Common SEO Definitions Part 2

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Last month I talked about the importance of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and some of the more common definitions and terms. SEO is an essential part for the success of your business. It helps with the marketing plan of your business or products and can increase your customer list and improve your overhead.

Below is a continued list of some of the common SEO definitions:

Name, Address & Phone (NAP) – NAP, just as it says, is a description of the name, location and the phone number of your business. The key part about your business’ NAP is to ensure that it is exactly the same everywhere on the Internet. This includes every page of your website, your social media accounts and anywhere else on the web your site is listed.

Organic Search – Organic searches are the results a user will find when they type in a keyword or phrase into a search engine. Being found organically on the web is an exceptional way of generating ‘free’ leads but it also takes a great deal of work and effort, especially if you want to get to the coveted top spot.

Pay Per Click Advertising (PPC) –This is a method of advertising where an advertiser pays for their ads to appear on a website or in the advertising positions on the search engines. Just as it sounds, the advertiser will only pay money when a user clicks on the link.

Reciprocal Link – This is the practice of two websites linking to each other. In most cases, linking to another website shows that you trust their content and what they are saying and a reciprocal link is when they link back to your site.

Search Engine – A search engine is what the majority of us use when we go online. It is a way for us to quickly and easily find the content, businesses, information or news we want. Some of the major search engines are Google, Bing, Yahoo!, Ask, AOL, and Wow.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) – This is the use of marketing a business or product through the major search engines. It is most effective by creating content and information that users will interact with, share and use and the goal is to rank higher in the search engines than a competitor.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – This is the act of making changes to a website as a way to help it rank better in organic search results. Common SEO changes include adding in keywords, improving content and changing the code.

Search Engine Results Page (SERP) – This is what is displayed by the search engines when a user types in a keyword or phrase.

Spiders – These are web based programs that are created to ‘crawl’ around the web and index all of the content on it. Spiders will locate every webpage that exists and are often used when determining how a website will rank for a specific keyword or search term. Other names for spiders are: robots, web robots, crawlers, web crawlers, bots and internet bots.

Title Tag – A title tag is an element that helps search engines and users determine what a particular page of a website is about. The title appears in the html code of the site and is also displayed at the top of the Internet browser that is being used. A title tag is also the hyperlink that is shown in the search results.

Top Level Domain (TLD) – Top level domains are the major URL extensions located at the end of a website and some examples are .com, .org and .net.

Uniform Resource Locator (URL) – The Uniform Resource Locator is most commonly known as the web address of a website.

White Hat SEO – This is the correct practice used when attempting to help a website rank organically. It’s essentially playing by the rules that the major search engines lay out.

Black Hat SEO – This is the incorrect practice used when attempting to help a website rank organically. It is striving to use ways to manipulate search results and increase the traffic for a website. The majority of the time black hat SEO will not pay off in the end and the website will be caught and penalized.

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