What is a backlink?
A backlink is a link from one site to another. What counts, what does not, why some carry weight and others none, and how to see the ones you have.
Read about what a backlink is →The numbers SEO tools quote at you, explained
Most SEO metrics are invented by the tool that shows them to you, not by Google. These pages say who made each one, what it is built from, and where it stops being useful.
rel=nofollow, and when to use it
What rel=nofollow does, how it differs from sponsored and ugc, whether nofollowed links still help, and when adding the attribute is the right call.
Read about how rel=nofollow works →What is domain authority?
Domain authority is a third-party prediction of ranking strength, not a Google metric. How it is calculated, what it is good for, and where it misleads.
Read about what domain authority measures →Reading a domain's authority over time
How to see what a site's authority score used to be, why history matters more than today's number, and what a sudden rise or fall usually means.
Read about how to read authority over time →Which of these actually predicts anything
One thing is worth saying once, up front: no score on this page is a Google ranking factor. Domain Authority is Moz's, Domain Rating is Ahrefs', Authority Score is Semrush's, and each is that vendor's guess at the same thing from its own crawl of the web.
The number that predicts most, and the one worth checking first, is far duller: how many separate sites link to the specific page you are trying to outrank. It is countable, it is not vendor-specific, and it is available on every SERP you look at.
Check the numbers on your own site
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