SEO Definitions

This page provides definitions and explanations for a range of
common terms related to Search Engine optimisation.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

- Search engine optimisation is the process of improving the volume and quality of visitor traffic to a website from the natural or organic results of search engines like Google, Yahoo or Bing. SEO involves refining the content, the code and the structure of a website for the purpose of improving its ranking. This is done through a variety of methods, including inserting relevant keywords and phrases into the text content and the source code of individual web pages, ensuring that website architecture follows search engine guidelines, and establishing high quality external links to the website.

Pay-Per-Click (PPC)

- Pay per click or paid search, is the form of advertising offered by Google and the other search the engines. Rather than pay for their advertisement to be displayed in the search engine results, advertisers only pay a fee when someone clicks on their text advert and arrives at their website. Pay per click adverts are featured separately from organic search listings on search engine results pages in a defined 'sponsored links' section. Ranking in sponsored links sections depends on a range of factors, including the relevance of keywords to the website and the amount that the advertiser is prepared to pay or bid for attracting a visitor to their website for any give keywords or phrases.

Algorithm

– Search engines use algorithms to work out how relevant a website is in order to index and rank it appropriately. The search engines are protective of the exact details of their algorithms and may change them from time to time to improve the relevancy of their search results.

Analytics

– Analytics refers to the techniques, approaches, tools, programmes and data that search engine specialists and web marketers use to understand how their website is performing and how visitors interact with it. Anchor Text– Anchor text works as a hyperlink to another website or another internal webpage. Search engines value hyperlink keywords , and it is important that they are optimized to be relevant to the keywords you wish to be found for.

Backlinks

– see inbound links

Black Hat SEO

– This refers to practices designed to side-step search engine guidelines in order to make a website appear higher than the rankings than if guidelines are followed correctly. There are many black hat techniques, such as spamming or cloaking. Search engines are likely to penalize any website found using black hat SEO techniques, and will often ban them from their search engine listings.

Crawler

– Also known as a spider, robot or bot). A crawler is a search engine program that 'crawls' through websites, retrieving data, following links, logging page versions and updates and storing URLs in the search engine's database or index. Crawlers allow search engines to provide fast, accurate and up-to-date listings.

Description Tag

- A short HTML paragraph that provides search engine crawlers with a synopsis of a webpage's content.

Flash Optimisation

- The relatively new process of refining Flash movie and surrounding HTML code to be more 'crawlable' for search engines. Until recently, search engine crawlers were unable to 'read' flash code at all.

Google AdWords

– Google's advertising programme where text advertisements appear in the sponsored links sections of Google search engine results page and Google Adsense host sites. Advertisers bid on the keywords and phrases relevant to their online websites or core business area. If a user clicks on a text ad which links through to a website, the advertiser is charged a fee.

Inbound Links

- Known also as backlinks, backward link or back link, inbound links define the links from other websites to your website. Inbound links can dramatically improve a website's search engine rankings, especially if they contain keyword-optimised anchor text relevant to your website and are located on websites with a high relevance to your website's market sector.

Index

- An index is a search engine's memory bank or database. It contains all of the data and information that search engine crawlers retrieve from websites. When a user performs a search, the search engine draws on its index and algorithms to return a ranked list of the web pages most relevant to the keyword query.

Keyword / Keyword Phrases

- Sometimes referred to as search terms and search phrases, keywords are the words and phrases users enter into search engine query boxes. Search engines list results pages in accordance with how relevant the pages are to these keywords. Ensuring that pages are relevant to the keywords used in search queries is a key part of the SEO process.

Link

- A link is either an image or piece of enhanced text that when clicked on by a user opens a different web page or website or takes the user to a different part of the page being viewed. High quality internal and inbound links are critical in achieving high rankings, and link development is a major part of the SEO process.

Link Baiting

- Link baiting refers to the creation of website content that encourages users to link to your page from their own websites. Link baiting techniques vary enormously, but can include informed articles and news stories, useful resources and occasionally controversial or sensational content. Some websites use link baiting as the core component of their internet marketing strategy.

