Search Engine Optimization A to Z
When those of us in
search marketing talk and write about link building, we tend to use terms that
we think are very commonly understood. We bandy around phrases like "CTR
on page 1 of the SERPs is better than on page 2" and "god help me if
my content gets deindexed."
However, for the new
guys and gals out there (and that includes people who are both learning about
building links and clients who seek link services) this link building guide
will help define and explain some of the more common link building terms, from
A to Z.
A – AC Rank, Actual PageRank, Anchor Text
AC Rank [A Citation Rank]
Majestic SEO's measure of a page's importance, on a scale of 0
to 15. It can be considered an alternative to Google's PageRank and is used in
various link tool programs. The AC Rank stands for A Citation Rank.
The Actual PageRank
Google's value for
your page, and it's not what you see on a tool or your toolbar, as that isn't
updated frequently enough to reflect the true value.
Anchor text
The content inside of the anchor element ( < a>anchor
text < /a>) and is designed to give you an idea of what the content
you are pointing to is about. The anchor element contains an href attribute
where the target of the link is designated. The anchor element is, many times,
called an anchor tag.
B – Backlink Profile, Bait, Bing, Blekko, Blog Network, Broken
Links
Backlink profile
A term used to
describe the links coming into a site from sources other than the site itself.
Bait [link bait]
Content that is
specifically designed in order to naturally attract links.
Bing
The most popular
alternative to Google's search engine at the current time, owned by Microsoft.
Blekko
Also a great
alternative to Google and prides itself on being a spam-free search engine. It
has some great features that can help you when link building.
Blog networks
Exactly what they sound like: networked blogs. Their importance
in link building has recently been compromised as several high-profile and
large networks (e.g., BuildMyRank) have been devalued.
Broken link building
The process of finding
links that hit 404 pages on other sites, contacting the sites with those links,
and asking to have the link pointed to your own resource.
C – Content, Conversion, CTR
Content
The subject matter, in
text and images, of your site and its pages. Content is also used to describe
anything that your brand produces, whether it's a guest post on another site,
an article that you distribute, a press release, or an infographic.
Conversion
A term used to
describe an event where a user performs a certain action that is valuable to
you as a site owner. Some webmasters view a contact email as a conversion, for
example, while others simply view an actual sale as one.
CTR [click through rate]
A term associated with
PPC but becoming more popular in the general SEO vernacular as some speculate
that it may become more important in ranking. Your CTR is the number of times
your listing is shown (triggered by a search and referred to as impressions
with PPC) divided by the number of times it's clicked upon, calculated as a
percentage.
D – Deep Link Ratio, Deindexed, Directories, Drain Rank, Disavow
Links
Deep link ratio
The percentage of
links that go to your subpages vs. just your home page. Many different views
abound about what number is ideal.
Deindexed
Refers to being thrown
out of a search engine and removed from their database.
Directories
One of the most
consistent ways that people have built links throughout the years. There are
paid and free versions, directories that accept all submissions and many that
are quite picky about what they'll accept, and while they have fallen out of
fashion somewhat recently, they are still a valid source of traffic.
Disavow Links Tool
Use this to tell Google or Bing which links you want
them to ignore in your backlink profile. This tool came about after an outcry
from webmasters who were punished for incoming links that hurt them but that
they could not control.
Drain rank
This refers to the
idea that linking out to other sites drains your PageRank.
E – Equity, External Link
Equity
The group of links
pointing to your site at a point in time.
External links
Links that go from
your site to someone else's site. Some people nofollow them in order to prevent
them from receiving any link juice.
F – Followed Link, Footer Link, Footprint
Followed links
Links that are allowed
to send link juice to their targets. For ranking purposes, these are the kind
of links that you want. A link without a rel=nofollow is a followed link.
Footer links
Links that appear in
the footer of a site, generally on every page. These were originally so abused
that many SEOs now consider a footer link to be very poor. However, there are
still legitimate footer links.
