Glossary
Link building, defined
Plain-language definitions of the link-building terms that come up in practice, written to be useful whether or not you ever use Outlink AI.
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22 terms, each with the short answer up front. Where a term is something the autopilot actually runs, the entry links across to the tactic that puts it into practice.
Link building
Link building is the practice of getting other websites to link to yours, because search engines treat a link from one site to another as a signal that the destination is worth showing to searchers.
Link building cost
Link building cost is what it takes to acquire a link, and it depends far more on how the link is acquired than on the link itself: an earned link costs the time, tools and content behind the outreach that won it, while a bought placement has a sticker price - which Google's policies say must be marked sponsored, so it passes no ranking credit.
Backlink
A backlink is a link on someone else's website that points to yours. It is the same object as any hyperlink - 'backlink' simply names it from the perspective of the site being linked to.
Editorial link
An editorial link is a link a writer or editor chose to add because it helps their reader, with nothing given in exchange. It is the kind of link search engines are trying to reward, as opposed to links that were bought, swapped, or placed by the site being linked to.
Anchor text
Anchor text is the visible, clickable words of a link. Search engines read it as a description of the page being linked to, which is why it influences what that page is understood to be about.
Dofollow vs nofollow links
A nofollow link carries a rel="nofollow" attribute telling search engines not to pass ranking credit through it; a dofollow link is simply an ordinary link with no such attribute. 'Dofollow' is informal shorthand - there is no rel="dofollow".
Link equity
Link equity is the ranking value a link passes from one page to another. It is the modern, less-jocular name for what SEOs long called 'link juice', and it descends from PageRank, Google's original method of scoring pages by the links pointing at them.
Domain Rating (DR) and Domain Authority (DA)
Domain Rating (DR) and Domain Authority (DA) are third-party scores that estimate the strength of a website's backlink profile on a 0–100 scale. DR is Ahrefs' metric and DA is Moz's; neither is a Google metric and neither is used by Google to rank anything.
Toxic backlink
A toxic backlink is a link from a site whose only apparent purpose is to manipulate search rankings - link farms, private blog networks, hacked pages, or directories with no editorial standard. The term is an SEO-industry label, not a Google classification.
Private blog network (PBN)
A private blog network is a group of websites created or bought by one owner for the purpose of linking to a target site. PBNs are a direct violation of Google's link spam policies.
Google link spam policy
Google's link spam policy is the published section of its search spam policies defining link practices Google considers manipulative - buying or selling links for ranking purposes, excessive link exchanges, large-scale automated link building, and requiring links as a condition of an agreement.
Link exchange
A link exchange is an agreement between two or more sites to link to each other, so that each gets a link in return for giving one. Google's link spam policy names excessive link exchanges as a form of link spam; occasional reciprocal links between genuinely related sites are a normal part of the web.
Link prospecting
Link prospecting is the research step of link building: finding the specific websites and pages that could plausibly link to you, then filtering them down to the ones worth contacting. It decides most of what outreach can achieve, because no message rescues a pitch to the wrong site.
Link building outreach
Link building outreach (often just "link outreach") is contacting the people who run other websites - editors, writers, site owners - to give them a genuine reason to link to your content. It is how most deliberately earned links begin, and it succeeds or fails on relevance rather than volume.
AI link building
AI link building is the use of AI models to do parts of link-building work - finding and qualifying prospects, finding contacts, drafting personalized outreach, sorting replies and checking placements - while a person at the linking site still decides whether to add the link.
Guest posting
Guest posting is writing an article for someone else's publication, usually including a link back to your own site. It remains a legitimate tactic when the article is written for that publication's audience rather than produced primarily to place a link.
Broken link building
Broken link building is finding links on other sites that point to pages which no longer exist, then suggesting your own working page as the replacement. The pitch works because you are reporting a real defect on someone's page, not asking a favor.
Unlinked mention
An unlinked mention is a place where a website names your brand, product, or research in its text without linking to you. Asking for the link to be added is one of the highest-conversion requests in link building, because the endorsement already exists.
Link reclamation
Link reclamation is recovering links you have already earned but are losing value from: links pointing at pages on your site that now return an error, links that were removed or changed, and mentions of your brand that were never linked in the first place.
Niche edits
A niche edit is a link added to an article that has already been published, rather than to new content. The term covers two very different things - asking a site owner to add a genuinely useful link to an existing page, and paying a site to insert one - and only the first is consistent with Google's link spam policy.
Link velocity
Link velocity is the rate at which a site gains new backlinks over time. It is a descriptive measure SEOs track, not a documented Google ranking factor or a threshold anyone can quote.
Email deliverability
Email deliverability is whether the messages you send actually reach the recipient's inbox rather than their spam folder or nowhere at all. For link-building outreach it is the constraint that decides whether any of the work is seen.
Last reviewed 2026-10-24.
Putting the vocabulary to work
From definitions to the actual job
Definitions tell you what the words mean; the tactics pages show how each play runs - guest posting, resource and broken-link building and unlinked mentions. If you have got as far as choosing software, the tool comparisons are written to be useful even where they conclude against us. Common buyer questions are collected on the answers hub.
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