Viscoelastic models aim to characterize material properties by extracting the parameters that best describe observed deformations. However, due to the equivalence of various model structures, the conventional model parameters as constants assigned to each model element cannot be uniquely determined for a given deformation and, therefore, are unfit to represent material properties. To resolve this problem, we formulate the framework of viscoelastic models based on their transfer functions. We explicitly derive the functional form of the transfer functions of viscoelastic models and show that a set of parameters is uniquely determined for each equivalent set of viscoelastic models. The newly identified parameters correspond to the instantaneous modulus and the distribution of the characteristic time scales of the system, and based on this perspective, we show that the differentiation order of a fractional viscoelastic element, spring-pot, is determined solely by the recursive nature of the characteristic time scales of the system. Furthermore, we show that all viscoelastic models are equivalent to four canonical model structures.