Link building glossary

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A

AI Optimized Article

An article format on Rankticker written to be quoted by AI assistants as well as read by people. It leads with a direct answer, makes specific claims with sources, and names the client's brand in context instead of only linking to it. It's ordered from the marketplace like any other format, and makes most sense on publications AI models already cite.

AI Overviews

Google's AI-generated summaries at the top of some search results, with links to the pages they draw on. Google started rolling them out to all US users in May 2024 and has since added more countries. Google says there are no additional requirements to appear in them: the page has to be indexed and eligible to show a snippet.

AI visibility

How often, and how favourably, a brand shows up in answers from ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot, Claude and Google's AI Overviews. It's usually measured by running a fixed set of prompts on a schedule and recording mentions, citations and sentiment. Rankticker reports it per engine in each project's AIO Performance tab; the AI visibility page explains the approach.

Anchor text

The clickable words of a link. It tells readers and search engines what the target is about, which is why over-optimised anchors are one of the easiest manipulation signals to spot. Natural profiles are mostly branded, URL and generic anchors. Our anchor text strategy post has working ratios.

Authority

Shorthand for how much a site or page is trusted, usually estimated from its backlinks. Google doesn't publish an authority score. DA, DR and Trust Flow are each one vendor's model of the idea, useful for comparing sites against each other and, in our view, not much else.

B

Backlink

A link from another website to yours. Search engines use links to find pages and as one signal of importance; people use them to find you. What a backlink is worth depends on the linking page's relevance, its traffic, its own links and where on the page the link sits. See how to evaluate a backlink.

Broken link building

Finding links on other sites that point to dead pages, then offering the site owner a working replacement on your own site. It works because you're fixing the editor's problem. It's slow, and the replacement has to cover what the dead page covered or the pitch falls flat.

C

Citation (AI)

A source an AI answer names or links to, such as Perplexity's numbered references or the link cards in AI Overviews. Citations send some traffic, and they show which publications a model treats as reliable on a topic. Rankticker's AIO opportunities list the publications AI models cite in your niche, so you can buy placements on them.

Citation Flow

Majestic's 0–100 score estimating how much link equity a site or URL carries, based on how many links point to it. It measures volume and says nothing about quality, so it's read next to Trust Flow. Majestic describes both on a logarithmic scale.

Contextual link

A link inside the body of an article, surrounded by text on the same subject. The alternatives are sidebar, footer and author-bio links. Contextual links are what most buyers want from a guest post or link insertion, because readers click them and the surrounding text gives them meaning.

Crawl budget

The number of URLs Googlebot can and wants to crawl on a site, set by crawl capacity and crawl demand. Google says it mainly matters for large sites: a million or more pages changing weekly, or 10,000 or more changing daily. For most link buyers the more useful question is whether the linking page is indexed.

D

Digital PR

Earning coverage and links from news sites through data studies, expert comment, reactive pitching and campaigns. The links are editorial and can't be ordered on demand, which is most of their value. We compare it with paid formats in digital PR vs guest posts vs link insertions.

Disavow

Telling Google to ignore specific links or domains pointing at your site, by uploading a text file in Search Console. Google says most sites don't need it and recommends it only when you have a considerable number of spammy or artificial links that have caused, or will likely cause, a manual action. Disavowing because a tool's toxicity score went red is usually wasted effort.

Dofollow

Informal name for a link with no rel value that limits it (no nofollow, sponsored or ugc). There's no rel="dofollow" attribute; links are followed by default. You can filter for it in the marketplace, and the live link tracker checks the attribute hasn't changed after the post goes live.

Domain Authority (DA)

Moz's 1–100 score predicting how likely a domain is to rank compared with other domains. Since March 2019 it has come from a machine-learning model trained on Google results, using linking root domains, total links, Spam Score and other inputs. It's non-linear, so moving from 70 to 80 is far harder than 20 to 30. Google doesn't use it, and Moz says as much on its DA page.

Domain Rating (DR)

Ahrefs' 0–100 measure of the relative strength of a site's backlink profile. It counts unique referring domains with at least one followed link, each weighted by its own DR and divided by the number of sites it links out to. Nofollow links, traffic and domain age don't count. It's logarithmic and can be inflated with cheap links, which is why we read it next to traffic and topical relevance.

E

E-E-A-T

Experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trust: the framework in Google's search quality rater guidelines, with the first "E" added in December 2022. It isn't a single ranking factor or a score. For link building it's a decent test of a publication: named authors with real expertise, and a reason to trust what the site prints.

Editorial link

A link an editor chose to include because it helps the reader, with no payment or exchange behind it. This is what link-based ranking systems were built to reward. A paid placement can sit on an editorial site and pass editorial review, but it isn't an editorial link in this sense, and Google asks for it to carry rel="sponsored" or rel="nofollow".

