Search Engine Optimization and Marketing Terms and Acronyms
Posted by reviews on Aug 31, 2007
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Adsense
Algorithm
Anchor Text
Anchor text refers to the visible text for a hyperlink. For example:
< a href=”http://www.reviewerofsites.com/” >This is the anchor text< /a >
ATW
- AlltheWeb (search engine)
Authority
A website that is considered by Google or other search engines to be trusted and usually given a high PageRank.
BackLink
A web page that has a hyperlink to one of your pages, usually the home page.
B2B
Business to Business
Blog
BOT
Abbreviation for robot (also called a spider). It refers to software programs that scan the web. Bots vary in purpose from indexing web pages for search engines to harvesting e-mail addresses for spammers.
BOTW
Best Of The Web (Directory)
- Cache
- CAPTCHA
- Completely Automated Public Turing Tests to Tell Computers and Humans Apart
Cloaking
Cloaking describes the technique of serving a different page to a search engine spider than what a human visitor sees. This technique is abused by spammers for keyword stuffing. Cloaking is a violation of the Terms Of Service of most search engines and could be grounds for banning.
Canonicalization
Click Fraud
Conversion
Conversion refers to site traffic that follows through on the goal of the site (such as buying a product on-line, filling out a contact form, registering for a newsletter, etc.). Webmasters measure conversion to judge the effectiveness (and ROI) of PPC and other advertising campaigns. Effective conversion tracking requires the use of some scripting/cookies to track visitors actions within a website. Log file analysis is not sufficient for this purpose.
- Content
- Context
- Relevance of one element of a web page’s content to other elements of web page’s content.
CPL
- Cost Per Lead
- CPM
- Cost Per Thousand
- CPS
- Cost Per Sale
- CPC
- Cost Per Click (Google’s PPC Program)
- CTA
- Content Targeted Adverstising - It refers to the placement of relevant PPC ads on content pages for non-search engine websites.
- CTR
- Click Through Rate
- CVC | CVC2
- Card Verification Code
Data Center
Dedicated Server
Deep Link
A hyperlink from another website that is pointing to one of your website pages, other than the home page.
Directory
A web directory lists web sites by category and subcategory.
- DMOZ
- Directory MOZilla (a directory)
- DNS
- Domain Name System
Domain Name Doorway Page
A doorway page exists solely for the purpose of driving traffic to another page. They are usually designed and optimized to target one specific keyphrase. Doorway pages rarely are written for human visitors. They are written for search engines to achieve high rankings and hopefully drive traffic to the main site. Using doorway pages is a violation of the Terms Of Service of most search engines and could be grounds for banning.
Duplicate Content
Dynamic IP
EPC
- Earnings Per Click
FFA
Free For All - FFA sites post large lists of unrelated links to anyone and everyone. FFA sites and the links they provide are basically useless. Humans do not use them and search engines minimize their importance in ranking formulas.
- GAP
- Google Advertising Professionals
- Google (a search engine)
- HTTP
- Hypertext Transfer Protocol
- HTTPS
- HyperText Transfer Protocol Secure
- IBL
- Inbound Link (see Back Link)
- KDA
- Keyword Density Analyzer
- KEI
- Keyword Effectiveness Index
- Keyword/Keyphrase
- Keywords are words or terms which are used in search engine queries. Keyphrases are phrases consisting of multiple words that are used in search engine queries.
- Keyword Stuffing
- Keyword stuffing refers to the practice of adding (many) keywords to a web page for the benefit of influencing how a search engine ‘perceives’ the page. This is not for the benefit of human visitors.
Link Building
The process of finding or acquiring backlinks to your website or sites.
Link Farm
A link farm is a group of separate, highly interlinked websites for the purposes of inflating link popularity.
Link Juice
Link Popularity
Long Tail
LS
- LookSmart (a PPC Directory)
- LSA
- Latent Semantic Analysis
- LSI
- Latent Semantic Indexing
Matt Cutts
Google Employee in charge of preventing or limiting SPAM in the Google search engine results pages. His blog.
- Monetize
- Nofollow
- Noindex
- OBL
- Outbound Link
Organic Results
Page Rank (or PageRank)
PageRank is a numerical weighting (0 to 10, 10 being the highest) based upon the Google link analysis algorithm.
PFI
Pay For Inclusion
- PPC
- Pay Per Click
- PPR
- Pay Per Rank
- PPV
- Pay Per Visitor
- PR
- Google PageRank™ is a numerical weighting (0 to 10, 10 being the highest) based upon the Google link analysis algorithm.
- PR0
- PageRank Zero - the lowest actual PageRank given by Google.
Proxy
- PSA
- Public Service Ad
- PubCon
- Reciprocal Link
A two way hyperlink between websites.
