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SEO Glossary

Details: Category: Optimization; Published on Saturday, 10 December 2011 17:04; Written by Super User; Hits: 181

Search Engine Optimisation Glossary

SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) You have probably come across a number of terms that mean nothing to you! Many of these are general web terms used by SEOs but some are new terms devised by the SEO world.

Algorithm

This is what search engines use to determine search results.

Alt Tags

Alt tags are used to provide more information about an image to a search engine than a Title, File Name and Caption. The Alt tag is used by search engine robots to determine the content of an image. Alt tags appear as follows:

Image optimisation is an important but often overlooked part of SEO.

Anchor Text

Anchor Text determines the visible text of a link on the page (the bit that is usually underline). Anchor Text plays two roles – it tells search engines which keywords to attribute to the landing page of the link. Good SEO practice would mean the anchor text, referring site and landing page had keywords in common.

Example:

<a href=”http://www.ojv.no/mobile-development-training/iPhone-training/”>iPhone App Development Courses</a>

Authority

Authority is the amount of trust given to a page (page authority) or site (domain authority) for a search query. This trust is dependent on the number of incoming links from other trusted websites.

Back links (in links, incoming links etc)

Back links are links from an external site to any page on your site. Links from sites with higher authority and Page Rank are the most useful as they tell search engines that your site is to be trusted (gains authority) and that people are interested in your content (relevant to search queries on that subject.)

Black Hat

Black Hat SEO is an SEO approach that goes against SEO best practices. Any method that tricks search engines or goes against their guidelines is counted as Black Hat and the site in question can take a huge hit to their rankings. Search engine guidelines are always changing so something that worked before and seemed fine can haunt SEOs in the future. The biggest example of this is the Google Panda update that took a toll on many businesses and forced them to change how they practised SEO.

Blog

Thanks to the Google Freshness update, an important part of SEO has become about regularly updating content. Maintaining a blog on a website keeps the content fresh and tells search engines that a site is up to date and in use. content marketing is one of the strongest tools in the SEO box at the moment. Maintaining a blog allows you provide a space for guest bloggers to offer their fresh content, and you can use other authority blogs to publish your own well written content in order to place high value links.

Bot

Search engines use bots to crawl a website automatically to index pages. Bots can also be use to scrape content from websites to use on spam websites.

Bounce Rate

If you visit a web page and leaves without viewing another page, that counts as a ‘bounce’. A lower bounce rate shows that people are interested in a site as a whole and not just one page. Having an easy to use website and relevant links within content prompts users to stay and read more. Spammy websites are more likely to have high bounce rates due to irrelevant links and adverts everywhere that turn away visitors.

CMS (Content Management System)

Content Management Systems such as Joomla, Word Press and Drupal allow publishers to maintain blogs without knowing much about code. Once set up, they allow users to simply log in, write, edit and publish without messing around with the site layout as a whole.

Content Marketing

Content marketing is about creating and sharing great content – blog posts, videos, infographics etc. in the hopes of bringing conversation to your site. Original and impressive content encourages sharing and commenting from users and done well can greatly increase brand awareness. Use content marketing to bring conversation to your own site.

Crawler

Follows the link structure of a website (helped by a site map) to gather data. It is important to have an easy to navigate link structure so that crawler bots can find their way around.

Duplicate Content

Any content that is the same or very similar to other content on the web is duplicate content. Duplicate content usually occurs when a spammer steals copy from another site and uses it as its own to promote a blog or website. There are times where duplicate content is inevitable (quotes etc.) and so it does not automatically mean search engine penalties but the page Google believes is the original will receive a higher ranking.

Internal Links

Internal links are links to pages on the same domain. These are used for navigational purposes. A good internal link structure makes it easier for users and bots to find their way around websites and encourages users to stay on websites.

External Links

Links that leave a web page to go to another domain.

Link Building

The process of actively encouraging links to your site, the most useful way to gain links currently is through guest blogging.

