If your small business is just getting into search engine optimization then you’ve probably come across some terms or phrases that you have absolutely no idea what they mean. You may have also come across some terms or phrases and got the wrong idea of what they mean or just were simply given wrong information. This small business search engine optimization glossary is your guide to knowing all the fancy terms of search engine optimization so you know what you’re talking about. Below you’ll find a bunch of common terms you’ll come across when dealing with search engine optimization and their actual meaning or definition.
Absolute Link – This is a hyperlink displayed on a web page with no anchor and is displayed as the actual URL of the hyperlink.
An Attribute or Alt Tag – The accurate way to say this is the alt attribute, it’s not a HTML tag, it’s an HTML attribute. The alt attribute is the alternate description tag used in a HTML image syntax. This is used if the browser cannot display the image. This is also used to describe what an image is to search engine crawlers.
Anchor Text – This is the clickable text in a hyperlink that is displayed on a web page.
Backlink – The is what they call a link from one website to another; also known as an inbound link.
Cloaking – This is a black-hat SEO technique and should be avoided at all costs. Basically it’s when a web server shows one web page to search engine crawlers and another to actual human visitors via the reporting user agent.
Deep Linking – This is when you build backlinks to your internal web pages; this excludes your homepage. This can also be used when talking about internal linking and refrencing making sure all your web pages are somehow internally linked.
Keyword Density – This is the percent of a specific keyword or phrase appearing in content. This should not be considered when writing content; content should read naturally and not contained stuffed keywords.
Long Tail Keyword – This is a keyword that consists of more than 3 words; an example would be “How To Do SEO”.
Meta Description Tag – This is what appears as the description in search engine results underneath the web page’s title. It’s located in the head section of an HTML document.
On-Page SEO – This is referring to actual optimization of your web pages to make them optimal for search engines. This would include, but not limited to, title tags, heading tags, internal links, meta description, etc.
Off-Page SEO – This is the process of building backlinks to your web pages.
One Way Link – This is a backlink that you do not link back to anywhere on your website.
Pagerank – This is a value 0 through 10 given by Google to web pages based on the quality of their inbound links.
Redirect – The process of redirecting domains, web pages or URLs to another.
Robots.txt – This file is used to control what sections or web pages of your website a search engine crawler can or cannot crawl.
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