Useful Search engine optimization terminologies

Search engine optimization is a set of procedures adopted to improve the chances of a website appearing in the initial couple of pages in search engine results. Search engine optimization can be offered both as a standalone service focusing on optimizing the keywords, adding relevant content or link building as in an existing site, or as a comprehensive service right from the web building and development stage for new upcoming sites. The strategy for optimizing any site depends on the products or services it provides. It is largely important to understand how search engines view and rank a particular website. Being automated software, they are mostly text-driven; i.e. they crawl the web from one site to another via links and view the keywords to get an idea on what the website is actually about. Later, they index the site in their database as per its relevance and later retrieve it whenever the relevant keywords are searched. Search engine crawlers are unable to see images, Javascript, flash movies, or directories, so it does not make sense to add tons of such items on your website just to increase its visibility for search engines.

While going for search engine optimization measures for your website, it is very important to know the various terminologies which are related to search results, and affect the visibility of the website, so that you know for sure where exactly you need to focus to make your website more search-friendly.

1) Search engine marketing: Also known as SEM, it involves marketing of yourwebsite through search engines. It involves online organic search engine placements and pay-per-click advertising through Google AdSense advertising.

2) SERPS: It is an abbreviation for Search Engine Research Panel, which denotes the organic search results which are displayed whenever we type a keyword in the search engine.

3) Anchor text: It is the text which is hyperlinked to take you to another web page. The number of inbound links a particular website gets from other trusted sites is an indication of its popularity and reliability. It plays a very significant role in improving the Google search ranking of the recipient web page. However, excessive stuffing of links with the same anchor text on the same website is taken as an indication of poor search engine optimization, resulting in banning of the site by Google.

4) Backlinks: In SEO terminology, back links mean the number of inbound links that connect from another site to yours. They are important because they measure the popularity your website enjoys amongst the web audience. Backlinks can be good or bad. Backlinks obtained from reputed websites hosting a theme similar to yours is considered good, and helps in boosting your page ranking; while backlinks from shady places like link farms are likely to harm your prospects of building up respectable link popularity.

5) Link exchange: In link exchange, two or more websites place each other's links on their web pages. In reciprocal link exchange, two websites interlink each other. Three way link exchange programs are also possible, wherein website A links to website B, website B to C, and C links back to A. Generally, such types of link exchanges are hard for Google search engine to track. Google search engine generally places less weightage to reciprocal and closed loop links, as these are often the result of link trades and do not portray the actual website quality. Google looks for quality one way links to decide on the ranking.

6) Page rank: Page rank (PR) is Google's patented procedure of assessing the importance and relevance of a particular website. Though the exact methodology adopted by Google to arrive at a page rank is not clear to anybody, it is clear that Google provides a decent page rank to sites having healthy link building policies.

7) Keywords: Keywords are the most important on-page SEO factors for any website. Search engines match the website's keywords against search strings. It is therefore of utmost importance to optimize your website for the proper keywords. With millions of websites offering the same products and services, it is next to impossible to achieve good page ranks with a single word search string. It is also quite difficult to let the reader know about your website with a single word search string. To achieve good results in keyword optimization, go for 2-3 word search strings which tend to aptly describe your product. Also think from the customer's perspective to find out what keywords are likely to be searched more, and use them properly in your website content.

By getting yourself acquainted with all the terminologies used in search engine optimization techniques, along with the role each term has to play in getting good visibility and quality traffic to your website, you can suitably optimize each factor in your favor to gain prominence in search engine results, and in the bargain, boost your online sales quite remarkably.

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