This is the fourth and last post in the series: Beginners Guide to Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
In this post we shall read about:
Search Engine Results Page, SERPs, Search Engine Submission, Website Submission, Search Terms, Sitemap, Spider, Title Tags, Three-Way Link Exchange, Unique Pageview, Unique Visitor, White Hat SEO, XML, XML Feed.
You might want to read these posts before proceeding:
About: Algorithm, Algorithmic Results, Alt Tag, Alt Text, analytics, Anchor Text, Backlink, Banned, Black Hat SEO, Blacklisted, Broken Link, Click-Through Rate, Cloaking, Conversion, Conversion Analytics, Conversion Rate, Crawler, Delisted, Directory, Doorway Page, Dynamic Content, Flash Optimization.
About: Gateway Page, Geographic Segmentation, Geographical Targeting, Gray Hat SEO, Hidden Text, Hit, html, Hyperlink, Inbound Links, Index, Keyword, Keyword Density, Link, Link Baiting, Link Exchange, Link Farm, Link Popularity, Link Text, Listings, Local Search, Meta Description Tag, Meta Keywords Tag, Meta Robots Tag, Meta Search Engine, Meta Tags.
About: Natural Search Engine Listings, Natural Search Engine Optimization, Optimization Services, Organic Listings, Organic Optimization, Outbound Links, Page Rank, Paid Inclusion, Paid Listings, Paid Placement, Pay-Per-Click, Position, PPC, PR, Query, Rank, Reciprocal Link Exchange, Results Page, Robot, robots.txt, search engine, Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimization.
Search Engine Results Page (SERPs)
SERPs or Search Engine Results Pages, aka Results Pages are the dynamic webpages which display search results for a particular query. These pages contain links and a short description of the linked page, relevant to the search query.
Search Engine Submission/ Submission/ Website Submission
Search Engine Submission, known otherwise as Website Submission, Blog Submission or simply Submission, is the feature offered by most search engines which allows blog and website owners to submit their URLs in order to get considered for indexing the pages of the blog/website for inclusion in the search results. While everyone is free to submit new blogs and websites, the search engines don’t necessarily index all submitted sites.
Search Terms
Search Terms, Keywords or Queries are the phrases which constitute the data you provide the search engine with, using which the engine then lists links to relevant web pages. These terms are often mistyped or have more commonly used synonyms, which the search engine then suggests along with the results. Search Terms or Keywords are the heart of the entire Search Engine, since the entire foundation of data-mining or retrieving information based on input rests upon those words!
Sitemap
A sitemap is a webpage which contains links to some or all the pages of the website or blog, so that those pages can be easily found by both search engines and visitors. Search Engines often rely on Sitemaps in order to keep their index up-to-date.
Spider
A search engine spider, bot, robot or crawler is the script used by search engines to look for new and modified information on web pages. These spiders crawl webpages, moving to the next via links/ hyperlinks. The spiders of Google Search Engine are called Googlebots.
Title Tags
The title tag of a webpage is the phrase used to supply the search engines as well as normal visitors with a basic idea of what topic the page is about. The title tag is a piece of code in HTML, which is placed within the “head” section of the webpage.
Three-Way Link Exchange
Three way link exchanges are a system of creating links among three webpages or websites such that there is no reciprocal linking. Suppose Page ‘A’ contains a link to Page ‘B’, ‘B’ to ‘C’ and Page ‘C’ to Page ‘A’. This way, the search engines are expected to rank the linked pages higher without penalizing the pages for artificial/inorganic reciprocal linking. This technique is also used to create a closed loop of links so that new websites can be quickly indexed and will be ranked higher when linked to from a large number of websites through one another.
Unique Pageview
A unique pageview is the event where a web browser requests a ‘new’ webpage to be loaded, which hasn’t been accessed in a specified time period before now, upon instruction by a human or a computer program. Often the popularity of a website or blog is measured in terms of daily and monthly unique pageviews. The uniqueness is tracked using one or more of: cookies or pieces of code stored on the computer which accessed the page, tracking the IP address of the computer or other methods.
Unique Visitor
A unique visitor is said to have visited a website when one or more pages of the website are downloaded by a remote user, computer program or search engine bot, and that user agent hasn’t visited the website in a specified period of time before now. Unique visitors are most often tracked using cookies and IP addresses.
White Hat SEO
Originally known simply as Search Engine Optimization or SEO, the term was coined when certain webmasters started using unethical methods to gain unfair advantage over their competitors. The unethical brand is called Black Hat SEO, and the ethical and accepted brand is known as White Hat SEO.
XML
XML or Extensible Markup Language is a raw cousin of HTML. It is used to transfer and store text-based data and special tags for webpages. In recent times XML is playing a huge role in dynamic content websites, in the form of AJAX or Asynchronous Javascript And XML.
XML Feed
XML Feed is a document which contains the latest additions to one or more webpages, and is used to inform other scripts and sites about the updates. XML Feeds are used as sitemaps on most blogs and websites, to inform search engines about the latest pages and data.
Despite my best effort to include all the important terms in this series, I’m almost sure I missed out some of them. So, if you need help understanding certain terms related to SEO, feel free to post a comment below!
