THIS IS STEP BY STEP SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION
PAGE 86 TO END CHAPTER 12
SEO Challenge #10: Implement an SEO Program
Give the Step-by-Step method a serious try for three months. Follow the program closely and consistently. When possible, go above and beyond the recommended work outlined in this plan. How much movement did you experience on the search engines after three months? How many additional visitors have you attracted to your site with this process?
Conclusion
Go Forth and Take the Search Engines by Storm
Nothing ventured, nothing gained, so the saying goes. Give this process a try, as you have nothing to lose. While it’s impossible to guarantee success (or everyone would be successful), I can assure you that this process has led to some huge successes for the campaigns I’ve personally worked on. Work at it just a few hours a week and over the course of a few months, you could be pleasantly surprised with the results you experience on the search engines.
What can you expect? Here is a breakdown of how my past campaigns have typically progressed. First, there is a slight increase in rankings for some of the search terms being targeted. Typically, like clockwork, after about two or three months, a few key search terms will start to rank and, as progress is made, these search terms will eventually make it onto the first page of the major search engines.
From my experience, by the time some of the targeted search terms reach the top half of Google’s first page, there has been a big increase in online traffic. As mentioned earlier in this book, you can find some free tools to track this traffic through Google Analytics (http://www.google.com/analytics). Better yet, because this traffic has been so targeted and relevant, these increases have led to more sales, phone calls, and other conversions.
Additionally, there was a strong correlation between the search terms being optimized and the keywords driving the majority of the traffic online. This strong connection was not a coincidence.
If you’re still not sure SEO is worth the effort, here are some key reasons why you should give search engine optimization some serious consideration:
• SEO is important because it improves the odds of someone finding you online.
• Online visibility can bolster your credibility and brand awareness.
• SEO can put you in front of people actively looking for your products and services.
• SEO allows you to focus your online marketing efforts on an end result, such as more sales, leads, and visibility.
What makes search engine optimization such a powerful method of advertising is that it empowers your customers to find you at the exact moment they are actively looking for what you have to offer. Most other advertising channels require you to shout your messaging at prospective customers and simply hope for the best.
Better yet, while most advertising requires you to invest money based on the number of people you are attempting to get in front of, the customers you attract with SEO are completely free when you begin to get placement on the search engines:
Which would you prefer? If your answer is free customers, I think you’re starting to see the value in this!
I urge you to give this strategy a try. With the Step-by-Step process—which includes all the tools and resources needed—it is easy to put theory into practice.
Free marketing and website traffic is there for the taking—as long as you know how to get it. And now you know how to get it! So go forth and conquer the search engines. Once you move forward, you’ll never look back. The days of the yellow pages are behind us. It’s a new kind of revolution—and information is king.
Glossary of Essential SEO Terms
#
301 Moved Permanently
The file has been moved permanently to a new location. This is the preferred method of redirecting for most pages or websites. If you are going to move an entire site to a new location, you may want to test moving a file or folder first. If that ranks well, then proceed with moving the entire site. Depending on your site authority and crawl frequency, it may take anywhere from a few days to a month or so for the 301 redirect to be picked up.
404 Not Found
The server was unable to locate the URL. However, some content management systems send 404 status codes when documents do exist.
A
Above the Fold
A term traditionally used to describe the top portion of a newspaper. In e-mail or web marketing, it means the area of content viewable prior to scrolling.
AdWords
Google’s advertisement and link auction network, which controls all search engine listings found in the sponsored section of Google.
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing programs allow merchants to expand their market reach and mindshare by paying independent agents on a cost per action (CPA) basis. Affiliates only get paid if visitors complete an action.
Age
Some social networks or search systems may take site age, page age, user account age, and related historical data into account when determining how much to trust that person, website, or document. Some specialty search engines, like blog search engines, may also boost the relevancy of new documents.
Alexa
Amazon.com-owned search service which measures website traffic. While not highly accurate, it is free.
