Definition Of Terms
What is SEO?
SEO, is the shorter version of the term Search Engine Optimization. Here on CoderSEO.com, we shall define SEO with this SEO meaning: anything and everything a site owner or webmaster does to a webpage for the purpose of gaining the best visibility and ranking in search engine results pages. That is SEO.
It is done in such a way that a web site or web page is made as highly qualified as possible to receive visitors, a.k.a. traffic, sent by major search engines such as Google, Yahoo!, and Bing.
How? The more seo friendly you can make your webpages the better. A seo friendly webpage is a webpage that is built by following the guidelines given by search engines. Basically, The better you are at following such guidelines the more seo friendly your webpages become. Being seo friendly makes your webpages easily found in search results for the most searches performed by people using the search engines to look for the same information, products, and/or services that you may be offering on your site.
The higher your webpage is ranked in search results pages gives you a much larger opportunity for a huge volume of free organic traffic sent to your online business website by these search engines.
Search Engine
A search engine is a powerful program that provides results to queries you enter in the form of keywords that you use to describe anything you wish to find the answer to in a matter of seconds. Search engines use algorithms that make them function without human intervention.
Keyword
A keyword is a word or a group of words that a search engine user uses to search for any kind of information that he/she wants to find on the Internet. Keywords are not limited to letters of the alphabet. For example, you can find products by typing their model number, price, and/or even a serial number.
Targeted Keyword
A targeted keyword is the keyword that people are using on search engines to search for solutions to their problems. Your goal is to be on top of your competitors in the rankings each and everytime that keyword is used to query Google and other search engines.
Search Results
Search results are all the answers that a search engine gives you in the form of a list of ten items per page (default) that represent different places on the Internet where the information you are looking for is located. Ideally, search engines will only give you search results that are relevant to the keyword you used when you performed your search.
SERP
SERP stands for search engine results page that contains the search results for your query.
Bots, Crawlers, & Spiders
Bots, crawlers, and Spiders are programs that search engine deploy all over the Internet to crawl web pages to seek for all kinds of information that will eventually get stored in their databases for indexing. You will always find people on the Internet referring to these programs as crawlers, robots, and/or bots.
Metadata
This includes html tags that are between the opening <head> and closing </head> tag of your web page.
Title Tag
The title tag is found in the head section of an html page as described above. Enclosed between <title></title> html tags, web browsers display them in the title bar and in tabs. Search engines display the title tag of each web page when serving search results. This gives the title tag its very important role in search engine optimization. Keywords are bolded within search results snippet titles as they match search engine user queries. Search engines do this to show that each search result they deliver is highly relevant to the keyword used for each query. Your job is to make sure that the keyword(s), or key topic(s), found on the body of your page is visible in your title tag. Creating a descriptive page title than can stand out and compete for high rankings and increased clickthrough rate is a must in SEO. You are welcome to use our Title Tag Generator anytime.
Meta Description Tag
The meta description tag must always be placed underneath the title tag html code. Like the title tag, the meta description tag gets displayed as part of search results snippets. Though having not as much impact on search engine rankings, the meta description must be compelling enough to attract more clicks than your competitors. You are allowed to put more key phrases and key information about your business or product(s) into a meta description. A search engine friendly meta description tag, however, is not a place where you put long strings of keywords. Your goal, when writing descriptions, must be to help people using the search engines find your business as the one they can trust to be the best solution to their query. Search engines reward webpages that provide valuable and useful information with higher ranking positions over those that fail to do so. Feel free to take advantage of the free online Meta Description Generator here on Coderseo.
Meta Keywords Tag
The Meta Keywords tag holds all keywords that are relevant to the overall content of a web page. The webpage may contain information about one or more products, services, and/or information. Google already told website owners not to spend time on the meta keywords tag anymore as they had removed it from the list of things that help them rank websites in the SERPs. However, as long as you do not abuse the meta keywords tag, you can let it stay because of the fact that Bing uses it as a ranking signal. Our Meta Keywords Generator can help you speed write your meta keywords tag a bit so as to avoid spending too much time on it than you should.
Backend SEO Terms
Robots.txt
The robots.txt is a text file that is located in the root directory of a website that robots, a.k.a. user agents, have to check first before crawling. Basically, whatever information webmasters want to keep private can be kept away from user agents by the use of the robots.txt file. As someone who does search engine optimization, you may view the robots.txt file as a good place where you can solve a few website optimization challenges as well. With the correct syntax found here, you can properly set directives that user agents can understand. But be very careful, with improper use, a robots.txt file can block search engines and people will not be able to find your business in organic search results. On the other hand, if you do your homework to fully understand the robots.txt, you will reap the benefits of having a well optimized website up to the server level.
For a deeper understanding of the robots.txt file do your best to study everything about Using a robots.txt file. Check the references area at the bottom of this page for more resources on this subject matter.
All About Links
Hyperlink
A hyperlink is a part of a web page's content that you can click with your pointing device to initiate the action which was intended for it to perform.
Anchor Text
An anchor text is any hyperlinked text that takes a web site user to another location of the same web site or to an external location when clicked.
Internal Link
An internal link is any text or image that is hyperlinked to take a web site user to a different location but only inside the same web site when clicked.
External Link
An external link is any text or image that is hyperlinked to take a web site user to a different location that is outside the web site where he/she is when clicked.
Inbound Link
An inbound link is a hyperlink, from any external source, that takes a visitor to your web site.
Outbound Link
An outbound link is a hyperlink, from your web site, that takes your own web site user(s) to an external location such as another web site.
Backlink
A backlink is a type of inbound link that another person, known or unknown to you, has created to cite your web site without you having the need to return the favor in terms of linking back to him/her web site or content.
Reciprocal Link
A link becomes a reciprocal link when you create it for only one reason which is to return the favor to another person who put a link on his/her web site or web content to point to your web site or web content.