Believe it or not, competitive pursuit after a Thanksgiving turkey’s wishbone is a perfect metaphor for understanding better customer centric content marketing.  Prepare yourself for a Thanksgiving themed post without the tryptophan side effects.

5 Steps of A Wishbone Strategy Applied to Content Marketing
Here’s how the wishbone strategy works and how you can apply it to your content marketing strategy.

Step 1: Lobby Mom to ensure turkey is on the Thanksgiving menu. Every year, there are Moms across the country who set their sights on trying some new tradition without any input from the people who will be eating the meal. To avoid a holiday dining catastrophe, kids start begging said Moms to get a Thanksgiving turkey as soon as Halloween is over. Content marketers need to listen to and understand prospect and customer interests to ensure they provide the information that matters most. To this end, consider the content your target audience needs at every point in the purchase cycle from awareness through post purchase support.

Depending on your product or services, this can translate to a variety of different types of content. Here’s an extensive list to choose from, and don’t forget to serve seasonally appropriate content which resonates with your audience. To carry on with our Thanksgiving theme, an example could be links to cool Turkey carving apps, Thanksgiving recipes or instructions for how to make paper decorations look like turkeys.

Photo Credit: carbonated via Flickr

Step 2: Beg Dad to carve the turkey. While this seems like pandering, in our house, Dad was a surgeon when it came to carving the bird and, unlike Mom, he carefully preserved the wishbone for a fair battle. As a marketer, it’s important to go beyond just defining your target audience to understanding what various segments want and need to attract and maintain their attention. Just as many of us play up to Dad’s carving skills, our content must also tightly synch with the needs of prospective readers.

Photo Credit: lapstrake via Flickr

Step 3: Be chosen a wishbone contender. Again, this requires advance planning. It helps to go that extra step with regard to chores and homework as well as positioning yourself nearest to the turkey when it appears fresh from the kitchen. Depending on your family, getting the wishbone can be a situation where, if you snooze, you loose. Similarly, content marketing must be available where prospects are searching for it. We all know there is a dizzying array of apps, ads, channels, widgets (and so on…) vying for our prospects’ attention.

Think strategically in terms of your communication channels such as campaign-oriented website landing pages and emails, seasonally appropriate blog posts from your CEO and instructional videos from product development. Of course don’t just duplicate, rather integrate the appropriate versions of your content on social media networks such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+. Depending on your audience, consider third party media placement such as providing articles for other media or sponsored content. Make it easy and compelling for your prospects to choose you through relevant content.

Photo Credit: Roger Smith via Flickr

Step 4: Assess your wishbone stance. When you’re ready to wrestle for wishbone bragging rights, it’s essential to realize that an effective strategy is all about positioning. You must get your thumb as close as possible to the tip of the wishbone. Further, it helps to let your competitor take a first try since this weakens the bone on his side. In terms of content marketing, asses your messaging stance and ensure your tailored content is integrated with the rest of your marketing. This includes linking to the appropriate products in your blog posts, providing commerce on channels like Facebook where your prospects are engaging with you, or sending a post-purchase emails with helpful product usage tips. To help inspire you, check out this Clutter Control Freak post that links to the specific product, a holiday card keeper.

Step 5: Make a good wish. Of course, all of this work is for naught if you don’t have a really good wish. In marketing terms, (I know this is a reach, but bear with me) this means having a contextually relevant call-to-action for your prospect to take the next step in the purchase process. A problem for many marketers is that once you’ve primed your prospect and they leave without buying, they still have an unmet need. Therefore they’ll probably purchase from another firm and, as long as they’re somewhat satisfied, they may not return to your firm – ever.

The one content marketing element missing from this wishbone list is ensuring you’ve got great information that, like the smell of your mother’s fresh cooked turkey, will lure people in. Without quality content, it’s difficult to get your prospects, customers and the public to return for seconds and thirds. You may get them once, but after that you’ll find yourself searching for new customers. Therefore, pack your content with real protein and nutrition to engage your readers over and over again.