Alt Attribute
Most major search engines are not able to easily distinguish an image’s content. Using an image alt attribute allows you to help search engines understand the function of an image by providing a text equivalent for the object.
Analytics
Software that allows you to track your page views, user paths, and conversion statistics based upon interpretation of your log files or through including a JavaScript tracking code on your site.
Anchor Text
The text a user would click on to follow a link.
Search engines assume that your page is authoritative for the words that people include in links pointing at your site. When links occur naturally, they typically have a wide array of anchor text combinations. Too much similar anchor text may be considered a sign of manipulation and could thus be discounted or filtered. Make sure to mix up your anchor text when building links that you control.
API (Application Program Interface)
A series of conventions or routines used to access software functions. Most major search products have an API program.
Ask
Ask is a search engine owned by InterActive Corp. It was originally named Ask Jeeves; “Jeeves” was dumped in early 2006.
Authority
The ability of a page or domain to rank well in search engines. Five key factors associated with site and page authority are link equity, site age, traffic trends, site history, and the publishing of unique, original, quality content. Search engines constantly tweak their algorithms to try to balance relevancy algorithms based on topical authority and overall authority across the entire web.
B
Backlink (see Inbound Link)
Bait and Switch
Marketing technique where you make something look overtly pure or as though it has another purpose to get people to believe in it or vote for it (by linking to it or sharing it with friends), then switch the intent or purpose of the website after you gain authority. For example, it is generally easier to get links to informational websites than commercial sites. Some new sites might gain authority much more quickly if they tried looking noncommercial and gained influence before trying to monetize their market position.
Black Hat SEO
Search engines set up guidelines that help them extract billions of dollars of ad revenue from the work of publishers and the attention of searchers. Within that highly profitable framework, search engines consider certain marketing techniques deceptive in nature and label them as black hat SEO. Those considered within the guidelines are called white hat SEO techniques. The search guidelines are not a static set of rules, and things that may be considered legitimate one day may be considered deceptive the next.
Blog
A periodically updated journal, typically formatted in reverse chronological order. Many blogs not only archive and categorize information, but also provide a feed and allow simple user interaction like leaving comments on the posts. Most blogs tend to be personal in nature. Blogs are generally quite authoritative, with heavy link equity, because they give people a reason to frequently come back to the site, read the content, and link to whatever they think is interesting.
Blogger
Blogger is a free blog platform owned by Google.
It allows you to publish sites on a subdomain of Blogspot.com or to your own domain. If you are serious about building a brand or making money online, you should publish your content to your own domain because it can be hard to reclaim a website’s link equity and age-related trust if you have built years of link equity into a subdomain on someone else’s website.
Bold
A way to make words appear in a bolder font. Words that appear in a bolder font are more likely to be read by humans scanning a page. A search engine may also place slightly greater weight on these words than regular text. When writing your own copy, if a word or phrase appears on a page many times, it does not make sense or look natural to bold every occurrence.
Bookmarks
Most browsers come with the ability to bookmark your favorite pages. Many web-based services also allow you to bookmark and share your favorite resources. The popularity of a document (as measured in terms of link equity, number of bookmarks, or usage data) is a signal for the quality of the information. Some search engines may be using bookmarks to aid their search relevancy.
Brand
The emotional response associated with your company and/or products. A brand is built through controlling customer expectations and the social interactions between customers. Building a brand is what allows you to move away from commodity-based pricing and toward higher margin, value-based pricing.
Branded Keywords
Keywords or keyword phrases associated with a brand. Typically, branded searches occur late in the buying cycle and are some of the highest-value and highest-converting keywords.
Broken Link
A hyperlink that is not functioning. A link that does not lead to the desired location.
Browser
Client used to view the World Wide Web. The most popular browsers are Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, Mozilla’s Firefox, Safari, and Opera.
