ABCs of Search Engine Optimization – A Dictionary

Every month I try to focus on a particular marketing communications issue here on the No. 2 Pen blog. Last month I talked content marketing with ebooks, and this month you’ll get a smattering of info on search engine optimization and keywords.

To start off on the theme, check out this list of definitions relating to search engine optimization (SEO).

Alt tags – Descriptive, keyword rich text descriptions for non-textual elements, e.g. photos and graphics. Placed within the HTML of a web page.

Analytics – Tools that allow you to assess your website visitors by number, location, traffic sources, and much, much more. Popular analytics tools include Google Analytics, StatCounter, CoreMetrics, and Omniture.

Anchor text – Text that is associated with a link, e.g.,  <a href=”http://www.no2pen.com/website-content-writing/”>Website Content Writing</a>. In this example, “website content writing” are the link’s anchor text.

Header tags – HTML tags that indicate titles and sub-titles of documents, e.g., H1, H2, H3, etc. Using header tags in a hierarchical fashion is an SEO best-practice

Index – The list of all known web pages in the world kept by each search engine. When a site is “indexed” by Google, it means that Google has become aware of and recorded the contents of a website.

Keywords – Words or phrases to incorporate into a website for the purposes of increasing search engine ranking.

Keyword research – The process of determining how many website users search for particular terms. Decide what words to optimize for based on volume, competition, and relevance.

Keyword stuffing – Using keywords in an unnatural way both in website copy and HTML code to try and trick search engines into ranking a site highly. Results in poor user experience and usually doesn’t work.

Meta description – An HTML tag that should describe the content of a particular web page. Often, the content in the meta description tag appears as the description for a listing on a search engine results page. The meta description should describe that web page using keyword rich copy that is designed to “get the click.” Be sure to keep the description under 160 characters.

Meta keywords – Once upon a time search engines relied upon meta keyword tags to determine the content of a page. This led to meta keyword tag abuse, and as a result meta keyword tags have very little value now.

Meta tag – A general name for a large variety of tags that contain information pertinent to web browsers and search engine spiders. Common meta tags include the description tag, keyword tag, and relationship tag.

Nofollow – A tag that can be added to a link that tells search engines to ignore that specific link. When a link is nofollowed, it usually has very little value.

Organic search results – Search engines index web pages and rank them based on relevance and credibility. Organic search results, also called natural search results, are not paid for through advertising programs such as Google AdWords.

Pagerank (PR) – A metric developed by Google that is somewhat relevant to the “strength” of a particular page. At one time, Google PR was a good way to gauge Google’s opinion of a particular web site or web page, however this has changed. Google PR is no longer an accurate guide to determine Google’s opinion of a particular page or website.

Search engine optimization (SEO) – The process of improving a web site so that it receives more visitors from search engines and greater search engine rankings for specific keywords.

Search engine results pages (SERPs) – After a user enters a search term(s) into a search engine, the pages that turn up because of that search appear on this web page. Simple enough.

Spam - A general term that describes poor quality web pages and websites.

Spider - Also known as a “bot.” Spiders are programs created by search engines that “crawl” the entire internet, cataloging and recording much of the everything.

Title tags – Think of a title tag like the copy on the spine of a book.  It’s the text seen at the very of a browser or in a search engine results page (the copy above the meta description). The purpose of a title tag is to tell the reader and the search engines what that individual page is about. For SEO purposes, title tags should be keyword rich.

White hat vs. black hat SEO – White hat represents ethical tactics for improving a page ranking, while black hat refers to tactics that “cheat” the search engines. Typically, black hat tactics are an attempt to manipulate search engines, where white hat tactics are attempt to market a web site and improve the user experience.

User experience – The ease or difficulty at which a website visitor can navigate the site or comprehend the content. The golden rules at Google are: 1) Do no evil and 2) Maximize the user experience. SEO is very much about maximizing the user experience.

XML sitemap – A data file that helps search engine spiders index a web site. Having an XML sitemap is an SEO best practice.

There are more than 200 factors that play into SEO, each with varying degrees of importance. SEO is a very complex issue and not one that can be covered in a simple dictionary. I suggest you read this article on SEOMoz for a great explanation of all those factors -> Search Engine Ranking Factors.

Want more definitions? Check out our post “Social Media Dictionary for Small Businesses.”

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