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.

Top 7 Most Common Mistakes with Do-It-Yourself SEO

Top 7 Most Common Mistakes with Do-It-Yourself SEO

Most people today seem to understand that they need to optimize their website for search engines. However, with the vast amount of conflicting information on the internet today, many people are still getting it wrong. In recent investigations, it has been found that one out of three websites has at least one of the following seven issues on their website.

Check your website for the following seven mistakes:

1.  Description Tag – The description tag is supposed to describe the page on your website. It should not be used to stuff keywords for search engines. This tag should be about 25 words long and it should include your keywords as part of the normal sentence structure. You also shouldn’t overdo it; a whole paragraph is not going to improve your results.

2.  Keyword Tag – The keyword tag is meant to hold the keywords you want your site listed for. The tags should represent the things visitors can find on that particular page. Do not use things from other pages on your site or keywords that you think people might search for if they are not part of your site. The keyword tag should only contain twenty words or less; do not go over. You also shouldn’t repeat the keywords more than three times. For example, if you sell shoes, you shouldn’t put red shoes, blue shoes, black shoes, tennis shoes, and basketball shoes. You should only use the word shoes three times and each of the descriptions three times.

3.  Anchor Text – Many people think that they should use the name of the link they are providing on their webpage. This could not be further than the truth. Search engines want to see your keywords used as anchor text whenever possible.

4.  Title Tag – This is one of the most important aspects of your website. It is the very first thing a search engine will see when it comes to your page and this is what the engine will look at to decide what your page is about. Don’t include your url in your title tag and your company name should not be in the beginning of the description either. Don’t go over 60 words.

5.  Keywords In Your Text – Your keywords should be included within the text of your page. They should flow as a part of the normal sentence structure, and should not be stuffed into sentences that don’t make sense. The keywords used on your page should be the same ones you used in your title and description.

6.  Abstract Tag – many people are now using abstract tags within their sites. Some are replacing the description tag with an abstract and stuffing it full of unnecessary keywords. This should never be done. Most experts agree that an abstract tag is just that abstract. Leave it out.

7.  Image Tags – While Google and other search engines rarely look at image tags, they do hold value. Many sites like Google Images or Flicker spend their time searching sites for pictures. When they find a picture, they don’t want to see “jpg123,” they want to see “shoes worn at the Grammy’s”.

If you are one of these people, don’t get discouraged.  You might consider hiring a professional SEO expert to give you some advice. The rules of SEO change on a regular basis; you just have to stay ahead of the curve.