C
Cache
Copy of a web page stored by a search engine. When you search the web, you are not actively searching the whole web, but files in the search engine index.
Canonical URL
Many content management systems are configured with errors that cause duplicate or exceptionally similar content to get indexed under multiple URLs. Many webmasters use inconsistent link structures throughout their site that cause the exact same content to get indexed under multiple URLs. The canonical version of any URL is the single most authoritative version indexed by major search engines. Search engines typically use PageRank or a similar measure to determine which version of a URL is the canonical URL.
Cloaking
Displaying different content to search engines than to searchers. Depending on the intent of the display discrepancy and the strength of the brand of the person or company cloaking, it may be considered reasonable or it may get a site banned from a search engine.
Clustering
In search results, the listings from any individual site are typically limited to a certain number and grouped together to make the search results appear neat and organized and to ensure diversity amongst the top-ranked results.
Comments
Many blogs and other content management systems allow readers to leave user feedback. Leaving enlightening and thoughtful comments on someone else’s related website is one way to get them to notice you.
Conceptual Links
Links that search engines attempt to understand beyond just their words. Some rather advanced search engines attempt to find out the concept links versus just matching the words of the text to that specific word set.
Concept Search
A search that attempts to conceptually match results with the query, not necessarily with those words, but rather their concept.
Conversion
Many forms of online advertising are easy to track. A conversion is reached when a desired goal is completed.
Most offline ads have generally been much harder to track than online ads. Some marketers use custom phone numbers or coupon codes to tie offline activity to online marketing.
Here are a few common example desired goals:
• a product sale
• completion of a lead form
• a phone call
• capture of an e-mail
• completion of a survey
• capture of a person’s attention
• feedback
• website share by a visitor
• link at your site by a site visitor
Copyright
The legal right to publish and reproduce a particular piece of work.
Cookie
Small data file written to a user’s local machine to track them. Cookies are used to help websites customize your user experience and track conversions.
CPA (Cost Per Action)
The effectiveness of many forms of online advertising is measured on a cost-per-action basis.
CPC (Cost Per Click)
Many search ads and contextually targeted ads are sold in auctions where the advertiser is charged a certain cost per click.
CPM
Cost per thousand impressions. Many people use CPM as a measure of how profitable a website is or has the potential of becoming.
Crawl Depth
How deeply a website is crawled and indexed. Since searches that are longer in nature tend to be more targeted, it is important to try to get most or all of a site indexed such that the deeper pages have the ability to rank for relevant long-tail keywords.
Crawl Frequency
How frequently a website is crawled. Sites that are well trusted or frequently updated may be crawled more often than sites with low trust scores and limited link authority.
Click Through Rate (CTR)
The percentage of people who view and then click on an advertisement, which is a way to measure how relevant a traffic source or keyword is.
D
Dead Link
A link that is no longer functional. Most large, high-quality websites have at least a few dead links in them, but the ratio of good links to dead links can be seen as a sign of information quality.
Deep Link
A link that points to an internal page within a website. When links grow naturally, most high-quality websites have many links pointing at interior pages. When you request links from other websites, it makes sense to request a link from their most targeted relevant page to your most targeted relevant page. Some webmasters even create content based on easy linking opportunities.
Dedicated Server
Server limited to serving one website or a small collection of websites owned by a single person. Dedicated servers tend to be more reliable than shared (or virtual) servers. Dedicated servers usually run from $100 to $500 a month. Virtual servers typically run from $5 to $50 per month.
De-Listing
Temporarily or permanently becoming de-indexed from a directory or search engine.
Demographics
Statistical data or characteristics that define segments of a population.
Description
Directories and search engines provide a short description near each listing that aims to add context to the title.
High-quality directories typically prefer the description describe what the site is about rather than something overtly promotional.
Directory
A categorized catalog of websites, typically manually organized by topical editorial experts. Some directories cater to specific niche topics, while others are more comprehensive in nature. Major search engines likely place significant weight on links from DMOZ and the Yahoo! Directory. Smaller and less established general directories likely pull less weight. If a directory does not exercise editorial control over listings, search engines will not be likely to trust its links at all.
