SEO has organically become an entire field of study on its own over the last decade or so, one with endless possibilities and often hard to follow trends and fads. Without a PHD or even Bachelor’s in this daunting field, and with so many charlatans and fakers pretending to be “experts” in the subject, it is a really good idea for any site, blog or business owner to become at least familiar enough with the jargon to follow a conversation and separate the fakers from the real deal when it comes to SEO.

List of 20 Basic SEO Terms and Their Meaning :

SEO

Search engine optimization. This refers to the overall effort of optimizing a web page or an entire site. It has come to include everything from on page content to backlinks, SERP’s, authority and more. It is a catch-all term today for increasing a pages rank in searches given specific keywords or phrases.

SEM

Search engine marketing. Though broadly used similarly to SEO, when SEM is mentioned it should refer to the paid ads, such as those through Adsense, and SERPs results. In the broader sense the marketing can also refer to backlinks and efforts to post content linking to your site on other blogs and sites, however the primary separation between this and SEO is the paid results and not any specific marketing practice beyond that.

Duplicate Content

Copied, or plagiarized content which may too closely resemble other content. Duplicate content hurts a page’s searchability.

SERPs

Search engine results page. This is the actual results from a keyword or phrase entered into a search. For example search “light bulbs” in Google will result in a number of hits, each with a link and the content describing the page linked to. This is SERPs. You want your site to rank high given specific relevant keywords and phrases.

Algorithm

A mathematical term denoting a pattern numbers will follow given various formulas. Search engines follow very advanced and complex algorithms while ranking pages. These Algorithms are also constantly changed and updated.

Links

Test or graphic clicked leading to another page on the internet.

Link Building

Creating more links to your page to increase traffic and improve your websites searchability in general.

Backlink

Often used interchangeably with “link,” this however is a link which goes “back” to your page. It is a matter of perspective, a link to your page from another being the “backlink” – for the owner of the site linking to your page it would simply be a link.

Anchor Text

The visible words linking to a page. Ex. Google – this is anchor text to www.google.com

On-Page SEO

The visible content on a page, optimized for search engines. Note: this should be worded for both human readers and search engines, and more so for humans, all things equal.

Off-Page SEO

This is the hidden text on any webpage, usually entered by the designer of the page as “tags.” It is not seen by the reader but does play a role in searchability.

Alt tag

This is alternative text created for browsers which do not show specific images. This text will be seen in an images place. Any image may have this and it does not necessarily need to describe the image.

Guest Posting

Posting on another’s blog as a guest.

You may also check Benefits Of Guest Blogging

Building Natural Authority of Wedbsite

It is a way of getting links generated not by the company or by paying for them, but “naturally” as it were, by users. This creates “authority” – as in your site is what is referred to by users in certain situations. When referred to by a marketing team they want to create the appearance of natural authority as much as possible in all of their links.

HTML and BBL code

The coding used by programmers to create a site. It is the language computers will convert into the information you actually see. HTML is the most common. BBL is often a substitute or an addition to HTML.

DoFollow Attribute

Instructs web crawlers to follow a link. It is the default setting for any link and requires not additional coding to create.

NoFollow Attribute

ref= “nofollow”. This instructs crawlers not to use crawlers to find the link. This tag must be entered into the link code in order to instruct engines not to follow.

Index

Refers to search engines index of web pages. This is what is used to quickly find results when you enter a search term. It is a “snapshot” in time of a webpage. These are updated organically by search engines but you may also submit your site to be indexed for quicker results.

Keyword

A word entered into a search engine which provides various results, these depending on SEO of the given pages. These results may also be paid for, SEM.

Page Rank

Where your page falls in any keyword or key phrase search.

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