Internet Marketing and Search Engine Optimization Glossary
Search Engine Optimization In San Antonio
| SEO Glossary: Search Engine Optimization Definitions
Anchor Text and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Anchor text is the text for a hyperlink. Example: Automated Robot or Search Engine Spider and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) There are web programs crawling all over the web indexing, inspecting and cataloging web sites. Obviously we focus on the search engine spiders (bots) attracting them to your site often. To achieve maximum search engine optimization it is imperative that spiders visit a website often. Back Links and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Any link on another website that points to the subject page. Also referred to as inbound links. These links are what connect sites and help determine popularity. Every back link to your website is a vote that the search engines tabulate to decide the popularity and ranking of your site. Quality back links are vitally important to SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Not all back links are the same however, some back links can actually harm your SEO (Search Engine Optimization) efforts. Avoid link farms and irrelevant back links. Never buy back links online, this will harm your SEO, (Search Engine Optimization) efforts. A back link can appear as a url as in www.internetmarketinginsanantonio.com or as hypertext within normal content such as “Internet Marketing in San Antonio” Black Hat SEO (Search Engine Optimization) “Black Hat” Search Engine Optimization refers to SEO techniques employed by some SEO experts that violate the terms of service of many search engines and can result in your website being penalized. Although some Search Engine Optimization experts refer to Black Hat vs White Hat SEO techniques in ethical terms, in reality these techniques should be viewed from a pragmatic stand point. If an SEO technique is likely to get your website penalized then don’t use it. Search engines however do not set their algorithms based on any higher moral principles; these algorithms are created to achieve the goals of the large corporations which own these search engines. If you believe large corporations are inherently ethical I have three letters for you “AIG”. Cloaking and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Often considered a Black Hat SEO, (Search Engine Optimization) tactic. Any of several varying techniques used to provide a different web page for the search engine spiders to scan than what a human user would see. Cloaking is one of the most controversial methods used in SEO, (Search Engine Optimization).. It can be an unethical attempt to mislead search engines regarding the content on a particular web page. On the other hand, it can be used to provide human users with content that a search engine would not be able to process or parse. An ethical use of cloaking would be to provide website accessibility to blind people and people with other disabilities. A good benchmark on whether a given act of cloaking is ethical or not is whether it enhances accessibility. CPC and Internet Marketing A major SEM (Search Engine Marketing) tool, Abbreviation for Cost-per-Click. Used in online advertising, it is the cost an advertiser pays each time a link pointing to their site is clicked. This can range from $.05 to $150 depending on the link text. It should be noted that it is very rare to receive clicks at the $.05 price. The most common price range we see in our SEM (Search Engine Marketing) practice is 50 cents to $5 per click, this is largely determined by the industry (or category) the advertisers falls in. The effectiveness of any PPC (Pay Per Click) campaign can only be measured by ROI (return on investment). CTR and Internet Marketing SEM (Search Engine Marketing) term. Abbreviation for Click-through Rate. It is a ratio of clicks to impressions in a Pay-per-Click (PPC) campaign. Google currently employs a quality score partially determined by the click through rate of your campaign. High bidders do not necessarily get top position. Professional PPC (Pay Per Click) experts like we have here at www.Knock3.com use their knowledge to ensure that our clients receive the maximum number of quality clicks for the minimum price. Description META Tag and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Web Design and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) term which refers to the information in one of the META tags that holds the description of the web page and/or website. This information is used by some search engines when search results are displayed. This text commonly appears below the title in most search engines. Example: A search on Google for a term like “ Search Engine Optimization in San Antonio” might return results like this: Search Engine Optimization in San Antonio Search Engine Optimization and Internet Marketing Company serving San Antonio and Texas. www.knock3.com Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tool. A large volume of websites categorized by theme or subject. In addition to being a good place to look for information about a specific topic, directories are also a valuable source of one-way back links. Acquiring listings in a directory can be very time consuming and it is important to restrict directing listings to relevant directories. You would not want the following link: (Title)Search Engine Optimization in San Description) Search Engine Optimization and Internet Marketing Company serving San Antonio and Texas. (URL) listed in a directory about shoes. Doorway Page and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Considered by some to be a Black Hat SEO (Search Engine Optimization) tactic. Also called a gateway page or squeeze page, a doorway page exists for the purpose of driving traffic to a website. They are designed and search engine optimized to target one specific key phrase and are written for search engines to obtain high rankings and drive traffic to the site. Care must be taken when using doorway pages to avoid being penalized by the Search Engines. Doorway pages can be an effective SEO (Search Engine Optimization) tool in the hands of an SEO (Search Engine Optimization) expert like we employ at www.knock3.com Header Tags and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Many website designers have abandoned the use of H1 and H2 tags as they are no longer needed for website design however, Search Engines still place value on these tags and they should not be ignored from an SEO (Search Engine Optimization) stand point. Areas on a web page enclosed by heading tags. Example: <H1> Web Design in San Antonio</H1>. Heading tags vary in importance, with regard to SEO (Search Engine Optimization) depending on the number used in the headings or sub-headings (i.e. H1,2,3,4.). Title, heading tags and content should relate to the key phrase targeted by a web page. IBL and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Abbreviation for In-bound Link. Any link on another page that points to the subject page. Also called a back link. An IBL can appear as a url, as in www.internetmarketinginsanantonio.com or as hypertext within normal content such as “Internet Marketing in San Antonio” Keyword/Key phrase and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Keywords and phrases are words used in search engine queries. Such as “Internet Marketing in San Antonio” Each variation of a keyword, such as the plural form of the word, is treated like a separate term. SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the process of optimizing web pages for keywords and key phrases so that the pages rank highly