Guest posting & SEO glossary
53 terms from guest posting, link building, technical SEO, and AI search — each defined in one or two sentences, then explained in practical terms. Every entry has its own citable page.
- AI search
AEO (Answer Engine Optimisation)
AEO is the practice of structuring content so search engines and assistants can extract a direct answer from it — through concise answers, question headings, and FAQ markup.
- Link building
Anchor text
Anchor text is the visible, clickable words of a hyperlink. It gives both readers and search engines a strong hint about what the linked page contains.
- Link building
Anchor text ratio
Anchor text ratio is the distribution of anchor types across your backlink profile. A safe profile is usually 40–60% branded, 20–30% generic or naked URL, and under 10% exact-match commercial anchors.
- Content
Author bio
An author bio is the short profile appended to an article identifying the writer, their expertise, and usually a link to their site or profile.
- Link building
Backlink
A backlink is a hyperlink on another website that points to a page on your site. Search engines treat backlinks as votes of confidence and use them to judge a page's authority.
- Technical SEO
Canonical tag
A canonical tag tells search engines which URL is the preferred version of a page when several URLs show similar content.
- Content
Content brief
A content brief is a working document that defines a planned article's target query, search intent, audience, structure, sources, and internal links before writing begins.
- Content
Content syndication
Syndication is republishing an existing article on another platform, with permission, to reach a new audience.
- Link building
Contextual link
A contextual link is a backlink placed inside the body copy of an article, surrounded by relevant text, rather than in a sidebar, footer, or author bio.
- Technical SEO
Crawl budget
Crawl budget is the number of pages a search engine is willing to crawl on your site in a given period. It matters mainly for large sites with thousands of URLs.
- Outreach
Digital PR
Digital PR is earning coverage and links from journalists and publications by giving them genuinely newsworthy material such as original research or expert commentary.
- Technical SEO
Disavow
Disavowing is submitting a file to Google asking it to ignore specific backlinks pointing at your site.
- Link building
Dofollow
A dofollow link is an ordinary hyperlink with no nofollow, sponsored, or ugc attribute, so it passes ranking value to the destination page.
- Measurement
Domain Authority (DA)
Domain Authority is a 1–100 third-party score, created by Moz, that predicts how likely a domain is to rank in search results. It is a comparison metric, not a Google ranking factor.
- Measurement
Domain Rating (DR)
Domain Rating is Ahrefs' 0–100 measure of the strength of a website's backlink profile. Like DA, it is a third-party estimate rather than an official search engine metric.
- Technical SEO
Duplicate content
Duplicate content is substantially identical text available at more than one URL, either on the same site or across sites. It splits ranking signals rather than incurring a direct penalty.
- Content
E-E-A-T
E-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness — the framework Google's quality raters use to assess content and its creators.
- Content
Editorial guidelines
Editorial guidelines are a publication's published rules for contributed content: word count, tone, sourcing standards, link policy, and formatting requirements.
- Link building
Editorial link
An editorial link is one a writer or editor chose to include because it genuinely helps the reader, with no payment or exchange attached.
- Measurement
Featured snippet
A featured snippet is a short extract shown above the standard results that directly answers a query, pulled from a page the engine considers authoritative.
- AI search
GEO (Generative Engine Optimisation)
GEO is the practice of making content easy for generative AI systems such as ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity to retrieve, understand, and cite.
- Link building
Guest posting
Guest posting is the practice of writing an article for someone else's website in exchange for exposure, authority, and usually a contextual backlink to your own site.
- Technical SEO
Indexing
Indexing is the step where a search engine stores and organises a crawled page so it can be returned in results. A page that is crawled but not indexed cannot rank.
- Technical SEO
Internal linking
Internal linking is the practice of linking between pages on your own site to distribute authority, define relationships, and help crawlers discover content.
- Measurement
Keyword difficulty
Keyword difficulty is a 0–100 estimate of how hard it would be to rank on page one for a query, based mainly on the backlink strength of current results.
- Link building
Link equity
Link equity, sometimes called link juice, is the ranking value passed from one page to another through a hyperlink.
- Link building
Link farm
A link farm is a site or network that exists to publish outbound links at scale, with no genuine audience or editorial standard.
- Link building
Link insertion
A link insertion, also called a niche edit, is a backlink added to an article that already exists and is already indexed, rather than to a newly published guest post.
- Content
Link magnet
A link magnet is a page built specifically to attract links — original data, a free tool, a template library, or a definitive guide.
