The Importance of Backlinks

In Search Engine Optimization, you've come across the term "backlink" at least once. For those of you new to SEO, you may be wondering what a backlink is, and why they are important. Backlinks have become so important to the scope of Search Engine Optimization, that they have become some of the main building blocks to good SEO.

Backlinks are links that are directed towards your website. Also knows as Inbound links (IBL's). The number of backlinks is an indication of the popularity or importance of that website. Backlinks are important for SEO because some search engines, especially Google, will give more credit to websites that have a good number of quality backlinks, and consider those websites more relevant than others in their results pages for a search query.

When search engines calculate the relevance of a site to a keyword, they consider the number of QUALITY inbound links to that site. So we should not be satisfied with merely getting inbound links, it is the quality of the inbound link that matters.

A search engine considers the content of the sites to determine the QUALITY of a link. When inbound links to your site come from other sites, and those sites have content related to your site, these inbound links are considered more relevant to your site. If inbound links are found on sites with unrelated content, they are considered less relevant. The higher the relevance of inbound links, the greater their quality.....Read More

SEO Terms and definitions

SEO - Search Engine Optimization. The act of altering a web site so that it does well in organic listings of search engines. A service I give away for free.

Affiliate Marketing - A marketing program in which an advertiser pays an affiliate for driving event-driven traffic to their site. An event is primarily completing an order on the advertisers site but could simply be some sort of lead generation. Affiliate gets paid a commission based on order or lead. See affiliate marketing programs.

AJAX - Asynchronous JavaScript and XML. A way to design web pages that are more end-user friendly and respond more quickly when the user requests data. A good example of AJAX in practice is Google Maps.

Alt Tag - An HTML attribute typically used within the IMG tag to provide alternate text when images cannot be displayed.

301 Redirect - Method of redirecting an old webpage to a new location. More simply, to display another web page for the web address that you are trying to visit. 301 implies that the move is permanent (as opposed to temporary, etc.)

Anchor Tag - An HTML tag that allows you to create a link to another document or web page or to a bookmark within the current web page.

B2B - Business To Business. Marketing strategy which involves the transaction of goods or services between businesses.

B2C - Business To Consumer. Transaction of goods or services directly to the end consumer.

Backlink Importance - Links originating from one website and pointing to another website or web page. See link building.

Black Hat SEO - The use of unaccepted or frowned upon SEO practices in order to get higher rankings and more traffic. Use at the risk of being dropped from the engines or at least being removed from high rankings. More on black hat seo.

Blogs Value - "Web Log". An online journal of sorts.

Bot - Programs written to scour the web automatically for various reasons (to index web pages, for spamming purposes, etc.) aka web robots, web crawlers, internet bots, spiders.

Cloaking Definition - Showing a different web page to a search engine spider than what is normally seen. Method typically used by spammers.

Conversion - Web traffic that fulfills a pre-established goal, such as purchasing of a specific product or filling out a registration form, etc.

CPA - Cost Per Acquisition. Fee paid to an affiliate marketer for driving a particular action or event on your site (either a sale or lead generation, etc.).

CPC - Cost Per Click. Typical rate of measuring the expense involved with acquiring web traffic.

CSS - Cascading Style Sheets. A language used to describe how a given page or web site will look. Used to control font styles, graphical layouts, color, etc.

CTR - Click Through Rate. Standard method of measuring the success of an online advertising campaign. Calculated by dividing the number of users who clicked on an ad by the number of times the ad was shown (also known as an impression). (Wikipedia)

Dynamic Website - A website whose content is not fixed. What is shown on a page is based on user-selected activities and/or programmatically driven.

Google PageRank tricks - Google PageRank™ is a numeric value that represents how important a page is on the web.

SERP - Search Engine Results Page. The listing of web pages that a search engine shows a user once they've entered a search value.

Keywords - Words that are used by search engines to determine the topic of a given web page.

Keyword Density - How often a keyword or keyword phrase is used on a given web page.

Landing Page - A content-rich web page geared around a particular topic, product or conversion goal. Typically a main navigation item of a website.

Latent Semantic Indexing - Or LSI for short, is an algorithm used by Google (and possibly other search engines) to determine how words are related to each other in the context of a web page. An article about "cookies" might contain words such as chocolate, sugar, flour or dough for example.

Meta Data / Meta Tags - Web page specific, descriptive information that helps a search engine identify the purpose and topic of a given web page. Common meta data include a web page's description and keyword listing.

Organic Search - Search results in a search engine that are not paid advertisements. The results that come up naturally based on their indexing within a search engine. Organic search results are good. We all want to come up on top for organic searches using keywords we are optimized for. For example, searching for "george ajazi" will return this website in organic search results.

200 OK - The request has succeeded. The information returned with the response is dependent on the method used in the request.

301 Moved Permanently - The requested resource has been assigned a new permanent URI and any future references to this resource SHOULD use one of the returned URIs.

302 Found - The requested resource resides temporarily under a different URI. Since the redirection might be altered on occasion, the client SHOULD continue to use the Request-URI for future requests.

304 Not Modified - If the client has performed a conditional GET request and access is allowed, but the document has not been modified, the server SHOULD respond with this status code.

307 Temporary Redirect - The requested resource resides temporarily under a different URI. Since the redirection MAY be altered on occasion, the client SHOULD continue to use the Request-URI for future requests.

400 Bad Request - The request could not be understood by the server due to malformed syntax. The client SHOULD NOT repeat the request without modifications.

401 Unauthorized - The request requires user authentication. The response MUST include a WWW-Authenticate header field containing a challenge applicable to the requested resource.