What else would you add to this wishbone strategy? How are you ensuring your content marketing remains focused on your target audience’s needs while working to get them to close the deal?

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2011. |
Thanksgiving Wishbone Competitiveness & Content Marketing Tips – Who Knew? | http://www.toprankblog.com

Thanksgiving Wishbone Competitiveness & Content Marketing Tips – Who Knew? is a post from: How To Get Backlinks To Your Site

I’m not sure I buy the “social media has turned things around” story exactly, but I do wonder how many companies and consultants roll the dice and take shortcuts and loopholes to get ahead only to find out later it’s worthless? The notion of paid links is an old story (Paid Links Evil? Dec 2005) but many of the tactics used to shortcut results for SEO will always be a fresh topic of discussion.

It turns out the retailer in the Inc. story was doing SEO internally then hired two SEO companies to help out. The story goes on to say that a SEO company was to “reach out to relevant sites and ask them for links. Instead, one of the companies admitted it was paying for links.”  That’s worded in a way that makes you think maybe the retailer didn’t know the SEO company was buying links.

We don’t buy links at TopRank Marketing.

We never have. Not ever in 10 years of being in the search marketing business. As far as the retailer in the Inc. article, it’s surprising because buying links isn’t cheap.  If a company didn’t know the SEO consultant was buying links, it’s peculiar any way you look at it. Where did the money come from to buy the links? How did the SEO company not report what it was doing? How did the company owner not know what the SEO company was doing?

I polled followers of @leeodden on Twitter whether they or someone they knew knew had ever been penalized for buying links. Almost all of them said yes. When I’ve mentioned that we never buy links to other search marketers, the disbelief was like I told them I didn’t need to breathe air.

The point of relating this story to you isn’t so much about the risks and rewards of paid links, defining exactly what “paid means” (what about a 3 way barter?) or even judging those that sell and buy links. The point is that the online retailer in the story says social media tactics were largely ignored and now they’re committed to blogging, Tweeting and being active on Facebook. He claims all is now well in their SEO world. “We’re back on top.”

The point:  Why didn’t the online retailer commit to a better online marketing strategy in the first place?

It’s been promoted for years that paid links can carry consequences.  People like Google’s Anti-Spam Czar Matt Cutts make their perspective clear and make it easy to report paid links. Right or wrong, it’s the way search engines want to play.  Obviously, paid links with the right anchor text from very authoritative and relevant websites have a positive impact, or SEOs and website owners wouldn’t participate.  It’s important to note that Google doesn’t have a problem with paid links per se, but with paid links that pass PageRank.

The question I have for companies that rely too much on shortcuts and loopholes is, “Why not suspend the “free money now” attitude and invest in a smart and competitive online marketing program that can get results AND stand the test of scrutiny?”  Won’t a customer focused marketing effort that provides optimized and linkable content to a growing social network earn more links, more traffic and more revenue anyway?

I don’t think there’s much reason to put your brand and revenue at risk if you have a long term view of how the search and social web works. The investment in understanding and engaging customers plus the staff, software and time to implement content, analyze performance data and ongoing content marketing is well worth the cost and there’s virtually no risk.

“Don’t bring a sword to a gun fight”

Years ago at a search conference discussion about black hat and white hat tactics, Tim Mayer, ex head of Search at Yahoo! made the comment “”If you’re being entirely organic and going after ‘Viagra,’ it’s like taking a sword to a gunfight. You just aren’t going to rank” when discussing acceptable tactics in really aggressive industries like “PPC” (pills pron casino).

The temptation and pressures to profitability are great in industries that are flush with heavily optimized and marketed web sites.  However, most companies don’t fall in that category and I think smarter and more creative marketing can still win for the vast majority of websites, especially in the long run. We’ve seen it happen with our own clients nearly 10 years.

Why rent when you can own?

