An SEO Glossary - Common SEO Terms Defined

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has become an essential weapon in the arsenal of every online business. Unfortunately, for most business owners and marketing managers (and even many webmasters), it's also somewhat of an enigma. This is partly due to the fact that it's such a new and rapidly changing field, and partly due to the fact that SEO practitioners tend to speak in a language all of their own which, without translation, is virtually impenetrable to the layperson. This glossary seeks to remedy that situation, explaining specialist SEO terms in plain English...

AdWords

See ‘Sponsored Links’.

algorithm

A complex mathematical formula used by search engines to assess the relevance and importance of websites and rank them accordingly in their search results. These algorithms are kept tightly under wraps as they are the key to the objectivity of search engines (i.e. the algorithm ensures relevant results, and relevant results bring more users, which in turn brings more advertising revenue).

article PR

The submitting of free reprint articles to many article submission sites and article distribution lists in order to increase your website's search engine ranking and Google PageRank. (In this sense, the "PR" stands for PageRank.) Like traditional public relations, article PR also conveys a sense of authority because your articles are widely published. And because you're proving your expertise and freely dispensing knowledge, your readers will trust you and will be more likely to remain loyal to you. (In this sense, the "PR" stands for Public Relations.)

article distribution lists

User groups (e.g. Yahoo, MSN, Google, Smartgroups, and Topica groups) which accept email submissions of articles in text format, and then distribute these articles via email to all of the members of the group. See also 'article PR'.

article submission sites

Websites which act as repositories of free reprint articles. Authors visit these sites to submit their articles free of charge, and webmasters visit to find articles to use on their websites free of charge. Article submission sites generate revenue by selling advertising space on their websites. See also 'article PR'.

backlink

A text link to your website from another website. See also ‘link’.

copy

The words used on your website.

copywriter

A professional writer who specializes in the writing of advertising copy (compelling, engaging words promoting a particular product or service). See also ‘SEO copywriter’ and ‘web copywriter’.

crawl

Google finds pages on the World Wide Web and records their details in its index by sending out ‘spiders’ or ‘robots’. These spiders make their way from page to page and site to site by following text links. To a spider, a text link is like a door.

domain name

The virtual address of your website (normally in the form www.yourbusinessname.com). This is what people will type when they want to visit your site. It is also what you will use as the address in any text links back to your site.

ezine

An electronic magazine. Most publishers of ezines are desperate for content and gladly publish well written, helpful articles and give you full credit as author, including a link to your website.

Flash

A technology used to create animated web pages (and page elements).

free reprint article

An article written by you and made freely available to other webmasters to publish on their websites. See also 'article PR'.

Google

The search engine with the greatest coverage of the World Wide Web, and which is responsible for most search engine-referred traffic. Of approximately 11.5 billion pages on the World Wide Web, it is estimated that Google has indexed around 8.8 billion. This is one reason why it takes so long to increase your ranking!

Google AdWords

See ‘Sponsored Links’.

Google PageRank

How Google scores a website’s importance. It gives all sites a mark out of 10. By downloading the Google Toolbar (from http://toolbar.google.com), you can view the PR of any site you visit.

Google Toolbar

A free tool you can download. It becomes part of your browser toolbar. It’s most useful features are it’s PageRank display (which allows you to view the PR of any site you visit) and it’s AutoFill function (when you’re filling out an online form, you can click AutoFill, and it enters all the standard information automatically, including Name, Address, Zip code/Postcode, Phone Number, Email Address, Business Name, Credit Card Number (password protected), etc.) Once you’ve downloaded and installed the toolbar, you may need to set up how you’d like it to look and work by clicking Options (setup is very easy). NOTE: Google does record some information (mostly regarding sites visited).

HTML

HTML (HyperText Markup Language) is the coding language used to create much of the information on the World Wide Web. Web browsers read the HTML code and display the page that code describes.

Internet

An interconnected network of computers around the world.