Robots.txt
- Robots.txt is a file which well behaved spiders read to determine which parts of a website they may visit.
- SEM
- Search Engine Marketeer
Search Engine Marketer
Search Engine Marketing - SEMPO
- Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization
- SEO
- Search Engine Optimization
Search Engine Optimizer - SEP
- Search Engine Placement
Search Engine Positioning
Search Engine Promotion - SERPs
- Search Engine Results Pages
- SEs
- Search Engines
- SES
- Search Engine Strategies (a conference)
- SEU
- Search Engine Usability
- Sitemap
- Shared Server
- SMM
- Social Media Marketing
- SMO
- Social Media Optimization
Snap shot
SPAM
- Sites Positioned Above Me
Spamdexing
Spamdexing was describes the efforts to spam a search engine’s index.
- Spider
- Also called a bot (or robot). Spiders are software programs that can scan the web, normally following hyperlinks (links) throughout a website (via internal links) and to other websites (via external links). They have many different purposes, including indexing web pages for search engines to finding e-mail addresses for email spammers.
- SSL
- Secure Socket Layer
Static IP
An IP address that does not change.
Subdomain
- Text Link
- TLD
- Top Level Domain
- TOS
- Terms of Service
URI
Uniform Resource Identifier
URL
Uniform Resource Locater
W3C
- World Wide Web Consortium
- Webmaster Tools
- Wikipedia
- A is a multilingual, web-based, free content encyclopedia project, operated by the Wikimedia Foundation, a non-profit organization. It is the largest, most extensive and fastest growing encyclopedia currently available on the Internet.
Y!
- Yahoo! (a directory)
Google Partners with GoDaddy, Means Need to Register Domain Longer
Posted by reviews on Aug 28, 2007
In Google’s continuing war on spam sites “cluttering” their search results Google has partnered with GoDaddy to gather more information on webmasters and their domains.
As covered on Search Engine Journal
Google recently filed United States Patent Application 20050071741. As part of that patent application, Google made apparent its efforts to wipe out search engine spam, stating:
‘Valuable (legitimate) domains are often paid for several years in advance, while doorway (illegitimate) domains rarely are used for more than a year. Therefore, the date when a domain expires in the future can be used as a factor in predicting the legitimacy of a domain and, thus, the documents associated therewith.”
Domains registered for longer periods give the indication, true or not, that their owner is legitimate. Google uses a domain’s length of registration when indexing and ranking a Web site for inclusion in their organic search results.
So to prove to everyone that your site is the real deal, register for more than one year and increase your chances of boosting your search ranking on Google.
This is very interesting news that I see as continuing to be a consideration for webmasters and SEO’s as Google continues to partner with or buy other domain registrars in the future. If Google sees a registration for only a year or so they will very possibly consider it to be spam and not display the page or site very highly in the search results. This is a big deal for new websites and, in particular, non-spam sites, such as ecommerce sites.
Lesson learned: Register your domain for as long as possible to increase your likelihood ranking well with Google both in terms of PageRank and the Search Engine Results Page (SERP).
10 Great Ways to Build Backlinks
Posted by reviews on Aug 27, 2007
Building links is an important part of online marketing, as it can direct targetted traffic to your site, but also improve your ranking on the three main search engines (Google, Yahoo, and MSN (Live)). It can also increase your PageRank, which is helpful toward how you appear in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERP). More likely though, it will help you if you happen to sell text links or blog posts. There are many ways to build links and here are just a few.
1. Submit Press Releases. A simple press release about your website’s launch can be released to several PR websites, who will then distribute it to various online news sites.
2. Reciprocal Links with Similar Websites. It is very important that you only exchange with sites that are highly related to your content. Google is stating that they view link exchanges as schemes to be avoided. You may not get much of value, other than potential targetted traffic. You can find link partners by emailing them directly or searching through webmaster forums, such as Digital Point Forum.
3. Comment on Other Blogs. Start commenting on relevant and popular sites in your niche. It is very important that you do not spam the comment section. Likely, the comment will be blocked or not approved. This will increase the likelyhood that the webmaster will implement ‘nofollow’ on their site and further comments will be of little or no value. Instead, write a relevant comment. Try to avoid using keyword names in place of your name when commenting. This will probably cause the moderator to not allow your comment. Again, if the comment is set to nofollow, the link will not count for most search engines.
4. Social Bookmarking/Voting Websites. Various social voting websites, such as Netscape or Digg have a high PageRank and can direct a lot of traffic your way. This is especially true if you publish content that is particularly interesting.
5. Forum Signatures. Sign up for as many forums of related content as you can find and that are active. Emphasis should be placed on forums that allow signature links, especially if they are not nofollow.
