Off-Page SEO: Key Link Building Concepts

On-page and technical SEO help to make your website stand out in the competition and gain visibility in the search results. While you focus on these two aspects, make sure you’re not neglecting off-page SEO to increase brand awareness and build authority. These are the activities that take place outside of your website, such as 

• Link building
• Social media mentions
• Reviews
• Content marketing
• Email marketing

Ranking on the first page of SERPs is not possible without a proper link building strategy, as it is the most important part of off-page SEO efforts. 

Link building involves acquiring links from authoritative and trusted sites with a high PageRank. Google evaluates the quality and relevance of the links pointing to your website to rank it.

Don’t know much about the different methods to get inbound links to improve your website’s search rankings and visibility? We have listed all the important terms and link building strategies that will help you to build a strong backlink profile. 

Let’s begin!

Anchor Text

It is the underlined, clickable word of a link. When you click on this text, it takes you to the link’s destination. Google determines the relevance of the text to the content of the page you’ve linked to. So, make sure to choose an anchor text that provides context to the users and search engines about the linked page or website.

Backlink

Backlinks are the links pointing to your site from another website. These inbound or incoming links help Google and users understand the relationship between the two sites. Backlinks are also important to improve your SEO efforts and determine the relevance and authority of your website for certain keywords. The more high-quality links your site has, the higher your chances to get a better ranking on the SERPs.

Link Equity

Link equity is the value of your website’s incoming links based on their relevance, trustworthiness, and authoritativeness. It represents the potential ranking power that a link transfers to your site. 

Sites with high link equity have a higher rank on the SERPs and also help other sites improve their ranks by linking to them. So, focus on acquiring high-quality links if you want to increase your site’s link equity.

Link Velocity

In simple terms, it is the measurement of how quickly or slowly your site generates links. You may experience a sudden increase in your site’s link velocity due to a viral marketing campaign. It could also be due to spamming; make sure to disavow links originating from less reputable sites or link farms.

Broken Backlink

These are the inbound links on your site that no longer work and often lead to a blank page with a 404 error message. This can happen when the

• Target page gets deleted or edited
• Target page moves to a new URL without setting up a redirect

An error may also occur when the website goes offline or there’s a problem with the requested URL, such as incorrect formatting or misspelling. While occasional broken links don’t impact your SEO efforts, too many dead links can signal that your site’s quality is not up to the mark.

Brand Mentions

It’s when your brand name gets mentioned in the media—it could be on a review site, a web page, or other social media platforms. Users or review sites may mention your company name or product in a positive or negative way. It’s important to respond to the reviews or feedback and use this opportunity to interact with your target audience and improve brand authority.

Domain Authority (DA) and Domain Rating (DR)

Moz has developed a score called Domain Authority to measure how well a website is likely to perform and rank on search engines. The checker analyzes the number and quality of backlinks pointing to a website to determine its DA. The score ranges from 0 to 100—the higher the score, the greater your chances to climb the search engine rankings.

Domain Rating, on the other hand, is a website authority metric developed by Ahrefs. It helps determine the strength of a website’s backlink profile in comparison to others and measures the rating on a logarithmic scale from 0 to 100, with 100 being the best score.

Editorial Links

These are the links that a website owner or publisher places in the content. Unlike acquired or sponsored links, editorial links are not part of a link building or advertising campaign. The author does not request or pay for these links. Editorial links show your website as an authority, and you can achieve them by creating great content.

Guest Posts

You write a blog or article for someone else’s website and link it to your site. It’s one of the best methods to get incoming links and expand your reach as a marketer or SEO. Many websites invite writers to contribute to their site. Just reach out to their team and send them your pitch.

Backlink Profile

It comprises all the links from other websites pointing to your site. Quantity and quality are both important factors when it comes to analyzing your backlinks. Links from credible, authoritative sites make your backlink profile strong. On the other hand, spammy links or those from less reputable sites hurt your SEO efforts, including your search rankings and domain authority.

Link Exchange

As the term suggests, it’s an exchange of links between two websites to improve their search rankings. The agreement is mutually beneficial and is set up through link building outreach. While exchanging a few links may have no consequences, an excessive number of reciprocal links on your site may lead to a manual action by Google. So, it’s advisable to avoid link schemes and acquire links by creating valuable content.