403 Forbidden - The server understood the request, but is refusing to fulfill it. Authorization will not help and the request SHOULD NOT be repeated.

404 Not Found - The server has not found anything matching the Request-URI. No indication is given of whether the condition is temporary or permanent.

410 Gone - The requested resource is no longer available at the server and no forwarding address is known. This condition is expected to be considered permanent.

500 Internal Server Error - The server encountered an unexpected condition which prevented it from fulfilling the request.

501 Not Implemented - The server does not support the functionality required to fulfill the request. This is the appropriate response when the server does not recognize the request method and is not capable of supporting it for any resource.

Title Tag - A meta data element that determines the actual "title" of a given webpage. The title is what shows up in the top bar of your browser. It is also the hyperlink that shows in search engine results listings.

TLD - Top Level Domain. The three main domain extensions: .com, .net, .org

peanut butter and jelly sandwichPaid Link Building - Websites who are willing to link back to your site for a fee in order to boost your rankings/weight in the search engines. See link building.

PBJ - Peanut Butter and Jelly sandwich.

PPC - Pay Per Click. Advertising method where an advertiser pays for their ads (which are displayed on a given website) if and only if someone actually clicks on the ad.

Reciprocal Link - The practice of placing a link from website A to website B strictly because website B is linking to website A. I scratch your back, you scratch my back.

Sausage Link - A tasty snack to munch on while building reciprocal links.

Search Engine - Web site whose function is to help users find web pages on any given searched topic.

SEM - Search Engine Marketing. The act of marketing a website via search engines, whether this be improving rank in organic listings, purchasing paid listings or a combination of these and other search engine-related activities.


Spider - Programs written to scour the web automatically for various reasons (to index web pages, for spamming purposes, etc.) aka web robots, web crawlers, bots, internet bots.

Splash Page - Typically an introductory web page (first page seen by a web surfer) that is graphics-heavy. Meant for attention-grabbing purposes only. Not rich in content (if any). Eye candy.

Static Website - A website or web page whose content is fixed (does not change or has to be manually changed).

Supplemental Results - Google's secondary index of web pages it doesn't consider worthy of being in the main index. This concept has been done away with by Google publicly, but I do feel it actually still exists in a not-as-readily-identifiable way.

URL - Uniform Resource Locator. Or, more commonly, a web address.

W3C - World Wide Web Consortium.

White Hat SEO - The use of accepted SEO practices in order to get higher rankings, more traffic, etc.

Learn Basic SEO Techniques

SEO Techniques are a set of specific tasks that would be performed by a Search Engine Optimization Company, when employed by a Client who desires high search engine positions to attract targeted traffic, with the intention of increasing their conversion rates and brand awareness.

Effective Website Optimization should enable the Search Engines to Index a site, utilising the most relevant keywords, related to the content which is promoting the goods and services offered by the Client. Implementing successful On - Off Page SEO Techniques require's an extensive knowledge of logic and a very good understanding of the targeted market sector.

Search Engine Optimization must be focused towards Human visitors in order to achieve good quality traffic and conversion rates. Page Content should be specific, informative and relevant to a search query. Writing relevant, quality content is one of the most important factors or Basic SEO Techniques, which will unlock the doors of your website to real visitors.

A website is a visual and graphic interface to a Company. The web designer will incorporate many skills including graphic design and expert coding to represent the Clients goods and services, to reflect the quality, expertise and brand of the Client. The foundation of strong SEO Techniques should be developed prior to the website design stage by an SEO Specialist. The combination of a professional web designer and SEO professional working in tandem will result in an effective Internet platform, for Search Engine Marketing.

Bsic SEO Techniques

So you want Your website to be on the first page of every Search Engine - SEO Techniques will help You get there! The Techniques on this page will enpower You with the information that will move You towards that goal. Set Your aim high, the sky is the limit! Others have done it, so why can't You -- Search Engine Optimization ( SEO ) is really quite simple!

If You have been putting Basic off page seo optimizing Your website for a higher Search Engine results position, today is a good day to make Your start. on - off page SEO Techniques will make it much easier that You expected!

The following list of SEO Ranking Factors will help you optimize your website so you will get a higher Search Engine Results Position (SERP). Some of the items can be done quickly -- others will take a bit of time.

If you complete all the items on the following list of SEO Techniques, give the Search Engines some time to send out their bots to deep crawl your website, your site traffic will increase. Make sure you are ready for it!

Basic SEO Tips & Techniques

1. Commit yourself to the process. SEO isn’t a one-time event. Search engine algorithms change regularly, so the tactics that worked last year may not work this year. SEO requires a long-term outlook and commitment.

2. Be patient. SEO isn’t about instant gratification. Results often take months to see, and this is especially true the smaller you are, and the newer you are to doing business online.

3. Ask a lot of questions when hiring an SEO company. It’s your job to know what kind of tactics the company uses. Ask for specifics. Ask if there are any risks involved. Then get online yourself and do your own research—about the company, about the tactics they discussed, and so forth.

4. Become a student of SEO. If you’re taking the do-it-yourself route, you’ll have to become a student of SEO and learn as much as you can. Luckily for you, there are plenty of great Web resources (like Search Engine Land) and several terrific books you can read. Aaron Wall’s SEO Book, Jennifer Laycock’s Small Business Guide to Search Engine Marketing, and Search Engine Optimization: An Hour a Day by Jennifer Grappone and Gradiva Couzin are three I’ve read and recommend.

5. Have web analytics in place at the start. You should have clearly defined goals for your SEO efforts, and you’ll need web analytics software in place so you can track what’s working and what’s not...More Read