Since a lot of my daily interactions with Customers and Employees involve what I would call "SEO 101", I thought, why not recognize the basics for the beginner on my blog. I think there is so much conflicting information out there when it comes to basic SEO, specifically links, that it becomes overwhelming and frustrating even for the "newbie". A lot of customers come in "tip toeing" and even defensive at times, because they have either been, A. burned before or B. are confused and therefore reserved when it comes to budget projection. After years of seemingly endless amounts of reading, meetings, e-mails and of course client phone calls, I feel like I`ve literally "heard it all" when it comes to on-line marketing.
That said, I decided to make this blog all about YOU, the reader. I wish I had a blog like this to read when I was getting started! Not all that obviously biased, and sometimes even arrogant "insider knowledge". Instead, I`d like to share some simple, but effective link building and on-page advice.
So, here is my plan for the next few posts:
The Simple Make Up of a Ranking Site
Unique Content
Sometimes Less is More
Trust: The Search Engines have Feelings
Link Building, 101
Working with Google, the Careful but Effective Approach
If I Were a Search Engine
Conversions, a Consumers Perspective
Relevancy, Knowing your Target Audience
Common Misconceptions, Who Do You Believe
Encouraging the Spider
Monetizing Your Site, Real Options
More to come.....
What topic interests you the most? I`ll write on request.
Monday, December 22, 2008
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Google Lays off 10,000 ???
I try to not get too caught up in the news, gossip and media frenzy when it comes to the economy, war and anything else that contributes the the downfall of society, economy and/or our country in general. I find it`s easy to get so worked up that I carry the news with me, and it can have a really negative impact on my generally enthusiastic and positive attitude. So, typically I prefer to just "stay out of it" as much as possible. HOWEVER, I just found this too noteworthy not to share.
Just do a quick search for "Google lay`s off 10,000" and you`ll see 1,000`s of results... Google`s own SERP is showing webGuild: http://www.webguild.org/2008/11/google-layoffs-10000-workers-affected.php as the top story.
In a nutshell:
"Google has been quietly laying off staff and up to 10,000 jobs could be on the chopping block according to sources. Since August, hundreds of employees have been laid off and there are reports that about 500 of them were recruiters for Google."
My conclusion:
In a nation wide economic downturn, it`s no surprise Google, or anyone else, is making a dramatic change, especially like cutbacks for what seems to be mostly recruiters (if you`re cutting back, what do you need recruiters for?). What I find appalling are the other allegations:
Google reports to the SEC that it has 20,123 employees but in reality it has 30,000. Why the discrepancy? Google classifies 10,000 of the employees as temporary operational expenses or “workers”. Google co-founder Sergey Brin said, “There is no question that the number (of workers) is too high”
The classification affords Google several advantages such as:
1) Hire full time employees without full time benefits. The classification enables Google to pay them above minimum wage, provide no health benefits, no insurance coverage, no stock options, and no offer of permanent employment.
2) By under-reporting actual employee headcount, Google looks good to Wall Street. A low headcount gives the illusion that productivity per employee is more than it actually is, which in turn looks good in the eyes of Google shareholders which is ultimately good for Google’s stock in the short term.
Is it true? Is it not true? You decide.
Just do a quick search for "Google lay`s off 10,000" and you`ll see 1,000`s of results... Google`s own SERP is showing webGuild: http://www.webguild.org/2008/11/google-layoffs-10000-workers-affected.php as the top story.
In a nutshell:
"Google has been quietly laying off staff and up to 10,000 jobs could be on the chopping block according to sources. Since August, hundreds of employees have been laid off and there are reports that about 500 of them were recruiters for Google."
My conclusion:
In a nation wide economic downturn, it`s no surprise Google, or anyone else, is making a dramatic change, especially like cutbacks for what seems to be mostly recruiters (if you`re cutting back, what do you need recruiters for?). What I find appalling are the other allegations:
Google reports to the SEC that it has 20,123 employees but in reality it has 30,000. Why the discrepancy? Google classifies 10,000 of the employees as temporary operational expenses or “workers”. Google co-founder Sergey Brin said, “There is no question that the number (of workers) is too high”
The classification affords Google several advantages such as:
1) Hire full time employees without full time benefits. The classification enables Google to pay them above minimum wage, provide no health benefits, no insurance coverage, no stock options, and no offer of permanent employment.
2) By under-reporting actual employee headcount, Google looks good to Wall Street. A low headcount gives the illusion that productivity per employee is more than it actually is, which in turn looks good in the eyes of Google shareholders which is ultimately good for Google’s stock in the short term.
Is it true? Is it not true? You decide.
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Cool Tool of the Day
I like cool SEO Tools, especially when they`re free!
This one sure saved us a lot of time today:
Mass Google PR Checker
What`s your favorite SEO tool? Feel free to share!
This one sure saved us a lot of time today:
Mass Google PR Checker
What`s your favorite SEO tool? Feel free to share!
Thursday, October 9, 2008
Matt Cutts Blog Is Down
So, we think this is funny and thought you would too... go to:
http://mattcutts.com/blog/
It appears the Black Hat SEO community is not without a sense of humor!
http://mattcutts.com/blog/
It appears the Black Hat SEO community is not without a sense of humor!
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
More on the PR Update...
Since a lot of my clients and partners are noticing a change in their PR, I thought I should do a quick follow up post.
If you are concerned about a change in Google PR as reflected on the toolbar. Here’s a few things to consider:
• Google Toolbar PR and actual PR and 2 different numbers, just because the Toolbar says something, that doesn`t mean it`s your sites true, actual PR.
• PR works on a logarithmic scale so as more websites get indexed the majority of sites lose PR relatively. Google is doing updates more frequently because there are so many new sites to index. Eventually it will nearly impossible to achieve a PR 7 or 8, most of us will be lucky to get PR at all, but this isn`t to say your site has lost any value.
• Your PR is diluted across your whole site, as you add new pages you must add deep links to each new page as well as increase links to the main page in a greater proportion to be sure of a PR increase which will not help SERPs. Furthermore if your non WWW version of your site is not redirected to your WWW version, it should be as to not split PR between the 2 URL`s.
• Trust rank is far more important than page rank. Who links to you, who you link to. Google knows very well many sites that sell links and in an effort to confuse sellers and buyers, they can take away PR as reflected on the toolbar. This isn`t to say you have lost any true PR.
If you are a partner or if you are selling links, there are special ways you should be hosting your links in order to ensure you don`t get flagged as a link seller and lose Toolbar PR. I suggest:
• Limit the number of OB links per page to 10-15 max, maybe even less on the HP
• Try to only links to sites that are relevant and can be seen as useful to the users of your site
• Do not host your links at the very top or very bottom of the page… within the body or even a sidebar is much more natural looking
• Do not state the links are paid or sponsored anywhere from within the site
• Embed the links within content, stand alone links look very suspicious - Instead, offer: Hosted Marketing Pages or Contextual Links
• Throw in at least one authoritative, relevant OB link on your HP that is obviously NOT paid (for example: NASA, a .gov, etc)
• For each new link make sure you add at least 200-500 words of fresh content to that page
• Continue to add fresh new links to your site each month, even if they are not higher PR, the trend makes your site appear as more of an authority
Bottom line:
Toolbar PR does NOT = True or Actual PR
If you sell links, be smart! Host them in a natural looking way!
Work on continuing to add value to your site... if you want to be successful on-line, you`re going to have to invest a lot of time and money, nothing comes easy, and if it does, it won`t last long.