JavaScript

A programming language used to create dynamic website pages (e.g. interactivity).

keyword

A word which your customers search for and which you use frequently on your site in order to be relevant to those searches. This use known as targeting a keyword. Most websites actually target ‘keyword phrases’ because single keywords are too generic and it is very difficult to rank highly for them.

keyword density

A measure of the frequency of your keyword in relation to the total wordcount of the page. So if your page has 200 words, and your keyword phrase appears 10 times, its density is 5%.

keyword phrase

A phrase which your customers search for and which you use frequently on your site in order to be relevant to those searches.

link

A word or image on a web page which the reader can click to visit another page. There are normally visual cues to indicate to the reader that the word or image is a link.

link path

Using text links to connect a series of page (i.e. page 1 connects to page 2, page 2 connects to page 3, page 3 connects to page 4, and so on). Search engine ‘spiders’ and ‘robots’ use text links to jump from page to page as they gather information about it, so it’s a good idea to allow them traverse your entire site via text links. (See ‘Link paths’ on p.21. for further information.)

link partner

A webmaster who is willing to put a link to your website on their website. Quite often link partners engage in reciprocal linking.

link popularity

The number of links to your website. Link popularity is the single most important factor in a high search engine ranking. Webmasters use a number of methods to increase their site's link popularity including article PR, link exchange (link partners / reciprocal linking), link buying, and link directories.

link text

The part of a text link that is visible to the reader. When generating links to your own site, they are most effective (in terms of ranking) if they include your keyword.

meta tag

A short note within the header of the HTML of your web page which describes some aspect of that page. These meta tags are read by the search engines and used to help assess the relevance of a site to a particular search.

natural search results

The ‘real’ search results. The results that most users are looking for and which take up most of the window. For most searches, the search engine displays a long list of links to sites with content which is related to the word you searched for. These results are ranked according to how relevant and important they are.

organic search results

See ‘natural search results’.

PPC (Pay-Per-Click advertising)

See ‘Sponsored Links’.

PageRank

See ‘Google PageRank’.

rank

Your position in the search results that display when someone searches for a particular word at a search engine.

reciprocal link

A mutual agreement between two webmasters to exchange links (i.e. they both add a link to the other’s website on their own website). Most search engines (certainly Google) are sophisticated enough to detect reciprocal linking and they don’t view it very favorably because it is clearly a manufactured method of generating links. Websites with reciprocal links risk being penalized.

robot

See ‘Spider’.

robots.txt file

A file which is used to inform the search engine spider which pages on a site should not be indexed. This file sits in your site’s root directory on the web server. (Alternatively, you can do a similar thing by placing tags in the header section of your HTML for search engine robots/spiders to read. See ‘Optimizing your web ’ on p.22. for more information.)

Sandbox

Many SEO experts believe that Google ‘sandboxes’ new websites. Whenever it detects a new website, it withholds its rightful ranking for a period while it determines whether your site is a genuine, credible, long term site. It does this to discourage the creation of SPAM websites (sites which serve no useful purpose other than to boost the ranking of some other site). Likewise, if Google detects a sudden increase (i.e. many hundreds or thousands) in the number of links back to your site, it may sandbox them for a period (or in fact penalize you by lowering your ranking or blacklisting your site altogether).

SEO

Search Engine Optimization. The art of making your website relevant and important so that it ranks high in the search results for a particular word.

SEO copywriter

A ‘copywriter’ who is not only proficient at web copy, but also experienced in writing copy which is optimized for search engines (and will therefore help you achieve a better search engine ranking for your website).

search engine

A search engine is an online tool which allows you to search for websites which contain a particular word or phrase. The most well known search engines are Google, Yahoo, and MSN.

site map

A single page which contains a list of text links to every page in the site (and every page contains a text link back to the site map). Think of your site map as being at the center of a spider-web.

SPAM

Generally refers to unwanted and unrequested email sent en-masse to private email addresses. Also used to refer to websites which appear high in search results without having any useful content. The creators of these sites set them up simply to cash in on their high ranking by selling advertising space, links to other sites, or by linking to other sites of their own and thereby increasing the ranking of those sites. The search engines are becoming increasingly sophisticated, and already have very efficient ways to detect SPAM websites and penalize them.

spider

Google finds pages on the World Wide Web and records their details in its index by sending out ‘spiders’ or ‘robots’. These spiders make their way from page to page and site to site by following text links.

