An Insight into SEO Terminology

SEO i.e search engine optimization is a trending online marketing technique which has helped many business grow in a short span. To become a SEO freelancer or SEO expert, one should have the basic knowledge of few terms related with this advanced marketing technique. Here in this post, I will be sharing some of the most common terms associated with SEO. So, here they are:

1. Search Engine: Search engine or web search engine a program, which searches a information/document or group of documents for relevant matches of a users keyword phrase and returns a list of the most relevant matches. e.g. Google, Yahoo, Bing, Yandex, Baidu etc.
2. SERP: A 'web search engine' is a software system that is designed to search for information on the World Wide Web. The search results are generally presented in a line of results often referred to as search engine results pages (SERPs). The information may be a mix of web pages, images, and other types of files.
3. SEO: Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of affecting the online visibility of a website or a web page in a web search engine's unpaid results often referred to as "natural", "organic", or "earned" results.
4. On-Page SEO: On-page SEO oe On-site SEO is the practice of optimizing individual web pages in order to rank higher and earn more relevant traffic in search engines. On-page refers to both the content and HTML source code of a page that can be optimized, as opposed to off-page SEO which refers to links and other external signals.
5. Off-Page SEO: "Off-site SEO" (also called "off-page SEO") refers to actions taken outside of your own website to impact your rankings within search engine results pages (SERPs). Optimizing for off-site ranking factors involves improving search engine and user perception of a site's popularity, relevance, trustworthiness, and authority.
6. Link Building: Link building is the process of acquiring hyperlinks from other websites to your own. A hyperlink (usually just called a link) is a way for users to navigate between pages on the internet. Search engines use links to crawl the web; they will crawl the links between the individual pages on your website, and they will crawl the links between entire websites.
7. Backlinks: Backlinks are incoming links to a webpage. When a webpage links to any other page, it's called a backlink
8. DoFollow Links: Dofollow links allow search engine bots to follow them and reach the destination website. Giving back the link juice and a backlink.
9. NoFollow Links: Nofollow links attributes do not allow search engine bots to follow link.That means if the website owner is linking back to you with nofollow attributes, it does not pass on link juice.
10. Search Engine Bot: Search Engine Bot also known by names web crawler, web spider, search bot, Internet bot is a automated software program that systematically browses the World Wide Web, typically for the purpose of Web indexing (web spidering). Web search engines and some other sites use Web crawling or spidering software to update their web content or indices of others sites' web content.
11. Black Hat SEO: In search engine optimization (SEO) terminology, black hat SEO refers to the use of aggressive SEO strategies, techniques and tactics that focus only on search engines and not a human audience, and usually does not obey search engines guidelines.
12. White Hat SEO: In search engine optimization (SEO) terminology, white hat SEO refers to the usage of optimization strategies, techniques and tactics that focus on a human audience opposed to search engines and completely follows search engine rules and policies.
13. Grey Hat SEO: Grey Hat SEO is SEO techniques that are more risky than White Hat SEO techniques but will not get your website banned from search engines (although a search engine penalty could result). They're questionable SEO techniques but do not fall in the same category as Black Hat SEO techniques.
14. Anchor Text: Anchor text is the clickable text in a hyperlink.
15. 301 Redirect: A 301 redirect is a permanent redirect which passes between 90-99% of link equity (ranking power) to the redirected page. 301 refers to the HTTP status code for this type of redirect. In most instances, the 301 redirect is the best method for implementing redirects on a website.
16. 302 Redirect: A 302 redirect is a temporary redirect. It states that the request page is temporarily moved to new address.
17. Bounce Rate: Bounce rate is the percentage of single page visits (or web sessions). It is the number of visits in which a person leaves your website from the landing page without browsing any further.
18. Page Views: Page views refer to a number of pages viewed or clicked on the site during the given time.
19. Exit Rate: Exit rate as a term used in web site traffic analysis (sometimes confused with bounce rate) is the percentage of visitors to a site who actively click away to a different site from a specific page, after possibly having visited any other pages on the site. The visitors just exited on that specific page.
20. Session: In web analytics, a session, or visit is a unit of measurement of a user's actions taken within a period of time or with regard to completion of a task.
21. Canonical Issue: A canonical issue arises when 301 redirects are not properly in place. This means that your website can be accessed by search engines from several different URLs. This means that search engines can then potentially index your site under different URLs, meaning that it will look like a site of duplicated content.
22. CMS: A CMS is a software tool that allows you to create, edit, and publish content. e.g. Wordpress, Joomla, Weebly, Wix, Magento etc.
