Tuesday 30 August 2011

SEO Basics -- SEO Terminology

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is inevitable in modern business. It is cost effective, time saving and business friendly if you know how to SEO. For the newbies and beginners, I have explained the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) terminology which will help you get better understanding of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Knowing this basic Search Engine Optimization (SEO) terminology, you can walk through online resources and enhance your understanding of SEO and gain higher rankings with search engines.
1. Keywords:
Keywords are the words or phrases which users enter as search queries. Search engines then display most relevant search results to the users. So choosing right keywords is the first step for better Search Engine Optimization (SEO). High paying keywords are much better in results.
For a list of high paying keywords for every niche, click here.
2. Keyword Research:
For choosing high traffic and relevant keywords, a bit of research has to be done which is called keyword research. You can use different services like Google Adwords to choose better keywords. But your keywords must bring more traffic, having less competition and be high paying.
For more information on how to select right keywords through Google Adwords, click here.
3. Keyword density:
Search engines display the most relevant sites to the users. They determine the relevancy by the keyword density. Keyword density is the number of times a keyword appears on your page (title, heading, body etc). A moderate keyword density is essential for better Search Engine Optimization (SEO). If keyword density is very low, your blog will not rank high. If it is very high, your blog may face search engine penalty.
4. Keyword stuffing:
Very frequent and over use of a keyword in the content is called keyword stuffing. It will eventually lead to search engine penalty.
5. Crawling:
Crawling is the process in which search engine crawlers (spiders or bots) traverse your web pages and categorize them according to keyword density and relevancy. It is through crawling that a search engine is able to display your pages in search results.
6. Crawlers:
Crawlers are the programs used by search engines for crawling and indexing. They are also called spiders or bots.
7. Indexing:
A search engine indexes a page when it finds relevant information, proper keyword density, and unique content and valuable popularity of that page. Only an indexed page appears in search results.
8. Robots.txt file:
It is a simple text file which contains different commands that ask the search engines not to index some pages as specified by the user. If your website does not provide robots.txt file, you will have to make one.
9. Link Popularity:
Link popularity is a major factor in gaining high rankings. Link popularity means how many sites are linking to your site. The more site link in, more popular is your site and it contains useful information that’s why other sites link to it. Thus search engines rank such a site higher.
10. Back links:
Back links mean how many sites link back to your site, which sites link to it and how they link to it. Quality back links are very important for higher rankings. If a popular site links to your site, it means your site is quite reliable and so it gets better search engine rankings.
For more guidelines on back link building, click here.
11. Relevancy:
As search engine promise to offer the most relevant search results, so your site must contain relevant information about the niche you are targeting.
For example if your site is about automobile insurance, don’t write the title as
“Smith and sons” instead title may be “Florida automobile insurance company”
12. Filter Words:
Some words and propositions are ignored by search engines while evaluating your site for better search results and speed. They are called filter words.
For example: a, am, an, the, they, what, who, why, are, to this, it, I, you etc
13. Stop words:
These are the words which will simply get your site banned. All words or phrases that are adult or sexually explicit are called stop words. Some search engines may make their own list of stop words to penalize the sites with “keyword stuffing”.
14. Search engine penalty:
A site is said to be penalized by search engines if the pages are not indexed or indexed pages do not appear in search results. Search engine penalty may be the result of playing with the search engine rules like keyword stuffing, using stop words, link exchange, duplicate content, buying traffic etc.

No comments:

Post a Comment