Sponsored Links

Paid advertising which displays next to the natural search results. Customers can click on the ad to visit the advertiser’s website. This is how the search engines make their money. Advertisers set their ads up to display whenever someone searches for a word which is related to their product or service. These ads look similar to the natural search results, but are normally labeled “Sponsored Links”, and normally take up a smaller portion of the window. These ads work on a Pay-Per-Click (PPC) basis (i.e. the advertiser only pays when someone clicks on their ad).

submit

You can submit your domain name to the search engines so that their ‘spiders’ or ‘robots’ will crawl your site. You can also submit articles to ‘article submission sites’ in order to have them published on the Internet.

text link

A word on a web page which the reader can click to visit another page. Text links are normally blue and underlined. Text links are what ‘spiders’ or ‘robots’ use to jump from page to page and website to website.

URL

Uniform Resource Locator. The address of a particular page published on the Internet. Normally in the form http://www.yourbusinessname.com/AWebPage.htm.

web copy

See ‘copy’.

web copywriter

A ‘copywriter’ who understands the unique requirements of writing for an online medium.

webmaster

A person responsible for the management of a particular website.

wordcount

The number of words on a particular web page.

World Wide Web (WWW)

The vast array of documents published on the Internet. It is estimated that the World Wide Web now consists of approximately 11.5 billion pages.

About the Author:

* Glenn Murray is a website copywriter, SEO copywriter, and article submission and article PR specialist. He owns article submission service Article PR and copywriting studio Divine Write. He can be contacted on Sydney +612 4334 6222 or at glenn@divinewrite.com. Visit http://www.DivineWrite.com or http://www.ArticlePR.com for further details.

SEO Training – How to Get the Most Out of It

Let’s set the stage…

You’ve just invested valuable time and money by completing your hands-on SEO Training. You are now sitting back in your office contemplating all the wonderful information you just gathered, but you’re really confused on where to start. You pick up your notes leafing through them hoping something will inspire you to know what to do next. You start to drift back to class wishing you where still there. You hated to leave, you didn’t want it to end, you silently wish your instructor was there telling you where to begin.

Good news! I am going to share with you a detailed search engine optimization and internet marketing plan to get the most out of your seo training and to get you started today.

Step #1 – Setting Goals

Before you can really get started you have to know what you want to achieve with your Web site. There could be a number of goals that you have in mind but your first step is get a clear picture of what you want the outcome to be. It could be:

• To gain higher rankings.
• To redesign your Web site to be more user friendly.
• To implement SEO basics throughout your site to make it search engine friendly.
• To increase your visitor response online.
• To open additional windows to your site through social media marketing.
• To launch an article marketing plan.
• Or all of the above.

What ever your goal is it is important to write it down and post it where you can see it every day. “Goals that are not written down are just wishes.”

Step #2 – Keyword Research

Any new project should always include this step. Keyword research is the basis for any successful page on your site. Let’s take the goals above and see how the keyword research you learned to perform in your seo training can be used.

• Higher rankings can be achieved by finding those keywords in your industry that have a high KEI (Keyword Effectiveness Index) and low competing pages. You should concentrate on finding five phrases that you can work on simultaneously.

• By redesigning your Web site you can be including your new found phrases and work them into your sales copy. If you are creating a new site this is the ideal time to make sure you are concentrating on your visitors experience while on your site.

o Include a call to action above the fold
o Contact information above the fold in straight html including area code and zip code.
o Only use Flash in small elements and not as the whole page.
o Include something that will grab your user’s attention. Something out of the normal that will make your visitor stop and take notice of your page.

• Implementing SEO basics can be a daunting task if your site is large or it is many years old. Tactics that where used years ago are no longer useful and most times are being flagged as spam. Depending on how many elements need to be addressed you need to determine if it would be better to start with a fresh page or redo the existing page. A determining factor would be if the current page is already indexed. If this is the case then it would be best to fix the existing page. If the page has too many errors and creating a new one would be wiser be sure to name the new page the same as the old one or do a 301 redirect to the new page. Include your keyword phrase when implementing your basic search engine optimization.