in search engine results. Keyword Frequency and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) How often a keyword appears on a page and in specific areas on a page. The more times a keyword shows up on a webpage, the more relevant that page is considered to be for that search. If overdone, some search engines and directories will downgrade the page due to what they consider to be spamming. Keyword Placement and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Refers to the areas on a web page that a search engine looks for keywords. Most important are the page title, body text, headings and link text. Keyword Prominence and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) How close to the beginning of the content a keyword appears on a page. A keyword that appears closer to the top of the page will be more relevant to some search engines. However, your keywords and phrases should be peppered throughout the page, in the middle and end for best results. Keyword Stuffing and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) The practice of adding extra keywords to a web page. These words are added for the ‘benefit’ of search engines and not human visitors and the words may or may not be visible to human visitors. While not necessarily a violation of search engine Terms of Service, at least when the words are visible to humans, it detracts from the impact of a page and looks like junk content. It is also possible that search engines may discount the importance of large blocks of text that do not conform to grammatical structures (i.e. lists of disconnected keywords). Internet Marketing and Search Engine Optimization experts walk a fine line here this is also an area where SEO amateurs often misstep. Keyword Weight or Density and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) The number of times your keyword or phrase is used in relation to all the other words on a page. It is often expressed as a percentage. META Tags and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) META tags are part of HTML but are there for the sole use of search engine spiders. The most important two are the description and the keyword META tags. Using too many meta tags reduces the value of each meta tag. For instance you would be better off having 3 meta tags such as “Search Engine Optimization in San Anotonio, Internet Marketing In San Antonio, Web Design in San Antonio” rather than 10 or 20 key phrases. Mirror and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) A nearly identical or duplicate website or page. Using mirrors can be a violation of the Terms Of Service of may search engines and could damage your website ranking. If you are going to create multiple websites for your business they should each have unique content. Out-bound Links and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Links from your website to another website. Outbound links are believed to diminish your sites ranking. PPC and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Abbreviation for Pay-per-Click. An advertising model where advertisers pay only for the the clicks on their advertisements. PageRank or PR and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Google’s proprietary measure of link popularity for web pages. It is expressed as a score in a range of 0 to 10 (example 6/10) with 0 being low and 10 being high. Reciprocal link and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) A link to another website placed on your site in exchange for a link to your site from theirs. This can be helpful , harmful or neutral to your websites SEO (Search Engine Optimization) efforts depending on the Page Rank of the other website versus the page rank of your website. Robots.txt and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Robots.txt is a file which well-behaved spiders read to determine which parts of a website they may visit. Having this file implemented incorrectly can defeat all other SEO (Search Engine Optimization) efforts. Sandbox, Google The and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Supposedly used by one large search engine as a probation period for new sites. Gaining a high PR or ranking is not possible during this period. However our and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Internet Marketing experts have not found the sandbox theory to be true as we have achieved high ranking for brand new websites on many occasions, even in competitive categories like Web Design in San Antonio, SEO in San Antonio, and Internet SEM and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Abbreviation for Search Engine Marketing. Search Engine Marketing is the task of locating, researching, submitting and positioning a website within search engines for maximum exposure. SEM includes the function of choosing the target keywords and keyword phrases for the website’s META tags. It can also include the purchase and placement of advertising in search engines. SEO Abbreviation for Search Engine Optimization. SEO covers the process of making web pages spider friendly (so search engines can read them) and helping web pages be relevant for targeted keywords. The ultimate goal of all SEO efforts should be for your website to rank on the first page of search engine results for relevant search terms. SERP and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Abbreviation for Search Engine Results Page/Positioning. Also loosely used to describe search engines in general. Search Directory and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) A search directory is similar to a search engine in that they each compile databases of web sites. A directory differs in that it only enters sites that are directly submitted to it and, instead of crawling a site, they send humans to inspect and decide if the site is worthy of a listing. The listings are then categorized, and sometimes alphabetized, so that the results of any search will start with site descriptions that begin with some number or non-letter character. Spam or Spamdexing and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) The practice of deliberately and dishonestly modifying HTML pages to increase the chance of them being placed close to the beginning of search engine results or to dishonestly influence the category to which the page is assigned. Spamdexing refers exclusively to practices that mislead a search and indexing program to give a page a ranking it does not deserve. Spider and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Also called a bot (or robot). Spiders are software programs that scan the web. They vary in purpose from indexing web pages for search engines to harvesting email addresses for spammers. Stop Word and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Small common words, such as “a,” “as” or “the,” that are ignored by search engines when indexing web pages and processing search queries. Title and and Internet Marketing The META/HTML tag that contains the page title which SHOULD be determined by the contents of that page. Many designers pay little attention to the title versus the page content. A website about Web design in San Antonio should have the words Web Design in San Antonio in the title. Web Design and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Search Engine Optimization should be taken into consideration during the web design and website development process. It is much easier to optimize a site for terms such as “Web Design in San Antonio” or “Internet Marketing in San Antonio” while the website is being designed and developed. SEO can be applied to a website that already exists however, the best time to start SEO is during the web design and development process. |