Search Engine Optimization Terms and Definitions
If you are a webmaster or wanna be one, you will have to deal with search
engines if you are interested in getting free traffic to your site. The
following definitions will help you understand the terminology generally
used when dealing with search engines:
Algorithm: Every search engine uses some sort of algorithm. An
algorithm is a complex set of mathematical computations that search
engines use so that whenever somebody searches for something, they
can provide the most relevant search results. All search engines have
different algorithms and keep them a closely guarded secret so that their
search results are not manipulated by unscrupulous people. Search engines
frequently change and or modify their algorithms in an effort to improve
the accuracy of their search results.
Alt Tag: This is an HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) tag which can
be used in an image <img> tag. It is a good practice to use an alt
tag in an image tag as search engines can not read an image but they can
read the alt tag. However, since many people started to abuse this tag by
stuffing it with key words, most search engines now ignore this tag. But it's still good to use this tag as those visitors who have turned
off images will see the text of this tag. Visitors will also see this tag
text when they move their mouse on the image.
Anchor Text: It is the visible text in an HTML link on which a
website visitor can click to go to that web site. For example, in the link
Better Value Web Hosting,
the text "Better Value Web Hosting" is the anchor text. Many
search engines like Google are giving considerable weight to this anchor
text in the incoming links to a web page or web site.
Apache Web Server: It is the most widely available HTTP (Hyper Text
Transfer Protocol) server on the Internet and supports programming
languages like PHP, PERL and others. More information about apache is
available at Apache Software Foundation.
Also see Web Server
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Back Links: See Incoming Links
Bad Neighborhood: This term refers to a website or a bunch of
websites that have been penalized by search engines because these websites
tried to get higher ranking in search results by using unethical SEO
methods such as cloaking, hidden text, keyword stuffing, link farms etc.
etc. You may like to read Google's
Webmaster Guidelines.
Bot or Crawler or Web Crawler or Spider or Web Spider: The
term bot is derived from the word "robot". While bots can
be used for many purposes, the search engines usually refer to their bots
as crawlers, web crawlers, spiders or web spiders. These web crawlers or
spiders are web robots that recursively gather web-page information, such as the bot used by Google
called GoogleBot.
Broken Link: Also called Dead Link. If you click on an HTML
link and your browser displays an error message that the page can not be
displayed, there can be two reasons for that:
1. The web server on which the website is hosted is down at that
particular time
2. The link is broken. The broken link is usually the result of the
destination page having been deleted or renamed.
Cloaking: It is the practice where a website displays different
content to the Search Engine Crawler than the content displayed to the
website users. The idea is to trick the Search Engines to get higher
ranking in search results. Search Engines absolutely hate this unethical
practice and ban such sites from their search index.
Click Through: The process of clicking on an HTML link to go from
the present web page to the clicked web page. For example, if you click at
Home
(opens in a new window so you won't lose this page), you will end up
at our Home page. Thus you would have clicked through from here to our
Home page.
Content: also variously referred to as Web Page Content or Web
Content. This is all the content that a visitor to that web page sees.
It may consist of text, images, music or whatever else a webmaster has put
on the page for the benefit of visitors.
CTR - Click Through Rate: It is defined as the number of times a
link is clicked through per 100 showings. For example, if a link is shown
100 times and is clicked on 5 times then its click through rate is 5%.
Each showing of a link is called an impression. The Click Through Rate is
commonly denoted as CTR. CTR becomes very important if you are advertising
your business through text ads or banners. The CTR shows the effectiveness
of your text ad or banner.
Dead Link: See Broken Link
HTML: It stands for Hyper Text Markup Language.
In its basic form, it's a very simple programming language made up of tags
and is used for creating World Wide Web pages. With a very few
exceptions, almost all web pages that you see on the internet today are
written in HTML. This page that you are reading right now is an HTML web
page.
HTML Document: Also commonly referred to as HTML page or web page.
It is an electronic document written in HTML.
HTML Link: Also called Hyper Link. When a user clicks on a
HTML link, the user is transported to the web page to which that HTML link
points. The visible portion of an HTML link can be text called Anchor Text
or it can be an image. A banner is a good example of an image as the
visible portion of the hyper link.
HTML Tags: Also called HTML Elements
are instructions to the Web Browser as to
how it should display the content of your web page to the visitor. Some
examples of HTML tags or elements are: <html>, <head>, <body>,
<p>. Notice that all HTML tags MUST be enclosed in angle brackets
and all tags must have an ending tag like </html>, </head>,
</body>, </p>. Notice the forward slash / in front of each
tag; it signifies the end of that tag or element. So a very rudimentary HTML document
will look like:
<html>
<head>
</head>
<body>
</body>
</html>
The very first tag <html> tells the browser that what follows is an
HTML document. The <head> tag contains further information about the
document and usually contains Title and other tags known as Meta
Tags. </head>
indicates the end of <head> tag. <body> tag contains the main
content of the document and many contain text, tables, pictures,
paragraphs, line breaks etc. etc. </body> signals the end of the
body tag and </html> indicates the end of the HTML document.
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Incoming Link: Also called Back Link. An HTML link from
another website to your website. For example, if your website is listed in
a directory such as Yahoo!, then you have an incoming link from that
directory to your web site. This is just an example, an incoming link
doesn't necessarily have to be from a directory; it can be from any
website. An incoming link can be to your home page or any other web page
on your website.
Internet: A network of computers created with the idea that if one
or several of the computers in the network go down or are destroyed, the
network will still work. The concept has become extremely popular and the
network now includes computers from almost all Governments, Universities,
Research Facilities and many major commercial organizations.
Meta Tags: These are special HTML Tags inside the
<head></head> tags and are used to give additional information
to the browser and search engine crawlers or bots about the HTML page. In
the normal scheme of things, these meta tags are not visible to the
visitor. Some people wrongly refer to the <title></title> tag
as a meta tag; it's not. While Title tag is inside the
<head></head> tag, there can be only ONE title per HTML page
but there can be many, and usually are many, meta tags per HTML
document. Also the the Title tag has the its format as <title>Title
of the document here</title> which is just like other HTML tags
while meta tags have the format <meta name="NameOfTheMetaTag"
content="Some content here">. Common examples of meta tags
are "keywords", "description" and many others.
Search Engine:
A search engine is a computer (or rather a bunch of computers acting in
unison) that find or at least try to find the most relevant web pages in
their database in response to a user's query or search
term.
Search Engine friendly Web Page: A web page that has been designed
such that it is easier for search engines to index. Generally, web pages
with lots of plain text are search engine friendly while web pages with
lots of graphics (pictures) and JavaScripting are not as search engines
can not properly read such pages.
SEO: It stands for Search Engine Optimization. It is the process
of designing a web page in such a way that it will rank high in search
engines search results for certain keywords or keyword phrases.
Search Term: A word or phrase ( two or more
words) that a user enters in the search box of a search engine before
clicking on the search button.
Web Browser: A software application such as Internet Explorer,
FireFox or Netscape that enables a user to read the content of web pages.
Web Page: An electronic document usually created using HTML
and can usually be accessed over the web with a web browser. If a web
page is located in a password protected directory, it can only be
accessed using the proper password.
Web Server: Web server is a computer
optimized for serving web pages fast to client applications such as the
Web Browsers (Internet Explorer, FireFox, Netscape etc.). A web server
software such as the apache web server software is installed on this
computer to enable it to communicate with client applications over the
Internet to serve web pages.
WWW: It stands for World Wide Web. It is a global network of
computers called Internet Servers which serve HTML documents also called
HTML pages to applications like Web Browsers.
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