Basic SEO Definitions
Posted by Yvette | Under SEM 101, SEO Wednesday Apr 7, 2010
One of the most frustrating things for many small business owners, who are new to SEO, is all of the industry jargon. In an effort to make things a little easier for anyone who is just getting into the arena, here are definitions to some of the most common phrases in our industry.
Algorithm – This is an intimidating sounding mathematical term that basically means using calculated steps to solve a problem. What does this have to with SEO? Everything. Algorithms are how the search engines determine where your website will be listed when someone types in one of your keywords.
Adwords – This is Google’s “cost-per-click” form of advertising. When you enter a keyword into Google’s search bar, you usually see results on the right, in addition to the ones you see on the left. The results on the right have paid to be placed there. They’ve gone through a sort of auction, and the price of their bid, the quality of their website, and a few other factors will determine their placement in that column.
Back links – Also known as “incoming links”. These are links on third party websites that point to yours.
Conversion – A conversion occurs when a prospect either buys something from you, signs up for your newsletter, or takes some other action that gets them close to becoming a customer.
Spiders – These are automated programs used by the search engines to “crawl” over the World Wide Web. They find and catalog the information found on websites worldwide.
Splash Page – A splash page is a homepage that doesn’t contain any actual content. It’s usually a page created using flash or multimedia imagery that has a place where users can click to enter the actual site.
SERPS – Search engine results pages. These are the pages that appear when someone searches for something on the Internet. For example, enter the phrase “New York” into Google and you get over 7 million pages or SERPS.
This list is by no means exhaustive, but it should give those new to SEO a starting point for some of the common industry jargon.
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