Domain
Scheme used for logical or location organization of the web. Many people also use the word domain to refer to a specific website.
Duplicate Content
Content duplicate or near duplicate in nature.
Search engines do not want to index multiple versions of similar content. Many automated content-generation techniques rely on recycling content, so some search engines are somewhat strict in filtering out content they deem to be similar or nearly duplicate.
E
Editorial Link
Search engines count links as votes of quality. They primarily want to count editorial links that were earned over links that were bought or bartered. If the links are from sites without editorial control, like link farms, they are not likely to help you rank well.
Entry Page
The page a visitor uses to enter your site. If you are link building, it is important to point links at your most appropriate page when possible.
Ethical SEO
Search engines like to paint SEO services that manipulate their relevancy algorithms as being unethical. Any particular technique is generally not associated with ethics, but is either effective or ineffective.
Everflux
Major search indexes are constantly updating. Google refers to this continuous refresh as everflux. In the past, Google updated their index roughly once a month. Those updates were named Google Dances, but since Google shifted to a constantly updating index, Google no longer does what was traditionally called a Google Dance.
External Link
A link that references another domain. If you link out to lots of low-quality sites or primarily rely on low-quality reciprocal links, some search engines may not rank your site very well. Search engines are more likely to trust high-quality editorial links (both to and from your site).
F
Favorites (see Bookmarks)
Feed
Many content management systems, such as blogs, allow readers to subscribe to content update notifications via RSS or XML feeds. Feeds can also refer to pay per click, syndicated feeds, or merchant product feeds. Merchant product feeds have become less effective as a means of content generation due to improving duplicate content filters.
Flash
Vector graphics-based animation software that makes it easier for websites to look rich and interactive. Search engines tend to struggle with indexing and ranking Flash websites because Flash typically contains so little relevant content.
Forward Links (see Outbound Links)
Fresh Content
Content that is dynamic in nature and gives people a reason to keep paying attention to your website. Fresh content often refers to creating new content.
FTP (File Transfer Protocol)
A protocol for transferring data between computers. Many content management systems (such as blogging platforms) include FTP capabilities.
G
Google Advertising Professional (GAP)
A program that qualifies marketers as proficient AdWords marketers.
Google
The world’s leading search engine in terms of reach. Google pioneered search by analyzing linkage data via PageRank. Google was created by Stanford students Larry Page and Sergey Brin.
Google Bot
Google’s search engine spider. Google has a shared crawl cache between their various spiders, including vertical search spiders and spiders associated with ad targeting.
Google Bombing
Making a page rank well for a specific search query by pointing hundreds or thousands of links at it with the keywords in the anchor text.
Google Bowling
Knocking a competitor out of the search results by pointing hundreds or thousands of low-trust, low-quality links at their website. Typically, it is easier to bowl new sites out of the results. Older, established sites are much harder to knock out of the search results.
Google Dance
In the past, Google updated their index roughly once a month. Those updates were named Google Dances, but since Google shifted to a constantly updating index, Google no longer does what was traditionally called a Google Dance.
Major search indexes are constantly updating. Google refers to this continuous refresh as everflux.
Google Keyword Tool
Keyword research tool provided by Google that estimates the traffic and competition for a keyword and will tell you what keywords Google thinks are relevant to your site or a page on your site.
Google Sitemaps
Program that webmasters can use to help Google index their sites’ content. Please note that the best way to submit your site to search engines and keep it in their search indexes is to build high-quality editorial links.
Guestbook Spam
A type of low-quality automated link in which search engines do not place much trust.
H
Headings
The heading element briefly describes the subject of the section it introduces. Heading elements are classified from H1 to H6, with the lower-numbered headings being most important. You should only use a single H1 element on each page, though you may want to use multiples of the other heading elements to structure a document.