Entity

A distinct, identifiable thing (a company, a person, a product, a place) that search engines and language models recognise and connect to facts and to other entities. Repeated mentions of your brand next to the topics you want to be known for help Google's Knowledge Graph and LLMs make that association. It's why unlinked mentions count in AI answers.

Exact-match anchor

Anchor text that repeats the target keyword word for word, such as "payroll software" linking to a payroll software page. A few in a natural profile are normal. A lot of them on paid placements is the pattern Google's link spam policy names: links with optimised anchor text in articles, guest posts or press releases distributed on other sites.

F

Follow ratio

The share of a site's backlinks, or referring domains, that are followed versus nofollow, sponsored or ugc. Real profiles are mixed, because social platforms, forums and many news sites qualify outbound links by default. A profile that's almost entirely followed links with keyword anchors is a footprint.

G

GEO (generative engine optimization)

Work aimed at getting content cited, and described accurately, in AI-generated answers. The term comes from a 2023 paper by researchers at Princeton and IIT Delhi, presented at KDD 2024, which found that adding citations, quotations and statistics to a page raised its visibility in generative engine responses by up to about 40%. In practice it overlaps with SEO and digital PR more than the acronym suggests. See link building for AI search.

Grey niche

Categories many publishers restrict or refuse, such as gambling, CBD, adult, crypto and payday loans. Publishers that accept them often charge more. A site with a lot of grey-niche outbound links is a risk for every other brand buying there, so grey-niche outbound share is one of our vetting flags, and each publisher profile states which grey niches it accepts.

Guest post

A new article written for another publication, usually by or for an outside brand, with a link back. Done well, it puts your expertise in front of a relevant audience. On Rankticker the content is written by our editors or supplied by you, and the publisher reviews it before it goes live (see content).

H

HARO and journalist requests

Services where journalists post requests for expert sources and PR teams pitch replies, earning quotes and sometimes links. Cision rebranded HARO (Help a Reporter Out) as Connectively in 2024, then discontinued it, and sold the HARO brand to Featured.com in April 2025. Other request services still run, and UK journalists post on social media under #journorequest.

Homepage link

A link on a site's homepage, either in a fixed block such as a sidebar or partners list, or in a recent post that will scroll off. Homepages usually carry the most internal link equity. A fixed homepage placement often sits in a template, which makes it a sitewide link in all but name.

I

Indexation

Whether a page is in a search engine's index and eligible to appear in results. A link on a page that isn't indexed is unlikely to do much for rankings, and a site with most of its pages unindexed is a quality warning. Pages indexed is one of our publisher risk flags, and the live link tracker checks the placement page's status.

L

Link equity

The value a link is thought to pass from the linking page to the target, informally "link juice". It depends on the linking page's own links, its relevance, where the link sits and how many other links share the page. It's a model. Google doesn't report it.

Link exchange

Two sites linking to each other by agreement. Occasional reciprocal links between related sites are normal on the web. Google's spam policies list excessive link exchanges, and partner pages built only for cross-linking, as link spam.

Link farm

A site, or group of sites, that exists to link out to anyone who pays and has no real audience. Signs include thin posts across unrelated topics, several outbound commercial links per post, and metrics that don't match the traffic. Our guide to spotting PBNs and link farms walks through the checks.

Link health monitoring

Checking placed links on a schedule after they go live: the page loads, the anchor is still there, the link reaches the right target, the attribute hasn't changed and the page is indexed. Links get edited out, and sites migrate without redirects. Rankticker runs these checks on every order and flags failures in your inbox (link monitoring).

Link insertion

Adding a link to an article that's already published, instead of commissioning a new one. Also called a niche edit. The appeal is that the page may already have traffic, rankings and links of its own. The risk is a publisher who inserts links into old posts for anyone who asks, so check how many paid links the page already carries.

Link permanence

How long a publisher commits to keeping a placed link live. Rankticker publisher profiles state it per site (lifetime, for example), and the live link tracker shows whether the commitment is being kept.

Link reclamation

Recovering links you've lost or should already have: redirecting old URLs that still attract links but now return 404, asking sites to restore links they removed, and turning unlinked mentions into links. It's usually the cheapest link building you'll do, because the site already chose to reference you.

Link velocity

The rate at which a site gains or loses referring domains over time. A spike with no launch, news story or campaign behind it can look manufactured. Our post on budget and velocity covers how to set a pace.

LLM

Large language model: the kind of model behind ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Copilot. LLMs answer from what they learned in training and, more and more, from live web retrieval, which is where citations come from. Which publications a model retrieves and cites for your topic is the basis of AI visibility work.

M

Manual action

A penalty applied by a human reviewer at Google when a site breaks its spam policies, reported in Search Console's Manual actions report. Unnatural links to or from your site are one of the listed reasons. You fix the problem, then file a reconsideration request.

N

Niche edit

Another name for a link insertion: a link added to an existing article on a site in your niche.

