Glossary of terms relevant to backlinking

IM: Short for Internet Marketing.

Backlink: A backlink is a hyperlink or linked word/phrase on another site (not yours usually) on the Web pointing to one of your site pages or articles. Unlike Yahoo and Bing, Google places a great deal of emphasis on backlinks as a measure of trust and authority.

Outsourcing: When routine Internet Marketing jobs such as creating Web 2.0 accounts, building backlinks, writing articles or other jobs (depending on your particular IM model) are carried out by freelancers, usually living in other parts of the world where labor costs are lower. The main means of outsourcing are through websites like elance.com, odesk.com and guru.com.

Double-pass backlinking: The process of setting up backlinks in two stages or ‘passes’ on other sites. The first ‘pass’ is to create the account with genuine-looking biographical details and photo, the second pass is to drop the links in. A week is a good general timeframe to allow between your first and second pass and this gives the backlinks a considerably better chance of not being deleted as the account will look more genuine. The newest memberships on community sites (like forums) are often the most scrutinised and least trusted.

Single-pass backlinking: Creating a new account and leaving the backlinks in one step. As new accounts are more likely to be scrutinised by moderators/webmasters, this can be riskier if a new member on a forum about Facebook Application Development has backlinks to, for example, acne, weight loss, forex and debt reduction sites.

Nofollow: nofollow is a form of HTML coding used to instruct Google that a hyperlink on a page should NOT influence the link target’s ranking in the search engine’s index. It is intended to combat spam. Using a tool like SEO for Firefox from here:

Dofollow: The opposite of nofollow. Without a nofollow HTML tag, a link will pass ‘Link Juice’ to the hyperlinked site.

Link Juice: The power of trust and authority (and therefore Google Organic Search results significance) coming from one site or page to another via a link (kind of like ‘electricity’).

Link velocity: The speed at which links are built to a particular page. I know of some very well resourced companies who build literally millions of backlinks a year to a single page to compete in VERY competitive niches. Our monthly members are building backlinks at a Link Velocity of 400 a month. Consistency is the key rather than velocity as truly viral articles across the Web can attract big numbers of links.

OBL: Outbound links. This refers to the number of backlinks on a single page of a site. In theory, the more outbound links (links to OTHER sites) a page has, the less Link Juice will pass to each link as the PR power is shared between them. However, I’m very doubtful about this and will be presenting my counter-argument soon on this forum.

Crawled/Spidered: When Google becomes aware of new material on the Web by visiting a particular page or site (from a link elsewhere), this is called getting spidered or crawled. However, what you really want is for Google to regard that new material as worthy of being added to their overall index. Getting something crawled or spidered is pretty easy - getting indexed can take a little longer and often occurs on a somewhat unpredictable timeframe e.g. I’ve had sites or articles that took a month to get indexed whereas others have been added in a day.

Indexed: The Google Index is kind of a giant virtual library of the entire Web - sort of. When new material appears on the Web, Google figures out how quickly it should be added to its Index. Some new material probably never gets indexed at all - ever. Why? Simply because the incoming links to that new material (if there are any) are not regarded as of sufficient trust or authority to justify that new site/article/page being added to the index.

New Website, But No Customers

New Website, But No Customers

Have you developed a new website and you are not getting any customers? This is very possible if you are not ranked high in the search engine results. You see, if you are competing against thousands of other websites for the top ten spots in the search results, you may have a long road ahead. If customers don’t see you in the search results, how are they supposed to find your site? You have to be seen before you can make a sale.

Raising your site to the top of the search results is not a quick process. It requires time and effort to complete an ongoing optimization campaign. You have to be aware of all the things that can help raise your ranking, as well as what can lower them. Google actually may penalize your site for certain practices. The harder part of knowing what to do can be all of the conflicting information found on the internet today. There are literally thousands of blogs and forums to read that can explain the aspects of search engine optimization. However, you will notice a common thing: very few agree on what is right and wrong. The best thing you can do is hire a professional SEO company that can provide proven results and techniques.

These companies will know the best way to raise your search engine rankings and what things you should avoid doing. They should also be able to increase the number of links you have coming into your site. You will want to make sure that any company you choose allows you to be in charge of the final decision process. This is especially true if the company will be submitting articles or blogs on your behalf. You should always have the opportunity to check anything placed on your behalf for accuracy.

You should also look for a company that guarantees the amount of work they will do on your behalf. It is ultimately impossible to determine what results you will receive with a SEO campaign. However, a company shouldn’t expect you to pay hundreds or thousands of pounds and then provide no results. Look for some type of guarantee. Many companies will promise that if you don’t receive results, they will give you a longer campaign for free to raise your rank. A few companies will even offer a money back guarantee. Make sure you ask for a contract that spells out exactly what you can expect.

In the end, hiring a SEO company really is the best way to complete a SEO campaign. It is often much cheaper than hiring a new member of staff to manage your process. You do have to consider that when you are first starting out, it may take over forty hours every week to do the work yourself. If you are trying to run your company and your SEO campaign, you may find you don’t have enough hours in the day. Shop around and find the company that you feel most comfortable with.