Guest Blogging

The act of writing or publishing content that has links back to the author’s website.

Index

It is a misconception that when searching on Google or other search engines, users are searching the web. They’re not. In fact they are searching a database of web pages indexed by search engines.

Keyword

The term a user searches for, SEOs target keywords that they want web pages to rank for.

Keyword Density

The frequency a keyword appears on a web page. A site with an unnatural high keyword density (keyword stuffing) can be penalised.

Landing Page

The page a user first lands on when entering a website through a SERP.

Long Tail Keywords

Queries with a number of words. It is usually best to aim for the shortest, most searched for keyword but it can always be useful to rank for long tail keywords as they are more likely to result in conversions, especially in niche markets.

Link Farm

A group of sites all linked together to boost ranking. A risky strategy that s.engines are rather good at spotting and penalising.

META Tags

META tags are contained in the HEAD section of the HTML of a web page and while they do not show up on the page itself they do appear in SERPs and are used by search engines for indexing. The META title and META description often make up the entry that appears for a web page in SERPs and so is the first piece of information a user sees about your website.

Nofollow

A piece of code found in the HTML of a link or in the HEAD of a web page that tells search engines not to follow links.

Noindex

Similar to Nofollow, tells robots not index pages or links. Good for telling s.engines not to index duplicate content.

Organic Search Results

Search results that appear naturally. Usually there are paid results at the top and side of the main results page that are paid for by advertisers.

PageRank (PR)

Google Page Rank (PR) is a value given to a website dependent on Google’s algorithm. This is a value between 0 and 1, not to be confused with Toolbar PageRank which is between 0 and 10 using Google’s algorithm.

PPC

Pay Per Click advertising is where digital advertisers pay for their web pages to appear in a prominent place on a SERP for targeted keywords. Advertiser pay every time a user clicks, hence the name Pay Per Click. the cost of a click can vary wildly according to the popularity of the search term and the quality of the advertisement.

QDF (Query Deserves Freshness)

Part of Google’s algorithm that gives newer web pages higher ranking if a query deserves freshness. When searching for current events, the most recent news stories show up before older ones. Search queries such as ‘Google update’ would bring up Google’s most recent updates and not those from years ago. This is just one of Google’s many algorithms that tries to ensure the most relevant results for queries.

Reciprocal Links

Where web sites link to each other. Search engines don’t rate these as highly as one-way links as they are usually the result of link exchange.

SEM (Search Engine Marketing)

SEM is the act of marketing a website on search engines and includes search engine optimisation, paid advertising and other methods to increase traffic to websites through search engines.

SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)

If you are reading this you probably have an idea of what SEO is but for complete novices it is the process of achieving a high rank in search engine results to increase web traffic. The difference between a website ranking top for a search query or on page 2 is huge in terms of traffic – and profit.

SERP (Search Engine Results Page)

A SERP is the page that is produced by a search engine upon receiving a query. A Google SERP displays the first 10 natural results, usually 3 paid results at the top, a number of paid ads in a bar on the right and ways to narrow down your search on the left.

SMM (Social Media Marketing)

Using social media to market a website or brand.

Social Media

Social websites including social networks (Facebook, Google+, Twitter etc.), blogs, forums, bookmarking and review sites. Websites that encourage user interaction are social. Used badly, social media can really impact your business for the worse. Learn how to use social media effectively to give your business a great boost for brand awareness and SEO.

Toolbar PageRank (PR)

Similar to PageRank, uses Google algorithm to assign a web page a value between 0 and 10. SEO Status is a toolbar extension that provides the toolbar PageRank for websites.

TrustRank

TrustRank is a way of determining the value of a website by the number of in-bound links from human trusted sites. These are dedicated ‘hub’ sites that search engines trust and so any sites they link to are deemed as trusted sites as well.

White Hat

White Hat is the nice side of SEO. White Hat SEO follows best practice for search engine optimisation and does not try to trick search engines. Generally, white hat SEO is less likely to result in potential penalties due to changes in search algorithm.