Link Farm

- A link farm is a website that only includes a list of links to other websites. Link farms contain no useful content except for links to other sites and can be easily confused with web directories. The concept of link farms was created as a method for boosting search engine listings, but modern search engines regard link farms as a form of spam and may blacklist them.

Long tail keywords

These are keyword phrases that are often very specific and contain several keywords, for example the combination of a brand name and the product. Long tail keyword phrases are used to attract high quality traffic to a website as they tend to draw in users looking for something specific, and thus often boast a higher conversion rate.

Meta Data / Metadata

HTML data on a webpage that describes the content on the page. This information is used by search engines to understand what the webpage is about and so index it accurately.

Meta Description Tag

- Also referred to as a description tag, a meta description tag is a short HTML paragraph that provides search engine crawlers with a synopsis of a webpage's content.

Meta Keywords Tag

- A tag that provides search engines with a snapshot of keywords relevant to a specific webpage. Search engines no longer use meta keywords as a major ranking criteria, instead preferring to scan the actual website content.

Meta Robots Tag

A meta robots tag tells the search engine whether or not to index a webpage. Robots.txt files and password protection offer alternatives to meta robots tags.

Meta Tags

Meta tags are HTML tags placed in a webpage that contain information for crawlers and internet browsers. Main types of meta tag information include page-relevant keywords (meta keywords tag), page descriptions (description tag) and whether a page can be indexed (meta robots tag).

Natural Listings / Organic Listings

- Natural listings are listings that appear on search engine results pages purely based on their relevance to the search terms, as determined by the search engine's algorithm. The best and most cost effective way of improving a website's natural ranking is through the use of search engine optimisation techniques.

Organic Listings / Natural Listings

Page Rank (or PR)

- not to be confused with rank - is a link analysis algorithm developed by Google which measures the importance of a website or web page. A score from one to ten is given to a website to represent its PageRank rating.

Rank

- Rank is the position a website listing occupies relative to the top on a search engine's natural search results page. Search engines generally display ten listings per page, and getting near the top of the listings is regarded as essential due to overwhelming evidence showing that search engine users rarely look beyond the first page or two of listings when deciding on which websites to click through to.

ROI (Return On Investment)

- A method used to evaluate the efficiency of an investment. Calculating basic ROI is simple - the return from an investment is divided by the cost of the investment, with the result expressed as a percentage or a ratio. Marketeers can measure the return on the marketing expenditure or advertising in ROI terms.

Search Engine

- A search engine is a website that enables users to search the internet for other websites. The search functionality is dictated by the keywords and phrases the user enters into the search engine's query box, and listings are returned and displayed in two ways. Natural (or organic) results are displayed solely in terms of how relevant to the keywords the websites are deemed to be by the search engine. Sponsored (or 'paid for') results are listed in accordance with both relevance to the keywords and how much the website owners are prepared to bid to appear in the search results for the keyword in question. To determine the relevance of websites to the keywords, search engines use complex processes often referred to as algorithms. Search engines pro-actively gather information on websites through the use of crawlers and store the details in their indexes or databases.

Search Terms

- Sometimes referred to as keywords and keyphrases, search terms are the words and phrases users enter into search engine query boxes. Search engines list results pages in accordance with how relevant the pages are to these search terms. Ensuring that pages are relevant to the search terms used in search queries is a key part of the SEO process.

Spider

- Also known as a Crawler, Robot, or bot. A spider is a search engine program that 'crawls' through websites, retrieving data, following links , retrieving data, following links, logging page versions and updates and storing URLs in the search engine's database or index. Spiders allow search engines to provide fast, accurate and up-to-date listings

Title Tags

- An HTML tag containing text describing the contents of a webpage. Optimising title tags are a significant part of SEO because they are often used as the text links that lead to sites from search engine result pages. The best title tags contain relevant keywords that both encourage accurate indexing and appeal to search engine users.

Unique Visitor

Unique visitor is a term which refers to the registering of a hit on one page of a web site from a unique IP address in a specified period. Subsequent hits by the same IP address are not counted as unique during that same period. Unique visitor counts are one useful way of measuring the success of search engine optimisation.

White Hat SEO

White hat SEO is the acceptable use of search engine optimisation techniques that follow search engine best practice guidelines.

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