The reason I’ve never participated in link purchases or endorsed the practice isn’t as much about Google’s rules on paid links that pass PageRank. It’s because I could never understand why anyone would “buy” something with such risk associated with it when they could “earn it and own it”?   With roots in Public Relations, our online marketing agency has been accustomed to earning media placements and often times highly desirable links since we started the business in 2001. It can take more time to see aggressive results, but when you focus on making creative content and doing the hard work of promotion to earn traffic and links, the cost is one of investment vs. the often higher cost of advertising with no equity in what you’ve purchased. Then there’s the cost if the links are devalued by the search engines and subsequent lost revenue. I’d rather build, promote and earn those links that will be in place indefinitely.

Using that strategy, Online Marketing Blog has accumulated a substantial number and quality of links (according to Majestic SEO). The devil is in the details with this sort of thing of course, since it matters very much what the topic, anchor text and PageRank are of the link sources. But suffice it to say, we experience very good results in each of those areas as evidenced by over 21,000 different keyword phrases that sent organic traffic each month and top visibility for important and challenging keyword queries.

What’s your experience with managing risk with SEO tactics? Have you experienced what the online retailer above went through and focused anew on a sustainable and longer term online marketing strategy?

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. |
The Real Cost of Buying Links for SEO: $4 Million | http://www.toprankblog.com

The Real Cost of Buying Links for SEO: $4 Million is a post from: How To Get Backlinks To Your Site

Some companies and individuals appear to attract links without really trying. Others struggle and never break through to the point of building links at increasing velocity.

We’ve shared plenty of linkbuilding tactics at Online Marketing Blog, and it’s an ongoing popular topic for search marketers. In addition to direct and mechanical tactics, becoming a link magnet in your own right is an indirect yet powerful strategy to attract organic links.

The rise of the social web has set the idea of personal branding on fire. By developing a brand for yourself, your company and even the individuals within it, you can build an army of advocates ready to link to everything you post.

How can you develop your personal brand so that you only have to publish that sticky idea and links occur as a byproduct?

During SES New York 2010, Greg Jarboe, President & Co-Founder of SEO PR, moderated a notable group of linkerati:

• Rand Fishkin, CEO, SEOmoz.org
• Jennifer Slegg, CEO, JenSense.com
• Aaron Kahlow, Chairman & Founder, Online Marketing Summit

Jennifer Slegg, CEO, JenSense.com

Jen started things off by talking about the building blocks to creating a personal brand with the goal of link magnetism:

First, ask yourself, “What an I doing it for?”

• Rankings
• Clients
• Job opportunities
• Stardust
• Recognition

Figure out why you want to be a link magnet before anything else.

Next, consider your name.

Personal name

• Is your name fairly unique? If not, you may have a difficult time building a personal brand.
• Are there others with similar names? If so, there is the potential for confusion, and you’ll want to consider developing a handle.
• Is the domain name available? This is vital for your blog, and you’ll want your domain name to be your personal brand if possible.
• If you use a handle, does it narrow your focus too much? I.E., if your name was “content queen,” you may limit your appeal.

Company name

• This is potentially problematic in that you and the company brand are forever merged. This can create potential company marketing conflicts in the future.
• Consider using a spin on a company name (i.e., GoogleGuy or Company CEO).
• Remember company name and your name will always be tied together. What if the company gets sold?

Setting the groundwork

Whatever name you go with, register it everywhere. Then, set up your blog on your site – everyone who wants to develop a personal brand needs a blog. Create a unique design/logo and ensure it is just as brandable as the name you use.

Define your personality

People link to personalities as much as quality information. What do you want to be?

Helpful – Great way to start if participating in forums is key to your branding. If you show knowledge, people will follow and then link to you.

Informative/expert – The most important thing is, you need to know your stuff. If you don’t consider yourself expert quality, start researching and learning now. You’ll get called out if you post bad info. Try these ideas:

• Guest blogs
• Speak/participate in events (offline/online)
• Answer questions via Twitter

Controversial – Take the opposite stance on any popular industry topic. If everyone is singing praise about a company, look at the negative. If a company makes a move that everyone loves or hates, take the unpopular view and run with it. But tread carefully – you could develop a reputation for being “anti” or “pro” on a topic.

