This is the third post in the series: Beginners Guide to Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
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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, SEM, SEO
You might want to read these first :
SEO Beginners Guide Part 1
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
SEO Beginners Guide Part 2
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
Natural Search Engine Listings
Known to most people as simply search ranking, Natural Search Engine Listings are also referred to as Organic Search Listings. These search results are listed on the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) only because the Search Engine’s algorithm finds them most relevant to the search query, unlike the paid listings.Thus, theoretically you can only improve your website’s organic search ranking by doing Natural Search Engine Optimization.
Natural Search Engine Optimization
Commonly known as simply SEO, Natural Search Engine Optimization is the process of improving your organic search engine rankings by carrying out activities like keyword optimization, increasing the update frequency, building inbound links from other web pages, adding meta data etc. The result is increased search engine visitor traffic to your blog/website and more sales/subscriptions.
Optimization Services
Also known as SEO services, these are meant to help your website/blog attain a desired rank on the SERPs through services like link-building and keyword optimization with constant monitoring and analysis of results. While it is best to carry out your own SEO, huge websites and networks of blogs are difficult to maintain and optimize for search engines at the same time. Thus, SEO services are in great demand, since they are more experienced in the activities involved and assure results within a short time-frame.
Organic Listings (or Organic Optimization)
Same as Natural Search Engine Listings (or Natural Search Engine Optimization)
Outbound Links
The links from a given page to other web pages on the internet are referred to as outbound links. These outbound links may be directed at other websites (external outbound links) or pages on the same website (internal outbound links). Excessively large number of unrelated external outbound links cause suspicion (so to say) in the Search Engines’ algorithm, leading to penalization (Google PageRank is usually reduced) or even blacklisting from the Organic Search Listings.
Page Rank (or PR)
PageRank or Google PageRank is an algorithm designed to determine the value of a given webpage on the internet, by finding out the probability of a web surfer landing on the given page by following links from other pages. It was developed by Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Needless to say, this algorithm has been one of the most popular ways to determine the value of a website/webpage for several years. The algorithm is based on the principle that a person is most likely to land up on a webpage which has been linked to the most number of times from the most popular pages.
Paid Inclusion
Paid Inclusion in the context of Search Engines is the service a Search Engine offers to include a particular webpage or website in its search index. The ranking position of the page/site however, is subject to its relevance to the search query as in the case of any ordinary search listing. Most popular Search Engines like Google and Yahoo do not offer paid inclusion publicly, however, special purpose search engines, such as those specifically related to Engineering Products or Home Appliances charge a fee to include entries in their index.
Paid Listings
Paid listings are the search results included in the search index upon payment of a certain fee. Paid listings may simply mean inclusion in the index, or even paid positioning. These listings are usually displayed separately as advertisers’ links.
Paid Placement
Paid placement is the service offered by Search Engines to advertisers who wich to expose their ads to people looking for information on a specific topic. This service is offered by all major search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing. unlike natural or organic search results, paid placement guarantees a high position in a prominent place based on bidding, and is almost independent of the search algorithm. That’s why people looking for immediate targeted traffic opt for paid placement instead of organic search optimization.
Pay-Per-Click (PPC)
Pay-per-click or Cost-per-click marketing or advertisement refers to the service offered by search engines where the advertiser pays a pre-determined fee when a search engine user clicks on the ad. While PPC or CPC marketing is still popular, other advertisement methods like PPV (Pay Per View) and CPA (Cost Per Action) have captured significant share of the market. CPC campaigns are often at risk of getting attacked by competitors, who hire people to click repeatedly on their ads to quickly drain the ad campaign funds.
Position
Search Engine Position or SERP rank is the position at which a particular webpage is displayed in the results pages of the search engine in response to a particular query from the user. Naturally, all website and blog owners fight ferociously to gain the top spots in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). Businesses spend thousands and even millions of dollars to gain the top spots in order to gain more customers than their rival(s).
Query
A query or keyword is the word(s) entered by the search engine user, using which relevant links are displayed to related websites and blogs, images and videos etc. Once the user enters the query, the search engine fetches the most authoritative webpage links and related information, ordering them in descending order of relevance and authority in the SERP or search engine results page.
Rank
Same as SERP position, rank refers to the position of a particular webpage in the Search Engine results. It is basically a function of how important the search engine considers the webpage, in the context of the entered query/keyword. SERP rank or Search Engine Rank can be improved by creating frequent, unique and keyword optimized content, apart from building high quality relevant links.
Reciprocal Link Exchange
Reciprocal link exchange refers to the practice of creating mutual hyperlinks between webpages belonging to different websites, so as to gain more authority in the search engines, thus getting ranked higher and getting more visitor traffic.
Results Page
A Search Engine Results Page or SERP is the dynamic webpage which contains links and/or short description of various pages linked to the keywords/queries entered byt he search engine users. These pages are created dynamically by fetching information from the search index, and ordered using a specific algorithm of the Search Engine.
Robot
A robot, bot, crawler or spider is the active part of a search engine, the program or script that actually crawls websites across the WWW gathering new and updated information and updating the search engine’s index. Most search engines have robots, since it is the fastest way to create and update their index. Robots follow links from one webpage to another, and are often controlled by the Algorithm of the search engine, which decides the importance of specific webpages/websites based on factors like inbound/outbound links, keyword density, meta information, frequency of updates etc.
Robots.txt
Robots.txt is the universally accepted filename which contains the information a particular website/blog’s owner wants to provide the search engines with, so that the search index and results are accordingly modified. Some website/blog owners block either a few pages or the entire blog/website, in case they want to keep the information private. Others instruct the search engine robots/bots/crawlers to keep coming back at specific intervals for new information. Some webmasters provide URLs to the website associated information like Feed URL, Sitemap URL etc. This file is supposed to be located at “http://mywebsite.com/robots.txt” for the search engine spiders/bots to find the contained information.
Search Engine
Search Engine is the term used to describe either a few of or the entire array of datacenters (servers), the program, algorithm or script which crawls the World Wide Web (WWW) or the websites and blogs on the internet, looking for information to create an index, from which search results about a particular topic/keyword are retrieved upon querying by the internet users. A search engine is one of the most integral elements of the WWW, since one can’t possibly hope to find the best/latest information about a topic by manually browsing through hundreds of millions of websites and blogs! Some of the most popular general search engines today are Google, Yahoo, Bing (MSN) and Ask. There are other special search engines like WolframAlpha which are more semantic, and even solve complex mathematical problems! Specialized search engines are also created and widely used, for people looking for industrial products, scientific papers, patents etc.
Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
Search Engine Marketing is a complex term, which includes all forms of marketing: Paid and Organic; through search engines. SEM usually refers to SEO combined with PPC marketing for paid listings.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO or Search Engine Optimization is the process of optimizing or modifying your website/blog so that the Search Engines would give the maximum possible authority for the same content. Usually SEO involves simple activities like linking to your blog/website from other blogs, sites and forums; increasing the related keyword density without making the content illegible, updating your content regularly etc. Unfortunately, in recent years SEO has taken precedence over creating unique and high quality content in terms of funds and time allocated.