23. Thin Content: As per Google, thin content is a low quality content which can be full of grammatical errors, duplicate content & low quality.
24. PPC: Pay-per-click (PPC), also known as cost per click (CPC), is an internet advertising model used to direct traffic to websites, in which an advertiser pays a publisher (typically a website owner or a network of websites) when the ad is clicked.
25. CPA/PPA: Cost per acquisition (CPA), also known as "Cost per action" or pay per acquisition (PPA) and cost per conversion, is an online advertising pricing model where the advertiser pays for a specified acquisition - for example a sale, click, or form submit (e.g., contact request, newsletter sign up, registration etc.)
26. CPC: The cost-per-click (CPC) is the amount you earn each time a user clicks on your ad. The CPC for any ad is determined by the advertiser; some advertisers may be willing to pay more per click than other.
27. CPM: CPM bidding means that you pay based on the number of impressions (times your ads are shown) that you receive on the Google Display Network.
28. Google Dance: In search engine optimization (SEO), Google Dance is used to describe the period of time in which Google used to rebuild its rankings, and as a result of this rebuilding, rankings of Web sites on Google's SERP may fluctuate in order during a several day period.
29. Google Bowling: Maliciously trying to lower a site's rank by creating low quality links for it.
30. Googlebot: Googlebot is Google's web crawling bot (sometimes also called a "spider"). Crawling is the process by which Googlebot discovers new and updated pages to be added to the Google index. Google uses a huge set of computers to fetch (or "crawl") billions of pages on the web.
31. Inbound Link: An inbound link (also referred to as a back link) is a hyperlink on a third-party web page that points to a web page on your site.
32. Outbound/External Link: Outbound links start from your site and lead to an external site. Outbound links send visitors away from your web site.
33. Internal Link: Internal links are links that go from one page on a domain to a different page on the same domain. They are commonly used in main navigation.
34. HTML: HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) directives or “markup” which are used to add formatting and web functionality to plain text for use on the internet. HTML is the mother tongue of the search engines, and should generally be strictly and exclusively adhered to on web pages.
35. Keyword: In terms of SEO, it is a word and phrase that searchers enter into search engines, also called "search queries.
36. Landing Page: A web page which serves as the entry point for a website or a particular section of a website.
37. Link Condom: Any of several methods used to avoid passing link love to another page, or to avoid possible detrimental results of endorsing a bad site by way of an outgoing link, or to discourage link spam in user generated content.
38. Link Juice: Link juice or Google Juice is a colloquial SEO term describing the distribution of backlinks within a webpage and the strength or reputation of these links.
39. LSI: LSI stands for latent semantic indexing, which is the method that Google and other search engines use to study and compare relationships between different terms and concepts. These keywords can be used to improve SEO traffic and create more visibility and higher rankings in search results.
40. Meta Tag: A meta tag is a tag (that is, a coding statement) in the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) that describes the contents of a Web page.
41. Organic Results: Organic search results are listings on search engine results pages that appear because of their relevance to the search terms, as opposed to their being advertisements.
42. Paid Results: Paid or non-organic search results may include pay per click advertising.
43. Index: An index is another name for the database used by a search engine. Indexes contain the information on all the websites that Google (or any other search engine) was able to find. If a website is not in a search engine's index, users will not be able to find it.
44. NoIndex: It is an attribute assign to a web-page that tells search engines not to index that page in their database.
45. Reciprocal Link: A reciprocal link is an agreement between two webmasters to provide a hyperlink within their own website to each other's site. Generally this is done to provide readers with quick access to related sites, or to show a partnership between two sites.
46. ROI: It stands for Return-On-Investment and it is a performance measure used to evaluate the efficiency of an investment or to compare the efficiency of a number of different investments. ROI measures the amount of return on an investment relative to the investment's cost.
47. Sandbox: There has been debate and speculation that Google puts all new sites into a “sandbox,” preventing them from ranking well for anything until a set period of time has passed.
48. SiteMap: A site map (or sitemap) is a list of pages of a web site. There are three primary kinds of site map: Site maps used during the planning of a Web site by its designers. Human-visible listings, typically hierarchical, of the pages on a site.
49. Spam-indexing: In computing, spamdexing (also known as search engine spam, search engine poisoning, black-hat SEO, search spam or web spam) is the deliberate manipulation of search engine indexes. It involves a number of methods, such as repeating unrelated phrases, to manipulate the relevance or prominence of resources indexed, in a manner inconsistent with the purpose of the indexing system
50. URL: A Uniform Resource Locator (URL), colloquially termed a web address, is a reference to a web resource that specifies its location on a computer network and a mechanism for retrieving it.

