Articles by topic: SEO glossary

What is a link bait?

link_bait1After writing a previous blog post on our top link building techniques, we have had a lot of people asking about link baiting. So just what exactly is a link bait?  Previously we described it as:

A link bait normally involves creating something on your website that is either useful, humorous, or unique in such a way that people will link to it (a bit like an online viral).

Link baiting can be a very powerful tool for creating links to your website, and although it was once considered a bad practice, it is now a completely legitimate way of naturally building links to your site. Most link baits are normally topical, for example, I’m sure there are many link baits based on Michael Jackson right now as people try to cash in. The window of opportunity for topical link baits can be small, so whatever you decide to do, you need to plan it carefully.  Here are 2 great examples of link baits that I thought were very clever:

1 - George Bush Flash game

There was an incident about 9 months ago where a news reporter took off his shoes and threw them at George Bush during a press conference. Less than 12 hours later, a Flash game had a appeared on the internet where you had to try and hit an animated George Bush by throwing shoes at him, at a cleverly named domain of sock and awe (http://www.sockandawe.com). When I viewed the game, it said that approx 5 million shoes had successfully hit George in the face. The highest possible score you can get is seemingly 99, but most people get an average of 10.  This gives you a good idea about how many visitors the site had in a short amount of time. Checking it today, there have been nearly 97 million hits to George! Looking at the site, I can see that there are 33,000 websites linking to the domain, and it has a Page Rank of 6!  This Page Rank strength is being passed onto the developer websites at the bottom of the page.

2 - Fight Night Round 4 fight prediction

The next example that I liked was by EA Games. EA produce the Fight Night boxing games for XBox 360 and PS3, and there latest game (Fight Night Round 4) was given an extra boost in PR prior to it’s release using a clever link bait on their website, and posted on video sites like YouTube. The developers simulated the fight between Ricky Hatton and Manny Pacquiao one week before the superfight, and posted it online for boxing fans to see. The fight ended with an 11th round KO of Hatton, which was very controversial for British fans. The link was sent around like wildfire which built up a lot of links, but also served to demo the game to many people that hadn’t heard of it before, showcasing the graphics and improved realistic game play.

Hopefully this post has explained what a link bait is, why it is so powerful, and the examples will give you some ideas for possible link baits of your own! To find out more about link baiting, other link building techniques or more about Elevator SEO, simply get in touch!

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ILQ (Inbound Link Quality) definition

ILQ is an acronym for Inbound Link Quality, which is a score calculated by the quality of links to a website. This doesn’t take into account all of your links, instead it simply focuses on Yahoo Directory links (worth 1 point each, but generally you get 15 links from a listing), DMOZ listings (30 points per listing), .edu listings (worth 45 points each) and .gov listings (worth 67 points each).

As you can see, the rating doesn’t take into account links from all kinds of high ranking websites, nor does it take into account the relevance of other inbound links. However, it can prove to be a useful guide.  Here are a few examples of different ILQ scores:

BBC: ILQ score: 1,928,870 | Y! 10,400 | DMOZ 1,920 | edu 39,700 | gov 1,110
CNN: ILQ score: 5,045,390 | Y! 5,190 | DMOZ 520 | edu 106,000 | gov 3,800
Ebay.co.uk ILQ score: 2,767 | Y! 15 | DMOZ 7 | edu 55 | gov 1
Play.com ILQ score: 2,796 | Y! 6 | DMOZ 3 | edu 60 | gov 0

Unsurprisingly:

Google.com ILQ score: 100,166,600 | Y! 600 | DMOZ 638,000 | edu 1,610,000 | gov 128,000

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Long tail keywords definition

When dealing with an SEO company, one of the phrases you will probably hear a lot when discussing your campaign is ‘long tail keywords’. Long tail keywords are basically a combination of multiple keywords to more accurately describe what you are searching for.

So what are the advantages of using long tail keywords?

Well, consider the keyword ‘SEO’. This keyword on it’s own is extremely competitive, so being able to rank highly for this keyword alone will involve considerable time and investment before you begin to see any results. However, if you were to to use another keyword to i.e. include the geographical location, for this would be less competitive giving you the opportunity to rank highly for it. So, instead of optimising for the term SEO, you may optimise for the term ‘manchester seo‘. Additionally, SEO as a keyword isn’t particularly targeted, as the searcher could be looking for an SEO company, a specialist, tips, advice or even just a definition.

If we used a long tail keyword, i.e. manchester seo company, then again this will be less competitive than a single keyword and is also more highly targeted (the searcher is most likely looking for an SEO company based in Manchester).

The longer your long tail keyword is (the more keywords it made up of), the less competitive it will be to rank for. However, make sure you do your research first. It might be easy to rank for a very long tail keyword, but if no one uses it as a term to search for, you won’t get any traffic from it. This is all part of your keyword analysis that should be performed at the very start of your campaign.

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301 redirect definition

A 301 redirect is a method of telling web browsers and search engines that a website or web page has permanently moved to a new location or address. An example of this might be:

A webmaster wants to change their domain URL from www.domain.co.uk to www.domain.com. By adding a 301 redirect from the .co.uk address to the .com address, a web visitor using a standard web browser will automatically be re-directed to the .com address. Additionally, a search engine will also automatically be redirected to the new domain. Because a 301 redirect indicates a permanent change of address, the search engine should also automatically update all the links within it’s index. Also, any search engine page rankings and links to the site should also be preserved which is very important, especially for older, more established websites.

301 redirects are also used internally for websites to prevent internal content duplication issues such as canonicalization / canonicalisation and for updating page names. For example, if an unfriendly URL is changed so that is ‘friendly’ a 301 redirect would be used from the old link to the new so that users and search engines know the location has permanently changed i.e.

Changing www.domain.com/page?124 to www.domain.com/services.

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White hat SEO definition

White hat SEO is a term used to describe search engine optimisation techniques. Techniques are considered as ‘white hat’ or ‘ethical SEO‘ if they adhere to guidelines provided by the Search Engines. Most SEO companies will claim that they use only ethical or white hat techniques.

In contrast to white hat techniques, there is what is known as ‘black hat’ SEO. This refers to techniques for optimising your site that aren’t within the search engine guidelines. These techniques are often used to deceive or trick the search engine robots by doing things such as hiding text, using door way pages, using hidden links etc. Black hat SEO techniques are popular with spam websites, and can generate traffic in the short term. However, long term if you are seen to be using black hat techniques you will be penalised or banned from the search engine index completely.

‘Grey hat’ SEO is also a term that exists. This is when it isn’t clear if a technique is white hat or black hat, but is probably best avoided if possible. If you are unsure if you have are using black hat techniques, you should get a professional SEO company or SEO consultant to review your site.

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