PPC SEO glossary: link terms in ad language
Most link jargon has a twin in the ads manager. Here are the terms we hear confused most often, each tied to something you already use.
Twelve terms, plain
Backlink
A link from another site to yours. Closest ad twin: a placement, except nobody bills you per click.
Dofollow
A link without a rel attribute that tells search engines to ignore it. Placements on this marketplace are permanent dofollow.
Anchor text
The clickable words. Think ad headline, but you should usually keep it natural, not a copy of your top bid keyword.
Domain Rating (DR)
Ahrefs' 0 to 100 authority score for a whole site. Other tools use their own scales, so never mix them in one comparison.
Referring domains
How many separate sites link to a domain. More useful than raw link counts, like unique users versus impressions.
Organic traffic
Estimated monthly visits from search, as modelled by a tool. An estimate, not an analytics report.
Link intersect or gap
Sites that link to your rivals but not to you. The audience-overlap report of the link world.
Nofollow, sponsored, UGC
Link attributes that signal paid, user-posted or untrusted links. Google treats them as hints.
Tier 2 link acquisition
Pointing links at the pages that link to you. It is a common tactic and also a common source of spam, so we would only use it very sparingly.
Link pyramid
A layered scheme of links aimed at boosting other links. Often sold cheap, frequently low quality. We would avoid it.
Unnatural links
Links that break Google's spam policies. Search Console can show a manual action if Google decides yours do.
Indexation
Whether Google has stored a page. A link on a page that is not indexed does little.
Three mix-ups worth fixing
CPC is not a link price. A link price is a one-time fee for a placement, and the traffic that follows may be zero or may be steady. Divide by visits only after the fact.
Quality Score is not Domain Rating. One judges your ad and page for a query. The other describes a whole site from a vendor's tool. Different object, different owner.
Impression share has no twin. Links do not bid. You cannot buy a position, only presence.
Conversion tracking is not link tracking. There is no pixel on a third-party article. You see a click as a referral in analytics when someone follows it, and everything else arrives as search.
Where to go next
Once the words stop being strange, the numbers get easier. Start with the cost-per-visit sums, then see how a first test is sized in the budget split. Take it slowly.
If a term here is missing, it probably has an ad-world twin we have not matched yet. Tell us through your account page.
One more habit: when a vendor quotes a metric, ask which tool and which date. Numbers refresh monthly in most tools, so a screenshot from spring tells you little about autumn.
Domain Rating belongs to Ahrefs. Domain Authority belongs to Moz. Trust Flow belongs to Majestic. Each is a model of the web, and none of them is Google's.