Good luck! Now go write some content :-)
If you are concerned about a change in Google PR as reflected on the toolbar. Here’s a few things to consider:
• Google Toolbar PR and actual PR and 2 different numbers, just because the Toolbar says something, that doesn`t mean it`s your sites true, actual PR.
• PR works on a logarithmic scale so as more websites get indexed the majority of sites lose PR relatively. Google is doing updates more frequently because there are so many new sites to index. Eventually it will nearly impossible to achieve a PR 7 or 8, most of us will be lucky to get PR at all, but this isn`t to say your site has lost any value.
• Your PR is diluted across your whole site, as you add new pages you must add deep links to each new page as well as increase links to the main page in a greater proportion to be sure of a PR increase which will not help SERPs. Furthermore if your non WWW version of your site is not redirected to your WWW version, it should be as to not split PR between the 2 URL`s.
• Trust rank is far more important than page rank. Who links to you, who you link to. Google knows very well many sites that sell links and in an effort to confuse sellers and buyers, they can take away PR as reflected on the toolbar. This isn`t to say you have lost any true PR.
If you are a partner or if you are selling links, there are special ways you should be hosting your links in order to ensure you don`t get flagged as a link seller and lose Toolbar PR. I suggest:
• Limit the number of OB links per page to 10-15 max, maybe even less on the HP
• Try to only links to sites that are relevant and can be seen as useful to the users of your site
• Do not host your links at the very top or very bottom of the page… within the body or even a sidebar is much more natural looking
• Do not state the links are paid or sponsored anywhere from within the site
• Embed the links within content, stand alone links look very suspicious - Instead, offer: Hosted Marketing Pages or Contextual Links
• Throw in at least one authoritative, relevant OB link on your HP that is obviously NOT paid (for example: NASA, a .gov, etc)
• For each new link make sure you add at least 200-500 words of fresh content to that page
• Continue to add fresh new links to your site each month, even if they are not higher PR, the trend makes your site appear as more of an authority
Bottom line:
Toolbar PR does NOT = True or Actual PR
If you sell links, be smart! Host them in a natural looking way!
Work on continuing to add value to your site... if you want to be successful on-line, you`re going to have to invest a lot of time and money, nothing comes easy, and if it does, it won`t last long.
Good luck! Now go write some content :-)
Monday, September 29, 2008
Google PR Toolbar Update
Yes, that`s right. It`s that time again!!! If you`ve noticed your PR fluctuating or if some of the sites linking to you have changed in PR it`s because Google is doing a PR update right now. Matt Cutts said they are "1/365th of the way there!" so, expect to see up`s and down`s until the dust settles.
As you are probably already aware, Google periodically updates it`s PR Toolbar. In the past these updates generally took place once every 3-6 months. Over the last year or two we have noticed Google updating the PR Toolbar even more frequently and for longer periods of time. We recently experienced a Toolbar update, at the end of which we updated our rented products with new pricing in accordance with what we believed was the updated PR. Unfortunately, even though the update seemed to be over, we continued to see a lot of sites change dramatically in PR. One day a PR 8 would go to a 5, only to come back up the next day to a 7. It`s obvious now that the updates will be happening more sporadically and changes can fluctuate for long periods of time (weeks, sometimes months). I personally think Google is moving towards a more sophisticated system which will allow them to update sites on the fly. PR today, gone tomorrow...
Overall Google has devalued Toolbar PR anyways. It used to be that the higher the Toolbar PR, the more SEO value that site can pass. That is no longer the case. And, just becasue the Toolbar says something, that doesn`t mean it`s your sites true PR.
I`ve seen a variety of things happening, such as:
Google takes some or all PR away on certain sites they think might be selling links to confuse buyers, but the pages still cache and the links still index.
Google leaves PR as is, but stops the site from being able to pass any PR.
Google only gives higher PR to sites in certain industries, or to branded names (you know Adobe, HP and such are buying links!!).
Higher PR is getting increasingly difficult to achieve- like Google is grading on a curve and only so many sites can be a 9, a few more an 8, more 7`s, etc. So, even if you have high PR now and you feel nothing has changed on your site, you`re PR can go down simply due to the "Google curve". If your in a popular online industry, too bad. You may never be able to achieve the higher PR`s, unless you knock someone out of that spot. It`s called on-line saturation! How relevant can a scale from 1-10 be when there are billions of sites ranking #8? Not very. Sorry people, but if 1 million turns into 5 million over the next year in your industry, you`ll be lucky to be a PR 3.
With so many discrepancies it`s become apparent Toolbar PR is a thing of the past. Instead, there are many other variables that you can use when determining the value of a site, for example:
How many backlinks that site has – specifically .gov and .edu links
How old the site is – what is the age of the domain?
The Compete and Alexa ranking
How many other OB links that site or page has
How many pages are indexed, how much unique content does the site have?
How the site is hosting the links (top, bottom, sidebar? contextually or stand alone? boxed together, under a "sponsored heading", near other links that aren`t relevant...)
The list goes on and on....
If you do see a dramatic decrease and you think it`s because of something you did (on page changes, a bunch of new links, etc.), the worst thing you can do is freak out and make a bunch of changes. This is exactly what Google is looking for when trying to determine whether a new link building trend (or whatever caused them to "red flag" your site in the first place) is natural or “paid”. If they are messing with you and trying to confused you by temporarily changing the PR on the toolbar, it`s only with the hope you`ll screw things up for yourself by taking down your links or making other changes to your site.
Unless your site loses rankings in the SERPS, don`t freak out (and even then, don`t freak out... but that`s a whole new blog post for another day). Who cares what your Toolbar PR is if you still have good organic placement? Isn`t the goal to get traffic to your site?
Bottom line:
Google DOES play games with sites to confuse people
Toolbar PR DOES NOT = organic placement
A decrease in PR DOES NOT = a penalty
If you suspect Google is playing games, play games too :-) Buy links that are difficult to flag as paid and RANK ON!
E-mail me of you have questions: Jenny@textlinkbrokers.com
or, as always, comment away!
As you are probably already aware, Google periodically updates it`s PR Toolbar. In the past these updates generally took place once every 3-6 months. Over the last year or two we have noticed Google updating the PR Toolbar even more frequently and for longer periods of time. We recently experienced a Toolbar update, at the end of which we updated our rented products with new pricing in accordance with what we believed was the updated PR. Unfortunately, even though the update seemed to be over, we continued to see a lot of sites change dramatically in PR. One day a PR 8 would go to a 5, only to come back up the next day to a 7. It`s obvious now that the updates will be happening more sporadically and changes can fluctuate for long periods of time (weeks, sometimes months). I personally think Google is moving towards a more sophisticated system which will allow them to update sites on the fly. PR today, gone tomorrow...
Overall Google has devalued Toolbar PR anyways. It used to be that the higher the Toolbar PR, the more SEO value that site can pass. That is no longer the case. And, just becasue the Toolbar says something, that doesn`t mean it`s your sites true PR.
I`ve seen a variety of things happening, such as:
Google takes some or all PR away on certain sites they think might be selling links to confuse buyers, but the pages still cache and the links still index.
Google leaves PR as is, but stops the site from being able to pass any PR.
Google only gives higher PR to sites in certain industries, or to branded names (you know Adobe, HP and such are buying links!!).