Headline
The title of an article or story.
Hidden Text
SEO technique used to show search engine spiders text that human visitors do not see. While some sites may get away with it for a while, generally the risk-to-reward ratio is inadequate for most legitimate sites to consider using hidden text.
HITS
Link-based algorithm that ranks relevancy scores based on citations from topical authorities.
Home Page
The main page on your website, which is largely responsible for helping develop your brand and setting up the navigational schemes used to help visitors and search engines navigate your website. As far as SEO goes, a home page is typically going to be one of the easier pages to rank for some of your more competitive terms, largely because it is easy to build links into a home page. You should ensure your home page stays focused and reinforces your brand, though, and do not assume that most of your visitors will come to your site via the home page. If your site is well structured, many pages will likely be far more popular and rank better than your home page for relevant queries.
Host (see Server)
HTML (Hypertext Markup Language)
The language in which pages on the World Wide Web are created.
HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol)
The foremost protocol to communicate between servers and web browsers. Hypertext transfer protocol is the means by which data is transferred from its residing location on a server to an active browser.
I
Inbound Link
Link pointing to one website from another website.
Most search engines allow you to see a sample of links pointing to a document by searching using the link function.
Index
A collection of data used as a searchable bank to find a match to a user-fed query. The larger search engines have billions of documents in their catalogs.
Internal Link
Link from one page on a site to another page on the same site. It is preferable to use descriptive internal linking to make it easy for search engines to understand what your website is about. Use consistent navigational anchor text for each section of your site, emphasizing other pages within that section. Place links to relevant related pages within the content area of your site to help further show the relationship between pages and improve the usability of your website.
Internet
Vast worldwide network of connected computers.
Internet Explorer
Microsoft’s web browser.
IP Address (Internet Protocol Address)
Every computer connected to the Internet has an IP address. Some websites and servers have unique IP addresses, but most web hosts host multiple websites on a single host.
ISP (Internet Service Provider)
ISPs sell end users access to the web. Some of these companies also sell usage data to web analytics companies.
J
JavaScript
A client-side scripting language that can be embedded into HTML documents to add dynamic features.
K
Keyword
A word or phrase implying a certain mindset or demand that targeted prospects are likely to search for. Long-tail and brand-related keywords are generally worth more than shorter and vague keywords because they typically occur later in the buying cycle and are associated with a greater level of implied intent.
Keyword Density
An old measure of search engine relevancy based on how prominent keywords appeared within the content of a page. Keyword density is no longer a valid measure of relevancy over a broad open search index, though. When people use keyword-stuffed copy, it tends to read mechanically (and thus does not convert well and is not link-worthy), plus some pages crafted with just the core keyword in mind often lack semantically related words and modifiers from the related vocabulary (and that causes the pages to rank poorly as well).
Keyword Funnel
The relationship between searchers’ various related keywords. Some searches are particularly well aligned with others due to spelling errors, poor search relevancy, and automated or manual query refinement.
Keyword Research
The process of discovering relevant keywords and keyword phrases to focus your SEO marketing campaigns on.
Keyword Research Tools
Tools that help you discover potential keywords based on past search volumes, search trends, bid prices, and page content from related websites.
Keyword Stuffing
Writing copy that uses excessive amounts of the core keyword. When people use keyword-stuffed copy, it tends to read mechanically (and thus does not convert well and is not link-worthy), plus some pages crafted with just the core keyword in mind often lack semantically related words and modifiers from the related vocabulary (and that causes the pages to rank poorly as well).
L
Landing Page
The page on which a visitor arrives after clicking on a link or advertisement.
Link
A citation from one web document to another web document or another position in the same document. Most major search engines consider links a vote of trust.
Link Baiting
The art of targeting, creating, and formatting information to provoke the target audience to point high-quality links at your site. Many link-baiting techniques are targeted at social media and bloggers.
