What is a Reciprocal Link?
Reciprocal links in simple terms “are links arranged on the basis of an agreement between two sites to provide a link to the other site within their own site”.
This is mainly used for increasing link popularity and consequently web traffic. Its an arrangement that is made out of trust and also with the understanding that there is mutual benefit. Reciprocal Links is a major force in Search Algorithms.
So what are the advantages of having a Reciprocal Link?
- You get visitors of other sites, directed towards your site.
- Search Engines also counts the number and quality of the sites that link to your site, so it helps rankings.
- It creates the opportunity of friendship between the various active users across the web and hence more quality as well.
- It make things easier for users, as they can know where to find related information and also at the same time, whom their favorite site prefers to read or visit.
- A cheaper(most of the time free) and more effective tactic, when compared to other means of garnering link popularity.
What is an RSS Feed?
Really Simple Syndication or RSS is “a file format used for web syndication to inform people about regularly changing content in a site or blog”.
Its also known as Rich Site Summary.
The major advantage of RSS is that it helps people from not having to subscribe to a newsletter. The use of RSS is growing rapidly with more and more bloggers and site owners realizing the amount of traffic it can bring.
Here are some advantages of RSS feeds:
- It can help you keep things in order and also makes your content more organized.
- It can be a great resource to your readers, they can know what is happening in your site easily.
- It can help you get a lot of traffic, and better rankings as well.
- It will give you a wide selection of channels to distribute your content to.
- It’s a great new way to make money with ads, you can place ads in your RSS Feeds.
What is a Robots.txt file?
A Robots.txt is a “file that is added to your server, to prevent Search Engine Spiders from crawling to certain sections of your site, or your entire site”.
The Robots.txt file is easy to create, as its a simple notepad file. It’s a major tool used by illegal sites to survive on the Internet. But there are some valid advantages to it as well.
These are some reasons why people use Robots.txt file, or why you should use it:
- If you don’t want your unfinished site to already appear in public.
- It can help you escape from spammers, who try to collect email addresses.
- You have sensitive information that you do not wish to be shared. Porn Sites, come under this category.
- You can cut off specific pages from the Search Engine Listing, and that can be a useful advantage.
- It can act as an invitation for bots to crawl to your site as well.
What is Black Hat SEO?
Black Hat SEO, is “the use of unethical techniques to make search engine rankings go up”.
It’s still widespread in spite of all the backlash from Google. It breaks rules and regulations that exist in Search Engine Optimization and also runs the risk of getting the website being banned. There are groups of people who claim that if Black Hat SEO is illegal so is basic SEO.
Here are some methods of Black Hat SEO:
- Keyword Stuffing- This is stuffing your site with keywords in a non-logical manner.
- Use of Doorway Pages- Door Way pages are fake pages are that used for indexing purposes.
- Invisible Text- This is adding text that is the same color of the background.
- Spamdexing- This is the process by creating pages specifically for the search engine for obscure phrases.
- Link Cloaking- This process is basically hiding the actual content of the site and misleading users and search engines.
- The other processes include Buying Links, Data Mining and Page Rank Hijacking.
What is a Sitemap?
A Sitemap is “the representation of the navigation structure or the architecture of a website”.
The Sitemap lists the pages that the website contains in an organized fashion and the link to the Site Map can be usually seen in the bottom end of the page or sometimes at the top.
The Sitemap can be easily generated by various tools available on the net.
Here are some reason why you should have a Sitemap:
- It makes Search Engine Spiders find your pages easily, this is specially useful if your site is new.
- Visitors can look for specific things easily with the Sitemap.
- It is useful for sites that contain dynamic content.
- Helps really large sites that contain a lot of content pages which are not interlinked in the right way.
- A site map helps get pages that contain Flash or Ajax get indexed as well.
5 Awesome Tools For Keyword Research
I wanted to write this post earlier, but I was not able to write it owing to a mix of my lazy-ness and being bombed with work.
May of you keen keyword-junkies out there may already know about these tools, but nevertheless these are some awesome tools for the tiny little noobs like me out there.
Here’s what we start out with ( bear in mind, these are tools for keyword drilling and research and don’t delve into issues such as keyword density, page flow etc., )
1. Adwords External Keyword Tool
This tool can be called the “big brother” of keyword drilling based on generic ideas.