Higher PR is getting increasingly difficult to achieve- like Google is grading on a curve and only so many sites can be a 9, a few more an 8, more 7`s, etc. So, even if you have high PR now and you feel nothing has changed on your site, you`re PR can go down simply due to the "Google curve". If your in a popular online industry, too bad. You may never be able to achieve the higher PR`s, unless you knock someone out of that spot. It`s called on-line saturation! How relevant can a scale from 1-10 be when there are billions of sites ranking #8? Not very. Sorry people, but if 1 million turns into 5 million over the next year in your industry, you`ll be lucky to be a PR 3.
With so many discrepancies it`s become apparent Toolbar PR is a thing of the past. Instead, there are many other variables that you can use when determining the value of a site, for example:
How many backlinks that site has – specifically .gov and .edu links
How old the site is – what is the age of the domain?
The Compete and Alexa ranking
How many other OB links that site or page has
How many pages are indexed, how much unique content does the site have?
How the site is hosting the links (top, bottom, sidebar? contextually or stand alone? boxed together, under a "sponsored heading", near other links that aren`t relevant...)
The list goes on and on....
If you do see a dramatic decrease and you think it`s because of something you did (on page changes, a bunch of new links, etc.), the worst thing you can do is freak out and make a bunch of changes. This is exactly what Google is looking for when trying to determine whether a new link building trend (or whatever caused them to "red flag" your site in the first place) is natural or “paid”. If they are messing with you and trying to confused you by temporarily changing the PR on the toolbar, it`s only with the hope you`ll screw things up for yourself by taking down your links or making other changes to your site.
Unless your site loses rankings in the SERPS, don`t freak out (and even then, don`t freak out... but that`s a whole new blog post for another day). Who cares what your Toolbar PR is if you still have good organic placement? Isn`t the goal to get traffic to your site?
Bottom line:
Google DOES play games with sites to confuse people
Toolbar PR DOES NOT = organic placement
A decrease in PR DOES NOT = a penalty
If you suspect Google is playing games, play games too :-) Buy links that are difficult to flag as paid and RANK ON!
E-mail me of you have questions: Jenny@textlinkbrokers.com
or, as always, comment away!
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
What`s Up with the Yahoo Site Explorer ??
Around here we like to use Yahoo Site Explorer to check indexed pages and backlinks. For those of you who may not be familiar with the command, you simply go to Yahoo.com and type in:
link:http://www.yourwebsitehere.com
This will ask Yahoo to tell you how many links you have indexed with them. You can use the same command in Google, but in my experience, they tend to only show 10-15% of a sites backlinks (Google is sneaky) whereas Yahoo tends to show 80-90%. HOWEVER, today I just read a post here on SEO Roundtable: http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/018145.html
Which is always legit. They are saying that DigitalPoint Forums is reporting on a major update in Yahoo and that many websites are experiencing huge drops in link numbers. They aren`t sure if it`s a glitch, or if Yahoo has tweaked their algorithm and the huge drops in backlinks may be attributed to the algo change. Either way, this is not good for me. I often refer to Yahoo as being the better search engine for checking backlinks... if they don`t want to show us everything and Google doesn`t either, we`re going to be guessing a lot more. Oh well, as long as my clients still see good rankings, we`re all happy...
What do you think?
link:http://www.yourwebsitehere.com
This will ask Yahoo to tell you how many links you have indexed with them. You can use the same command in Google, but in my experience, they tend to only show 10-15% of a sites backlinks (Google is sneaky) whereas Yahoo tends to show 80-90%. HOWEVER, today I just read a post here on SEO Roundtable: http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/018145.html
Which is always legit. They are saying that DigitalPoint Forums is reporting on a major update in Yahoo and that many websites are experiencing huge drops in link numbers. They aren`t sure if it`s a glitch, or if Yahoo has tweaked their algorithm and the huge drops in backlinks may be attributed to the algo change. Either way, this is not good for me. I often refer to Yahoo as being the better search engine for checking backlinks... if they don`t want to show us everything and Google doesn`t either, we`re going to be guessing a lot more. Oh well, as long as my clients still see good rankings, we`re all happy...
What do you think?
Thursday, August 21, 2008
SEO Slang - AKA - SEO Definitions
If you do SEO or SEM you know there is a special language that we speak.... I like to call it "SEO Slang"....
This is a compilation of various industry related terms I feel are important in the SEO/SEM/Links/PPC/SM world for my employees and anyone else who wants to talk the "SEO talk"...
Here it is:
JENNY'S SEO SLANG:
Affiliate - An individual or company that markets a merchant's products or services and it paid only a sales commission fee. An affiliate is a marketing partner who promotes your products or services for a commission.
Affiliate Site - A site created to host links to a merchant's Web site so the site owner can make a commission.
Age of Domain - The number of years a particular website has been on-line. This starts with the date the domain was registered.
Alexa Ranking - Alexa is a search engine that provides extra information such as traffic rankings. An Alexa ranking is an indicator used to gauge site performance, based on comparisons drawn against other sites.
Algorithm - A mathematical equation, created by the search engines themselves (Google has their own, Yahoo has their own, etc) that uses certain information from websites in order to define their rankings.
Anchor Text Optimization – The technique of purposely placing keywords in the anchor text of your incoming and/or internal links in order to rank better for those keywords.
Authority Site - A site that is deemed by a search engine to be authoritative in its chosen field of subject matter. .edu and .gov sites are seen as “authority sites” and therefore desirable places to have a link.
Backlinks (Inbound Links) - The term used to refer to links which point to your site. Also called "Inbound Links" or "In Links"
Bad Neighborhood - Google sometimes refers to spammy Web sites, which employ tricks to misdirect users, as "bad neighborhoods."
Banned - When a search engine determines a Web site has violated their quality standards, all Web pages are removed from the search engine's index.
Banner Ad - An advertising banner (most often graphic) displayed on sites to advertise a web site. If a user clicks on the banner it will take them to that site
Black Hat - Techniques considered unethical, or contrary to the Terms of Service of search engines. Some examples are hiding text (ie - white letters on a white background) and cloaking.
Block Level Analysis – Microsoft’s attempt to deal with the faults in PageRank (PR) and HITS
Blog - A blog (short for web log) is an online journal or diary of an individual or groups opinions and latest news that is updated regularly, in chronological order. Many blogs allow visitors to make comments, or “postings” in response to the blogger, or ask questions.
Blogger - The owner and/or author of a blog. You can also have a “Guest Blogger” which is someone who writes for another owners blog.
Bot - Abbreviation for robot (also called a spider). It refers to software programs that scan the web. Bots vary in purpose from indexing web pages for search engines to harvesting e-mail addresses for spammers.
Brand/Branding - The emotional response associated with your company and/or products. A brand is built through controlling customer expectations and the social interactions between customers. Building a brand is what allows you to move away from commodity based pricing and move toward higher margin value based pricing.
Broken Link - A hyperlink which is not functioning. A link which does not lead to the desired location.
Cache - A cache is a temporary storage area where frequently accessed data can be stored for rapid access. (A “cached snapshot” is the search engines last view of the content of the webpage you’re currently viewing in your browser.)
Class C IP's - Class C networks make up an eighth of the total available IP addresses. The IP is unique, but if hosted on the same class C IP the search engine can detect and the links may not be as valuable then if hosted on completely unique Class C IP`s.
Cloaking - Cloaking describes the technique of serving a different page to a search engine spider than what a human visitor sees. This technique is abused by spammers for keyword stuffing. Cloaking is a violation of the Terms Of Service of most search engines and could be grounds for banning.
Code/Coding - Code can be added to web documents (HTML or other) through the usage of a program editor.
Content - The text, video, sound and graphics that makes up a web page. The text is what makes up the visual content.
