It’s important for an agency and a client to understand each other’s language when discussing search engine optimization efforts. It’s important because the language of search engine optimization involves a number of measurements which mean different things to different people.

A small poll recently indicated that one of the biggest concerns in the search marketing industry is the amount of “disinformation” and “rumors” on the Internet about obtaining top search engine visibility. Search marketing newbies, either in an agency, in-house, or as a client of an agency can all easily get caught up in the dizzying array of information and incorrect assertions freely available on blogs and forums. When I read about SEO, I’m alarmed at the many, conflicting definitions of phrases when people discuss off-page optimization, in particular, link building.

In search engine optimization, inbound links are a powerful tool to increase search engine rankings. While each search engine optimization process should begin with on-page optimization, prior to building thousands of links in off-page optimization, it would be a good idea to do some due diligence in off-page optimization.

Consider the following three phrases:

• Link Density
• Link Popularity
• Backlinks

When researching link opportunities for search engine optimization, or measuring off-page SEO results, one could assign a number to each of these phrases. What do these phrases mean to you from your off-page optimization due diligence? For some, the three numbers would all be the same. While one person may state they checked link popularity, another person may say they checked link density, and they could have checked for the same thing and reported the same number! But if you were to ask two SEOs to check link density, link popularity, and backlinks of a page, with no request for how they define the terms, you could end up with as many as 6 different numbers!

Defining mutually agreeable language and measurements between a client and an agency will go a long way to helping clients understand the value of their SEO efforts and expertise behind an agency’s recommendations.

Filed under: SEO on Thursday, June 14th, 2007 by Jacob Wolfsheimer |
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.