SEO Module 1-2

authority

A reliable, respected source—someone with knowledge. The engine calculated the amount of inbound links it has and they look at ow authoritative the websites are that link to you

PPC

pay per click is a pricing model an advertiser gets charges each time a prospect clicks on the advertisers ad

Link Building

this is the creation of content that entices people to link to your page from other websites. The types of link building vary tremendously, they include highly informative articles or news stories, useful resources, and sometimes controversial or sensationalistic content

Guest Blogging

this refers to the process of writing a blog post for someone else's blog. The incentive for doing this is getting backlinks to increase the guest bloggers site search engine rankings.

Generic Links

those that are "one-way" or non-reciprocated.

home or "root" page

usually the most frequented page on the site and the starting place of navigation for many visitors

hostname

where your website is hosted, commonly using the same domain name that you'd use for email

meta tag

A page's description meta tag gives Google and other search engines a summary of what the page is about

HTTP status code

A code that expresses the meanings of responses from the server when computers are conveying information to each other. The code is allotted as three numerical digits, with a different meaning depending on the number used.

Link Farms

A link farm is any group of websites that all hyperlink that all hyperlink to every other site in the group. Although some link farms can be created by hand, most are created through automatic programs and services. A link farm is a form of spamming the index of a search engine.

Drop-down menu

A system in which one chooses content from a menu. When one clicks on the menu, the list of choices are displayed in a list in a drawn out manner

Subdomain

A type of domain used to identify a category that is smaller than a regular domain (see page 6)

JavaScript

A type of programming language. It can add dynamic features to web pages and is used by many web services

ASCII language

Abbreviation for American Standard Code for Information Exchange. A character encoding centered on the English alphabet

CSS

Abbreviation for Cascading Style Sheets; a language for defining the design and layout of a web page.

HTML

Abbreviation for HyperText Markup Language, a language used when describing web page documents. It denotes the basic elements of web pages, including the document text and any hyperlinks and images embedded within

301 redirect

An HTTP status code (see page 12). Forces a site visitor to automatically jump to a specified URL.

404 ("page not found" error

An HTTP status code (see page 12). It means that the server could not find the web page requested by the browser.

Domain

An address on the Internet that indicates the location of a computer or network. These are administrated to avoid duplication.

Google AdWords

An advertising service which places relevant advertisements on search results pages and other content. When a user searches for keywords using Google, AdWords advertisements related to those keywords are displayed on the right, top and/or bottom of the search results pages alongside the organic search results.

head tag

An element that indicates the header in an HTML document. The content of this element will not be displayed in a browser

Crawler

Automated software that crawls (fetches) pages from the web and indexes them.

Internal Linking

By far one of the easiest ways to stop your website from ranking well on the search engines is to make it difficult for search engines to find their way through it. Many sites use fancy forms of scripts that enable fancy drop down navigation, etc. Many of these scripts cannot be crawled by search engines and result in pages being unindexed.

Categories in WordPress:

Categories allow for a broad grouping of post or page topics. They can be arranged in a hierarchy, so you can have subcategories. Each post must be attached to at least one category. For example, categories for a blog can be 'Books', 'Food', 'Music', and 'Travel'. In this example, the category 'Books' could be subdivided into the subcategories 'Fiction books' and 'Nonfiction books'.

Search engine

Computer function that searches data available on the Internet using keywords or other specified terms, or a program containing this function

ID (session ID)

Data provided for the identification and/or behavior management of a user who is currently accessing a system or network communications

Parameter

Data provided in the URL to specify a site's behavior

Text style

Formatting, such as the font, size and color of the text.

Index

Google stores all web pages that it knows about in its index. The index entry for each page describes the content and location (URL) of that page. To index is when Google fetches a page, reads it, and adds it to the index: Google indexed several pages on my site today.

Hidden Text

Hidden text is textual content that your readers cannot see but is still visible by the search engines. It is commonly done by putting a long list of keywords in white on a white background in hopes of attracting more search engine spiders. Hidden text is identified as search spam by each of the major search engines.

Google:

the world's most popular search engine. Google's mission is to 'organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful'.

Scrapping

Scrapping is a black hat SEO spam technique in which the spammer plagiarizes content from other websites in order to put content that is popular with search 2 engines on their own site, often for the purpose of selling advertising back to the search engines. This duplicate content has negative effects on search engine results.

SERP

Search Engine Results Page

SEO

Search engine optimization: the process of making your site better for search engines. Also the job title of a person who does this for a living: We just hired a new SEO to improve our presence on the web.

Search query

Single or multiple terms which are input by the user when performing a search on search engines.

Screen reader

Software for speaking on-screen information or outputting to a Braille display

Blog Spam

Spam in blogs (may be called blog spam or comment spam) is another form of spaming the search engines index. It is done by automatically posting random or commercialized comments to blogs, wikis, guestbooks or other publicly accessible online resource in an effort to increase traffic and web crawlers to that particular site. Any web application that accepts and displays hyperlinks from visitors may be a target.