Conversion - Site traffic that follows through on the goal of the site (such as buying a product from the website, filling out a contact form, registering for a newsletter, etc.). Webmasters measure conversion to judge the effectiveness (and ROI) of PPC and other advertising campaigns. Effective conversion tracking requires the use of some scripting/cookies to track visitors’ actions within a website. Many use analytics as well, such as Google Analytics.
CPC - Abbreviation for Cost Per Click. It is the base unit of cost for a PPC campaign.
CTA - Abbreviation for Content Targeted Ad(vertising). It refers to the placement of relevant PPC ads on content pages for non-search engine websites.
CTR - Abbreviation for Click Through Rate. It is a ratio of clicks per impressions in a PPC campaign.
Del.icio.us - Popular social bookmarking website… said to have “no follow tags” but Google still indexes the links.
Digg – A social news site where users vote on which stories get the most exposure and become the most popular.
Direct Clicks - When a user of a website directly clicks on the link(s) to get to the site the link points to. (Banners are good for direct clicks, our links are intended for SEO value).
Directory Link - A link on or within a Directory site, generally placed in a relevant category making it easy for a site user to find your listing or a search engine spider to find your link.
Directory Submissions - A website submission service where your website is added to the proper category in a searchable online directory which enhances your site’s visibility and creates relevant inbound links to your website. (Creating Directory Links)
DMOZ - The Open Directory Project is the largest human edited directory of websites. DMOZ is owned by AOL, and is primarily ran by volunteer editors.
Doorway Page/Gateway Page - A doorway page exists solely for the purpose of driving traffic to another page. They are usually designed and optimized to target one specific key phrase. Doorway pages rarely are written for human visitors. They are written for search engines to achieve high rankings and hopefully drive traffic to the main site. Using doorway pages is a violation of the Terms Of Service of most search engines and could be grounds for banning.
Duplicate Content - Content copied from other web pages to increase ranking with the help of more keywords is called “duplicate content”. Google has a filter that looks for duplicate text which may give a penalty to that page or even site.
Dynamic Content - Content which changes over time or uses a dynamic language such as PHP to help render the page.
EDU Links - A link hosted on a .edu site (an .edu site is a registered official educational institutions site)
Family Friendly - Pretty much every topic of relevancy other then adult, pharmaceutical and gambling. (Is it okay for a 5 year old to look at it?)
FFA - Abbreviation for Free For All. FFA sites post large lists of unrelated links to anyone and everyone. FFA sites and the links they provide are basically useless. Humans do not use them and search engines minimize their importance in ranking formulas.
Filter - Certain activities or signatures which make a page or site appear unnatural might make search engines inclined to filter / remove them out of the search results. For example, if a site publishes significant duplicate content it may get a reduced crawl priority and get filtered out of the search results. Some search engines also have filters based on link quality, link growth rate, and anchor text. Some pages are also penalized for spamming.
Footer - A websites text, images or links at the bottom of the page
Forum - An online discussion group, where participants with common interests can exchange open messages.
Fresh Content - Content which is dynamic in nature and gives people a reason to keep paying attention to your website.
FUD - Fear, uncertainty and doubt.
FUD Campaign - A “Fear, uncertainty, and doubt” campaign to frighten people into thinking something is bad by providing misleading information.
G - Google
General Category - A number of categories of relevancy represented in one place could be called a General Category site. (Blogs, new sites, etc.)
Google Dance - Up to June, 2003, Google has updated the index for their search engine on a roughly monthly basis. While the update is in progress, search results for each of Google's nine datacenters are different. The positions of a site appears to "dance" as it fluctuates minute to minute. "Google dance" is an unofficial term coined to refer to the period when Google is performing the update to its index. Google may be changing their index calculation method to allow for a continuous update (which will effectively end the roughly monthly dances).
Google Toolbar - Google’s specific toolbar options (such as PR)
GOV links - A link hosted on a .gov site (an .gov site is a registered official government site)
Grey hat - Optimization strategies that are in an unknown area of reputability/validity. Somewhere in-between Black and White Hat.
Header - The information at the beginning of an email, bulletin board message, article, etc.
Hit - One hit is one request for a file on a web server. A visitor opening a page with 5 images will in the process generate 6 hits (1 each for the images and one for the HTML page itself). The term is sometimes also used with reference to the number of results (hits) a search engine returns for a specific query.
HITS - Hyperlink Induced Topic Search
HP - Home Page
HTML - Hyper Text Markup Language - A programming (coding) language used to create documents for display on the World Wide Web.
HTTP - Hypertext Transfer Protocol - HTTP is the most common transfer protocol used to facilitate communication between servers and browsers.
Hyperlink – A hyperlink, more commonly called a link, is an electronic connection between one web page to either (1) other web pages on the same web site, or (2) web pages located on another web site. More specifically, a hyperlink is a connection between one page of a hypertext document to another.
Hyperlink Induced Topic Search - Referring to a search where the search algorithm relies (partly) on hyperlinks to identify topic areas. Not to be confused with "hits" referring to file requests.
Image Link - A hyperlink which appears on an image.
Image Tags - A hyperlink which appears on an image that defines the image for the search engine spider.
Inbound Links - The term used to refer to links which point to your site. Also called "Backlinks" or "In links."
Index - Often used in reference to the search engine. Is the site/link indexed? When the search engine picks up the website/ link the website/ link is “indexed”, which means it`s getting the search engine visibility.
IP Address - All computers across the internet are assigned a unique identifier called an IP address. They are used like street addresses so other computers can find them. An IP address could look something like this: 87.242.211.23.
Keyword Stuffing - Keyword stuffing refers to the practice of adding superfluous keywords to a web page. The words are added for the 'benefit' of search engines and not human visitors. The words may or may not be visible to human visitors. While not necessarily a violation of search engine Terms of Service, at least when the words are visible to humans, it detracts from the impact of a page (it looks like spam). It is also possible that search engines may discount the importance of large blocks of text that do not conform to grammatical structures (ie. lists of disconnected keywords). There is no valid reason for engaging in this practice.
Keyword/Keyphrase (Anchor Text, Link Text) - Keywords are words which are used in search engine queries. Keyphrases are multi-word phrases used in search engine queries. SEO is the process of optimizing web pages for keywords and keyphrases so that they rank highly in the results returned for search queries. Anchor text refers to the text that is used in your links.
Landing Page ("Doorway page") - A page used, which is generally relevant to anchor text, to help bring visitors to a website. A Landing Page can also be used for search engine optimization and PPC campaigns
Link (Text Link) - Similar to Image Links (Banner Links) these are hyperlinks which appear on text found within the site. A graphic, line of text, or both on a Web page that connects to another page on the same Web site or to one on a Web server located anywhere in the world. Links are "clicked on" to go to the Web page they specify.
Link Farm - A link farm is a group of separate, highly interlinked websites for the purposes of inflating link popularity (or PR). Engaging in a link farm is a violation of the Terms of Service of most search engines and could be grounds for banning.
Link Popularity - A broad term used to loosely associate how popular your site is by how many inbound links it has. Link popularity has changed over time, however, to now consider not only volume of incoming links but their "worth" to the site. Inbound links from relevant related sites are worth more to overall link popularity than non-related or non-relevant links.
Link Profile - What does the site tend to link to?
LP - Landing Page - Landing pages are any page, HomePage (HP) or SubPage (SP), within a particular website that a potential client will land on after clicking on an add, an organic result in the search engines, e-mail marketing campaign or even an article or Press Release.
