If you’re new to SEO (search engine optimization), it’s very important to get acquainted with the related terms and definitions. There are many SEO definitions and terms, but for the convenience of beginners, here is a list of the most used terms that help one navigate the world of SEO.
SEO – SEO, or search engine optimization, is a process that enables you to clearly describe your site to different search engines for indexing. With an effective “description,” you let search engines “know” more about your site and increase its ranking on specific terms.
SEM – SEM, or search engine marketing, refers to marketing or promoting your website in the world of the Internet by increasing its visibility in search engine result pages (SERP) using different methods like inclusion, search engine optimization, PPC (pay per click) campaigns, contextual advertising and paid placements. These SEM techniques are used primarily for business purposes.
White Hat SEO – It is the most effective, long lasting, ethical and proper SEO technique, based on the guidelines of SEO best practices.
Black Hat SEO – This is often described as unacceptable SEO technique, which can easily boost page ranks but also has the risk of black listing by Google.
Manual SEO – This is a time consuming, but effective process without the usage of any kind of software or tool.
Organic Results – Non-paid results returned by search engines are known as organic results. Organic result ranks are determined by the relevance of content, based on the terms searched for.
Keywords and Keyword Density – Keywords are the short phrases or terms that represent your page(s) for the search engines as well as to users of different sites. Keywords are typed into search engines to generate relevant search results. Keyword density denotes how often a keyword has been used on an individual web page.
SpiderBot – This is a program that “crawls” the web and is assigned to search, gather and organize information. It is also used to refer to and index web pages in various online searches.
Meta Tag – In order to identify the purpose and topic of a given page, search engines uses meta tags which contain descriptive information about the web page.
Alt Tag – An alt tag is an HTML tag generally used with an image that boosts Google Image results. Its main role is to exhibit text if the image itself is not displayed.
Page Rank – Page rank is measured within the values of 0 to 10. This measuring parameter is used by Google to determine the relative value of a web page in comparison to all other pages.
Link Building – This is a process of building the popularity of a site with the help of inbound and outbound links. If a website has a high number of relevant links, it can easily achieve high page rank.
URL – URL, or uniform resource locator, is the address of a website.