Link Building
The process of building high-quality linkage data that search engines will use to evaluate your website as authoritative, relevant, and trustworthy.
Link Bursts
A rapid increase in the quantity of links pointing at a website. When links occur naturally, they generally develop over time. In some cases, it may make sense that popular viral articles receive many links quickly, but there are typically other signs of quality as well.
Link Churn
The rate at which a site loses links.
Link Equity
A measure of a site’s strength based on its inbound link popularity and the authority of the sites providing those links.
Link Farm
Website or group of websites that exercise little to no editorial control when linking to other sites.
Log Files
Server files that show your leading sources of traffic and what people are searching for to find your website.
Link Hoarding
A method of trying to keep all your link popularity by not linking out to other sites. Generally, link hoarding is a bad idea.
Link Popularity
The number of links pointing at a website. For competitive search queries, link quality counts much more than link quantity. Google typically shows a smaller sample of known linkage data than the other engines do, even though Google still counts many of the links they do not show when you do a link search.
Link Reputation
The combination of your link equity and anchor text.
Link Rot
A measure of how many and what percentage of a website’s links are broken.
Long Tail
Long-tail keywords are longer strings of search terms that offer more precise and specific searches, thus have a higher value.
M
Manual Review
All major search engines combine a manual review process with their automated relevancy algorithms to help catch search spam and train their relevancy algorithms. Abnormal usage data or link growth patterns may also flag sites for manual review.
Meta Description
The meta description tag is typically a sentence or two describing the content of the page.
Meta Keywords
The meta keywords tag can be used to highlight keywords and keyword phrases that the page is targeting. Many people spammed meta keyword tags and searchers typically never see the tag, so most search engines do not place much (if any) weight on it. Many SEO professionals no longer use meta keywords tags.
Meta Search
A search engine that pulls top-ranked results from other search engines and rearranges them into a new result set.
Meta Tags
People generally refer to meta descriptions and meta keywords as meta tags. Some people also group the page title in with these.
Mindshare
A measure of the amount of people who think of you or your product when considering products in your category.
Sites with strong mindshare, top rankings, or a strong memorable brand are far more likely to be linked to than sites that are less memorable and have less search exposure. The link quality of mindshare-related links most likely exceeds the quality of the average link on the web. If you sell noncommodities, personal recommendations also typically carry far greater weight than search rankings alone.
Mirror Site
Site that mirrors (or duplicates) the contents of another website. Generally, search engines prefer not to index duplicate content.
N
Navigation
Scheme to help website users understand where they are, where they have been, and how that relates to the rest of your website.
Niche
A topic or subject that a website is focused on.
Search is a broad field, but as you drill down, each niche consists of many smaller niches.
Nofollow
Attribute used to prevent a link from passing link authority. Commonly used on sites with user-generated content, like in blog comments.
O
Organic Search Results
Most major search engines’ results consist of paid ads and unpaid listings. The unpaid/algorithmic listings are called the organic search results. Organic search results are organized by relevancy, which is largely determined based on linkage data, page content, usage data, and historical domain and trust-related data. Most clicks on search results are on the organic search results. Some studies have shown that 70 to 80 percent or more of clicks are on the organic search results.
Outbound Link
A link from one website pointing at another external website.
P
PageRank
Algorithmic scale based on link equity that estimates the importance of web documents. Since PageRank is widely tied to Google’s relevancy algorithms, other engines have moved away from relying on PageRank and place more emphasis on trusted links via algorithms such as TrustRank.
Page Title (see Title)
Paid Inclusion
A method of allowing websites that pass editorial quality guidelines to buy relevant exposure.
Paid Link (see Text Link Ads)
Penalty
Search engines prevent some websites suspected of spamming from ranking highly in the results by banning or penalizing them. These penalties may be automated algorithmically or manually applied. If a site is penalized algorithmically, it may start ranking again after a certain period once the reason for being penalized is fixed. If a site is penalized manually, the penalty may last an exceptionally long time or require contacting the search engine with a reinclusion request to remedy.