Its both a great tool for figuring out potential keyword combinations based both on ideas presented and semantic terms.
It also doubles up by showing search traffic for these terms according to G ( Even though I believe most of the data is skewed to a large extent ).
SCORES
Usage - 3/5
Finding New Keywords - 4/5
Finding Search Traffic - 3/5
Total - 10/15
CREDIT: PPC HERO
Keyword Discovery is yet another me-me service which tries to replicate the function of Wordtracker.
But, Keyword Discovery scores a home run when it comes to usability as well as finding regional search data.
If your out trying to figure out the search data for regional terms or optimizing for google.co.uk or .com.au, this is one awesome tool.
SCORES
Usage - 4/5
Finding New Keywords - 3/5
Finding Search Traffic - 2/5
Total - 9/15
3. Wordtracker
I included Wordtracker in this list after much resistance, not because the tool is not perfectly a keyword research tool, but because its more of an antique tool.
Wordtracker hasn’t evolved one bit over the years and still sticks to its basic function of suggesting keywords based on a thesaurus type model and displaying the search data based on meta-crawlers like Dogpile.
The only thing I like with Wordtracker is its keyword basketing system ( almost like an ecommerce site checkout ) and its massive KEI functions.
SCORES
Usage - 2/5
Finding New Keywords - 3/5
Finding Search Traffic - 2/5
Total - 7/15
Google Suggest is NOT EXACTLY a typical keyword research tool, its more of an attempt by google to tweak their search quality.
But, this tool is awesome for finding our longtail keywords!
I had to include this in the list for the amazing arrays of longtails you can optimize for with the help of this tool.
Afterall, longtails are gold!
SCORES
Usage - 4/5
Finding New Keywords - 5/5
Finding Search Traffic - 0/5
Total - 9/15
This is similar in function to Google Suggest, but I put this in the list because there are no tools which analyze search data according to the Yahoo perspective.
Yahoo is after all the second largest search engine in the web and it would be a shame to discount it from proceedings.
SCORES
Usage - 4/5
Finding New Keywords - 3/5
Finding Search Traffic - 0/5
Total - 7/15
I may have missed a couple of tools here and there, but I’ve to a large extent discounted the tools which were released by MSN.
I can guarentee you that these tools are some of the best you’ll find out there and these tools can help you create that foundation for a very successful search engine marketing strategy.
What is CPC?
Cost per Call
CPC or Cost Per Click System is “the amount an advertiser has to pay every time a visitor clicks on his ad.”
It’s a form of Internet Marketing and is also known as Pay Per Click. There is another form to it, and that is the Cost Per Call System, where instead of clicking on an ad, the visitor calls a number provided by the web page.
Though there have been scams, like “Click Fraud”, CPC is still an effective way of Internet Marketing.
Here are some reasons why CPC is effective:
- It boosts your sales.
- The payment is result oriented.
- It’s much quicker than many other means of promoting your site.
- Seasonal Promotion of your prodcuts is made easy.
- Implementation is very simple.
What is a Landing Page?
A Landing Page is “the first page that a visitor comes across after clicking a link”.
There are two types of Landing Pages- Reference(Provides Information) and Transactional(Service or Product Oriented).
A Landing Page forms the most important part of an online business, as the conversion of a prospective client to a client takes place within this page.
Here are four things that you should keep in mind when your building a Landing Page:
- Make sure that the keywords that your using to get the visitors is relevant to the content or service in the page.
- Give as much information as possible, and try and provide unique information.
- Keep it short - Don’t have a long drawn out page, be specific and stick to only one train of thought.
- Don’t add to many images or any kind of audio.
What is Keyword Research?
Keyword research is the process of figuring out target keywords that you want to optimize a page or a website for.
Keyword research is done on the basis of:
- What people are searching for.
- How many results are there for the phrase in the search engines
In other words, keywords are like targets or the foundation of a search engine optimization and marketing campaign.
Four Reasons why having good keywords is important
- With crappy keywords, even if you end up at page #1 there is a high probability that you are not going to get traffic.
- Traffic from irrelevant keywords doesn’t convert as well as traffic from relevant key-phrases.
- Bad keywords can result in a bad search engine optimization campaign.
- If you shoot at keywords which are too competitive or have too few searches, it could be a detrimental effect on the time and money you invest into search engine optimization.