Snippet

Text displayed beneath the title of a corresponding web page on the search results pages of a search engine. A web page summary and/or parts of the page that match the search keywords will be displayed

Accessibility

The ability for users and search engines to access and comprehend content.

User experience

The experience gained by a user through using products, services, etc. Emphasis is placed on providing an experience truly sought after by the user, such as "enjoyment," "convenience" and "comfort."

Googlebot

The generic name of Google's crawler. Googlebot crawls the web constantly

Site Optimization

The manipulation of your content, wording and site structure for the purpose of attaining high search engine positioning is the backbone of SEO and the search engine positioning industry. Everything from creating solid titles and metatags, to tweaking the content to maximize its search engine effectiveness is key to any successful optimization strategy.

Quality Content

The more content-rich your site is, the more valuable it will appear to search engines, your human visitors, and other webmasters who will be far more likely to link to your site if they see consistently published high-quality content. Creating quality content can be extremely time consuming, however it will be well worth the effort in the end.

Crawl

The process of looking for new or updated web pages. Google discovers URLs by following links, by reading sitemaps, and by many other means. Google crawls the web, looking for new pages, then indexes them (when appropriate).

relevance

The quality of information in terms of the search query.

Open Directory Project (ODP)

The world's largest volunteer-run web directory (a list of Internet links collected on a large scale and then organized by category).

Flash

Web technology or software developed by Adobe Systems Incorporated. It is able to create web content that combines sound, video and animation

sitemap

a file on your site that tells search engines about new or changed pages on your site.

Featured results (in Google):

a highlighted search box that answers the question you type in the Google search bar. often appear as a paragraph or a bulleted list, accompanied by an image, and are situated above the regular organic search results.

Inbound Links

a hyperlink back to your site from another website; used in SEO marketing - sites with a variety of high quality inbound links rank higher on search engine results pages. s, also referred to as "IBLs", "BLs" and "Backlinks" are one of the most important ranking components for all sites,

Reciprocal Links

a listed, live connection to a different website, which in turn displays a similar link to the first website. Site owners and Webmasters to build links trading with anyone that would trade links between Sites.

Bounce rate:

a metric that measures the percentage of people who land on your website, and do completely nothing on the page they entered. So they don't click a menu item, a 'read more' link, or any other internal links on the page. A user bounces when there has been no engagement with the landing page, and the visit ends with a single-page visit. You can use bounce rate as a metric that indicates the quality of a webpage and/or the 'quality' of your audience

A breadcrumb

a row of internal links at the top or bottom of the page that allows visitors to quickly navigate back to a previous section or the root page.Many breadcrumbs have the most general page (usually the root page) as the first, left-most link and list the more specific sections out to the right

Breadcrumbs:

a small text path, often located at the top of a page. On yoast.com, for instance, the path to our Yoast SEO plugin page is Home > Yoast Plugins > Yoast SEO for WordPress. .

Google Search Console:

a web service by Google for webmasters. It allows webmasters to check their site's indexability and optimize visibility of their websites.

best practices for page titles

accurately describe the page content, create unique title tags for each page, brief descriptive titles

Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

actions orchestrated outside of the Site and its code. Where SEO is more technical, SEM is more marketing and sales oriented.

off page SEO

all aspects of SEO that happen off your website to garner quality inbound links.

Pay Per Click Search Engines

allow advertisers to sign up and bid on specific keywords -- keywords that are relevant to products and/or services available on their Website.

"alt" attribute

allows you to specify alternative text for the image if it cannot be displayed for some reason (

Title Tag

an HTML tag that defines the page's title

Holistic SEO approach:

an SEO approach where you focus on making every aspect of your site as good as possible in order to improve your ranking in the search results. Google's mission is to build the perfect search engine that helps people find the best results for what they are looking for. At Yoast, we believe that making your website fit this goal is the way to go, and that this can be accomplished by using a holistic SEO approach.

Algorithm (of a search engine):

aspect of a search engine that decides which pages (that have been saved in the index) are shown in the search results, and in which order. How Google's algorithm works is a secret and the factors that determine the ordering change regularly

Crawler (also: spider, bot, robot):

aspect of a search engine that goes around the internet 24/7, following links from one web page to another and saving the HTML-version of all pages in a gigantic database (the index). Pages that are saved in the index could appear in the search results

Root directory

at the top of the tree structure of a site. It is sometimes called "root".

Avg. CPC

average amount you get paid per click on your ad

Avg. Pos

average position of your ad the on the SERP

CTR

click through rate= clicks divided by impressions. measure of relevancy

Cloaking

cloaking is a search engine optimization technique in which the content presented to the search engine's spider during indexing is different than what is presented to the end users. This is done by delivering content based on the IP addresses or the User-Agent HTTP header of the user that is requesting the page.

structured data

code that you can add to your sites' pages to describe your content to search engines, so they can better understand what's on your pages. Search engines can use this understanding to display your content in useful (and eye-catching!) ways in search results. That, in turn, can help you attract just the right kind of customers for your business.