Also Read: Auditing a Website: First Step Towards SEO

Google Analytics, Webmaster & URL Redirection

One of the most important aspect of on page SEO is Website Traffic analysis and removal of Website errors. There are two major tools to do so. Google Analytics, one of the product of Alphabet Inc. is used to measure the traffic a website is getting from different sources. Where as Google Webmasters use to check website errors, crawl errors, sitemap submission etc. One another important thing is URL redirection which is used for temporary as well as permanent redirection of your website from Old URL to a New URL. Now I will explain all these 3 things one by one for you. I will explain how you can integrate all these in your website.

Google Analytics: Google Analytics is a free website analysis tool provided by Google (Alphabet Inc.) for tracking and managing website traffic. Google Analytics can be integrated into website with the help of a google account. If you have a website and want to track your website's traffic, simply copy paste, Google Tracking code into your website's Head Tag and start getting website traffic information within 24 hour into your Google Analytics account. Now here at One Stop SEO Guide, I will explain you all the steps that will help you in Google Analytics Integration into your Website or Blog.

Steps for Google Analytics Integration into Website/ Blog:

1. Go to www.google.com/analytics and signup for Google Analytics with a Google account.
2. Select an account name, website name and website URL you want to track. 
3. While entering website, keep in mind if your website in following HTTP or HTTPS protocol.
4. Then click on get tracking code. And Google Analytics Tracking code will be displayed for your website. 
5. Copy and paste that tracking code anywhere between Head tags of your website's home page.
6. Now within 24-48 hours you will start getting traffic report for your website on Google Analytics.
7. You can get tracking code again from Google Analytics. Simply go to Admin tab and click on Tracking Info and then on Tracking code.
8. You can also add multiple properties or websites i.e. upto 100 websites under one Google Analytcis account. 
9. To do so, Go to Admin Tab. Click on the drop down "Your Account Name" on Left side. And then click "Create New Account". 
10. Google Analytics Dashboard looks like this.

Google Webmasters: Another free web tool, provided by Google is Google Webmasters. It is very powerful tool to get a lot of information about your website. From search traffic to search appearance, from Google Index to Google Crawling, you can analyze most of the website's aspects here easily. To add your website to Google Webmasters, simply follow these steps.

Steps To Setup Google Webmaster's for Your Website:

1. Go to www.google.com/webmasters and signup for Google Webmasters.
2. Click on "Add a Property" and paste your website in the box. 
3. Click on "Add" and you will be asked to verify your Webmasters setup for your website.
4. Click on Verify and use "Alternate Method".
5. Click on "Google Analytics" and then click "Verify" button. 
6. Then click on "Continue" and you will be redirected to "Search Console".
7. You can add up to 100 websites to webmasters.  
8. You can submit your your website's sitemap.xml file and your website for google indexing there. Explore other options in webmaster to improve your website's rank on Google SERP and other search engines.
9. This is how Google Webmasters' Search Console looks like.

URL Redirection:  Sometimes, you need to redirect your website from old URL to a new URL. For this we can either use 301 or 302 redirect. If you are moving your website temporarily to new URL then use 302 URL redirect and if you want to permanently move your website from old URL to new URL and also want 90-99% link juice to new URL then use 301 redirect. To do so, you need to include redirection code into your website's Head Tag. Below is the Website Redirection code that you can add into your website's header. 

<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0;URL='http://www.yoursite.com/'" />

Replace "http://www.yoursite.com" with the URL of the website to which you want to redirect your blog/website.

More About On-Page SEO Optimization

In my last post on One Stop SEO Guide, I discussed with you about few major on-page factors. Now we will discuss few more on page factors that will help you in becoming a SEO expert. Earlier we discussed about Keyword Research, Meta Tags, Title Tag, Image Alt Tags, URL restructuring & redirection, internal and external linking (Inbound and outbound linking). Read our previous post Learning On-Page SEO via One Stop SEO Guide to learn about these all.

Now we will discuss about Keyword density, HTML header tags, sitemap and robot.txt files.Then lets start now.

