~70 SEO, link building, and GEO terms in plain English.

This glossary defines common terms you'll see in our process and reports. It is intentionally plain-English and built to help clients, operators, and partner teams reach the next useful page faster.

Use the jump table when you need a fast definition in a client call, report, or vendor review, then use the inline route blocks to move into the page that shows how the term works in practice.

What are the core link terms teams should know first?

Dofollow link

A standard hyperlink with no restrictive rel attribute. Search engines can follow these links and may use them as ranking signals. A plain <a href="..."> tag is dofollow by default.

Nofollow link

A link carrying rel="nofollow", which signals that the publisher is not explicitly endorsing the destination. Nofollow links can still drive traffic and diversify a link profile, but they behave differently than dofollow placements.

Referring domain

A unique domain that links to your site. Ten links from one website still count as one referring domain, which is why domain diversity usually matters more than raw backlink totals.

Contextual link

A link placed inside the main body of an article and surrounded by relevant copy. Contextual links usually carry stronger topical and editorial signals than footer or sidebar links.

Editorial link

A link placed because a writer or editor believed it belonged there, not because it was forced by automation or a low-trust network. Editorial discretion is part of what gives a placement real trust value.

Link juice

An informal term for the authority or ranking value that can flow through links. It is not a formal Google metric, but it is still a useful shorthand when discussing how stronger pages can support weaker ones.

Earned / organic link

A link someone adds because your brand, content, or product was worth referencing. Earned links are the cleanest form of third-party endorsement and the long-term goal behind most authority-building strategies.

Sitewide links

Links that appear across nearly every page of a site, usually in headers, footers, or navigation. At scale, sitewide links can look manipulative and often carry far less value than people assume.

Footer links

Links placed in a site footer. Some are legitimate, but repeated keyword-heavy footer links can become a spam signal very quickly.

Sponsored link

A link placed because of money, goods, or services changing hands. Google expects sponsored relationships to be disclosed using attributes like rel="sponsored" or rel="nofollow".

Anchor text & profile

Anchor text

The clickable text of a hyperlink. Anchor choices influence topical interpretation, which is why aggressive exact-match anchor patterns can become risky.

Anchor text ratio

The distribution of branded, generic, exact-match, partial-match, and naked-URL anchors across a backlink profile. Healthy profiles usually look varied rather than over-scripted.

Natural link profile

A backlink profile that looks like it could exist without artificial manipulation: diverse domains, mixed anchor styles, different placement types, and growth over time instead of sudden bursts.

Link profile

The full picture of backlinks pointing to a site or page, including quality, anchor distribution, referring domains, follow/nofollow mix, and velocity.

Reciprocal link

A mutual link exchange. Occasional reciprocal links are normal; systematic exchange patterns built for SEO manipulation are not.

Authority & metrics

These are third-party estimates, not Google-owned numbers. Use them for relative comparison, not as final truth.

DA / DR

Shorthand for Domain Authority and Domain Rating, two third-party metrics used to estimate the relative strength of a domain's backlink profile.

Domain Rating

Ahrefs' score for the strength of a site's backlink profile compared with other domains in its index. It can be useful, but it is still only a proxy.

Page Authority vs. Domain Authority

Domain-level metrics describe the site overall; page-level metrics describe a specific URL. A strong domain can still contain weak pages, and vice versa.

Trust Flow

A Majestic metric that estimates link quality by measuring how close a page is to a curated seed set of trusted sites.

Majestic

A link intelligence tool known for Trust Flow and Citation Flow. It is often useful as a second opinion alongside Ahrefs or Moz.

PageRank

Google's original link-based ranking concept. Public PageRank scores are gone, but PageRank-style link authority still underpins modern search behavior.

Spam Score

A third-party estimate of whether a site shares patterns commonly seen on low-quality or penalized domains. It is a warning light, not a verdict.

Indexing & technical SEO

Indexing

The process of getting a page added to a search engine's index. If a page is not indexed, its link value and visibility are severely limited.

Crawl budget

The amount of crawling attention a search engine is willing to spend on a site. It matters most on larger sites with lots of URLs.

Canonical tag

A signal that tells search engines which version of a page should be treated as the preferred one when similar URLs exist.

Index coverage

The share of a site's pages that are actually indexed. Poor index coverage can signal weak content, technical problems, or crawl inefficiency.

Internal linking strategy

The deliberate structure of links between your own pages. Strong internal linking helps distribute authority, clarify page hierarchy, and reduce wasted content.