Footprints
Ways of identifying
patterns that you're using to build links. For example, if 75 percent of your
links come from non-U.S.-hosted sites and are all on blogrolls, that's a big
footprint. A "natural" backlink profile should not have many obvious
footprints due to its organic nature, therefore having easily identifiable
footprints is a potential bad sign for your site. However, you can have a good
footprint too (such as if you had a lot of great and authoritative links from
respected news sources because your site was constantly being cited there.)
G – Google, Guest Posting, Graph
Google
So powerful, it's now
a verb. No matter what anyone says, almost all of us market to what Google
wants.
Graph [link graph]
Generally speaking,
the link graph is a representation of links for sites. It can be thought of as
being the "normal" for a niche of sites but may also refer to links
for a certain market sector/keyword/locality/etc. You can use a link graph for
competitive research to define what everyone else is doing and see where you
stand in relation to that. A complicated thing to define, as it's not a
discrete concept.
Guest posting
A popular way of
building links and creating new content. Many sites actively recruit for new
guest posters and some are amenable to the idea when contacted. The whole idea
of a guest post is to raise exposure for a brand on another site, but it's
quickly becoming a spammy and abused method. However, when done correctly,
guest posts can bring you some fantastic traffic.
H – Hashtag, Hidden Link, Href
Hashtags
Widely used on social
network platforms in order to associate a tweet/comment with something. They
begin with #. On Twitter, hashtags are used to help trend certain ideas. For
link building purposes, hashtag searches on Twitter are useful for finding good
potential link targets.
Hidden link
A link that is intentionally
coded in order to not appear as a link. It can be hidden using a text color
that is the same as the background, placed inside an irrelevant image, font
size 0, etc. These are viewed as manipulative and deceptive and can cause
Google to remove your site from their index.
href
An HTML attribute that
lists the target of a link. An example is < a
href="http://www.w3schools.com">Visit W3Schools < /a>.
I – Image Link, Internal Link, Inbound Link
Image link
An image that is
linked to a target. Image links are part of a natural link profile and can pass
link juice, but they do not include anchor text as regular text links do.
Instead, they use an alt text (which is also used by screenreaders) to give
information about the link target.
Inbound links
Links coming to your
site from a site other than your own. The anchor text of an inbound link
supposedly tells the search engines what your page is about, thus helping you
rank for that term.
Internal Link
A link from one page
of your site to another page on your site.
J – Juice
Juice
A term used to
describe the benefit received from a link, also referred to as link juice.
K – Keyword
Keywords
Words or phrases for
which you want to rank in the search engines. They should be present in your
copy and in links pointing to your site.
L – Link Profile
Link profile
The collective group
of sites that link to you.
M – MozRank
MozRank
A method of measuring
the link popularity of a webpage by SEO software provider Moz. Becoming a
more important metric by the day, almost akin to PageRank.
N – Nofollowed Link
nofollowed link
These are indicated by
placing a rel="nofollow" into the link code. A nofollow is designed
to tell Google that the link should not pass value to the target. Nofollows are
also used internally for PageRank sculpting and to indicate that a link is
sponsored/paid. Nofollow links are not good for ranking purposes but they can
be good for traffic.
O – Outbound Linking
Outbound linking
The practice of
linking from your site to another. Many people nofollow these links in an
effort to conserve link juice, but that practice is becoming a bit more frowned
upon recently.
P – PageRank, Paid Links, Panda, Penguin
PageRank
Google's measure of a
page's importance. There's a difference in what you can see as your PageRank
and what Google thinks it is.
Paid links
Refers to links that
are bought and placed on a website, with the intention of helping the buyer's
website rank better. When not indicated as such, are a violation of
Google's guidelines and are a risky tactic. Paid links can be problematic both
for the site selling them and for the webmaster buying them as both practices
can get you penalized. If a link has been purchased, it should be
indicated as such with a nofollow according to Google.
Panda
A Google algorithm update that can make grown men cry. It first
struck fear into our hearts in February 2011 and was an effort to force higher
quality sites higher up in the SERPs. After the first update, we've seen
several more. There's way, way too much to go into here but you can read all
the SEW articles about it here.
