SEO Acronym
If you’re responsible for the SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) of your website you may like to use one of Al’s Acronyms as a global checklist of your SEO work.
Experienced SEO specialists know that Search Engines L.U.S.T. over…
Links
User Engagement
Social Votes
Traffic
Warning: this article contains content about school proms.
Links
Links are what make the internet work.
There are inbound links and outbound links. Inbound links are also known as backlinks.
If your friend puts a link on her website to your website, she has created an outbound link on her website, which is an inbound link (aka backlink) for your website.
Like kids voting for their friends at the school prom, your friend has given some of her website’s reputation to yours. The more popular and cool kids receive more votes. The more popular and important websites have more backlinks.
Kids take more notice of who the popular and cool kids are voting for. Their votes carry more authority to their peers. They have more influence on who will be king and queen of the prom. Search Engines take more notice of links from popular websites. Their links carry more authority on the web. They have more influence on who will be ranked number 1.
The not so cool kids don’t have as much influence or power. Links from less popular websites don’t have as much influence or power.
Some kids are so desperate to be king and queen of the prom they try deceptive or sneaky ways to get more votes. In many cases they end up getting banned from the prom. Some website owners are so desperate to be ranked number 1 they try deceptive or sneaky ways to get more links. In many cases they end up getting banned from the Search Engines.
Responsible parents do their best to keep their children away from gangs and bad neighbourhoods. Webmasters should be careful who they link to, and who they receive links from. They want to avoid link farms of spammy content, also known as bad neighbourhoods.
Golden rule #1: never link to websites or watch movies with School Proms in them. 😉
User Engagement
Kids won’t want to stay at the school dance very long if they think the music sucks. They’ll bounce out of there real quick. The dance will get a bad rep amongst their peers, and they won’t look cool if they try to recommend it. Visitors to a website will not stay very long if the content is not engaging or relevant to them. The bounce rate will be high. Search Engines do not want to send traffic to websites that give visitors a poor user experience because it impacts negatively on their own reputation capital… they won’t be a cool search engine.
Golden rule #2: be more engaging than movies with School Proms in them.
Social Votes
If kids really ‘like’ the dance they will text their friends and tell them to hurry up and get there. If search engines see that a website is getting lots of genuine ‘likes’ on various social media platforms they will see it as being more popular and rank it higher.
Golden rule #3: delete all text messages about School Proms.
Traffic
If kids see lots of other kids lined up outside a dance hall enthusiastically waiting to get in, they will assume it must be a cool place to be. When search engines detect that there is lots of traffic going to a specific website with low bounce rates they see it as being more popular and rank it higher.
Golden rule #4: stay clear of streets with halls that host School Proms.