LPO – Landing Page Optimization – A serious of on-page elements can be optimized for conversions. LPO is part of a broader Internet marketing process called Conversion Optimization, or Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO), with the goal of improving the percentage of visitors to the website that become sales leads and customers.
Matt Cutts - (AKA “The Google Guy”) - Google's head of search quality. Runs his own Blog sponsored and endorsed by Google
Meta tag - A meta tag is an element of HTML that often describes the contents of a Web page, and is placed near the beginning of the page's source code. Search engines use information provided in a meta tags to index pages by subject.
Metadata - Data about data. Structured information that describes, explains, locates, and otherwise makes it easier to retrieve and use an information resource.
Mirror/Mirror Page - In SEO parlance, a mirror is a near identical duplicate website (or page). Mirrors are commonly used in an effort to target different keywords/key phrases. Using mirrors is a violation of the Terms Of Service of most search engines and could be grounds for banning.
Natural (Natural Search Listings) - See Organic Listings
Newsgroup - A discussion forum where users can post messages and reply to other users.
Newspaper Site - An online news publication site. Any topic of “General Family Friendly” relevancy can be found here.
"No Follow", "No Robot" (Blocked pages) – Website code that allows web masters and site owners to restrict which links a search engine crawler follows. By adding a "no follow" tag to a hyperlink the site tells the search engine that the link isn't worth anything to the site being linked to. This is a common tag used to discourage spam link builders from bulk link building as well as tell engines if links are paid advertising links.
Non-relevant - Also determined by the search engines algorithm, if a site is hosting links that would not seem relevant to the users of the site, we would call them “non-relevant”.
OB Links - Out Bound Links - A link pointing from your website to an external website.
One Way Links - Getting a link from a site without linking back to that same website. (*We only do one way links).
Organic (Organic Listings) - Organic search engine listings appear after all of the paid advertising (PPC ads). The results are formulated from the search engine's index. Also known as Natural Search listings.
Penalization - When a search engine penalizes a site the site generally loses PR and/or organic listings.
Penalized - Search engines prevent some websites suspected of spamming from ranking highly in the results by banning or penalizing them. These penalties may be automated algorithmically or manually applied. If a site is penalized algorithmically the site may start ranking again after a certain period of time after the reason for being penalized is fixed. If a site is penalized manually the penalty may last an exceptionally long time or require contacting the search engine with a reinclusion request to remedy.
PFI - Pay For Inclusion - Many search engines offer a PFI program to assure frequent spidering / indexing of a site (or page). PFI does not guarantee that a site will be ranked highly (or at all) for a given search term. It just offers webmasters the opportunity to quickly incorporate changes to a site into a search engine's index. This can be useful for experimenting with tweaking a site and judging the resultant effects on the rankings.
PPC - Pay Per Click - An advertising model where advertisers pay only for the traffic generated by their ads.
PR - Page Rank - Google's trademark for their proprietary measure of link
"Presell Page" - This is another term for content hosting or content advertising, also known as Hosted Marketing Pages (HMP’s) or In Content Pages.
Reciprocal Links - A reciprocal link is where website [A] links to website [B], Website [B] in turn links to website [A].
Reinclusion - If a site has been penalized for spamming they may fix the infraction and ask for reinclusion. Depending on the severity of the infraction and the brand strength of the site they may or may not be added to the search index.
Relevance/Relevancy (Search Engine Relevancy) - The measure of the accuracy of the search results - in other words it's a measure of how close the documents listed in the search results are to what the user was looking for.
Relevant (Site Relevancy) - Ultimately determined by the search engines algorithm, relevancy says how closely related a particular page is to the site it is hosting a link for.
Reseller - A customer who is authorized to resell another company’s products and/or services. They are responsible for properly relaying any TOS or contract, managing the client and ensuring the payment is on time.
Robots.txt - Robots.txt is a file which well behaved spiders read to determine which parts of a website they may visit
ROI - Return on Investment - In the context of SEO, the term refers to sales generated as the direct result of a search engine marketing campaign.
RSS - Really Simple Syndication
RSS Feed - Rss is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated digital content, such as blogs, news feeds
Sandboxed - Also known as the Google Sandbox, this is a theory which holds that all news websites are placed into a "holding area" where they must earn their way out through reputation building and management. The quickest way out of the sandbox is to build links from relevant related sources which are considered authoritative in your industry.
Search Engine Index - The search engines results for the keyword searched. #1 is the desired indexed number for your site. In other words, you`d like to be ranking #1 in the search engine indexing in order to get traffic to your site.
SEM - Abbreviation for Search Engine Marketing. SEM encompasses SEO and search engine paid advertising options (banners, PPC, etc.)
SEO - Search Engine Optimization - SEO covers the process of making web pages spider friendly (so search engines can read them) making web pages relevant to desired keyphrases
SEO Links - Links intended to help a site rank higher in the SERP`s.
SERP/Serps - Search Engine Results Page/Positioning - This refers to the organic (excluding paid listings) search results for a given query.
Sitewide - A link that appears on each page (including the HP) of a site.
Social Bookmark - A link building method for internet users to store, organize, search, and manage bookmarks of web pages on the Internet with the help of metadata.
SM - Social Media - Any website or web service that utilizes a 'social' or 'web 2.0' philosophy. This includes blogs, micro blogs (Twitter), social networks, social news, wikis, etc.
Source Code - Also known as source, source code is the original work created by a developer. It contains all the tags and instructions in a text file used to compose a Web page.
SP - Sub Page - This refers to a interior page of a website with multiple pages.
Spam/Spammy - Manipulation techniques that violate search engines Terms of Service and are designed to achieve higher rankings for a web page. Spam could be grounds for banning.
Spider - The search engine “spider” crawls each site. Spiders are used to feed pages to search engines. Another term for these programs is “webcrawler”.
Splash Page - Splash pages are introduction pages to a web site that are heavy on graphics (or flash video) with no textual content. They are designed to either impress a visitor or complement some corporate branding.
Stop Word - Stop words are words that are ignored by search engines when indexing web pages and processing search queries. Common words such as the.
Supplemental Index - Generally known as the Google index where certain pages of a website are stored, which have been given little to no trust or value from Google. This could be due to spammy elements, but primarily is due to the fact that these pages have no indexed backlinks.
Supplemental Results – Pages deemed to be of less importance by Google’s algorithm or are less trusted.
Title tag - HTML tag used to define the text in the top line of a Web browser, also used by many search engines as the title of search listings.
Toolbar - A row of icons at the top of your browser that activate functions when clicked.
TOS - Terms of Service or Terms of Sale, a legal document signed by the end user outlining the specific terms of the service/product they are purchasing.
URL - Uniform Resource Locator / Universal Resource Locator. A unique Internet address (for example http://www.textlinkbrokers.com) that every Internet resource must have in order to be located.
Webmaster Guidelines - The search engines guidelines for webmasters intended to help the search engine find, index, and rank your site. (Google has their own webmaster guidelines)
White hat - Techniques that fall within the terms of service of the search engines. Building useful online content, labeling pages correctly, gaining high quality in-bound links from relevant sites etc.
Feel free to send more ideas if you feel I`m missing anything. This is a work in progress!
This is a compilation of various industry related terms I feel are important in the SEO/SEM/Links/PPC/SM world for my employees and anyone else who wants to talk the "SEO talk"...
Here it is:
JENNY'S SEO SLANG:
Affiliate - An individual or company that markets a merchant's products or services and it paid only a sales commission fee. An affiliate is a marketing partner who promotes your products or services for a commission.
