// SEO & BACKLINK GLOSSARY

Learn the language of links.

Plain-English definitions of the SEO and link-building terms that matter most. Skim a card, click for a deeper page.

A clickable hyperlink from one website to another. The primary signal Google uses to measure trust and authority.

The visible, clickable words inside a hyperlink. Influences both rankings and click-through rates.

DoFollow vs NoFollow

Two ways links pass (or withhold) ranking signals. Most natural profiles include both.

Domain Authority

A 0-100 score (Moz, Ahrefs, Semrush use variants) estimating a domain's ranking strength.

The SEO value a link passes from one page to another â sometimes called "link juice."

Referring Domain

A unique website that links to yours. 10 links from 10 sites usually beats 100 links from 1 site.

A backlink from a spammy, penalized, or irrelevant site that may harm your rankings.

Google's tool for telling search engines to ignore specific low-quality backlinks pointing at you.

ABC Triangular Linking

A 3-site link pattern (AâBâCâA) used to avoid the obvious reciprocal AâB footprint.

The gradual loss of backlinks over time â 20-30% disappear within 90 days without monitoring.

Nofollow Attribute

A link attribute telling search engines not to pass ranking signals through this link.

A 0-100 logarithmic score estimating overall backlink authority of a domain.

Majesticâs 0-100 metric for backlink quality, based on proximity to a curated seed of trusted reference sites.

Majesticâs volume-based companion to Trust Flow. Most useful when read as a TF/CF ratio.

Link Spam Score

Mozâs percentage-based spam risk metric across 27 signals. Lower is better.

Niche Relevance

How topically related a linking site is to yours. Highly relevant links typically outperform high-authority but off-topic ones.

The pace at which a domain acquires new backlinks. Sudden spikes can look unnatural.

Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness â Google's framework for evaluating content quality.

Internal Linking

Links between pages on the same domain. Distributes equity and helps crawlers understand site structure.

A link from your site to an external domain. Linking to authoritative sources can build topical trust.

A network of low-quality sites built to manipulate rankings. Google penalizes participation.

Google's original 1998 link-graph ranking algorithm. Still the foundation of how authority propagates across the web.

The practitioner term for transferable ranking authority that hyperlinks pass. Rel attributes (nofollow/ugc/sponsored) and conservation rules.

The HTML attribute that signals language and regional variants to search engines. Reciprocity rule is broken in 80% of audits.

The cap on URLs Googlebot will fetch from your site per time window. Critical for sites over 1M URLs.

HTTP header for robots directives. The only way to deindex PDFs, images, and non-HTML resources.

The 5 gates that must open for a URL to appear in search. Audit checklist + 4 Search Console states.

Ready to put theory into practice?

Start earning niche-relevant backlinks with the ABC method and AI Watchdog.