- Link building
Link velocity
Link velocity is the rate at which a site gains new backlinks over time. Sudden, unexplained spikes are a common spam signal.
- AI search
llms.txt
llms.txt is a plain-text file at a site's root that summarises the site and lists its most important pages for large language models to ingest.
- Measurement
Long-tail keyword
A long-tail keyword is a longer, more specific query with lower search volume and usually clearer intent and lower competition.
- Technical SEO
Nofollow
rel="nofollow" is a link attribute that tells search engines not to pass ranking credit through that link. Google now treats it as a hint rather than a strict directive.
- Outreach
Outreach
Outreach is the process of contacting site owners, editors, or journalists to pitch content, request a link, or propose a collaboration.
- Link building
Over-optimisation
Over-optimisation is pushing SEO tactics past the point of naturalness — repeated exact-match anchors, keyword stuffing, or unnaturally uniform link patterns.
- Link building
Paid link
A paid link is any link where money changed hands for the placement itself. Google's guidelines require these links to be marked sponsored or nofollow.
- Link building
PBN (Private Blog Network)
A PBN is a group of websites, usually built on expired domains, created solely to link to a target site and manipulate rankings.
- Content
Pillar page
A pillar page is the comprehensive hub article at the centre of a topic cluster, linking out to every supporting page on the subject.
- Outreach
Pitch
A pitch is the short proposal you send an editor describing the article you want to write, why their readers need it, and why you are qualified to write it.
- Outreach
Prospecting
Prospecting is the research step of finding and qualifying websites worth pitching, before any outreach email is written.
- Measurement
Referring domain
A referring domain is a unique website that links to yours at least once. Ten links from ten different sites are worth far more than ten links from one site.
- Technical SEO
Rich result
A rich result is a search listing enhanced with extra visual elements — star ratings, breadcrumbs, images, or FAQ dropdowns — generated from structured data.
- Technical SEO
robots.txt
robots.txt is a plain-text file at the root of a domain that tells crawlers which paths they may or may not request.
- Technical SEO
Schema markup
Schema markup is structured data, usually JSON-LD, that describes a page's meaning to machines — its author, type, publication date, FAQs, or products.
- Content
Search intent
Search intent is the goal behind a query — informational, navigational, commercial, or transactional. Matching intent is a prerequisite for ranking.
- Measurement
Search volume
Search volume is the average number of times a query is searched per month, usually reported as a rounded estimate for a specific country.
- Measurement
SERP
SERP stands for search engine results page — the full page of results, ads, snippets, and panels returned for a query.
- Link building
Sponsored link
A sponsored link is a backlink acquired in exchange for money, products, or another form of compensation. It should carry rel="sponsored" and be disclosed to readers.
- Content
Topic cluster
A topic cluster is a hub page covering a broad subject plus a set of supporting pages on narrower sub-topics, all interlinked with the hub.
- Content
Topical authority
Topical authority is the depth and completeness of a site's coverage of one subject area. Sites with strong topical authority rank more easily for new pages on that subject.
- Link building
Topical relevance
Topical relevance is how closely the subject of a linking page and site matches the subject of the page being linked to.
- Content
Trust signal
A trust signal is any on-page element that helps a reader or crawler verify a site is legitimate — contact details, editorial policy, named authors, citations, or update dates.
- Technical SEO
XML sitemap
An XML sitemap is a machine-readable file listing the URLs you want search engines to crawl, along with optional metadata such as last modification date.
Frequently asked questions
Common questions about this reference and how to use it.
- What is this SEO glossary?
- It is a free, plain-English reference of the guest posting, link building, technical SEO, and AI search terms that come up most often in real campaigns. Each term has its own page with a short definition and practical context.
- Who is the glossary for?
- Marketers, founders, and writers who need a trustworthy definition quickly — and anyone briefing a freelancer or agency who wants to understand what they are being sold.
- How often is it updated?
- Terms are reviewed as search and AI systems change; new entries are added when a concept becomes common in client work, such as AEO and GEO in the last two years.
- Can I cite these definitions?
- Yes. Each definition page includes a canonical URL you can cite. Attribution to guestpostwebsite.com is appreciated.
- Where should I start if I am new to link building?
- Read the entries for guest posting, backlink, contextual link, and anchor text in that order, then move on to the complete guest posting guide.
- Is there a difference between DA and DR?
- Yes. Domain Authority is Moz's 1–100 score and Domain Rating is Ahrefs' 0–100 score. Both are third-party estimates, not Google metrics.