Being a jerk – This is very difficult to pull off, but those who are successful can be extremely popular. This gets you noticed, but you live with the rep. It could prevent you from being an authority. So if that’s your goal, this route may not be the way to go.

The key point to remember is the entire world is a stage – everything you say or do will help or hurt your brand.

Rand Fishkin, CEO, SEOmoz.org

Rand started his presentation with the notion that link magnets are the new paradigm of link acquisition.

How is a link magnet different than linkbait?

Linkbait = Content that’s built to attract links (but not necessarily reward their creation).

Link magnets emotionally or physically reward the linker, creating an incentive.

Why is this so powerful? Overall, the web has become jaded. Previously, we used to get plenty of legitimate blog posts/links due to great content. Now this has shifted. With a great post, we’ll get tons of Facebook status updates, Tweets, etc.

There was a golden era of linkbait where people loved and supported great content. Now we’re too sensitive; “The fish have figured out that there is a hook attached to our content.” This suspicion has created difficulties in attracting linkbait.

But people still link when it benefits them. Savvy marketers are rewarding linkers in non-financial ways.

For example, Yelp created a digital badge version of “People Love Us on Yelp” that restaurants could use on their websites. This made the most relevant pages on the web link back to the Yelp site.

There is the notion that great content earns links. According to Rand, this is a myth. You could post the absolute best piece of content on a subject on the web, and people will not link to it just because it’s good. It’s like saying, “The best ideas in politics are supported by the voters.” Instead, it’s branding and marketing to sell a concept that has an impact on where content goes.

The new bait is an emotional and obvious hook. Linking to content should do something for the people linking to it. Play to a linker’s psychology:

• Self-fulfillment
• Satisfaction
• Efficiency
• Effectiveness

One of the most beautiful things about the concept of link magnetism is that much of the time, especially when it’s embeddable, you have control of targeted links and anchor text.

You need a strategy for promotion & spreading of links. You need to create a distribution mechanism and a way to attract people, or it will never work.

Examples of great link magnetism:

Vimeo – When you click the “share” button on a video, it creates the overlay box to copy-paste the code and share it. By embedding the video, Vimeo also gains three links.

OKCupid – They create trends all the time using their data to help market the site. Their blog is frequently an example of both linkbait and a link magnet. By sharing the information on the blog, users are rewarded by sharing something interesting.

Techmeme – When they launched the learderboard, more than 30 of the top 100 bloggers linked to them.

Simply Hired – They publish the data/stats/salaries behind jobs. It is both interesting and useful data that frequently acts as a magnet for media.

Aaron Kahlow, Founder, Online Marketing Summit

Aaron decided to be interactive and not give a presentation. He gave just a few tips before turning over the panel to an audience Q&A.

Content – If you don’t have great content, there’s no reason anyone should link to you.

Personas/branding – If you don’t have a personality or aren’t comfortable with yours, you’ll never form the affinity necessary to gain links.

Social – Every time you create something, ask yourself if your colleagues/constituents would share.

Friends – Make sure you build relationships with those who are link magnets.

Suggestions:

1. Decide who your target market is, and then address them appropriately. For example, you can’t “geek out” and get technical if your audience is not.

2. Make sharing simple and easy. For example, if your audience is active on Twitter, leverage the Tweetmeme button on your blog.

3. When you find things you like, say something about it and link to it as opposed to always linking to the source.

© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. |
How to Become a Link Magnet – SES NY 2010 |
11 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

How to Become a Link Magnet – SES NY 2010 is a post from: How To Get Backlinks To Your Site

By embracing these two philosophies as part of their digital marketing DNA, small businesses can carve out a search marketing strategy that runs circles around larger competitors.

Today, we’ll briefly explore why creativity and agility are advantages small businesses have for search marketing, and some quick tips to activate each.

