Link talk is full of abbreviations that sound exact and are not. Here are twelve of them, defined once, with the caveats a careful reader wants.
RoyalSEO editorial team ·
Before the terms
People who ask to buy high domain authority websites are usually asking for something more specific: a placement on a site that looks established. The words below separate those two ideas.
Most scores are third-party estimates. They are useful for sorting a list. They are poor at telling you whether a particular article is worth being near. Treat each definition as a starting point.
When you are ready to apply the vocabulary, the vetting guide shows each term at work. And if a colleague only wants the myths, send them this page.
The twelve terms
Donor domain
The website that carries a link to you. In our catalogue there are 50,000+ of them.
Domain Rating (DR)
Ahrefs' 0 to 100 estimate of a site's backlink strength. Not used by Google.
Domain Authority (DA)
Moz's 1 to 100 prediction of how well a site might rank. Different method, different numbers.
Authority Score
Semrush's own blend of link data and traffic. Another estimate, another scale.
Referring domains
Distinct sites linking to a domain. Two hundred links from one site count as one referring domain.
Dofollow
A link without a rel attribute that tells search engines not to follow it. All marketplace placements are dofollow.
Nofollow, sponsored, UGC
Link attributes that tell Google how the link arose. Useful in a balanced profile.
Organic traffic
Estimated visits from unpaid search. Estimates differ by tool, so use ranges, not decimals.
Anchor text
The clickable words. For a premium firm, a plain brand name or the page title reads most naturally.
Link neighbourhood
The sort of pages and outbound links that surround yours on a donor site. The part that metrics cannot show.
Placement
One link inside an article. It may be a new editorial piece or an insertion in an existing one.
Link profile
The overall mix of sites linking to you, by type, topic and age. Reviewed as a whole, not link by link.
Three phrases to retire from the meeting
"High-authority" sounds precise. It hides a lot. Ask which vendor's score is meant, on which date and for which domain, because two tools can differ by twenty points on the same site.
"Safe" is another. No placement is safe in the sense of being immune from a change in how Google treats links. The honest word is "considered", meaning someone read the donor, judged the fit and wrote down why.
"Link juice" is folklore. It points at something real, the passing of weight along links, but suggests a quantity you can measure. You cannot. Use plain words instead: a link, a donor, a page.
A tiny worked example (hypothetical)
A fictional private-equity advisory sees two donors. Donor A has Domain Rating 74, estimated traffic of 2,000 a month and mixed topics. Donor B has Domain Rating 48, traffic of 6,000 and writes only about mid-market deals.
Most scoring tools would put A first. A reader of the advisory's market would put B first. We would too. The figures are invented, but the pattern is common enough to be worth rehearsing.
Where the main scores come from
Score
Published by
Scale
Domain Rating
Ahrefs
0 to 100
Domain Authority
Moz
1 to 100
Authority Score
Semrush
0 to 100
Trust Flow
Majestic
0 to 100
One caution
Never quote a score as if Google gave it. A partner who says Google rates us at 71 has misread the tool. Say the vendor's name every time.