Content quality & relevance

E-E-A-T

Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness—the framework quality raters use to evaluate credibility. It is not a single ranking switch, but it heavily informs how trustworthy content should look.

Topical relevance

How closely related the linking source is to the linked page's subject. Relevance often matters more than vanity metrics alone.

Co-citation

When two brands or sources are mentioned together on the same third-party page, even without directly linking to each other.

Co-occurrence

When a brand or page is repeatedly mentioned near the same topics or keywords, helping search systems build topical association.

Topic cluster

A pillar-and-spoke content model where a broad core page is supported by narrower pages that reinforce the same topic family.

Link acquisition tactics

Guest post

An article published on a third-party site that includes one or more links. Quality depends on editorial standards, relevance, and publisher legitimacy—not just the existence of the link.

Broken link building

A tactic where you find dead links on other sites and suggest your content as a replacement resource.

Skyscraper technique

A tactic that improves on already popular content and pitches that better version to sites that linked to the original resource.

HARO / Digital PR

Journalist-response and media-coverage tactics designed to earn links through expertise, commentary, and newsworthy angles.

Link insertion

A link added to an already-existing article. These can move faster than brand-new articles because the page may already be indexed and trusted.

Niche edit

A link inserted into an existing article on a relevant site. Legitimate versions rely on editorial integrity; low-quality versions often hide behind paid-link behavior.

Outreach

The process of contacting site owners, editors, or journalists to pitch content, links, or coverage. Good outreach is targeted and value-led.

Resource page links

Links earned by getting useful content included on curated resource pages, guides, or recommended-tools pages.

Press release link

Links generated through press release distribution. These can support visibility and awareness, but syndicated wire links should not be treated as a core ranking strategy.

Tiered link building

Building links to pages that already link to you. Done carelessly, this turns into low-quality amplification instead of stronger authority.

Strategy & analysis

Link gap analysis

The process of finding domains that link to competitors but not to you, revealing a more qualified outreach universe.

Link prospecting

The discovery and qualification step where candidate sites are screened before outreach begins.

Link reclamation

Recovering lost links, broken links, or unlinked brand mentions that can be turned back into working authority assets.

Link velocity

The rate at which a site acquires backlinks over time. Natural growth usually looks gradual rather than explosive and erratic.

Unlinked brand mentions

Cases where your brand is mentioned without a hyperlink. These are often warmer, lower-friction outreach opportunities.

Link building ROI

The return from authority-building work measured against outcomes like rankings, traffic quality, assisted conversions, and pipeline value—not just raw link counts.

White-label & managed programs

White label

Behind-the-scenes delivery done on behalf of another agency or partner, where the client relationship remains with the lead agency.

Managed link building

A fully managed service where strategy, outreach, editorial work, placement, and reporting are handled for the client rather than self-served through a marketplace.

What do GEO and AI visibility terms actually mean?

These terms connect classic SEO work to the newer systems used in AI overviews, answer engines, and citation-driven discovery.

GEO

GEO stands for Generative Engine Optimization. It describes the work involved in helping brands, pages, and supporting sources become easier for AI systems to extract, cite, corroborate, and trust.

Citation visibility

The extent to which your site or supporting publishers appear as cited evidence inside AI-generated answers. Citation visibility is about being used as proof, not just being mentioned.

Answer-first architecture

A content structure that leads with direct answers, definitions, and extractable blocks before expanding into depth. It is built for both users and machine interpretation.

Entity orchestration

The coordination of brand, service, author, location, and topical signals across core pages, supporting content, schema, and third-party references so the site tells one consistent story.

AI share of voice

A comparative metric describing how frequently a brand appears across chosen AI prompts, answer surfaces, or citation sets relative to competitors. It is directional, not absolute truth.

Assisted traffic

Traffic or conversions influenced by AI visibility even when the final click is captured somewhere else, such as direct, branded search, or another returning channel.

Risk & compliance

For the full quality framework behind these terms, see our Editorial Standards and Domain Auditing Methodology.

PBN (Private Blog Network)

A network of sites built mainly to pass or sell links. PBNs simulate third-party endorsement without authentic editorial independence and carry obvious long-term risk.

Toxic links

A loose label for backlinks from very low-quality, heavily spammed, or deindexed sites. Different tools define "toxic" differently, which is why context still matters.

Disavow

A Google Search Console mechanism that asks Google to ignore certain backlinks when assessing your site. It is a serious tool and should not be used casually or preemptively.