• Visitor response will increase if you are giving your visitors exactly what they are looking for. Only your keyword research will help you with this. We are in an instant gratification world and your visitor will only give you a few seconds to answer their search, so make sure it exactly what they are looking for.

• Open additional windows into your site by using your keyword phrases in your social media avenues. A couple great places to include your keyword researched phrases would be in your blog post and creating a lens in Squidoo around your researched phrase.

• Article marketing is not for everyone but it does allow you to open multiple windows into your site but writing articles around your phrase and submitting them to places like Scribd, ArtcileFactory.com and EzineArticles.com.

Step - # 3 – Which one to choose?

I know you want to implement each and everyone of those goals into your site and you still don’t know where to start.

Stop here and go find five phrases to work with and don’t even think about anything else at this point.

After you find those phrases refer back to your SEO training notes and refresh your memory on how to create a search engine friendly Web page and create content for each of the new keywords you found.

It is going to be hard not to get side tracked but stick to the project at hand. Your only concern is finding 5 phrases, creating content and designing five search engine friendly pages.

Once that is done go ahead and publish the five pages to your Web site. Include each page on your site map, link it from and to relevant pages on your site and include keyword rich link text within the body of the page.

Make a note of the day you added the new pages to your site for later use.

Now that you have the first three steps under your belt you are ready to move onto step four.

Step #4 – Addressing Existing Web Site Issues

Now that you have gotten a good start with the above steps, you can start working on bringing your current Web site up to par while you are actually waiting for indexing on your 5 optimized pages. Your next plan of attack would be working on existing pages within your site. You may not be able to change every issue with your site but remember every small change could result in increased ranking for your site. You may only be able to change your title and Meta tags and not be able to change your corporate sites navigation so tackle what you can and don’t worry about the rest. Each and every issue is just one of the over 200 factors so learn to pick your battles and fix what you can.

Step #5 – Social Media and Article Marketing

Your whole goal is to open as many windows into your site as possible. You have already started this by creating 5 new pages into your site now it is time to open the windows even further. Whether you decide to use article marketing or all the endless possibility of social media marketing now is the time to concentrate on one or both of these window opening wonders.

You can use the five phrases you found in your first step or you can find 5 new ones but at this stage you are creating content to be used in articles, on blogs or bookmaking pages within the many social media avenues. Your title is the most important element when tackling this step. Make your title keyword rich, compelling and deliver what your title describes in the article or blog post.

If you are not quite ready to dive into social media start at least with adding a blog to your Web site. Your best results will come from the blog residing on your server and not one that is hosted on a free blogging site. Make a commitment to blogging regularly and always about your industry so your site and your blog are industry related.

Step #6 – Tracking Your Progress

Web analytics can show you information about all of your optimization projects. Not only will it show you your results for the 5 keyword phrases you are working on but it will open your eyes to how your visitor is moving through your site. Record your results on a weekly or daily basis. This step will help you in testing each one of your projects and help you decide which one you should concentrate more on. Usually I find 2 or 3 phrases that are really performing and those are the ones I concentrate on blogging and adding it to the social media venues.

Step #7 – Keep Up With the Changes

There is no other step as important as this one. The internet changes its landscape on a daily basis so it is imperative that what you learn in your SEO Training is always the latest information. Your Web site and or clients are depending on your expertise so don’t let them down by applying out of date or useless techniques. There are many places you can turn to for guidance.

The first place would be Google, Yahoo! and MSN’s Webmasters guidelines. Each is posted on their site and is updates each and every time they have made changes to them.

Another place would be to subscribe to one of many search engine optimization and marketing blogs created by industry leaders. Your instructor should be able to point you in the right direction to their most trusted resources.

Continue learning by attending your favorite SEO Training provider’s courses on a yearly basis. Principles and techniques change often so always keep on top them.

Often students are overwhelmed with the amount of information they are given at class but if you learn to take them in small steps starting with setting your goals you will find that your seo training is working for you and your Web site.



About The Author

Tracy Fredrychowski – SEO Instructor
http://www.searchengineacademysc.com