Glossary

Backlink & SEO glossary

Plain-language definitions of the terms that matter for link building, monitoring, and recovery.

Backlinks

Backlinks are links from other websites to yours. They remain one of the strongest signals search engines use to rank pages.

A referring domain is a unique website that links to yours. Ten backlinks from one domain count as one referring domain.

Dofollow links pass ranking credit. Nofollow links don't pass ranking credit but can still drive traffic and brand awareness.

Domain Authority, Domain Rating, and Authority Score are third-party metrics that estimate a site's link-based strength.

Toxic backlinks are links from spammy, manipulative, or irrelevant sites that can harm your rankings or trigger a penalty.

Anchor text is the clickable text in a hyperlink. It helps search engines understand what the linked page is about.

Link reclamation is the process of finding and restoring backlinks that once pointed to your site but are now broken or removed.

A disavow file is a text file you upload to Google Search Console to tell Google to ignore specific backlinks.