Common Search Engine Terms

Use this post as a reference if you do not understand any of the abbreviations used in the posts that are in this forum. Some of the definitions contain links to posts and other resources that will give you more information. If you would like me to add anything to this post then PM me and I will try my best to add it in. Some might seem a little obvious but if you have not heard of them before how are you expected to know what they mean?


Anchor Text - Anchor text is the name you give your link. If i was to link to ozzu i would say "Ozzu Webmaster Forum " The "Ozzu Webmaster Forum" is the anchor text of the link. The anchor text should contain your main targeted keywords.

SERP - Search Engine Results Page. The page or pages that a search engine displays after a search query for a certain search term or phrase.

SEO - acronym for “search engine optimisation”. Search engine optimisation is a process of crafting a site's content so that the site gets high rankings in the various search engines (both the site and individual pages), and includes tailoring on-page text (such as headlines and subtitles) as well as choosing the proper keywords for a page's meta tags.

Sandbox Theory - http://www.ozzu.com/ftopic24751.html&highlight=sandbox

Google Dance - The name "Google Dance" has often been used to describe the index update of the Google search engine. Google's index update occurred on average once per month. During an index update there was significant movement in search results and Google showed new backward links for pages. However, in mid-2003 Google started to update it's index continuously. It appears that, still, there has to be an update of the complete index once in a while and during this time new backward links are shown. But, because of the continuous update, the effects on search results seem to be rather insignificant.
More info can be found HERE

Back links – Back links are simply the term used when discussing other sites that link to your website. To find your website's back links use the following syntax in the search box of your favourite search engine: link:http://www.yoursiteurl.com

Out going links – Outgoing links are links that you have on your website that link to another site. So if I placed a link on my website to http://www.ozzu.com, that would be a outgoing link.

DMOZ – DMOZ is a open directory project. When you submit your site to DMOZ you will have to wait anywhere from 1 week to 5 months (or longer) for it to get approved by a editor. Getting listed on DMOZ can increase the traffic to your site and improve your page rank (this depends on the page rank of the category that you are in and I linking to you.

PR - PR (PageRank) relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page's value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important."

Important, high-quality sites receive a higher PageRank, which Google remembers each time it conducts a search. Of course, important pages mean nothing to you if they don't match your query. So, Google combines PageRank with sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that are both important and relevant to your search. Google goes far beyond the number of times a term appears on a page and examines all aspects of the page's content (and the content of the pages linking to it) to determine if it's a good match for your query.

Meta Tags – A meta tag is an element of HTML that often describes the contents of a Web page, and is placed near the beginning of the page's source code. Search engines use information provided in a meta tags to index pages by subject.

Indexed – If you website has been indexed then that means that it will show up in the search results. A good way to see if your site has been indexed is to type “url: http://www.yourdomain.ext” The pages that show up in your results have been indexed.

Alt Text – If you do a link exchange with someone then it is recommended by all the webmasters that you add alt text to your link. Alt text is the text that appears in a box when you put your mouse over it. Search engines can read this text.

Spider – A software program that "crawls" the Web, searching and indexing Web pages to create a database that can be easily searched by a search engine.

Googlebot – Please visit http://www.google.com/bot.html for more information on what the googlebot is.

Keyword Density – A property of the text in a web page which indicates how close together the keywords appear. Some search engines use this property for Positioning. Analysers are available which allow comparisons between pages. Pages can then be produced with the similar keyword densities to those found in high ranking pages.

Robots.txt – Click the link for a tutorial on robots.txt http://www.searchengineworld.com/robots ... torial.htm

WHAT IS BLACK AND WHITE HAT SEO?