• Keyword Density: It is the % of no. of times a keyword or phrase appears on a web page or we can say in the content of a webpage as compared to the total number of words on the webpage/ content. When we talk about search engine optimization, keyword density is the factor used in determining whether a web page is relevant to a specified keyword or keyword phrase. Keyword density is an important part of On and Off page SEO. For example, if a keyword appears 4 times in a 100 word text the keyword density would be 4%. From the point of view of search engines, a high keyword density is a good indicator of search engine spam. If a keyword appears too often in a website, search engines will downgrade the website and it will then appear lower down in search results. The density for every keyword you use on a webpage should be between 2 to 4.5%. This % is considered as good practice in terms of SEO.
  
• HTML Header Tags: HTML Header tags are used to differentiate the headings and sub-headings of a webpage from the rest of the content. These tags are also known heading tags or simply header tags. The most important heading tag is the h1 tag and least important is the h6 tag. In SEO use a mix of header tags is a good practice and increases the readability of the content of a webpage. There a six types of HTML header tags. These tags are H1, H2, H3, H4, H5, H6.
  
• Sitemap (.xml and .html file): A sitemap is a list of pages of a web site accessible to crawlers or users. It can be either is an XML file that lists URLs for a site along with additional metadata about each URL so that search engines can more intelligently crawl the site or a HTML file for the end users. In SEO both are important but we usually focus on sitemap.xml as it is the file that we send to various search engines with the help of their webmasters to help them crawl our website or blog. If you want to generate .xml or .html file for your website, simply visit www.xml-sitemaps.com and enter your website's home page like "http://www.example.com", set the frequency to according to your choice. (Recommended monthly or weekly depending on the rate at which you update your website). Let the last modification to "Use Server's Response" and priority to "Automatically Set Priority". Click on 'Start' button and in few second, your sitemap.xml and sitemap.html files get generated for downloading.
  
• Robots.txt File: The robots exclusion standard, also known as the robots exclusion protocol or simply robots.txt, is a standard used by websites to communicate with web crawlers and other web robots. The standard specifies how to inform the web robot about which areas of the website should not be processed or scanned. Robots are often used by search engines to categorize web sites. Not all robots cooperate with the standard; email harvesters, spambots, malware, and robots that scan for security vulnerabilities may even start with the portions of the website where they have been told to stay out. The standard is different from, but can be used in conjunction with, Sitemaps, a robot inclusion standard for websites. Include all webpages or URLs that you don't want web spiders, bots or crawlers to crawl with Disallow tag. To learn how to create Robots.txt file, visit here. 

In my next post, I will explain about Webmasters & Analytics integration and use. I will also explain how you can apply URL redirection for your website or webpages. Keep on reading and do share the blog with your friends.

Learning On-Page SEO Optimization

One of the basic step in getting started with Search Engine Optimization is doing the On-page SEO work for your blog or Website. On-page factors plays a crucial role in optimizing your website/blog for search engine results. And in turn helps in driving more traffic to your website to grow your business. Here at One Stop SEO Guide, you will learn every aspect of SEO in easy steps.

In this post, I will explain about major on-page factors that you should perform on your website or blog to get better indexing and ranking on SERPs. I will explain in detail about on page steps and factors like URL restructuring, Meta Tags, Keywords research, URL redirects, HTML body tags, Image Alt tags, internal linking or inbound links, external linking or outbound links. In later posts, I will explain about Google Analytics integration for Website Traffic Monitoring, Setting up Google Webmaster and Google Adsense for your website/ blog. So, lets get started with On page SEO.

What is On Page SEO?   

On-Page SEO deals with all the things that you do on your website or blog to help it rank higher in SERPs. It includes adding page titles, internal linking, meta tags & descriptions, Image Alt tags, HTML heading tags etc.

• Keyword Research: Keywords' research is the most important on page factor as choosing right keywords helps you get better ranking of your website in search engine results whenever someone searches that keyword. Keyword is simply the word a normal user types in search engines' search box to get desired results. So, your website must have 5-6 keywords related to your website on its home page and sub pages. The keyword research can be done using online keyword research tools. Two most popular keyword research tools are Google Keyword Planner, Keywords IO Tool or Keyword Finder. Add 4-5 keywords for every page of your website depending upon its content type. Meta keywords code must be placed in header tag. Alternatively, you can also add your targeted keywords into your website's content. You can add keywords on your web-page using following Meta tag:

          <meta name="keywords" content="Keyword1, Keyword2, Keyword3"> 

• Title: Title tags is also an important element of a website. Title tag usually contains the heading that get displayed on first when your website is displayed in search engine results. It is also the text that get displayed into your browser title bar. If not set, displayed text will be "None". Ideal length for a title must be between 50-60 characters.The title pixel length must be between 512 pixels so that it will not get truncated in SERP display. (Check Title Pixel length here: Title Pixel Checker). Title tag must contain your website's targeted keywords as many as possible. HTML title tag code should be placed in head tags and can be written as below:

