by Ana Hoffman 10 comments

SEO Traffic Basics: Reciprocal Links, Backlinks, Keywords

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Optimizing your website in a way that makes it more attractive to search engines is a great way to exponentially increase your targeted website traffic.

Mind you that the targeted website traffic we are talking about here is absolutely FREE.

So, let’s start with the basics.

What on earth is SEO?

SEO is an acronym standing for “Search Engine Optimization”.

Your basic strategy here is to have your business sites rank as high as possible in Google and other search engines, thus bringing great quality targeted traffic to your website.

In other words, if an internet surfer searches for ‘Work At Home’ in Google, a website that has high search engine ranking optimization for that topic or even that exact phrase will probably be ranked higher in search results than a website that has not been optimized.

We call website traffic that results from search engine ranking ‘organic traffic‘ because you don’t have to pay for these visitors.

SEO Traffic Basic #1: KEYWORD.

To start increasing your website search engine ranking and bringing targeted website traffic, you need to understand the concept of keywords.

The term KEYWORD refers to the exact word or phrase that people are searching for.

For instance, at the time of writing of this article, the most popular keyword on Google was ‘British open leaderboard’ (don’t ask me why). That means that people have entered that exact phrase in the search box more than anything else that day.

Your keyword can be short (one word) or contain several words that specify the kind of information a web user is looking for.

In other words, it can be anything.

The point here is the more often your website mentions or is connected to (explained later) a specific keyword, the more likely it is to have high search engine ranking for those keywords.

SEO Traffic Basic #2: BACKLINK.

The next crucial part of generating traffic from search engine ranking is called a backlink.

‘BACKLINK’ is one of the measurements that the search engines use to see how important or insightful your website content really is.

For example, if any website includes this kind of link in their content targeted SEO website traffic and that link leads the visitors back to my website, that’s a backlink.

The thinking behind it is the better and the more valuable information you provide on your website, the more website masters will want to link to it, thus bringing you some free targeted traffic.

For example, Wikipedia website has very high search engine ranking on many topics because many sites quote it as a source in their content.

Your goal is to become “Wikipedia” website in your field and get as many websites to link to yours as you can thus causing it to rank higher for your keywords and helping your traffic generation tremendously.

SEO Traffic Basic #3: RECIPROCAL LINK.

Yet another important search engine ranking principal for your website traffic is called the reciprocal link.

A RECIPROCAL LINK is created when two similar in content websites mutually link to each other.

Reciprocal links are much easier to get than backlinks and many website owners use this tactic to improve their SEO ranking.

Unfortunately, although important, reciprocal links will not get you too far with the search engines, since it is so easy to get them.

So, keywords, backlinks, and reciprocal links are really the major concepts you need to pay attention to to generate targeted website traffic through search engine ranking.

Of course, this is only the tip of the SEO iceberg.

However, if you want to save thousands of advertising dollars and drive free targeted traffic to your website, it’s certainly worth the trouble!

Here is what I personally use to milk SEO for all it has to offer:

Your are right: you don’t have to comment or retweet, but would it help if I told you it would be much appreciated? :)

ana hoffman yournetbiz

 

traffic generation cafe comment below

{ 10 comments }

Daniel November 30, 2011 at 11:00 pm

I heard about Reciprocal links being quite useful. Maybe the author who wrote that article was referring to standard linking, or something totally different.

I think guest posting on a high quality site(with a high quality post, of course) would be one of the best ways to gain vast improvements in exposure for a website.
Now, as to finding sites to Guest post on, that’s another thing, altogether.

Ana Hoffman December 1, 2011 at 8:50 am

Not sure where you heard about reciprocal linking being of any use, Daniel.

Also, there’s certainly no shortage of blogs to guest post on; just about every one of them I read accepts guest posts.

Yes, that’s one of the best ways to build links AND bring in traffic.

Martin E November 1, 2011 at 7:06 pm

Good article. Reciprocal links aren’t nearly as effective as they used to be though, especially from unrelated sites. The hottest link building method is guest blogging :)

Ana Hoffman November 1, 2011 at 9:06 pm

I don’t thing reciprocal links work at all these days, Martin.

And yes, guest posting is one of the best things to do for both link building and traffic generation.

Sayed November 20, 2011 at 9:37 pm

Yes Ana
Reciprocal Links was good for SEO Long day ago
Now they are Dead (Whatever is the site is relevant or not)

Ya, Guest Blogging is the perfect way for link building and targeted Traffic.
Agreeing with you
:)
Sayed

Ana Hoffman November 21, 2011 at 5:44 pm

It’s amazing how many webmasters are still fishing for those reciprocal links, Sayed.

Tim September 29, 2011 at 5:07 am

Hi Anna,

I believe I have made a fatal miss understanding in keywords.
I’ve been trying to put my keywords in my title but was confusing with my blog heading . I could not understand how I was meant to get down to so few words in the tile and have it make sense.

So having addressed that, I am unsure if it is best practice to use the same title for every page or to change it to closer match the description.

EG. My keyword may be “CCTV Stuff” but that does not make sense on all posts so would “CCTV Stuff| Design Software” be better if the post was about design software?

Ana Hoffman September 29, 2011 at 7:04 am

Hi Tim

Don’t beat yourself up, we all make mistakes from time to time.

No – you don’t have to use the same page title. Use whatever keywords you are writing about.

Hope this helps.

Rasheed - Blog2Success March 23, 2011 at 7:43 pm

Great newbie’s guide for SEO!

By the way, SEO is an acronym, not an anagram :P

Still, for a newbie blogger such as myself, I now understand why you always talk about backlinks!! And so my journey to backlinking begins…

Ana March 23, 2011 at 8:09 pm

Typo, of course – thanks for letting me know.

Glad you got something out of it, Rasheed.

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