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.

Looking For a Welsh SEO Expert

Looking For a Welsh SEO Expert

If you are in the market for an SEO expert in Wales, you might be in for a shock. There are many different companies that offer this type of service. However, you may be confused in who you should choose out of the 509,000 results listed on Google for SEO experts. There are many things to consider when hiring a professional search engine optimization company. Many people claim to be profession SEO experts, but they offer nothing to back up their claims. Consider the following tips when you are in search of the best Welsh SEO expert:

1.  First and foremost, look for proven results on the expert’s page. If they have a website that is ranked at number 1,000, what makes you think they can get you to the top of the search engine results? Always look for experts that use their own techniques.

2.  Look for proven results. Any company you choose should have a portfolio showing previous work done, along with graphs proving results achieved. These results should show a graph of the number of visitors the company received before and after the services were performed. You should also ask for proof of a rise in search engine results.

3.  Make sure the company only uses white hat techniques. The use of link farms or keyword stuffing can actually hurt your website more than it helps it. If you end up getting banned by Google, you might as well start over; getting readmitted into the search results is not easy.

4.  Ask for an onsite optimization consultation up front. A good SEO expert should be able to provide you with a comprehensive report detailing what they believe needs to be done for your website. Take your report and compare it to the many suggestions you can find online today for white hat techniques. If something looks like it’s not a good practice move on to the next expert.

5.  Compare prices that are offered by different SEO experts as well. You may find that the prices to be found vary by hundreds of dollars. It is well known that some services cost more than others, but you should never pay higher prices for the same results you can get somewhere else.

6.  Look for an expert that can manage your complete campaign. not just part of it. Many things within a SEO campaign go hand in hand, and it is often best to have the same person know what is going on with every part.

7.  Make sure you get a contract! One of the biggest problems with SEO companies is that they provide you with tons of traffic and then they up the prices once you see the results. Make sure you are clear on what you are paying and what results you can expect to see. You should also be aware of the policy if you don’t get any results.

Picking the right SEO expert is not easy, but if you know the right questions to ask, you will find much better results. While an SEO company should never guarantee a specific ranking result, don’t spend your hard earned money on a company that cannot guarantee at least a set amount of effort.