Creativity as a search marketing advantage

Large = more risk management – Small = creativity/individuality can shine

Larger corporations are naturally risk-averse. Most won’t create blogs that take sides on issues, create controversy or linkbait, push the envelope with snarky ideas or allow shining examples of individuality. Which is why individuals and smaller companies have a continued advantage: there are far less stakeholders so it’s easier to sell creative, controversial or compelling ideas. The more creative your content is, the more editorially earned, organic links you’ll attract from the web community that content builds.

Tips to activate for SEO benefit:

Develop creative linkbait – small, creative groups have the perfect environment to brainstorm linkbait. Where larger companies will mostly follow proven archetypes, a small business can break the mold with clever, catchy and outside the box linkbait ideas. It’s an opportunity to create the kind of linkbait social web influencers are looking for but larger competitors do not understand. By embracing this it’s possible to outpace those who can only engage in manual/mechanical linkbuilding efforts because the content they are working with is dry.

Create controversy – success in small businesses comes from dedicated team members passionate about their industry of choice. Due to this passion, they will naturally have strong feelings about the industry they are in. Why not turn that passion loose on the web to attract others who feel the same? It’s going to be more authentic, let you leverage an angle larger competitors can’t or won’t use, and more closely connect with an audience. Even those who disagree with you play into this strategy, because as they respond to you in droves, they bring an influx of links and referral traffic. Individuals in your niche are dominating the SERPs by leveraging this approach and it’s an opportunity if your small business can artfully direct controversy.

Leverage a creative CMS - where large competitors are stuck using SEO-unfriendly CMS platforms, your small business can take advantage of cheap/free SEO-friendly online publishing tools like WordPress. Creative web developers can turn WordPress into an entire CMS to power your site at an extremely reasonable cost. If you need something more powerful, a CMS like Expression Engine is both affordable and natively search engine friendly. Small businesses have a choice where larger companies frequently get locked into complex systems or dated technologies.

Agility as a search marketing advantage

Larger = slower moving – Small = the advantage of speed and agility

Agility isn’t just a factor for influencing the social web. It’s an effective way for a small businesses to create an SEO strategy disruptive to competitors. Because larger corporations naturally have complex layers of approval processes, lawyers and committees, smaller businesses have an opportunity to exploit this by being first. Many small businesses try to act like large corporations, however this is not embracing the advantage possible by being able to turn on a dime.

Tips to activate for SEO benefit:

Flip your mindset about web content from formal to improvisational – particularly with content published through a social channel such as a blog.  According to the recent TopRank Marketing survey on blogging and SEO 94% of bloggers reported seeing measurable SEO benefits from blogging within 12 months. A majority see benefit, since more content  equals more hooks in the water for search engines. Data from Hitwise showing search phrases are getting longer reinforces this, showing you should feed the tail now more than ever. By having an agile content development process, smaller companies can and do outpace larger competitors who have more resources, but can’t get out of their own way.

Embrace personal brands – when a company embraces their team members having personal brands, this will as a by-product provide a search marketing advantage. For example: in interviews, on their own blogs and through their own exposure, a company and the individual both benefit since both parties frequently get mentioned/linked together. It’s a win-win situation. Where larger corporations use their many partners as an advantage for links, small businesses can encourage and embrace their passionate, trusted team members to develop personal brands in their industry.

Break news – as we’ve noted previously in social media marketing applications (and also discussed by Brian Clark at Copyblogger): every company is now a media company. By breaking news right along with media, you’re going to attract links and referral traffic. Instead of relying on external entities for attention, your company will start to become a trusted source as its own brand of media. To embrace this in a way that matters, agility is essential.

The more small businesses take advantage of their ability to be more creative and agile than larger competitors, the more their online content marketing and SEO programs will succeed.

What other advantages do you think small businesses have for search marketing?

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2010. |
Two Biggest Advantages of Small Businesses SEO |
25 comments | http://www.toprankblog.com

Two Biggest Advantages of Small Businesses SEO is a post from: How To Get Backlinks To Your Site

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You will get details on how we put to work the ideas and strategies we share with you via our Newsletter, and yes, only subscribers are privy to our SECRETS.