Keyword Stuffing

considered to be an unethical search engine optimization technique. Keyword stuffing occurs when an overload of keywords are loaded in the metatags and content of that page. The repetition of keywords in tags may explain why many search engines no longer use these tags. Also, packing a lot of keywords into your site can lead to your site being punished or no longer being indexed by search engines.

Cornerstone content:

cornerstone content pieces are those articles on your website you're most proud of. They reflect your business, communicate your mission and are extremely well written. These are the articles you would like to rank high in the search engines. Cornerstone articles are usually explainers; these articles combine insights from different blog posts. If you mark an article as cornerstone content in the Yoast SEO plugin, the content and SEO analyses become a little stricter

CPC

cost per click is the amount you'll actually pay for a click on your ad

on page SEO

covers everything you can control on each specific webpage across your website to make it easier for the SE to find and index

keyword density

how often you mention a keyword on a page, however don't write your content for the search engine write for the audience

Path, filename, and query string

determine which content from your server is accessed. These three parts are case-sensitive, so "FILE" would result in a different URL than "file". The hostname and protocol are case-insensitive; upper or lower case wouldn't play a role there.

Doorway Pages

doorway pages are websites that are created in order to spam the index of a search engine by inserting results with particular phrases for the purpose of sending visitors to a different page. Basically, they are blank pages the user will never see that is used for grabbing the attention of search engine spiders. They are also known as bridge pages, portal pages, jump pages, gateway pages, entry pages and various other names. Doorway pages that redirect users without their knowledge use some form of cloaking.

Answer box (in Google):

element of the search result that appears somewhere between the organic search results.

XML Sitemap

file, which you can submit through Google's Webmaster Tools, makes it easier for Google to discover the pages on your site.

fragment

generally identifies which part of the page the browser scrolls to. Because the content itself is usually the same regardless of the fragment, search engines commonly ignore any fragment used.

Google Content Network

google partner network where adwords can be displayed based on content themes rather than specific keywords

Crawlability:

has to do with the possibilities Google has to crawl your site. Crawlers can be blocked from your site. There are a few ways to block a crawler from your website: in the robots.txt file, in the HTTP header or in the robots meta tag. If your website or a page on your website is blocked, you're saying to Google's crawler: 'do not come here'. Your site or the respective page won't turn up in the search results in most of these cases.

Click

how many times someone clicked your ad to visit your site

A site map

is a simple page on your site that displays the structure of your website, and usually consists of a hierarchical listing of the pages on your site. Visitors may visit this page if they are having problems finding pages on your site

long tail theory

keyword optimization is more productive when directed towards more unique queries; this is because the engine traffic and ranking possibilities that comes from the most popular keywords does not even come close to the amount of traffic that comes from searches using more unique queries.

"Black hat" SEO techniques

list as follows

White Hat Strategies

list as follows

Viral Marketing

marketing method on-line or off-line that creates a drive for people to pass on information or a website URL, making it easy to do so using existing channels of communication.

Max CPC

max amount you get paid on your ad

Quality score

measure of relevancy

Flesch Reading Ease test:

measures textual difficulty of a text and grades texts on a scale from 1-100. The lower the score, the more difficult to read the text is. Texts with a high Flesch reading ease score are easy to read. Usually, a reading ease score of 60-70 is believed to be acceptable/normal for web copy. The Flesch Reading Ease test is implemented in the Yoast SEO plugin, and provides reliable scores for English, Dutch, and German.

search engines direct

more than 50% of traffic

impressions

number of times your ad has been displayed by the search engine

your rank is an indicator

of how many relevant and authoritative your website is in the eyes of the search engine

3 elements that the SE considers when listing site on the SERP

rank, relevance, authority

breadcrumb

row of internal links at the top or bottom of the page that allows visitors to quickly navigate back to a previous section or the root page. Many breadcrumbs have the most general page (usually the root page) as the first, leftmost link and list the more specific sections out to the right.

An SEO ("search engine optimization") expert

someone trained to improve your visibility on search engines.

"robots.txt" file

tells search engines whether they can access and therefore crawl parts of your site. This file, which must be named "robots.txt", is placed in the root directory of your site. It is possible that pages blocked by robots.txt can still be crawled, so for sensitive pages you should use a more secure method.

Copywriting:

the act of writing text for the purpose of advertising of other forms of marketing.

Canonical:

the canonical link element lets search engines know which variation of a collection of similar or identical pages you want Google to put into the search results

Anchor text

the clickable text that users will see as a result of a link, and is placed within the anchor tag

rank

the position that your website physically falls in on the SERP when a specific search query is entered.

Paid Links

the practice of purchasing links on websites solely for the increase in linkpopularity and rankings.

Parasite Hosting

the process of hosting a website on someone else's server without their consent generally for the purpose of search engine benefit

flat architecture

you attempt to minimize the number of links a search engine must follow t reach content pages

creative

your actual content

Head keyword

your most important keywords. They form the basis of your keyword research sheet and keyword strategy. After identifying your head keywords, you can start coming up with longer tail keywords. Note: head keywords can consist of several words.