SEO Glossary
Posted By: Thomas Shaw, 5:16pm Wednesday 27 May 2009
With all the hype around search engine optimisation (SEO) for recruitment websites and job boards. I thought it was important that you first understood a number of the common words that have been thrown around.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) - Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is a series of techniques used to improve a website’s search engine rankings.
SERP - Abbreviation for Search Engine Results Page/Positioning (SERP). The aim is for number 1 rank on your keywords.
Organic Search - These are the “natural” results that appear when a search is performed on a search engine. Your website’s ranking depends on a number of factors, the most influential being your content and coding.
Web Crawler - A program, sent out by the search engine, to brows the Internet in a methodical, automated manner. Web crawlers are mainly used to create a copy of all the visited pages for search engine indexing.
Search Engine Indexing - The process of reading a web page and extracting the content into a database. If a page is not in a search engine’s index, it cannot be shown for an organic search query.
Search Engine Rankings - The position a website has on a search results page when a search is performed on particular keywords. Google, Yahoo and Live are the three search engines to be concerned about, as other engines do not have enough traffic or are actually driven by one of the big three.
Backlinks - This is any link from another site which directs users to your site. Also known as inbound links, backlinks are one way in which search engines determine ranking.
Keyword Impressions - Keyword impressions represent the number of times a search term is typed into a search engine.
Keyword Density - The ratio of repetitions of a particular phrase or keyword compared to the total number of words in a page.
Meta Data - Meta data represents tags and titles that are utilized within the source code of a site. In the earlier days of search engines, meta data had a more direct impact on search engine optimization. Today, search engines use many more factors that meta data, and meta titles and tags serve more of a lesser, but still necessary, role in optimizing for search.
Anchor Text - The word that can be clicked on within a text-based link. The anchor text of a link impacts the relevancy of which it links.
Further resources