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Newsletter is a post from: How To Get Backlinks To Your Site

In your quest for finding new trusted links, it can be distressful when you run into the mental roadblock of where to search next. We all face the question, Where do I go next to secure high-quality links?

In this week’s column, we will explore different ways to find links in a round about manner, while maintaining the focus on quality trusted links.

Finding Trusted Sites Through Google

Those of you who are acquainted with some of my specific tactics know that I’m a huge advocate of finding sites to get links from using Google search. The reason for this is plain and simple. If a site is turning up high in search results in Google, it is most likely a trusted site. If the site is ranking particularly well, it might be one of those highly trusted sites that can really give a remarkable boost in rankings to the sites it links to.

At the same time, always using Google can be tedious. Especially as the quality of the search results erode the further down you drill into the SERPs. The question remains, How do you find good links from sites that are most likely trusted by Google?

Finding Trusted Sites Through Industry Leaders

There are other ways to find good links and know the site is probably trusted in Google. One way is to explore what sites the trusted Web sites are linking out to. Perhaps Forbes.com will not link to your business. At the same time, getting links from the sites that Forbes links out to will be a more reasonable endeavor for most.

This method of link building will also help to establish your site in trusted linking neighborhoods and associations. When search engines are mining linking data for patterns, it will be apparent your site is associated with other highly trusted sites for your industry.

More Ways to Find Trusted Site Links

Following are a few more suggestions for securing trusted site links, including online publications and journals, old directories, college and government resource pages, industry bloggers, and top ranking sites.

• Online Publications and Journals. Investigate the sites that industry and national publications covering your industry are linking to. As mentioned, you may not be able to get a link from Forbes, but you can get links from the sites it links out to. Also, check to see if these publications have a business directory or classifieds section with clean links.
• Old Directories. Find old human-edited directories that have been around since the 90s. Explore the sites they are linking out to and see if it makes sense to get them to link to your site. Remember the important vertical and niche directories. Often, these are well researched by human editors who are experts in their field.
• College and Government Resource Pages. Find those links pages on college and government sites. (Yes, contrary to some rumors, those links pages were made for people, are well researched, and still have value!) These can be a gold mine for finding high-quality sites to get links from. As with directories, try to find those pages that have been around since the 90s. That will be more of a trust signal than a new page created in the last year.
• Industry Associations and Non-Profits. These sites tend to have very high-quality backlinks and even links from your competition. Explore the sites they are linking to in articles, press releases, directories, and in the classifieds section.
• Bloggers. Find the leading bloggers for your industry and then keep track of the sites they are linking out to. Soon it will be apparent there are certain sites they all regularly link to. These are the sites to target first.
• Top Ranking Sites. Do an analysis to identify the sites that the top-ranking sites for your keywords are linking out to. While your direct competition probably won’t give you a link, the sites they are linking to will. Pay close attention to certain linking patterns. Do a number of these top-ranking sites link to the same resource or industry site? If so, then you definitely want to get a link from those sites. In a round about way, your competition will be helping you to rank higher.

One of the great benefits of this approach is it puts your site in a linking neighborhood of highly trusted sites. This will boost your trust profile and provide additional credibility in the eyes of the search engines. Remember, at its essence, Google is a data mining company; it is looking for patterns. This is just a way to reverse-engineer certain linking patterns.

Tags: how to get back links, backlinks wheel

Reverse Engineering Linking Patterns to Create Link Equity is a post from: How To Get Backlinks To Your Site

algorithm: The technology that a search engine uses to deliver results to a query. Search engines utilize several algorithms in tandem to deliver a page of search results or keyword-targeted search ads.

anchor text: The clickable text part of a hyperlink. The text usually gives visitors or search engines important information on what the page being linked to is about.

click through rate (CTR): The rate (expressed in a percentage) at which users click on an ad. This is calculated by dividing the total number of clicks by the total number of ad impressions. CTR is an important metric for Internet marketers to measure the performance of an ad campaign.