Nofollow

A rel value, rel="nofollow", asking search engines not to pass ranking credit through a link. In September 2019 Google started treating it as a hint and added sponsored and ugc alongside it; nofollow is now the fallback when neither applies. Nofollow links still send referral traffic, and the page they sit on can still be read by people and by AI tools.

O

Outbound link ratio

How many links a site sends out compared with how much content it has, or how many links it receives. A site that links out far more than anyone links in, mostly to commercial pages, is usually selling to anyone. Sponsored-outbound share is part of our publisher vetting.

P

PageRank

Google's original link analysis algorithm, described by Sergey Brin and Larry Page in their 1998 paper: a page is important if important pages link to it. Google says PageRank has evolved a lot and is still part of its core ranking systems. The public toolbar score is long gone, and DR and Citation Flow are third-party approximations of the idea.

PBN

Private blog network: a set of sites under one owner, often built on expired domains, used to link to money sites while looking independent. The links exist to manipulate rankings, which is what Google's link spam policy targets. Footprints include shared hosting and themes, thin posts on unrelated topics and outbound links to the same few targets. More in how to spot PBNs.

Press release

An announcement sent to media, often through wire services that syndicate it to many sites. Syndicated release links do little for SEO, and Google's spam policy names optimised anchors in press releases distributed on other sites. A release can still earn coverage and brand mentions that AI tools pick up; see press releases for SEO and AI visibility.

R

Referring domain

A unique website that links to yours at least once. Ten links from one site count as one referring domain. Most tools weight referring domains above raw backlink counts, and Ahrefs' DR only counts the first followed link from each.

rel="sponsored"

The rel value Google asks for on advertisements and paid placements. Google prefers it to nofollow for paid links but still accepts nofollow, and values can be combined, as in rel="sponsored nofollow". On Rankticker the buyer picks the attribute per order from those the publisher allows; paid links and Google's spam policies covers the decision.

rel="ugc"

The rel value for links in user-generated content such as comments and forum posts. Google suggests a site can drop it for trusted members who consistently contribute good content. You'll mostly meet it when judging forum and community links, which usually carry it.

S

Share of voice

Your share of the visibility available for a set of keywords or prompts, measured against competitors. In AI visibility it's usually the proportion of tracked answers that mention your brand compared with rivals. Rankticker shows it in the project's AIO Performance tab.

Sitewide link

A link that appears on every page of a site, typically in the footer, sidebar or navigation. Google's spam policy lists widely distributed links in footers or templates as an example of link spam. However many pages it's on, it's still one referring domain.

Skyscraper technique

Find content that has earned lots of links, publish something clearly better, then ask the sites linking to the original to link to yours. The name comes from Brian Dean at Backlinko. Editors now receive a lot of these pitches, so "clearly better" has to be obvious within one sentence of your email.

Spam score

Moz's Spam Score is the percentage of sites with similar features that Moz has found penalised or banned by Google, based on 27 features. Moz treats 1–30% as low, 31–60% as medium and 61–100% as high. It's a correlation, not a verdict, so it appears as a risk flag on Rankticker profiles rather than an automatic cut-off.

Sponsored post

An article paid for by a brand and presented as paid. It differs from a guest post mainly in disclosure. In the UK the ASA expects it to be obviously identifiable as advertising, and publishers selling through Rankticker set their own labelling rules (see for publishers).

T

TF:CF ratio

Trust Flow divided by Citation Flow. A ratio close to 1 suggests a site's links come from trusted sources in proportion to their volume. A low ratio, lots of link volume with little trust behind it, often means manufactured links. It's a practitioner heuristic rather than a Majestic rule, and one of the risk flags on our publisher profiles.

Tiered link building

Building links to the pages that link to you so they pass more value: tier 1 links point at your site, tier 2 links point at tier 1 pages, and so on. The lower tiers are usually automated or low quality, which is where the risk sits. We don't recommend it.

Topical authority

How thoroughly a site covers a subject, judged by the breadth and depth of its content and the relevance of the sites that link to it. A site with 200 posts on payroll has more topical authority on payroll than a general business blog with three.

Topical relevance

How closely the linking page and site match the topic of the page they link to. A relevant link from a modest site often does more, for rankings and for referral traffic, than an irrelevant one from a high-DR site. See topical relevance vs DR; campaign recommendations show topical overlap as a reason for each pick.

Toxic links

A label SEO tools give to backlinks they predict could hurt you. Google's own disavow guidance says most sites don't need to act, so a toxic score alone isn't a reason to disavow. The links worth dealing with are probably ones you, or an agency before you, bought or built at scale.

Trust Flow

Majestic's 0–100 score of link quality, based on how closely a site is linked from a manually reviewed set of trusted seed sites. Sites near trusted sources score higher; sites with questionable links score lower. Majestic also breaks it down by topic as Topical Trust Flow, which helps when checking relevance.

U

Unlinked mention

A mention of your brand, product or people on another site with no link. Mentions can still shape how AI models describe you. Asking for a link on an existing mention is a quick reclamation win; more in brand mentions in AI answers.