SEO / SEM glossary Part 2

As I promised, this is second part of SEO /SEM terminologies. These are useful words which can be used while communicating with other SEO Professionals , your boss(he may be unaware of them!!) or to your friends(Who know nothing about SEO).

Flux - A term describes the shuffling of positions in search engine results in between major updates.

G - Google, also known as The Big G or The Mighty G.

Google Algorithm - A mathematical formula used in calculating search engine ranking. The goal of any SEOP is to understand the algorithm as best as possible. Algorithms of course are very closely guarded secrets and possibly you’ll never meet anyone who has "cracked" an algorithm. Search engine algorithms change regularly to prevent anyone from guessing the system.

Grey bar - A Google PR score that can indicate a ban in place on the page currently being viewed; i.e. the page does not appear in Google search results.

Grey hat - Optimization strategies that are in a unknown area of reputability/validity.

IBL - Inbound Link. Links pointing from another site into your site.

KDA - Keyword Density Analyzer or Analysis. The ratio of keywords or keyphrases in relation to other text on a page.

Keyword/Keyphrase - A word or words that strongly relate to a page/site topic or search engine query.

Keyword Stuffing - Where a keyword or phrase is used excessively in page content or alt tags in an attempt to gain higher rankings. Can result in page penalties or bans.

Landing pages - Pages that are optimized and very targeted towards a particular subject. An effective/valid site optimization and sales conversion strategy.

Link Farms - Pages that consists of little else but links to other sites and usually the sites listed have links back to the farm page. The goal of a link farm is to artificially boost rankings through link popularity and is consequently at risk of penalty or ban.

Link popularity - A gauge of a site's popularity based on the number of inbound links. Link popularity is a major factor in search engine ranking and has greater strength (in theory) where inbound links are from other quality sites.

Meta tag - These mainly refer to the title, keywords and description tags. They are summary of the content that is on the page in different formats. Metatags content does play a role in rankings for many search engines.

MSN - A reference to Microsoft's search engine.

Mirror Site - A copy of a site with some content differences to target particular keywords. Not a recommended strategy as it can trigger a penalty or ban.

OBL - Outbound Link. A link pointing from your site to another site.

ODP - Open Directory Project - DMOZ

Off-page factors - Factors such as inbound links and the popularity of sites with links pointing into your site that you have little control over, but that still play a role in your site’s rankings.

On-page factors - A reference to the elements on your site and their role in your rankings, for example, Meta Tags, Code Cleaning relevance etc.

OOP - Over Optimization Penalty. Where a search engine algorithm detects that changes you are making to a page or the way the page is constructed is to influence rankings over being useful to a site visitor.

Organic search results - the results displayed after a search engine query that are not paid for by the listed site's owner.

Visit back for More SEO / SEM terms.

Contact me at webulletin@gmail.com

Author : Prashant Main

SEO / SEM glossary Part 1

With search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM) such hot topics these days - and constantly evolving, it's easy to get lost in all the various terminology and words used - especially when you're starting out and trying to learn SEO/SEM strategies.

Even if you don't intend to handle search engine optimization yourself and contract the work to others, it's important to understand what your SEO person is telling you.

With some basic familiarity of SEO terminology, you'll also be able to tell if a SEO person is heading down the wrong path - possibly taking your site with them in the form of a ranking penalty.

The following list consists some common SEO/SEM terms and definitions, with links to articles in some instances discussing the topic in more detail:

301 - A server response code, meaning "page has been permanently moved to x" A 301 redirect is commonly used to redirect sites or individual pages in cases where a domain or page name is changed and is usually the preferred method of redirection by search engines.

302 - A server response meaning, "Page has temporarily moved form this location".

Anchor Text - The visible text component of a hyperlink.

Alexa ranking - Alexa is a famous search engine that provides extra information such as traffic rankings. An Alexa ranking is an indicator used to gauge site performance.

ALT Image tag - Spiders cannot able to read images as such, so the alt tag or text attribute describes what the specific image represents.

Black hat - A person engaged in or tactic used to increase search engine rankings using methods prohibited by search engines.

Bot - Used in reference to a search engine robot or spider; software applications that retrieve web page information to feed into a search engine database.

CSS - Cascading Style Sheets. Used mainly to decrease the amount of source code on a page, by referencing a single set of instructions on how to display various elements on web page.

Crawl - The process by which search engine spiders fetch web page information.

DMOZ - Directory MOZilla is a human reviewed directory, the contents of which appear on many sites, including Google. A listing in DMOZ said to assist boosting rankings in general search results.

Doorway Page - A page used for driving traffic form any page to another specific page and usually focusing on specific keywords. Generally, doorway pages are designed for search engines only, human visitors never see them - consequently, they are illegal one. Doorway pages must not be confused with landing pages, a legitimate strategy.

Dupe/Duplicate content - Usually used in reference to a penalty applied by a search engine for the same content appearing on different pages/sites.

FFA - Free For All pages; basically a link farm. You add your site link to the page, it then gets pushed down as other links are added until your link is ultimately pushed off the page. Not a standard method of promotion or link building.

Visit back for More SEO / SEM terms.

Contact me at webulletin@gmail.com

Author : Prashant Main