Key Terms And Concepts Of Search Engine Optimization(SEO)

Alt text: This refers to the “alt” attribute for the IMG HTML tag. It is used in

HTML to attribute a text field to an image on a web page, normally

with a descriptive function, telling a user what an image is about and

displaying the text in instance where the image is unable to load.

Anchor text: The visible, clickable text in a link.

Backlink: All the links on other pages that will take the user to a specific web

page. Each link to that specific page is known as an inbound/backlink.

The number of backlinks influences PageRank so the more backlinks

the better - get linking!

Canonical: The canonical version is the definitive version. In SEO, it refers to a definitive URL.

Domain name: The easy to read name used to identify an IP address of a server that distinguishes it from other systems on the World Wide Web: our domain name is tutorchintu.blogspot.com.

Flash: A technology used to show video and animation on a website. It can be

bandwidth heavy and unfriendly to search engine spiders.

Heading tags: Heading tags (H1, H2, H3 etc) are standard elements used to define headings and subheadings on a web page. The number indicates the importance, so H1 tags are viewed by the spiders as being more important

than the H3 tags. Using target key phrases in your H tags is essential for

effective SEO.

Home page: The first page of any website. The home page gives users a glimpse into what your site is about – very much like the index in a book, or a

magazine.

Hypertext Markup Language (HTML): Hyper Text Markup Language, read by web browsers. Certain HTML tags

are used to structure the information and features within a web page.

Hyperlink: A link in a document (electronic) that allows you, once you click on it, to follow the link to the relevant web page.

Internet Portal (IP) address: The Internet Protocol (IP) address is an exclusive number, which is used to represent every single computer in a network.

Keyword frequency: The number of times a keyword or key phrase appears on a website.

Keyword phrase: Two or more words that are combined to form a search query – often referred to as keywords. It is usually better to optimise for a phrase rather than a single word.

Keyword rankings: This term refers to where the keywords/phrases targeted by SEO rank amongst the search engines - if your targeted terms do not appear on the first three pages, start worrying.

Landing page: The page a user reaches when clicking on a paid or organic search engine listing. The pages that have the most success are those that

match up as closely as possible with the user’s search query.

Link: A link is a URL embedded on a web page. If you click on the link you will be taken to that page.

Link bait: A technique for providing content that attracts links from other web pages.

Meta tags: Meta tags are there to tell the spiders what exactly the web pages are about. It’s important that your meta tags are optimised for the targeted

key phrases. Meta tags are made up of meta titles, descriptions and

keywords.

Referrer: When a user clicks on a link from one site to another site the user left is the referrer. Most browsers log the referrer’s URL in referrer strings.

This information is vital to determining which queries are being used to

find specific sites.

Robot.txt:  A file written and stored in the root directory of a website that restricts the search engine spiders from indexing certain pages of the website.

Universal Resource Locator(URL): This is a website’s address e.g. http://www.gottaquirk.com.

URL rewriting: Presenting search-friendly URLs without question marks, rewriting them on the server to their standard format suitable for use in querying

dynamic content.

Usability: Usability is a measure of how easy it is for a user to complete a desired task. Sites with excellent usability fare far better than those that are

difficult to use.