New to Seo? Definitions You Need To Know

SEO requires a lot of reading and background information in order to understand how the search engines work and what you need to do to rank better. Problem is that most of this information is held online in blogs, articles, forums and general web pages.

In many cases articles have been written for professionals by professionals and contain lots of acronyms and industry related terms.
Here’s a list of SEO-related definitions which serve as a great companion for your initial SEO reading. Read alone it will get you up to speed on some key terminology that you’ll need to know to intelligently engage the ever-changing world of SEO.
Algorithms. A search algorithm is a mathematical formula that a search engine uses to “rank” web sites for keywords. Based on a huge number of variables and calculations, algorithms are among the most closely-guarded secrets on the internet. Why? Imagine if they were leaked – suddenly the less-than-honest would have a very specific guideline to follow in climbing to the top of search results in a less-than-organic way, ruining the quality of Google’s search results and their entire competitive advantage with it.

Bot or Bots. See also “crawlers”

Crawlers. Googlebot, for example, is a search engine crawler. Googlebot periodically traverses the web in record time, indexing content, links – everything contained in page source code – and storing it in Google’s search index. Then, when a user visits Google and enters a search phrase, the index, filtered by the algorithm, is what the user gets.

Directories. Directories are like a phone book, and is not like a directory (folder) on your computer. Like a phone book, the directory holds information about different categories – they may be business or special interest. In the past directories have been used to exploit link popularity. However, Google and the other major search engines are on to this tactic, and the word among SEO “experts” is that the benefits of listing your site at directories are diminished if not gone.

Frames. Frames are a way of laying out a website with multiple documents in one browser window. From an SEO standpoint the use of frames for your layout is not recommended. Since frames do not use links in the same way, and since links may point to one frame from another, they may cause serious problems for crawlers.

Gateway Pages. Also “doorway pages.” Pages created to “rank well in search engines” by playing to the algorithms. However, any page written with search in mind, and geared towards search, can be construed to be a “gateway page.” The difference between a page well-optimized for search and a “gateway page?” No clear lines there, but quality of content is probably the determining factor.

HTML. HTML stands for Hyper-Text Mark-up Language, and it is the core building block that has made the web the greatest modern tool for business, social, informational, political and any other causes. Search engines look exclusively at a web page’s HTML code to determine its relevance. It’s important to pay attention to HTML and familiarize yourself with proper HTML programming techniques if you’re hoping to get a good handle on SEO.
Link Popularity. Inbound links are probably the most important optimization point for web pages. Link popularity (in terms of quantity) measures how many pages point to your site using link text. Number, quality, trust – these are all factors that affect the value of an inbound link.

Link Building. In short, the process of gaining links at other web sites pointing in to pages on your own.

Link Baiting. The process of generating high-quality content or articles on your web pages that users will appreciate and link to voluntarily.

More to come