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.
Also called: earned link, natural link
The defining feature is the absence of a deal. Nobody paid for it, nobody swapped for it, and no automated placement created it — a writer or editor decided a reference belonged there. Everything search engines say about what makes a good link reduces to some version of this test.
Editorial links are hard to acquire deliberately and easy to acquire accidentally, which is the awkward part of the job. You cannot demand one. You can only be worth citing and then make sure the people who would cite you know you exist — which is what outreach and digital PR are actually for.
The useful practical consequence: if a link would not exist had you not offered something in return, it is not an editorial link, whatever the invoice calls it. That distinction matters more than any metric attached to the linking domain.
Related terms
Digital PR
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.
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.
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.
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.
Last reviewed 2026-07-30. All glossary terms
Put your link building on autopilot
You stay in control · cancel anytime