SEO Start Point | DW SEO Blog

Search engine optimization is a business trade that exists solely on the Internet the phraseology and terminology used is unique to this deliverable. I have put together some SEO related every day definitions so that SEO beginner’s can start defining each definition in turn.

Algorithms:

A search algorithm is an intelligent mathematical formula that search engines utilize to rank websites for their keywords. This formula based on numerous calculations and permutations is one of the most guarded secrets on the Internet today.

Crawlers:

Let’s look at Googlebot for example: Googlebot is a search engine crawler. This crawler periodically invades the web in record time, indexing everything in its path, “yes” that means your website and everything pertaining to it. Crawlers thrive and live on page source codes. Once collected it is stored in Google’s Search Index. The reason for storage index is to facilitate the visitors search result. this processed result will be filtered by the algorithm, remember the result of the search is from the stored index not the live web.

Directories:

In the early days of the web, webmasters quickly realised the importance and power of inbound links. this importance gave the savvy webmaster a niche in the market for a dedicated place to store categorised inbound links, thus resulting in the birth of the directory. (History of Directories is a post on it’s own)

HTML:

HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language and is a backbone code building block. Search engines look exclusively at HTML code during indexing to markup and determine its relevance. therefore it is imperative to be on top of all your HTML coding if you decide to take up SEO as a business.

Link Popularity:

Inbound links are one of the most inportant parts to any websites optimization. The quality of inbound links have a massive impact on their individual value and relevance.

Link Building:

In layman terms link building is a process of gaining quality related oneway inbound links from websites to point to your website.

Meta Tags:

Meta tags are located at the top of a pages source code, they specify certain things that may not be included in the page content. They also allow webmasters to insert certain flags that search engine crawlers can react to. There is numerous meta tags that can help webmasters with SEO techniques.

Search Engine Marketing:

This term often refers to Pay-Per-Click marketing. These ads are normally displayed in the sponsored section of the search engine results. In some SEO circles this term relates to an action taken to gain rankings both paid or organically.

Search Engine Optimization:

This term is very much open to discussion and interpretation it is very often used as an overarching term to accommodate market reseach, keyword research, on page optimization, site structure, link building, brand building, viral marketing, adjusting and staying upto date. You Decide!

Search Engine Results Page (SERPs):

This is the result generated from a search engine query by the user to find out his websites page standing ranking for that pages related search term.

Spamming:

Relates to any unnatural manual or automated effort to bring a page higher in the search engine results. Once again this term is open to interpretation, however search engines have the last say on this matter.

Note: More SEO Definitions to follow at a later date.

Regards DW.