          <title>Page Title</title>

• Meta Description: Meta description is HTML attribute that is short explanation of content of a web page. Meta descriptions are commonly used on SERPs to display preview snippets for a given page. Meta descriptions should contain maximum keywords of a website by keeping in mind the keyword density. For every page of your website, there should be different description as well as title depending on the content of the webpage/subpages. Ideal length for a Meta description is between 150-160 characters. Below is the sample code for writing Meta Description tag. It should also be placed in HTML head tag just like Title and Keyword tags.

          <meta name="description" content="Here is a description of the applicable page">

• URL Restructuring: URL restructuring or URL rewriting is the process of writing yout website's sub-pages's URL in an optimized way. URLs like :"http://www.yourdomain.com/profile.php?mode=view&u=7" are less SEO friendly. We need to restructure our Static as well as dynamic URLs according to search engine requirements. While rewriting our website's sub pages URLs, you should include few keywords too in the URL. The problem with a dynamic URL structure (example: www.siteexample.com/page.php?cat=231&prod=55234) is that you can end up with lots of different variations of the URL getting indexed. This can potentially create a huge duplicate content problem and split your link value. Changing your URLs to a static structure will give you one URL for each page on your website. The URL should can the most important keywords of your website and each word must be separated by "-" instead of "_" because words separated by "_" are considered as single word where as words separated with "-" are considered as separate words. E.g: You can write the URL: www.example.com/page-1-new-post as www.example.com/one-stop-seo-guide 

      After restructuring and updating your present website URLs, you need to perform following actions:

1. Apply 301 Redirect Old URLs to New URLs
2. Update XML Sitemap and Resubmit to Webmaster Accounts
3. Update All Internal Links

• Internal Linking (In-Bound Links): Also known as In-around your website.bound link, an internal link is the link that connects to other page of the same domain. It is link a link on any subpage of your website that redirects to home page of your website or vice-versa. Internal links is very important for a website because they help users in easy navigation through your website and they help in spreading link juice. You can include internal or inbound links using Anchor text. Anchor text is the clickable text in a hyperlink. below is the code for the same.

          <a href="http://www.same-domain.com/" title="Keyword Text">Keyword Text</a> 

• External Linking (Out-Bound Links): External Links or out-bound links are hyperlinks that redirect to pages of other domain unlike In-bound links. This help in increasing the authority and ranking of your website. You can use external link anywhere on your website including in the content of your website and its subpages with the help of anchor text. Below is the code for the same.

         <a href="http://www.external-domain.com/" title="link anchor text">Link Anchor Text</a>

• URL Redirects: Redirection is the process of forwarding one URL to a different URL. There are three main kinds of redirects: 301, 302, and meta refresh.

1. 301 redirect, "Move Permanently": A 301 redirect is a permanent redirect which passes between 90-99% of link juice to the redirected page. 301 refers to the HTTP status code for this type of redirect. In most instances, the 301 redirect is the best method for implementing redirects on a website. It is used when you have either purchase/ moved to new URL from old one or you need a another URL of yours to redirect to targeted URL of your choice.
2. 302 redirect, "Move Temporarily": A 302 redirect is a temporary redirect. It passes 0% of link juice and, in most cases, should not be used. 302 referred to the status code "Moved Temporarily." These redirects are used when you temporarily want to redirect your one domain to other. Can be used in cases when you are creating a webpage and yet have not added any content to it but created the link for the same. And then redirecting that link to some other page like "A page with message: Under construction or coming soon", till the time original URL is ready to be presented to users.
   
3. Meta Refresh: Meta refreshes are a type of redirect executed on the page level rather than the server level. They are usually slower, and not a recommended SEO technique. They are most commonly associated with a five-second countdown with the text "If you are not redirected in five seconds, click here." Meta refreshes do pass some link juice, but are not recommended as an SEO tactic due to poor usability and the loss of link juice passed. 

Do apply these important factors into your website to make it Search engine friendly. I will explained more On-page SEO factors like Keywords density in content, HTML header tags, Sitemap and Robots.txt files in my next post on One Stop SEO Guide.

 

Check here: Google SERP Snippet Optimization Tool

Also Read: First Step Towards Becoming A SEO Freelancer