Affiliate Site - A site created to host links to a merchant's Web site so the site owner can make a commission.
Age of Domain - The number of years a particular website has been on-line. This starts with the date the domain was registered.
Alexa Ranking - Alexa is a search engine that provides extra information such as traffic rankings. An Alexa ranking is an indicator used to gauge site performance, based on comparisons drawn against other sites.
Algorithm - A mathematical equation, created by the search engines themselves (Google has their own, Yahoo has their own, etc) that uses certain information from websites in order to define their rankings.
Anchor Text Optimization – The technique of purposely placing keywords in the anchor text of your incoming and/or internal links in order to rank better for those keywords.
Authority Site - A site that is deemed by a search engine to be authoritative in its chosen field of subject matter. .edu and .gov sites are seen as “authority sites” and therefore desirable places to have a link.
Backlinks (Inbound Links) - The term used to refer to links which point to your site. Also called "Inbound Links" or "In Links"
Bad Neighborhood - Google sometimes refers to spammy Web sites, which employ tricks to misdirect users, as "bad neighborhoods."
Banned - When a search engine determines a Web site has violated their quality standards, all Web pages are removed from the search engine's index.
Banner Ad - An advertising banner (most often graphic) displayed on sites to advertise a web site. If a user clicks on the banner it will take them to that site
Black Hat - Techniques considered unethical, or contrary to the Terms of Service of search engines. Some examples are hiding text (ie - white letters on a white background) and cloaking.
Block Level Analysis – Microsoft’s attempt to deal with the faults in PageRank (PR) and HITS
Blog - A blog (short for web log) is an online journal or diary of an individual or groups opinions and latest news that is updated regularly, in chronological order. Many blogs allow visitors to make comments, or “postings” in response to the blogger, or ask questions.
Blogger - The owner and/or author of a blog. You can also have a “Guest Blogger” which is someone who writes for another owners blog.
Bot - Abbreviation for robot (also called a spider). It refers to software programs that scan the web. Bots vary in purpose from indexing web pages for search engines to harvesting e-mail addresses for spammers.
Brand/Branding - The emotional response associated with your company and/or products. A brand is built through controlling customer expectations and the social interactions between customers. Building a brand is what allows you to move away from commodity based pricing and move toward higher margin value based pricing.
Broken Link - A hyperlink which is not functioning. A link which does not lead to the desired location.
Cache - A cache is a temporary storage area where frequently accessed data can be stored for rapid access. (A “cached snapshot” is the search engines last view of the content of the webpage you’re currently viewing in your browser.)
Class C IP's - Class C networks make up an eighth of the total available IP addresses. The IP is unique, but if hosted on the same class C IP the search engine can detect and the links may not be as valuable then if hosted on completely unique Class C IP`s.
Cloaking - Cloaking describes the technique of serving a different page to a search engine spider than what a human visitor sees. This technique is abused by spammers for keyword stuffing. Cloaking is a violation of the Terms Of Service of most search engines and could be grounds for banning.
Code/Coding - Code can be added to web documents (HTML or other) through the usage of a program editor.
Content - The text, video, sound and graphics that makes up a web page. The text is what makes up the visual content.
Conversion - Site traffic that follows through on the goal of the site (such as buying a product from the website, filling out a contact form, registering for a newsletter, etc.). Webmasters measure conversion to judge the effectiveness (and ROI) of PPC and other advertising campaigns. Effective conversion tracking requires the use of some scripting/cookies to track visitors’ actions within a website. Many use analytics as well, such as Google Analytics.
CPC - Abbreviation for Cost Per Click. It is the base unit of cost for a PPC campaign.
CTA - Abbreviation for Content Targeted Ad(vertising). It refers to the placement of relevant PPC ads on content pages for non-search engine websites.
CTR - Abbreviation for Click Through Rate. It is a ratio of clicks per impressions in a PPC campaign.
Del.icio.us - Popular social bookmarking website… said to have “no follow tags” but Google still indexes the links.
Digg – A social news site where users vote on which stories get the most exposure and become the most popular.
Direct Clicks - When a user of a website directly clicks on the link(s) to get to the site the link points to. (Banners are good for direct clicks, our links are intended for SEO value).
Directory Link - A link on or within a Directory site, generally placed in a relevant category making it easy for a site user to find your listing or a search engine spider to find your link.
Directory Submissions - A website submission service where your website is added to the proper category in a searchable online directory which enhances your site’s visibility and creates relevant inbound links to your website. (Creating Directory Links)
DMOZ - The Open Directory Project is the largest human edited directory of websites. DMOZ is owned by AOL, and is primarily ran by volunteer editors.
Doorway Page/Gateway Page - A doorway page exists solely for the purpose of driving traffic to another page. They are usually designed and optimized to target one specific key phrase. Doorway pages rarely are written for human visitors. They are written for search engines to achieve high rankings and hopefully drive traffic to the main site. Using doorway pages is a violation of the Terms Of Service of most search engines and could be grounds for banning.
Duplicate Content - Content copied from other web pages to increase ranking with the help of more keywords is called “duplicate content”. Google has a filter that looks for duplicate text which may give a penalty to that page or even site.
Dynamic Content - Content which changes over time or uses a dynamic language such as PHP to help render the page.
EDU Links - A link hosted on a .edu site (an .edu site is a registered official educational institutions site)
Family Friendly - Pretty much every topic of relevancy other then adult, pharmaceutical and gambling. (Is it okay for a 5 year old to look at it?)
FFA - Abbreviation for Free For All. FFA sites post large lists of unrelated links to anyone and everyone. FFA sites and the links they provide are basically useless. Humans do not use them and search engines minimize their importance in ranking formulas.
Filter - Certain activities or signatures which make a page or site appear unnatural might make search engines inclined to filter / remove them out of the search results. For example, if a site publishes significant duplicate content it may get a reduced crawl priority and get filtered out of the search results. Some search engines also have filters based on link quality, link growth rate, and anchor text. Some pages are also penalized for spamming.
Footer - A websites text, images or links at the bottom of the page
Forum - An online discussion group, where participants with common interests can exchange open messages.
Fresh Content - Content which is dynamic in nature and gives people a reason to keep paying attention to your website.
FUD - Fear, uncertainty and doubt.
FUD Campaign - A “Fear, uncertainty, and doubt” campaign to frighten people into thinking something is bad by providing misleading information.
G - Google
General Category - A number of categories of relevancy represented in one place could be called a General Category site. (Blogs, new sites, etc.)
Google Dance - Up to June, 2003, Google has updated the index for their search engine on a roughly monthly basis. While the update is in progress, search results for each of Google's nine datacenters are different. The positions of a site appears to "dance" as it fluctuates minute to minute. "Google dance" is an unofficial term coined to refer to the period when Google is performing the update to its index. Google may be changing their index calculation method to allow for a continuous update (which will effectively end the roughly monthly dances).
Google Toolbar - Google’s specific toolbar options (such as PR)
GOV links - A link hosted on a .gov site (an .gov site is a registered official government site)
Grey hat - Optimization strategies that are in an unknown area of reputability/validity. Somewhere in-between Black and White Hat.
Header - The information at the beginning of an email, bulletin board message, article, etc.
Hit - One hit is one request for a file on a web server. A visitor opening a page with 5 images will in the process generate 6 hits (1 each for the images and one for the HTML page itself). The term is sometimes also used with reference to the number of results (hits) a search engine returns for a specific query.
HITS - Hyperlink Induced Topic Search
HP - Home Page
HTML - Hyper Text Markup Language - A programming (coding) language used to create documents for display on the World Wide Web.