Personalization
Altering the search results based on a person’s location, search history, content recently viewed, or other factors relevant to the individual on a personal level.
Portal
Website offering common consumer services such as news, e-mail, other content, and search.
PPC (Pay Per Click)
A pricing model through which most search ads and many contextual ad programs are sold. PPC ads only charge advertisers if a potential customer clicks on an ad.
Q
Quality Content
Content that is link-worthy in nature.
Quality Link
Search engines consider links votes of trust. Quality links count more than low-quality links.
Query
The actual “search string” a searcher enters into a search engine.
Query Refinement
Some searchers may refine their search query if they deem the results irrelevant. Query refinement is both a manual and an automated process. If searchers do not find their search results relevant, they may search again. Search engines may also automatically refine queries
R
Reciprocal Links
Nepotistic link exchanges where websites try to build false authority by trading links, using three-way link trades, or other low-quality link schemes.
Redirect
A method of alerting browsers and search engines that a page location moved. Permanent changes of location use 301 redirects, and 302 redirects are used for a temporary change of location.
Registrar
A company that allows you to register domain names.
Reinclusion
If a site has been penalized for spamming, the webmaster may fix the infraction and ask for reinclusion. Depending on the severity of the infraction and the brand strength of the site, they may or may not be added to the search index.
Referrer
The source from which a website visitor came.
Relevancy
A measure of how useful searchers find search results.
Many search engines may also bias organic search results to informational resources since commercial ads also appear in the search results.
Robots.txt
A file that sits in the root of a site and tells search engines which files not to crawl. Some search engines will still list your URLs as URL-only listings, even if you block them using a robots.txt file.
ROI (Return on Investment)
A measure of how much return you receive from each marketing dollar. While ROI is a fairly sophisticated measurement, some search marketers prefer to account for their marketing using even more sophisticated profit elasticity calculations.
RSS (Rich Site Summary or Real Simple Syndication)
A method of syndicating information to a feed reader or other software that allows people to subscribe to a channel they are interested in.
S
Search History
Many search engines store user search history information. This data can be used for better ad targeting or to make old information more findable. Search engines may also determine what a document is about and how much they trust a domain based on aggregate usage data.
Search Engine
A tool or device used to find relevant information. Search engines consist of a spider, index, relevancy algorithms, and search results.
SEM (Search Engine Marketing)
Marketing a website in search engines, typically via SEO, buying pay-per-click ads and paid inclusion.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
The art and science of publishing information and marketing it in a manner that helps search engines understand that your information is relevant to related search queries. SEO consists largely of keyword research, SEO copywriting, information architecture, link building, brand building, mindshare building, reputation management, and viral marketing.
SEO Copywriting
Writing and formatting copy in a way that will make it appear relevant to a wide array of related search queries.
SERP (Search Engine Results Page)
The page on which search engines show the results for a search query.
Search Marketing
Marketing a website in search engines, typically via SEO, buying pay-per-click ads and paid inclusion.
Sitemap
Page that can be used to help give search engines a secondary route to navigate through your site.
Social Media
Websites that allow users to create valuable content that can be shared virally. A few examples of social media sites are social bookmarking sites and social news sites.
Spam
Unsolicited e-mail messages. Search engines also like to outsource their relevancy issues by calling low-quality search results spam. They have vague, ever-changing guidelines that determine what marketing techniques are acceptable at any given time. Typically, search engines try hard not to flag false-positives as spam, so most algorithms are quite lenient, as long as you do not build lots of low-quality links, host large quantities of duplicate content, or perform other actions that are considered widely outside of relevancy guidelines. If your site is banned from a search engine, you may request reinclusion after fixing the problem.
Spamming
The act of creating and distributing spam.
Spider
Search engine crawlers that search or “spider” the web for pages to include in their index.
