Glossary

Link building & digital PR, defined

Plain-language definitions of the link-building and digital-PR terms that come up in practice, written to be useful whether or not you ever use Outlink AI.

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18 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.

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.

Digital PR is public relations run with search visibility as an explicit goal: earning coverage, citations, and links in online publications rather than pursuing print or broadcast placement for brand awareness alone.

Editorial link

An editorial link is a link someone chose to add because it was useful to their reader, with nothing given in exchange. It is the category of link search engines are trying to reward.

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.

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.

HARO (Help a Reporter Out)

HARO (Help a Reporter Out) was a service that emailed journalists' source requests to subscribers, who pitched themselves as expert sources in exchange for a quote and usually a link. Its owner Cision rebranded it as Connectively and then shut that service down, so the original HARO workflow no longer exists.

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