HTTP - Hypertext Transfer Protocol - HTTP is the most common transfer protocol used to facilitate communication between servers and browsers.
Hyperlink – A hyperlink, more commonly called a link, is an electronic connection between one web page to either (1) other web pages on the same web site, or (2) web pages located on another web site. More specifically, a hyperlink is a connection between one page of a hypertext document to another.
Hyperlink Induced Topic Search - Referring to a search where the search algorithm relies (partly) on hyperlinks to identify topic areas. Not to be confused with "hits" referring to file requests.
Image Link - A hyperlink which appears on an image.
Image Tags - A hyperlink which appears on an image that defines the image for the search engine spider.
Inbound Links - The term used to refer to links which point to your site. Also called "Backlinks" or "In links."
Index - Often used in reference to the search engine. Is the site/link indexed? When the search engine picks up the website/ link the website/ link is “indexed”, which means it`s getting the search engine visibility.
IP Address - All computers across the internet are assigned a unique identifier called an IP address. They are used like street addresses so other computers can find them. An IP address could look something like this: 87.242.211.23.
Keyword Stuffing - Keyword stuffing refers to the practice of adding superfluous keywords to a web page. The words are added for the 'benefit' of search engines and not human visitors. The words may or may not be visible to human visitors. While not necessarily a violation of search engine Terms of Service, at least when the words are visible to humans, it detracts from the impact of a page (it looks like spam). It is also possible that search engines may discount the importance of large blocks of text that do not conform to grammatical structures (ie. lists of disconnected keywords). There is no valid reason for engaging in this practice.
Keyword/Keyphrase (Anchor Text, Link Text) - Keywords are words which are used in search engine queries. Keyphrases are multi-word phrases used in search engine queries. SEO is the process of optimizing web pages for keywords and keyphrases so that they rank highly in the results returned for search queries. Anchor text refers to the text that is used in your links.
Landing Page ("Doorway page") - A page used, which is generally relevant to anchor text, to help bring visitors to a website. A Landing Page can also be used for search engine optimization and PPC campaigns
Link (Text Link) - Similar to Image Links (Banner Links) these are hyperlinks which appear on text found within the site. A graphic, line of text, or both on a Web page that connects to another page on the same Web site or to one on a Web server located anywhere in the world. Links are "clicked on" to go to the Web page they specify.
Link Farm - A link farm is a group of separate, highly interlinked websites for the purposes of inflating link popularity (or PR). Engaging in a link farm is a violation of the Terms of Service of most search engines and could be grounds for banning.
Link Popularity - A broad term used to loosely associate how popular your site is by how many inbound links it has. Link popularity has changed over time, however, to now consider not only volume of incoming links but their "worth" to the site. Inbound links from relevant related sites are worth more to overall link popularity than non-related or non-relevant links.
Link Profile - What does the site tend to link to?
LP - Landing Page - Landing pages are any page, HomePage (HP) or SubPage (SP), within a particular website that a potential client will land on after clicking on an add, an organic result in the search engines, e-mail marketing campaign or even an article or Press Release.
LPO – Landing Page Optimization – A serious of on-page elements can be optimized for conversions. LPO is part of a broader Internet marketing process called Conversion Optimization, or Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO), with the goal of improving the percentage of visitors to the website that become sales leads and customers.
Matt Cutts - (AKA “The Google Guy”) - Google's head of search quality. Runs his own Blog sponsored and endorsed by Google
Meta tag - A meta tag is an element of HTML that often describes the contents of a Web page, and is placed near the beginning of the page's source code. Search engines use information provided in a meta tags to index pages by subject.
Metadata - Data about data. Structured information that describes, explains, locates, and otherwise makes it easier to retrieve and use an information resource.
Mirror/Mirror Page - In SEO parlance, a mirror is a near identical duplicate website (or page). Mirrors are commonly used in an effort to target different keywords/key phrases. Using mirrors is a violation of the Terms Of Service of most search engines and could be grounds for banning.
Natural (Natural Search Listings) - See Organic Listings
Newsgroup - A discussion forum where users can post messages and reply to other users.
Newspaper Site - An online news publication site. Any topic of “General Family Friendly” relevancy can be found here.
"No Follow", "No Robot" (Blocked pages) – Website code that allows web masters and site owners to restrict which links a search engine crawler follows. By adding a "no follow" tag to a hyperlink the site tells the search engine that the link isn't worth anything to the site being linked to. This is a common tag used to discourage spam link builders from bulk link building as well as tell engines if links are paid advertising links.
Non-relevant - Also determined by the search engines algorithm, if a site is hosting links that would not seem relevant to the users of the site, we would call them “non-relevant”.
OB Links - Out Bound Links - A link pointing from your website to an external website.
One Way Links - Getting a link from a site without linking back to that same website. (*We only do one way links).
Organic (Organic Listings) - Organic search engine listings appear after all of the paid advertising (PPC ads). The results are formulated from the search engine's index. Also known as Natural Search listings.
Penalization - When a search engine penalizes a site the site generally loses PR and/or organic listings.
Penalized - Search engines prevent some websites suspected of spamming from ranking highly in the results by banning or penalizing them. These penalties may be automated algorithmically or manually applied. If a site is penalized algorithmically the site may start ranking again after a certain period of time after the reason for being penalized is fixed. If a site is penalized manually the penalty may last an exceptionally long time or require contacting the search engine with a reinclusion request to remedy.
PFI - Pay For Inclusion - Many search engines offer a PFI program to assure frequent spidering / indexing of a site (or page). PFI does not guarantee that a site will be ranked highly (or at all) for a given search term. It just offers webmasters the opportunity to quickly incorporate changes to a site into a search engine's index. This can be useful for experimenting with tweaking a site and judging the resultant effects on the rankings.
PPC - Pay Per Click - An advertising model where advertisers pay only for the traffic generated by their ads.
PR - Page Rank - Google's trademark for their proprietary measure of link
"Presell Page" - This is another term for content hosting or content advertising, also known as Hosted Marketing Pages (HMP’s) or In Content Pages.
Reciprocal Links - A reciprocal link is where website [A] links to website [B], Website [B] in turn links to website [A].
Reinclusion - If a site has been penalized for spamming they may fix the infraction and ask for reinclusion. Depending on the severity of the infraction and the brand strength of the site they may or may not be added to the search index.
Relevance/Relevancy (Search Engine Relevancy) - The measure of the accuracy of the search results - in other words it's a measure of how close the documents listed in the search results are to what the user was looking for.
Relevant (Site Relevancy) - Ultimately determined by the search engines algorithm, relevancy says how closely related a particular page is to the site it is hosting a link for.
Reseller - A customer who is authorized to resell another company’s products and/or services. They are responsible for properly relaying any TOS or contract, managing the client and ensuring the payment is on time.
Robots.txt - Robots.txt is a file which well behaved spiders read to determine which parts of a website they may visit
ROI - Return on Investment - In the context of SEO, the term refers to sales generated as the direct result of a search engine marketing campaign.
RSS - Really Simple Syndication
RSS Feed - Rss is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated digital content, such as blogs, news feeds
Sandboxed - Also known as the Google Sandbox, this is a theory which holds that all news websites are placed into a "holding area" where they must earn their way out through reputation building and management. The quickest way out of the sandbox is to build links from relevant related sources which are considered authoritative in your industry.
Search Engine Index - The search engines results for the keyword searched. #1 is the desired indexed number for your site. In other words, you`d like to be ranking #1 in the search engine indexing in order to get traffic to your site.
