Netlinking Glossary
When you are starting out in web-related professions, some terms can seem obscure. Many of the words used are anglicisms that describe sometimes complex practices. It can be hard to find your way around when you are a beginner! Discover with us the glossary of the terms most used in netlinking.
Anchor : Text used to create a hyperlink. It is clickable and takes the user to the configured URL. Its formatting differs from the rest of the text (usually underlined and in colour).
Unoptimised anchor : An anchor whose text is written so as not to favour organic search. It contains no keywords. “Click here” is an example of an unoptimised anchor.
Optimised anchor : An anchor whose text has been optimised around a keyword to improve organic search.
Directory : A website whose purpose is to list other sites, usually around a common theme, in order to create an inbound link for them and improve their organic search. In that case, be careful to choose a quality themed directory.
Backlink : An outbound link from a website A to a site B. Backlinks help improve site B’s organic search and vouch for its popularity in the eyes of search engines, provided that site A is of good quality.
Dofollow : A “normal” link, in the sense that it carries no attribute. There is no Dofollow attribute; the term is used in contrast to nofollow links. It passes “link juice” (or popularity) to the site it points to.
Link farm : See Link farm.
Guest-blogging : A practice that consists of inviting a qualified third party to write on a blog, usually in exchange for an outbound link to their site. It is a “win-win” exchange that allows the blog owner to obtain free content.
Link juice : See Linkjuice.
One-way link : A link made by a site A to a site B, without reciprocity. It is generally a spontaneous act, not carried out with an exchange in mind.
Cross links : Links made as part of an exchange between several sites, in order to get around the way search engines reduce the value of reciprocal links. Site A links to site B, site B links to site C, which in turn links to site A.
Inbound link : See Backlink.
Hard link : A link created using the destination page’s URL, rather than a JavaScript link or a PHP redirect. It is built as follows: <a href=”https://www.site.fr”>link anchor</a>.
External link : See Outbound link.
Reciprocal link : An exchange of links between 2 websites. Site A links to site B, and vice versa. They bring few SEO benefits and can lead to penalties if used excessively.
Outbound link : Also called an external link. A link made by a website A to another site B. It takes the user out of the site on which it is placed.
Linkjuice : Refers to the ranking “power” passed from a page A to a page B when the former links to the latter. Link juice works on the principle of communicating vessels:
- a page gains link juice when a link is made to it, and passes some on itself when it links to another page,
- if a page makes 5 links, its link juice is divided and shared equally between each link,
- the more a page is judged to be of quality by search engines, the more link juice it will have to pass on,
- the more links a page receives from sites judged to be of quality by search engines, the more link juice it gains,
- conversely, the more links a page makes, the more link juice it loses
Linkbaiting : Can be translated as “link bait”. A practice that consists of designing a page with quality content in order to earn backlinks naturally.
Link farm : A technique that consists of creating several websites in order to build links between them, to improve their organic search. It can be carried out manually or automatically (using a script, for example).
Linkwheel : Translates as “link wheel”. A practice that consists of creating a set of websites (usually at least 6) for the sole purpose of building outbound links in a considered way. The aim is to trick the search engines’ algorithm and to promote one particular website. The sites point to one another, then to the site whose ranking the practitioner wants to improve:
- The sites in one set point to one another concentrically, building cross links, as well as to a set of B sites
- The sites in the set of B sites point to one another following the same pattern, as well as to the targeted site.
Netlinking : A practice that consists of putting a strategy in place with the aim of increasing the number of backlinks to a website.
Nofollow : An attribute given to a link to tell search engines not to take it into account. A nofollow link passes no link juice.
Pagerank : An algorithm used by Google to measure the popularity of a web page. It takes into account the number and quality of inbound links.
