Link terminology
Links bring traffic to websites in two ways. People click on links from other sites, and quality backlinks help improve a page's position in search results.
All links are not equal, and not all link building strategies are considered good strategies. This page lists and defines terms used when discussing website links for building traffic and for search engine optimization (SEO).
Links and SEO
Anchor text
Anchor text is the text that appears with most links. It's the text the people click on when they click on a link. For example, WHTwiki link terminology is the anchor text in this link:
<a href="http://www.webhostingtalk.com/wiki/Link_terminology">WHTwiki link terminology</a>.
Search engine bots give weight to the keywords in anchor text. If anchor text contains keywords that are relevant to the page being linked to, those keywords can help the target page in search engine results for those keywords.
Link popularity
Link popularity is based on the assessment of links from web pages that link to a particular page. The quality and relevance of the pages linking to that page, how many pages link to it, and (for Google) their PageRank are factors in the degree that their links contribute to the link popularity of the target page.
Search engines give weight to link popularity when evaluating how to order web pages in search engine results. Google in particular is known for placing high importance on link popularity.
Types of links
When working on Linking strategies, aim for a variety of types of links.
Authority links
Authority links are from sites that search engines identify as authority sites. These sites are established, quality sites that typically rank well for the main keywords for the content area. Sites with .edu and .gov extensions, for example, are usually authority sites. backlinks from authority sites are considered very valuable for SEO, especially for newer sites.
Backlinks
Backlinks are links from other sites that link to your site. Also called inbound links or external links. See Website backlinks for detailed information.
Many of the types of links described in this section are backlinks.
Deep links
Deep links are external links to web pages other than the home page of a site. Deep links direct people to specific content, and they help with link popularity for specific pages.
Deep linking can be a problem for website owners if the home page contains advertisements or other content that they want all site visitors to see.
Also used as a verb: to deep link.
Directory links
Directory links are links from online directories. Some directories are useful for people, and others are less organized and maintained. Directories that are useful for people tend to be ranked higher and are therefore more useful for SEO.
While quality directory links are good for SEO (although not as useful as some other types of links), they should make up only a small percentage of backlinks to a site and should be added gradually.
Image links
Image links are images that are links. For example, most website logos are image links linking to the home page of the website. Keywords can be included in the alt text for image links.
Internal links
Internal links are links from one part of a website to another part of it. Also called on-site links.
Natural links
See Organic links.
One-way links
One-way links are links that link from Website A to Website B without Website B linking back to Website A. Search engines give more weight to one-way links than to reciprocal linking, so one-way links are preferable for SEO for Website B in this example.
On-site links
See Internal links.
Reciprocal links
See Linking_strategies#Reciprocal_linking.
Organic links
Organic links are backlinks that people add from other websites just because they find the content useful or otherwise worth sharing. Also called natural links.
Outbound links
Outbound links are links from your site to other sites. They're the opposite of backlinks; they go in the other direction. They won't help your site with SEO, but the content on your page when you describe the page linked to can benefit your site. The main purpose of outbound links, however, is usually to direct site visitors to useful and relevant content.
Press release links
Press release links are, of course, links from online press releases. Publishing press releases that contain backlinks to your site is a common part of SEO. Press release submission services are useful for this.
Social media links
Social media links are links from social media websites such as Del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, blogs, and forums. They may develop naturally, or creating Link bait can attract these links.
Text links
Text links are links with anchor text for people to click on. See Anchor text for an example of a text link.
Three-way links
See Linking_strategies#Three-way linking.
See also
Web Hosting Wiki article text shared under a Creative Commons License.