content network: A group of Web sites that agree to show ads on their site, served by an ad network, in exchange for a share of the revenue generated by those ads. For example: Google AdSense or the Yahoo Publisher Network.

contextual advertising: Advertising that is targeted to a Web page based on the page’s content, keywords, or category. Ads in most content networks are targeted contextually.

cost per action (CPA): A form of advertising where payment is dependent upon an action that a user performs as a result of the ad. The action could be making a purchase, signing up for a newsletter, or asking for a follow-up call. An advertiser pays a set fee to the publisher based on the number of visitors who take action. Many affiliate programs use the CPA model.

cost per click (CPC): Also called Pay per Click (PPC). A performance-based advertising model where the advertiser pays a set fee for every click on an ad. The majority of text ads sold by search engines are billed under the CPC model.

cost per thousand (CPM): An ad model that charges advertisers every time an ad is displayed to a user, whether the user clicks on the ad or not. The fee is based on every 1,000 ad impressions (M is the Roman numeral for 1,000). Most display ads, such as banner ads, are sold by CPM.

geo-targeting: Delivery of ads specific to the geographic location of the searcher. Geo-targeting allows the advertiser to specify where ads will or won’t be shown based on the searcher’s location, enabling more localized and personalized results.

Googlebot: Google uses several user-agents to crawl and index content in the Google.com search engine. Googlebot describes all Google spiders. All Google bots begin with “Googlebot”; for example, Googlebot-Mobile: crawls pages for Google’s mobile index; Googlebot-Image: crawls pages for Google’s image index.

inbound link: An inbound link is an hyperlink to a particular Web page from an outside site, bringing traffic to that Web page. Inbound links are an important element that most search engine algorithms use to measure the popularity of a Web page.

invisible web: A term that refers to the vast amount of information on the web that isn’t indexed by search engines. Coined in 1994 by Dr. Jill Ellsworth.

keyword: A word or phrase entered into a search engine in an effort to get the search engine to return matching and relevant results. Many Web sites offer advertising targeted by keywords, so an ad will only show when a specific keyword is entered.

link bait: Editorial content, often sensational in nature, posted on a Web page and submitted to social media sites in hopes of building inbound links from other sites. Or, as Matt Cutts of Google says, “something interesting enough to catch people’s attention.”

link building: The process of getting quality Web sites to link to your Web site, in order to improve search engine rankings. Link building techniques can include buying links, reciprocal linking, or entering barter arrangements.

meta tags: Information placed in the HTML header of a Web page, providing information that is not visible to browsers, but can be used in varying degrees by search engines to index a page. Common meta tags used in search engine marketing are title, description, and keyword tags.

pay per click (PPC): See Cost per Click (CPC).

quality score: A score assigned by search engines that is calculated by measuring an ad’s clickthrough rate, analyzing the relevance of the landing page, and considering other factors used to determine the quality of a site and reward those of higher quality with top placement and lower bid requirements. Some factors that make up a quality score are historical keyword performance, the quality of an ad’s landing page, and other undisclosed attributes. All of the major search engines now use some form of quality score in their search ad algorithm.

return on investment (ROI): The amount of money an advertiser earns from their ads compared to the amount of money the advertiser spends on their ads.

search advertising: Also called Paid Search. An advertiser bids for the chance to have their ad display when a user searches for a given keyword. These are usually text ads, which are displayed above or to the right of the algorithmic (organic) search results. Most search ads are sold by the PPC model, where the advertiser pays only when the user clicks on the ad or text link.

search engine marketing (SEM): The process of building and marketing a site with the goal of improving its position in search engine results. SEM includes both search engine optimization (SEO) and search advertising, or paid search.

search engine optimization (SEO): The process of making a site and its content highly relevant for both search engines and searchers. SEO includes technical tasks to make it easier for search engines to find and index a site for the appropriate keywords, as well as marketing-focused tasks to make a site more appealing to users. Successful search marketing helps a site gain top positioning for relevant words and phrases.

