Link building is supposed to be the process of convincing other websites to consider linking back precisely to your website. All business owners and marketers are very much interested in robust link building for driving more and more referral traffic and boosting their site’s authority.

As per NIO, “Link building is simply a process of getting backlinks to your page. For example, if you’re publishing articles on a website with a link to your site then you’re doing some link building. Link building is considered to be the most important element of every SEO strategy. If you want to have a well–ranked page you have to get backlinks to it.”

Google’s algorithms are truly dynamic and complex. They keep evolving over time; however, backlinks are still regarded as a crucial factor in helping search engine to determine precisely which sites would be ranking for which specific keywords. Link building is used as an effective strategy in many marketing companies like 201 Digital & Joel House SEO as links are regarded as signals to Google demonstrating the fact that your site is actually a genuine and quality resource that is worthy of citation. As such, sites that are having more backlinks would be earning higher SERP rankings.

Link building terminology could be pretty confusing to the people who are new to the SEO world. This link building glossary is an attempt to explain complex terms in a simple way in plain English.

Anchor Text

Every link would be consisting of two key elements. There would be the web address which is the destination that the link is actually pointing to and there would be the anchor text. The anchor text is supposed to be the text that would be working as the link. This is precisely the text that is found in the anchor element, as well as, the keyword/keywords that you would be clicking on for going to the target page. Anchor texts are especially crucial for Search Engine Optimization. If you are thinking of obtaining a backlink, it is a good idea to use an effective and relevant keyword as your anchor text.

Algorithm Updates

Whenever professionals are talking about algorithm updates they would certainly refer to Google. Basically, this simply implies that something has undergone a change in the manner in which Google evaluates sites.

Alt tag

This is actually an HTML attribute of what we call the IMG tag. We know that the IMG tag is instrumental in displaying images. However, the Alt tag is supposed to be the text that would be displayed if the image does not get loaded. You must understand that alt tags are having some SEO value. Google is unable to see what the picture actually presents but thanks to Alt tag, it can read and understand what the image is all about. This is certainly the best way of informing Google what exactly your images demonstrate.

Backlinks

A backlink is just a link that is strategically placed on somebody else’s website which would be pointing back to your website. Backlinks are regarded as a critical SEO factor. Obtaining numerous backlinks with relevant and important anchor text is certainly the most effective and fastest way of boosting your SEO rankings. Backlinks are pointing to your site while coming from another site. They are also, referred to as inbound links, incoming links, and simple links.

Canonicals

A canonical element would be informing a search engine about the precise page that could be used as the authentic or original source for preventing duplicate content.

Citations

Citations are supposed to be mentions of your company’s information such as name and telephone number. They are generally not linked but they could help search engines learn to develop more trust for a company or business.

Click-through Rates

CTR or the Click-Through Rates is supposed to be the accurate measurement of the number of people who actually clicked on a link to your website versus the exact number of times your website appeared somewhere.

Conversion Rates

This is precisely the actual percentage of visitors or users who achieve a specific objective or goal. This particular goal could be downloading an e-book, filling any ‘contact us’ form and submitting or simply buying a product etc.

Crawlability

Crawlability is referred to exactly how easily search engine spiders could access your website and follow links there.

Deep Linking

Deep links are quite valuable for Search Engine Optimization. Linking to particular pages within your website using a good quality anchor text would surely boost the rankings of such pages. Practically speaking, building deep links could be the factor that decides whether SEO game is won or lost. In other words, your SEO success depends largely on robust deep linking.

Duplicate Content

Suppose you are having two distinct pages in your website that display the same content, then your website could be penalized for using duplicate content. Duplicate content could mean your site may lose its ranking as Google may penalize you. Duplicate content would be occurring because of a number of reasons. However, it is a bad signal to the search engine/Google, hence, very much undesirable. We already know that canonical tags would be used for identifying the original page.

Editorial Links

If somebody gives you a particular link without you actually asking for it, that is supposed to be an editorial link.

Evergreen Content

Content that actually doesn’t become obsolete easily is regarded as evergreen content.

Followed Links

Links are supposed to be followed naturally unless they are having a ‘nofollow’ attribute. The term ‘followed’ is actually used to inform Google and other search engines for crediting the links towards those sites they are actually pointing to as that would help the websites rank higher.

Guest Posts

Guest posts are actually articles written by somebody who actually is not used to writing for the websites where the articles would be placed on. Excessive guest posts having keyword-rich anchors would be looked upon as a violation of the guidelines set down by Google.

Hidden Links

Hidden links are supposed to be links which are coded to make sure that these links are not appearing as links.

IP Addresses

An IP address refers to a series of numbers that identify a specific computer.

Image Links

This is a picture linking to another page either externally or internally. Remember that not all pictures would be containing a link.

Juice

Link juice is actually used for indicating the value or actual worth of the link.

Keywords

Keywords are whole phrases or single words of specific SEO importance meant for a given website or page. These are the phrases and words that would be indicating the specific topic relating to the page, the relevant link building terms as anchor text, the content of a visual or image.

Landing Pages

These are supposed to be the first pages the user comes across when they visit your website from anywhere.

Mobile-First Indexing

This is the latest way Google actually indexes a site. They would be crawling and indexing the site’s mobile version first.

Noise Anchors

Noise Anchors are supposed to be keywords like ‘website’, ‘click here’ etc.

Off-page SEO

There are two core elements of SEO: off-page and on-page. Off-page SEO practices seem to be everything that is done outside your page for boosting its rankings. The fundamental element of off-page search engine optimization seems to be link building.

On-page SEO

On-page practices are referred to everything that is done on your page for enhancing your SERP rankings. The things that could be done are tuning your HTML structure, boosting descriptions and title tags, ensuring faster site loading time, reviewing the keyword density and usage, boosting the overall internal linking structure etc.

Page Authority

Page Authority is actually a metric that has been generated by Moz for predicting how well a particular page would rank.

Query

A query is supposed to be a request made by individuals to a particular search engine for getting information on a specific topic.

Redirects

Redirects would be sending a page or site elsewhere.

SERPs

The SERPs are called the Search Engine Results Pages that represent the actual list of sites that are returned in a search engine query.

Spam

Spam implies everything that is unsolicited or undesirable online. Spam is humorously referred to as “sites positioned above mine”.

Toxic Links

Toxic links are known to potentially cause harm or some damage to your site.

Traffic

Traffic is referred to as the total volume of visitors coming to a site or page.

Unnatural Links

Which are spammy or paid links or those that are an element of a link scheme.

Velocity

Velocity is referred to as the actual speed of a site’s link growth.

Widget

Widgets are supposed to be bits of code that are embedded efficiently on a page generally designed for providing backlinks.

XML Sitemap

XML Sitemap is used for telling search engines about all the pages of your website and precisely where they could be found. XML is supposed to be a markup language.

Yandex

Yandex is known to be a popular Russian search engine.

Conclusion

We have discussed some of the most important and frequently used link building SEO terms. Once you know the terminology clearly, you would find the entire process of link building truly fascinating.