Linking Domains

These are the total number of unique websites with one or more links pointing to your site. So, a website will be counted as one linking domain even if your site has five links coming from it.

Link Reclamation

The links on your site, both internal and external, can “rot” or “decay” over time due to different reasons. For instance, the website may disappear, the page may get removed, or the links may get changed. 

You can reclaim the links that stop referring to the targeted pages or URLs. Recovering lost links is important as they cannot pass on any PageRank. In simple terms, lost backlinks have no SEO value.

DoFollow Links

These links have a rel=”dofollow” or rel=”follow” tag, which means they tell the search engine crawlers to follow and count the linked-to pages as important. DoFollow links have the potential to pass on link equity from one site to another. You can use these links as an important part of your link building strategy.

NoFollow Links

NoFollow links are the opposite of DoFollow, which means search engine crawlers don’t follow links with a “rel=nofollow” tag. While these links don’t pass on link equity to the linked-to page, you can use them for user-generated or sponsored content. They are useful for other reasons as well, such as 

• Reducing the effectiveness of spammy links and comments 
• Increasing brand awareness 
• Generating traffic to your website

Paid Links

These are the incoming links to your site acquired through money. Websites that use this method buy links from automated link building services, another website, or via link exchange programs. Buying links to improve your site’s ranking on search engines is a link scheme or a black hat SEO tactic that is a clear violation of Google’s policies. 

However, you can use two types of paid links: sponsored links and those acquired with the help of white hat link building agencies.

Sponsored Links

It’s a type of link placed on a specific blog or a website; the recipient either pays money for it or agrees to some other compensation. You can get sponsored links for your site through product reviews, paid ads, or sponsorships. It’s important for site owners to add the “rel=sponsored” link tag to the link acquired through these means to avoid Google’s policy violation. Note that sponsored links don’t pass on PageRank, so they don’t improve your rankings on the SERPs.

Reciprocal Links

Reciprocal linking was a common SEO practice; it’s an arrangement between two websites to exchange links to improve their rankings on search engines. In the past few years, Google has rolled out many updates to reduce link spam after taking notice of these link building schemes. 

Now, Google can easily identify reciprocal links and devalue them, which means these links do not contribute to your search rankings. However, an excessive number of reciprocal links on your site may put you at risk of violating Google’s guidelines.

Link Bait

It refers to text or a thumbnail link created to grab eyeballs and usually has a misleading, sensationalized, or deceptive headline. The idea is to convince people to click that link to read, watch, or listen to the linked content. Also called clickbait, these links can help publishers generate advertising revenue and drive traffic to their sites. 

Using a clickbait headline to attract people is not unethical if the content is relevant and useful to your readers. However, misleading headlines or thin content may frustrate the visitors, forcing them to leave your site. This will eventually lead to higher bounce rates, which also affect a site’s credibility.

Link Farm

Setting up a link farm is a black hat SEO tactic to achieve higher search rankings. A link farm or link network comprises a group of websites that agree to link to each other through automated programs. These links are usually of low quality and can damage your SEO efforts. Search engines, like Google, can identify link farms and punish them by dropping their rankings.

Unlinked Mentions

When a webpage, review site, or any other social media forum mentions your business, company, or product online without linking it back to your site, it is called an unlinked mention. Unlinked mentions are not the same as rotten or decayed links. 

Turning unlinked mentions into clickable links is easier than recovering lost links. Someone who has already mentioned your business probably would not object to adding a link to your site. While unlinked mentions do not directly contribute to your SEO efforts, they can help increase brand awareness. 

Link Disavow

A strong backlink profile is important for building authority in your industry. You may experience a drop in your rankings if your profile has more links from spammy or less reputable sites than high-quality links from credible domains. 

You can track and remove these low-quality links using Google’s Disavow tool if you can’t get them removed directly for any reason. Using the tool tells Google that you don’t want a specific link to point to your site, protecting you from a possible SEO penalty or negative SEO.

Are you interested in learning about other types of SEO and their related terms? Check our Knowledge Center.