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Services: SEO Information & Articles
An SEO Glossary - Common SEO Terms Defined
By Glenn Murray
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 submission sites
Websites which act as repositories of free reprint articles. They
are sites where authors can submit their articles free of charge,
and where webmasters can 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, 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.
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.
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.
* 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 www.DivineWrite.com or www.ArticlePR.com for further details, more FREE articles, or to download his FREE SEO e-book.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com
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