Penguin
A new search algorithm designed to detect, and boot out, spam.
Like Panda, it made us cry and several sites were "accidentally"
affected by it, so badly that there's actually a form to fill out if you think
you're one of those accidental cases. Again, there's too much to go into so
read about it here.
Q – Query
Query
Simply a question that
you ask a search engine or a database, whether or not it's in the form of a
question. We refer to queries in terms of how many times someone searches for a
keyphrase, and in manners related to seeing where you rank in an engine.
R – Rank, Reciprocal Links, Referrer, Rel, Robots, Rot
Rank
Where you show up on
the SERPs.
Reciprocal linking
The process of linking
to someone who links to you. It's a common way of requesting a link (i.e., I'll
link to you if you will link to me).
Referrer
In link terms, a
referrer is something that sent a visitor to your site. That could be a search
engine or a link from a website. It's the previous place a user was before they
hit your site.
Rel
An element that gives
the role of a link. Current uses critical for link building are to say whether
a link should be followed (the default) or nofollowed (rel=nofollow).
Robots
Search engine bots,
but robots can be slang for the robots.txt file, which gives instructions to
engines about what to do with your site. If you don't want certain pages to be
indexed, you block them in the robots file. There are also meta robots tags ( <
META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW">) A
robots.txt file is also found at url.com/robots.txt.
Rot
A term used to
describe what happens when there are links pointing to pages that are no longer
available and not properly redirected or handled.
S – SERPs, Sitewides, Social Signals, Spam
SERPs [search engine results pages]
The pages Google,
Bing, and others show you after you've performed a search.
Sitewide links
Links that are on
every page of a site. You commonly see them in sidebars and footers, and while
they once were a pretty easy way to get good rankings quickly, they're no
longer viewed so positively. You do tend to find them in almost any backlink
profile though, as they are part of a natural profile.
Social signals
Signs that your site/post/article
is doing well socially, on the main social network platforms. Social signals
are thought to be an ever-increasing method of measuring importance in the
search engines and may become a bigger part of algorithms.
Spam
Jokingly referred to as
being "sites positioned above mine", but is defined as being anything
that clutters the web and makes for a poor user experience. Spam links are
considered to be links that are irrelevant and low-quality but pursued simply
to improve rankings.
T – Toolbar Pagerank, Twitter
Toolbar PageRank [TBPR]
The number from 0 to
10 that you can see that reflects the most recently updated idea of how
important your site is to Google. It is not Google's true value of your site.
Twitter
A social media
platform where users communicate through 140 characters or less. It's becoming
more and more useful for finding good information as it happens.
U - Underline, Unnatural Links, URL
Underline
To signify most links,
the linked keywords will be underlined. Links are commonly coded with
underlining; style manipulations that do not underline a link can be considered
to be a hidden link.
Unnatural link warnings
Like lice, nobody wants to see them. They are messages received
in Google's Webmaster Tools that indicate that some potentially unnatural links have been detected for your site.
URL [Uniform Resource Locator]
URLs have several elements that are important for SEO purposes.
The domain name can give clues about the theme of your site and your brand and
should be chosen carefully, as overly-optimized domain names were supposedly
downgraded in the EMD update. File names should also be named carefully so that your URLs
are SEO-friendly.
V – Velocity
Velocity
Your link growth
speed. It can be measured with Link Research Tools.
W – Webmaster Tools
Webmaster Tools
Top search engines Google and Bing offer a free platform
that you can use to keep an eye on your site. It can be a first line of defense
when you notice any negative changes with rankings and traffic.
X – Xenu
Xenu's Link Sleuth
One of those old-school things that anyone who's been involved
in SEO for more than a few years probably loves. Xenu's Link Sleuth identifies broken links on sites.
Y – Yahoo
Yahoo
The other search
engine. Many link builders will refer to being listed in the Yahoo Directory,
which used to be one of those things that we all recommended. Today, Bing
provides the search results you see on Yahoo.
Z – Zzzzz
Zzzzz
Sleep, which you
definitely need if you're going to link build. It's tiring work!
