Search Engine Optimisation Dictionary of TermsSearch engine optimisation is one of the fastest changing areas of internet marketing. The rules, terminology and agreed best practises are shaped and changed daily making it difficult for the amateur search marketer to get a handle on how best to proceed. Rather than drift in a sea of terminology, Top Position’s SEO team has created a cheat sheet of key terms for optimisation newcomers. Read on for a no-nonsense guide to everyday SEO phrases.
Useful search engine optimisation terms
Alt tag: The text used to describe the content of an image on a web site. This is visible when you roll over the image and can be likened to a newspaper caption. Anchor text: Anchor text is the web site text you click on to activate and follow a link. This can be anything from the basic ‘click here’ to more subtle use within the main body of a sentence. From an organic search perspective, the anchor text of any link is an important consideration. Good SEO will wrap the link around the primary and secondary keywords. Back links / Link Backs: A link from another site back to your site. The quantity and quality of back links play a huge role in determining non paid search positions. Blog: A blog is a social media resource used by corporations and individuals. A blog is a stand alone web page that can be likened to an online diary and is used to share opinions, thoughts and reflections online. A blog can be a useful search engine optimisation tool. Bookmarking site: A social media resource. Popular bookmarking sites such as Digg allow users to rate web sites and news stories they come across online. The sites work as a voting system, with the more votes a page receives the higher it appears. Several search engines have begun to take note of stories and pages receiving high numbers of bookmarks. Used for search SEO, bookmarks can contribute to the number of linkbacks a site has. Deep linking: Deep linking is the process of pointing a link through to a specific page on a web site, rather than too the home page. The landing page will reflect the nature of the link. E.g. if the link is talking about a particular product, the link will be to the page about that product. HTML: Hyper Text Markup Language is a programming language often used to design web sites. HTML optimisation was one of the first activities associated with optimisation and involved checking and optimising header tags, meta tags and titles. Keyword density: A formula used to calculate the frequency of keywords on a web site. It is possible to have too high a keyword density – this means that the main words and phrases have been overused and is just as damaging to SEO as too low a density. A low keyword density suggests that the main keywords are not used often enough on the web page. Landing Page: The page that a visitor is taken to after clicking on a link. Meta tag: A part of old-school optimisation, meta tags are part of the web site coding and are split into descriptions and keywords. The meta tags are intended to tell search engine spiders the content of the page. Natural listings: Also known as the organic listings, the natural listings are appear in the main search engine results pages, below or to the left of paid search adverts (PPC). Activities are carried out to ensure the web site appears as high as possible in the natural listings. Off page SEO: The optimisation activity not carried out on the web site itself. This refers to the text and links from external or third party web sites. On page SEO: Work carried out on the web site itself to aid search engine positioning. This refers to changes made to the text and content of the web site. PageRank: A value assigned to each page of the web site by Google. This is determined by links to the page among other things and takes into account the page rank of the site publishing the link. Press distribution site: A web site such as ClickPress or Pressbox which provides a space for the publication and distribution of press released. Press distribution channels play a role in organic search work as they can be used for link building purposes and expose the web site being optimised to a wider audience. Want to learn more about search engine optimisation? Check out our SEO news and articles.
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