SEM - Abbreviation for Search Engine Marketing. SEM encompasses SEO and search engine paid advertising options (banners, PPC, etc.)
SEO - Search Engine Optimization - SEO covers the process of making web pages spider friendly (so search engines can read them) making web pages relevant to desired keyphrases
SEO Links - Links intended to help a site rank higher in the SERP`s.
SERP/Serps - Search Engine Results Page/Positioning - This refers to the organic (excluding paid listings) search results for a given query.
Sitewide - A link that appears on each page (including the HP) of a site.
Social Bookmark - A link building method for internet users to store, organize, search, and manage bookmarks of web pages on the Internet with the help of metadata.
SM - Social Media - Any website or web service that utilizes a 'social' or 'web 2.0' philosophy. This includes blogs, micro blogs (Twitter), social networks, social news, wikis, etc.
Source Code - Also known as source, source code is the original work created by a developer. It contains all the tags and instructions in a text file used to compose a Web page.
SP - Sub Page - This refers to a interior page of a website with multiple pages.
Spam/Spammy - Manipulation techniques that violate search engines Terms of Service and are designed to achieve higher rankings for a web page. Spam could be grounds for banning.
Spider - The search engine “spider” crawls each site. Spiders are used to feed pages to search engines. Another term for these programs is “webcrawler”.
Splash Page - Splash pages are introduction pages to a web site that are heavy on graphics (or flash video) with no textual content. They are designed to either impress a visitor or complement some corporate branding.
Stop Word - Stop words are words that are ignored by search engines when indexing web pages and processing search queries. Common words such as the.
Supplemental Index - Generally known as the Google index where certain pages of a website are stored, which have been given little to no trust or value from Google. This could be due to spammy elements, but primarily is due to the fact that these pages have no indexed backlinks.
Supplemental Results – Pages deemed to be of less importance by Google’s algorithm or are less trusted.
Title tag - HTML tag used to define the text in the top line of a Web browser, also used by many search engines as the title of search listings.
Toolbar - A row of icons at the top of your browser that activate functions when clicked.
TOS - Terms of Service or Terms of Sale, a legal document signed by the end user outlining the specific terms of the service/product they are purchasing.
URL - Uniform Resource Locator / Universal Resource Locator. A unique Internet address (for example http://www.textlinkbrokers.com) that every Internet resource must have in order to be located.
Webmaster Guidelines - The search engines guidelines for webmasters intended to help the search engine find, index, and rank your site. (Google has their own webmaster guidelines)
White hat - Techniques that fall within the terms of service of the search engines. Building useful online content, labeling pages correctly, gaining high quality in-bound links from relevant sites etc.
Feel free to send more ideas if you feel I`m missing anything. This is a work in progress!
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Online “Laugh” Marketing through Link Bait
Creating INFECTIOUS Results!
Question: How do you get good, relevant sites to WANT to link to you?
Have you ever received an e-mail with a funny movie clip, joke or picture? Remember that dancing baby that was sent around to millions? It was laughter that made that e-mail circulate around the web. The second you laugh out loud you begin thinking of someone to pass that e-mail along to: friends, family, co-workers…
Why not use this same technique when considering a link bait campaign?
What is Link Bait?
Link Bait is, more or less, anything you create anywhere on the Web that inspires other people to link to it. They can link to it via a Web page, a blog, social bookmarking, tagging, e-zine, newsletter, IM, e-mail or any other method that tells others about the bait.
Link Bait can be done in a variety ways:
News, contrary, attack, resource, fear and… humor!
Humor is universal. Using humor brings in readers from all over, and, when done properly, doesn`t risk offending your audience or alienating your site.
When it comes to your site, you can use humor to entice your audience, which, like many of us, have grown tired of the daily routine and are happy to stumble upon something humorous. Start posting something funny, you’ll then find your users coming back more often to see what innovative, funny or wacky things they`ll find.
Link Bait through outside sources, consider:
Articles, Press Releases, Pre-sell Pages
When preparing content that is intended to be syndicated, the focus should always be on compelling, newsworthy content. What is going to make the user not only enjoy reading the article, but love it so much they`d like to pick it up and put in on their own site?
Humor!
The most successful content based release is the one that connects with the reader. How better to connect then through humor?
Still, online marketing through humor can be tricky. It`s like watching a comedian that makes you laugh like crazy, but not being able to remember the jokes to tell to a friend the next day. You may have a great idea, but if you can`t effectively convey that message, it counts as a total loss.
Now what?
First, you need a professional writer, equipped to write a hook that will set the humorous tone you are going for. Second, you need a link bait expert who understands SEO and who can deliver on their promises.
That`s where we come in. With over 5 years of on-line marketing experience and thousands of happy clients, we feel confidant we can deliver content that will get the laughter flowing. Your humor based content will kick off the syndication. All you have to do is sit back and watch the traffic pour in!
TextLinkBrokers.com – Smarter Links for Higher Rankings
To contact me directly:
Jenny Hansen Stradling
Strategic Sales Director
360 Enterprises, Inc.
TextLinkBrokers.com
jenny@textlinkbrokers.com
Office: (480) 668-6139 ex 218
Question: How do you get good, relevant sites to WANT to link to you?
Have you ever received an e-mail with a funny movie clip, joke or picture? Remember that dancing baby that was sent around to millions? It was laughter that made that e-mail circulate around the web. The second you laugh out loud you begin thinking of someone to pass that e-mail along to: friends, family, co-workers…
Why not use this same technique when considering a link bait campaign?
What is Link Bait?
Link Bait is, more or less, anything you create anywhere on the Web that inspires other people to link to it. They can link to it via a Web page, a blog, social bookmarking, tagging, e-zine, newsletter, IM, e-mail or any other method that tells others about the bait.
Link Bait can be done in a variety ways:
News, contrary, attack, resource, fear and… humor!
Humor is universal. Using humor brings in readers from all over, and, when done properly, doesn`t risk offending your audience or alienating your site.
When it comes to your site, you can use humor to entice your audience, which, like many of us, have grown tired of the daily routine and are happy to stumble upon something humorous. Start posting something funny, you’ll then find your users coming back more often to see what innovative, funny or wacky things they`ll find.
Link Bait through outside sources, consider:
Articles, Press Releases, Pre-sell Pages
When preparing content that is intended to be syndicated, the focus should always be on compelling, newsworthy content. What is going to make the user not only enjoy reading the article, but love it so much they`d like to pick it up and put in on their own site?
Humor!
The most successful content based release is the one that connects with the reader. How better to connect then through humor?
Still, online marketing through humor can be tricky. It`s like watching a comedian that makes you laugh like crazy, but not being able to remember the jokes to tell to a friend the next day. You may have a great idea, but if you can`t effectively convey that message, it counts as a total loss.
Now what?
First, you need a professional writer, equipped to write a hook that will set the humorous tone you are going for. Second, you need a link bait expert who understands SEO and who can deliver on their promises.
That`s where we come in. With over 5 years of on-line marketing experience and thousands of happy clients, we feel confidant we can deliver content that will get the laughter flowing. Your humor based content will kick off the syndication. All you have to do is sit back and watch the traffic pour in!
TextLinkBrokers.com – Smarter Links for Higher Rankings
To contact me directly:
Jenny Hansen Stradling
Strategic Sales Director
360 Enterprises, Inc.
TextLinkBrokers.com
jenny@textlinkbrokers.com
Office: (480) 668-6139 ex 218
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