Submission
The act of making information systems and related websites aware of your website. In most cases, you no longer need to submit your website to large-scale search engines; they follow links and index content. The best way to submit your site is to get others to link to it.
T
Tagging, Tags (see Bookmarks)
Term Frequency
A measure of how frequently a keyword appears amongst a collection of documents.
Text Link Ads
Advertisements formatted as text links. Since the web was originally based on text and links, people are typically more inclined to pay attention to text links than some other ad formats, which are usually less relevant and more annoying. However, search engines primarily want to count editorial links as votes, so links that are grouped together with other paid links (especially if those links are to off-topic commercial sites) may be less likely to carry weight in search engines.
Title
The title element is used to describe the contents of a document. The title is one of the most important aspects to doing SEO on a web page.
TrustRank
Search relevancy algorithm that places additional weight on links from trusted seed websites controlled by major corporations, educational institutions, or governmental institutions.
U
Unethical SEO
Some search engine marketers lacking in creativity try to market their services as ethical, whereas services rendered by other providers are somehow unethical. SEO services are generally neither ethical nor unethical. They are either effective or ineffective. SEO is an inherently risky business, but any quality SEO service provider should make clients aware of the potential risks and rewards of recommended techniques.
Update
Search engines frequently update their algorithms and data sets to help keep their search results fresh and make their relevancy algorithms hard to duplicate. Most major search engines are continuously updating both their relevancy algorithms and search index.
URL (Uniform Resource Locator)
The unique address of any web document.
Usability
How easy it is for customers to perform the desired actions. The structure and formatting of text and hyperlink-based calls to action can drastically increase your website usability and thus conversion rates.
Usage Data
Things like a large stream of traffic, repeat visitors, multiple page views per visitor, a high click-through rate, or a high level of brand-related search queries may be seen by some search engines as a sign of quality.
V
Vertical Search
A search service focused on a particular field, a particular type of information, or a particular information format.
Viral Marketing
Self-propagating marketing techniques. Common modes of transmission are e-mail, blogging, and word-of-mouth marketing channels. Many social news sites and social bookmarking sites also lead to secondary citations.
Virtual Server
A server that allows multiple top-level domains to be hosted from a single computer. Using a virtual server can save money for smaller applications, but dedicated hosting should be used for large commercial platforms. Most domains are hosted on virtual servers, but using a dedicated server on your most important domains should add server reliability and could be seen as a sign of quality.
W
WHOIS
Each domain has an owner of record. Ownership data is stored in the WHOIS record for that domain. Some domain registrars also allow you to hide the ownership data of your sites. Many large-scale spammers use fake WHOIS data.
White Hat SEO
Search engines set up guidelines that help them extract billions of dollars of ad revenue from the work of publishers and the attention of searchers. Within that highly profitable framework, search engines consider certain marketing techniques deceptive in nature and label them as black hat SEO. Those considered within their guidelines are called white hat SEO techniques. The search guidelines are not a static set of rules, and things that may be considered legitimate one day may be considered deceptive the next.
WordPress
Popular open-source blogging software platform offering both a downloadable blogging program and a hosted solution.
If you are serious about building a brand or making money online, you should publish your content to your own domain because it can be hard to reclaim a website’s link equity and age-related trust if you have built years of link equity into a subdomain on someone else’s website.
Wordtracker
Feature-rich, paid-keyword research tool that collects data from a couple of popular meta search engines, like Dogpile.
X
XHTML (Extensible Hypertext Markup Language)
A class of specifications designed to move HTML to conform to XML formatting.
XML (Extensible Markup Language)
A simple, very flexible text format derived from SGML, used to make it easy to syndicate or format information using technologies such as RSS.
Y
Yahoo! Site Explorer
Research tool webmasters can use to see which pages Yahoo! has indexed from a website and which pages link at those pages.
YouTube
Feature-rich amateur video upload and syndication website owned by Google.
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