollow, sponsored and ugc links usually pass little or none. "Link juice" means the same thing. Google doesn't publish a link equity number.
Link exchange: A link exchange is an agreement between sites to link to each other for SEO. Occasional reciprocal links between related sites happen naturally. Arranged swaps at scale, including three-way exchanges meant to hide the pattern, are what Google's spam policies call excessive link exchanges.
Link magnet: A link magnet is a page that keeps attracting backlinks without outreach, most often a "[topic] statistics" page that collects many sourced numbers in one place. Writers searching for a figure find it, cite it and link to it. AI answer engines cite such pages for the same reason.
Link reclamation: Link reclamation is the work of recovering backlinks you've lost or should already have: fixing links that point to broken pages on your site, restoring removed listings, and asking sites that mention you without a link to add one. It's usually the cheapest link building there is.
Link scheme: A link scheme is any attempt to manipulate rankings with links: buying or selling links that pass ranking credit, excessive link exchanges, private blog networks, large-scale guest posting with keyword anchors, or automated link creation. Google's spam policies call this link spam and can demote or manually penalise sites that do it.
Link type: Link type is whether a link is followed (dofollow) or carries a nofollow, sponsored or ugc value, which changes how search engines treat it. On directory profiles, link type tells you whether a listing can pass ranking credit. It's checked by reading the link's rel attribute on the live page.
Linkable asset: A linkable asset is a page built so other sites want to link to it: original research, statistics, free tools, calculators, templates, in-depth guides or a glossary. It's the base of link earning. The best ones answer a need writers have again and again, like a reliable number or a clear definition.
Lost backlink: A lost backlink is a link that used to point to your site and no longer does: the page was deleted, the link removed, the site closed or your URL changed. Every site loses links over time. Directory listings are lost when directories die, prune old listings or require a badge you removed.
Naked URL: A naked URL anchor is a link whose visible text is the URL itself, like "agentlaun.ch" or "https://example.com". It's one of the most common natural anchor types, used in listings, citations and forums. Directory listings often show your URL as the link text.
Niche edit: A niche edit is a link added to an existing article on another site, usually in exchange for payment, rather than a new article written for the link. Sellers market them as links on pages that already rank. When paid for and followed, they are paid links under Google's spam policies.
Nofollow link: A nofollow link is a link with rel="nofollow", which asks search engines not to associate the linking site with the target or pass ranking credit through it. Since 2020 Google treats nofollow as a hint rather than a rule. Nofollow links still send visitors and can still help pages get discovered.
Orphan page: An orphan page is a page on your site that no other page on your site links to. Visitors can't navigate to it and search engines may not find it, or may treat it as unimportant. Orphans are common after redesigns, in programmatic sections and with landing pages built for ads.
Outbound link: An outbound link is a link from your site to a page on another site. Linking out to good sources helps readers and shows search engines what your page relates to. Outbound links to paid partners should carry sponsored or nofollow; editorial links to sources don't need anything.
Page Authority: Page Authority (PA) is Moz's 1 to 100 score predicting how well a single page will rank, where Domain Authority scores the whole site. Like DA, it's a machine-learning model built mainly on link data from Moz's index. It's Moz's counterpart to Ahrefs' URL Rating.
PageRank: PageRank is the link analysis algorithm Larry Page and Sergey Brin described in 1998 as the basis of Google. It scores a page by the number and importance of pages linking to it, treating links as votes. Google still uses a version of it internally, but stopped showing public PageRank scores in 2016.
Private blog network: A private blog network (PBN) is a group of websites, often built on expired domains with leftover authority, that one owner controls and uses to link to sites they want to rank. It's a link scheme under Google's spam policies. PBN links are sold widely, and networks get deindexed when detected.
Reciprocal link: A reciprocal link is a pair of links where two sites link to each other. Many happen naturally, between partners, integrations or a product and the directory listing it. Directory badges create reciprocal links on purpose. They're fine in moderation; arranged at scale, they become a link exchange scheme.
Referring domain: A referring domain is a unique website that links to your site at least once. If one blog links to you 50 times, that's 50 backlinks but one referring domain. SEO tools and studies treat the number of referring domains as a stronger signal than the raw number of backlinks.
Rel attribute: The rel attribute is the part of an HTML link that describes the relationship between the current page and the linked one. For SEO, the values that matter are nofollow, sponsored and ugc. Others, such as noopener and noreferrer, are for security and privacy and don't affect how search engines treat the link.
Sitewide link: A sitewide link is a link that appears on every page of a site, usually in the footer, sidebar or navigation. It produces thousands of backlinks from a single referring domain. Search engines largely treat it as one link, and sitewide links to unrelated sites, especially paid or swapped ones, can look manipulative.
Spam Score: Spam Score is Moz's estimate, from 1% to 100%, of the share of sites with similar features that Google has penalised or banned. It's based on signals Moz found common among penalised sites. A high Spam Score is a reason to look closer, not proof a site is spam.
Sponsored link: A sponsored link is a link created as part of an ad, sponsorship or other paid arrangement, marked with rel="sponsored". Google asks sites to mark paid links this way so they don't pass ranking credit. Affiliate links, paid directory placements and sponsored posts are common examples.
Toxic backlink: A toxic backlink is SEO-tool shorthand for a link from a spammy or manipulative source that might harm rankings. Google says it ignores most such links automatically and that "toxic link" scores are a tool concept, not a Google one. The real risk is a pattern of links you built or bought.
Trust Flow: Trust Flow (TF) is Majestic's 0 to 100 score for how closely a site is linked to a set of trusted seed sites. Its partner metric, Citation Flow (CF), measures link volume regardless of quality. A site with much higher CF than TF has many links from untrusted sources, a common sign of spam.
UGC link: A UGC link is a link inside user-generated content, such as a comment, forum post or community profile, marked with rel="ugc". It tells search engines the site owner didn't write or vouch for the link. Google introduced the value in 2019 and treats it as a hint.
Unlinked brand mention: An unlinked brand mention is a page that names your product or company without linking to it. They're among the easiest links to win: the writer already knows and likes you, so a short note asking them to add the link often works. Mentions also matter on their own for AI answers.
URL Rating: URL Rating (UR) is Ahrefs' 0 to 100 score for the strength of a single page's backlink profile, where Domain Rating scores the whole site. It counts both internal and external links to the page. A directory listing page with high UR passes more than a fresh listing page buried deep in the site.

Other glossary sections

Glossary A to Z