search engine results pages (SERPs): The page searchers see after they’ve entered their query into the search box. This page lists several Web pages related to the searcher’s query, sorted by relevance. Increasingly, search engines are returning blended search results, which include images, videos, and results from specialty databases on their SERPs.

social media: A category of sites that is based on user participation and user-generated content. They include social networking sites like LinkedIn or Facebook, social bookmarking sites like Del.icio.us, social news sites like Digg or Reddit, and other sites that are centered on user interaction.

spider: A search engine spider is a program that crawls the Web, visiting Web pages to collect information to add to or update a search engine’s index. The major search engines on the Web all have such a program, which is also known as a “crawler” or a “bot.”

title tag: An HTML meta tag with text describing a specific Web page. The title tag should contain strategic keywords for the page, since many search engines pay special attention to the title text when indexing pages. The title tag should also make sense to humans, since it is usually the text link to the page displayed in search engine results.

universal search: Also known as blended, or federated search results, universal search pulls data from multiple databases to display on the same page. Results can include images, videos, and results from specialty databases like maps and local information, product information, or news stories.

Web 2.0: A term that refers to a supposed second generation of Internet-based services. These usually include tools that let people collaborate and share information online, such as social networking sites, wikis, communication tools, and folksonomies.

Glossary is a post from: How To Get Backlinks To Your Site

In this article, we’ll explore some general terms and then dive into some practical tips. In addition to this article, you should also subscribe to our Internet Marketing Newsletter for more in-depth articles on this subject.

Link Popularity

Let’s start by defining some terms. Link popularity is a measurement of all the links coming into your site (or backlinks), as well as a determination of the quality of those links.

Basically, search engines are saying that if your site is any good, other sites should link to it. If nobody links to your site then it has little relevance. The more links you have, the more “votes” you have on how popular your site it. Thus, the act of link building can be likened to campaigning.

All search engines factor link popularity into their algorithms, but they calculate it differently. As a general rule, Google is more interested in the quality of the links, while Yahoo is more interested in the total number of links to your site.

A good way to check this out is by going to Marketleap. Click on “link popularity check,” type in your site address (and maybe your competitor’s site), and see the results.

PageRank

Google uses PageRank to determine the quality of a given site measured on a scale of 0-10, with 10 being the highest. To see this number, you can install the Google Toolbar or use any of several browser add-ons. From Google’s perspective, having one link from a site that has a large PageRank counts more than many sites that have a lower rank.

A page that Google has already rewarded with a decent PageRank (or PR for short) is sometimes called an authority page. Once you have a PR of 1, your site has some power. When your pages achieve a PR of 3, 4, or 5, you have “link juice” to pass on to other pages.

On-site SEO

The allocation of PageRank from one page to another within your site is sometimes called on-site SEO. An advanced form of the discipline is known as “PageRank siloing,” or “PageRank sculpting.” If you have a Web page with good PR, you can use that page to get other pages higher in the search engine rankings for specific keyword phrases.

While off-site optimization plays a larger role in gaining natural organic traffic, you can still see between 20 and 30 percent boosts in rankings by properly optimizing your pages with on-page factors. We’ll cover off-site optimization in our Newsletter.

Internal Linking Structure

Start with your title and header tags (for more info on this, refer to “Site Structure 101, Part 1“). The area to focus on is your internal linking structure. Basically, you want to link stronger pages to weaker pages of your site.

This concept of getting backlinks to a page internally is sometimes overshadowed by trying to acquire backlinks from external pages. Why not use the same concept and apply it to your internal linking structure and reap the rewards?

Nofollow Tag

Now, let’s say you have a shopping cart or link on your site that leads to a page that you don’t care to send link juice to. You can add a nofollow tag to the end of the link in your HTML code. This conserves your link authority and applies it to the links where you want to pass authority. A link using the nofollow tag looks like this: <a href=”http://searchenginewatch.com” rel=”nofollow”>a no-followed link</a>

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Backlink Automation is a post from: How To Get Backlinks To Your Site