As you begin to learn more about SEO, you will be interacting with these terms. So there's no time like the present to become familiar with them!
301 Redirect - Method of redirecting an old webpage to a new location. More simply, to display another web page for the web address that you are trying to visit. 301 implies that the move is permanent (as opposed to temporary, etc.)
Alt Tag – Adding an HTML tag to each image within a website so that the images are included in search engine results, as well as the website text.
Back link - Links originating from one website and pointing to another website or web page. Back links aid in organic search engine rankings.
Black Hat SEO - The use of unaccepted or frowned upon SEO practices in order to get higher rankings and more traffic. These websites are usually caught and removed from the search engines!
Bot (Robot) - Programs written to scour the web automatically for various reasons (to index web pages, for spamming purposes, etc.) aka web robots, web crawlers, internet bots, and spiders.
Cloaking - Showing a different web page to a search engine spider than what is normally seen. Method typically used by spammers.
Conversion - Web traffic that fulfills a pre-established goal, such as purchasing of a specific product or filling out a registration form on your website that comes from a search engine.
Keywords - Words that are used by search engines to determine the topic of a given web page. They are used within the web page text and behind the scenes of a web page.
Landing Page - A content-rich web page geared around a particular topic, product or conversion goal. This is where people “land” on your website from a search.
Meta Data / Meta Tags - Web page specific, descriptive information that helps a search engine identify the purpose and topic of a given web page. Common Meta data include a web page's description and keyword listing.
Organic Search - Search results in a search engine that are not paid advertisements. The results that come up naturally based on their indexing within a search engine. Organic search results are good. We all want to come up on top for organic searches using keywords we are optimized for.
Paid Link Building - Websites who are willing to link back to your site for a fee in order to boost your rankings/weight in the search engines.
SEM - Search Engine Marketing - The act of marketing a website via search engines, whether this be improving rank in organic listings, purchasing paid listings or a combination of these and other search engine-related activities.
SEO - Search Engine Optimization - The art of manually working within a web site so that it will rank higher in organic listings of search engines.
Spider - Programs written to search the web automatically for various reasons (to index web pages, for spamming purposes, etc.) Also known as web robots, web crawlers, bots, and internet bots.
Static Website - A website or web page whose content is fixed (does not change or has to be manually changed).
Title Tag - A Meta data element that determines the actual "title" of a given webpage. The title is what shows up in the top bar of your browser. It is also the hyperlink that shows in search engine results listings.
TLD - Top Level Domain - The three main domain extensions: .com, .net, and .org.
URL - Uniform Resource Locator. Or, more commonly, a web address.
White Hat SEO - The use of accepted SEO practices in order to get higher rankings, more traffic, etc. (Opposite is Black Hat!)
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