SEO Glossary - Link Building

A B C D E F H I L R

Anchor Text

the words you click on when you click a link. Anchor text usually gives your visitors useful information about the content of the page you're linking to. It may or may not be related to the actual text of the link URL you are clicking on.

Anchored Links

hyperlinks are created using anchor tags. If the anchor tag includes an anchor name with a keyword, this will strengthen the keyword in the anchor name and the referenced page will have higher rankings in search engines for this keyword.

Backlink

a link that points to a web page normally from an external site. These types of links are essential in gaining good rankings in all search engines. Google are famous in the way that they evaluate a link. In the eyes of Google it is a popularity contest - the more links you have pointing to your site, the more popular you are. The sheer number of links can influence site rankings greatly but it is a good practice to only request links from sites that are similar to your own site theme, this can help Google to identify a general theme and help them to associate your site into large themed clusters. There are ways of gaining large amounts of links that are frowned upon by search engines and main stream optimization companies, this entails running automated software to insert links into blogs. Due to the number of blogs out on the web, it is easy for a blog spammer to hit a million URLs in a day or so and get 200,000 to 5000,000 text backlinks, while in the short term this can boost a site in the results it is not a long term SEO tactic as the search engines normally pick up on this and discount the links. With anchor text being such an important factor in linking it can be a very attractive proposition for quick short term SEO campaigns.

Backward Links

links to your web page from other pages. Google introduced the term.

Broken Link

a link that no longer takes the user to the destination page when it is clicked on. This is usually the result of the destination page having been renamed or deleted from the server. Also referred to as a Dead Link.

Browsing, Surfing

the act of following hyperlinks from one website to another.

Cross Linking

an owner of one or more domains can interlink them together in order to inflate their link popularity. This is known as cross linking. The search engines are not to keen on this type of linking as it is normally used by people to increase their rankings. Cross linking is the practice of over-using links between a network of sites to artificially inflate link popularity and thus rankings. Google identifies clusters of sites which are strongly linked together but not well linked to the rest of the web and applies a penalty to these sites. Many innocent sites have been affected by this cross linking penalty as it is a common practice to link to a corporate headquarters from every page of a subsidiary site.

Dead Link

a link to a page that does not exist, probably because the page no longer exists, the page was moved or the server is down. Automated programs can be used to check your website to ensure such dead links do not exist. A dead link leads to a 404 error page.

Deep Linking

linking to a page that is one or more levels from the home directory. Deep linking may be used to fuel PageRank to a specific page on a website. Example: http://www.mysite.com/features/demo/flash/seo.html.

External and Internal Links

outbound links on a specific page can be internal and external. Internal links point to other pages on your site. External links lead to other sites. Having many internal links is a good thing for increasing your site's link popularity, because search engines evaluate all links to a specific web page, though not all links are considered equal.

FFA

abbr. Free For All (FFA Links Pages)

Human-Edited Directory

a directory that is created and maintained by editors who add links based on the policies particular to that directory.

Hyperlink

clickable content on a web page usually leads to another page, another site or another part of the same page. Spiders use links to crawl from one page to another as they index websites.

IBL

abbr. In Bound Link. Any link on another page that points to the subject page. Also called a Backlink.

Inbound and Outbound Links

there are two types of links on a page: inbound (links on other sites to yours) and outbound links (links on your Web page to other sites). Backward link is another term for inbound links that came into general use through the Google's "Backward links" option in the "Page Info" menu of the Google Toolbar. Inbound links increase your site's link popularity, while the outbound links on your site increase the popularity of the destination page. Experts recommend having many inbound and few outbound links.

Link

short hypertext link. A link can point from one document to another or to any resource in fact. It might be inside or outside the current document. Hyperlinked text is usually highlighted in some way. The default is blue underlined text, but it may vary. If there were no links, you would not be able to get from one Web page to another. Typically, you click on a hyperlink to follow it. Sometimes it is a picture or an icon. They can also appear as a word, image, icon or another graphic element which can be activated by a mouse click. In the source code, a link is a special set of characters that includes a destination URL.

Link Anchor Text

the clickable part of a link. Using keywords in the link anchor text of your inbound links will boost your search engine rankings for those keywords. Example: This is the link anchor text for this link

Link Exchange

internet marketing campaign is the process of exchanging hyperlinks with a quality site that is somehow related to a company's product or service. For instance, a public relations agency may link to a search engine positioning firm's article on "PR and SEO marketing." The SEO may then include a link on their site listing the public relations company. Good link exchange vendors can increase a company's PageRank and increase the number of targeted visitors. Poor link exchanges (think $99 "link farms" where a company promises to link your site to thousands of others) can actually harm site positioning.

Link Farm

a website set up with the sole purpose of increasing the link popularity of other sites by increasing the number of incoming links to those sites. They are typically made up of long lists of unrelated links. Some link farms are created as networks of sites that contain numerous links to one another. Link farms are also known as free for all links pages (FFA). Nearly all search engines remove link farms from their directories when they find them and many also penalize other sites that link to them. It is not a good idea to link to a link farm if you rely on organic search for page views.

Link Popularity

an important factor in search engine optimization and positioning. Search engines use link popularity as a factor in deciding how important your website is. This was Google's simple but brilliant contribution to web search - popular or relevant pages will tend to have more links and should therefore be ranked higher. In addition, link popularity is much more difficult to manipulate artificially than on-page factors and is thus less open to abuse. Link popularity is calculated firstly by counting the amount of websites that link to yours. However, more links do not necessarily mean better positioning as search engines also measure the quality of these incoming links. If your site enjoys links from other well-linked sites then your link popularity is further boosted. Additionally, some search engines, like Google, continuously refine their link popularity calculations by paying attention to the theme of a link.

Link Quality

the quality of content in the sites that are linked to yours, as well as the industry relevance to your site.

Link Reputation

how the search engine refers to a link by evaluating the link text.

Link Strategy

the method used by a particular site owner to increase the number of inbound links to their pages and boost their site's link popularity.

Link Text

the visible text contained between and or anchor tag that provides instructions or information to the viewer.

Linking

placing a link to another web page (usually on another website) on one of your own web pages.

Reciprocal Links

the links to another website placed on your site in exchange for links back to your site from theirs. Once a proven way to build link popularity which is instrumental in getting high search engine rankings. Links exchange is a good strategy for low-budget sites, however you should take a close look at the site you are going to link to, because a search engine can penalize your site for reciprocal linking if the site has been blacklisted by the search engine.