6. Create a Tool, Theme or Widget. Write or pay someone to write a useful tool and host it on your site. It could either reference your site in the widget, thus creating a backlink, or users may like it so much that they will link to it from their site or forum posts. Designing Wordpress or similar themes and placing your link in the footer is a great way of creating backlinks, as webmasters use them for their sites.
7. Submit your web site to Web Directories. This can be a very monotonous process, however it can possibly net you several hundred backlinks. An alternative would be to hire someone to manually submit your site to directories. The main ones to consider paying for would be Yahoo Directories and BOTW.com. You can also try to get it added to the DMOZ, but this can take 1-2 years!
8. Article Submissions. Write articles on your niche topic and submit them to article directories. At the footer of these articles would be your backlink. There is the potential that you will get some targetted traffic also from the readers of your articles, as they are published on related websites.
9. Blogs on Other Blog Platforms. Use your blogs or hire/find others to mention your site on their blog. You may get some targetted visitors and it will count as a backlink. In other words, if you have a network or simply one blog, you can link to your other sites. Another option is to find other bloggers and get them to do a blog post about your site. There are many people that will blog for a fee. Take a look at Payperpost.com, for example.
10. Squidoo Lenses. Making a Squidoo Lens is an easy process that could earn you some extra money, but more importantly, it counts as a backlink. A Squidoo Lens is basically a one page website that you can easily design via their helpful Squidoo Lens wizard. Your Squidoo Lens can be used to talk about a topic that you enjoy, a business, or a product. In addition, you can reference Amazon or Ebay products and earn a commission. You can then build links back to your site or sites from your lenses.
Web Surfers Resist Search Engine Sponsored Links
Posted by reviews on Aug 25, 2007
According to a recent poll by Penn State, web surfers do not trust search engine sponsored links. Print Goes Wireless published an article recently, stating that “consumers are distrustful of search engine sponsored listings and click on such links fewer than twice in every 10 searches, new research has revealed.” Those are some horrible statistics! This only shows that Adsense website owners need to be always changing with the consumer mindset. If it means tweaking their website layout to flow better with the ads or improving their content so the visitor will more likely trust, or even appreciate, the link, then the webmaster must keep working on imaginative ways of developing their sites.
Further, the article states, “in that study, participants clicked on the results identified as ‘organic’ on more than 80 per cent of their searches rather than sponsored links even though many of the organic results were actually rewritten sponsored links. So his goal was to determine whether integrating sponsored links into organic results would increase the click-through rate, but this did not happen.” This is very interesting and goes against much of the thinking of Adsense webmasters. Instead of using block ads, perhaps the better method is to integrate the ads into the content itself, such as having keywords link to an ad. We’ve seen this on some websites and forums, but they don’t seem well integrated and usually have a double line under the word. This seems to be very annoying for the reader if they happen to roll their cursor over the word, which would then display an ad image or more ad text.
The other unavoidable problem is with the advertisers themselves. If their advertisement leads the visitor to a page loaded with eye-popping, bold print that seems like a poorly designed web page, at best, or a horribly conceived ad, at worst, then the the visitor will be more annoyed than happy with the result of their click. Advertisers must take the time to make visiting their site worth it.
As web surfers become more savvy and discerning in what constitutes a worthwhile site, including those of advertisers, then the pressure falls back on the Adsense site and the advertisers to offer up something better.
5 Great Tips to Increase Your Adsense Revenue
Posted by reviews on Aug 24, 2007
If webmasters want to monetize their websites, the best way to do it is through Adsense or a similar program. There are plenty of webmasters that are finding it hard to earn decent amount of money via their websites. However there are the other ones, the ones that seem to be raking in the money. What makes these webmasters different from the rest?
The successful ones often can provide some great tips for making money via their websites. There is no need to reinvent the wheel. It’s time for you to learn from the successful ones and not repeat their mistakes.
Here are 5 great methods to improve your Adsense earnings.
1. Concentrating on one format of Adsense ad. The one format that has worked well for is the Large Rectangle (336X280) size. This format tends to have a higher Click Through Rate (CTR). The benefit of this ad format is that it look like normal web links. People are used to clicking on this layout since it is visually similar to most websites that they commonly use when browsing the internet. They may not know they are clicking on an Adsense ad.
2. Location, location, location! Do not put Adsense on the bottom of the pages of your site. Put them at the top, center, or sides, where people can see them more quickly. You will be surpised at how much a location matters.
3. Create a custom palette for your ads. Choose a color that will blend with the background of your site. If your site has a light blue background, try to use light blue as the color of your ad border and background. The idea to pattern the colors to make the Adsense ads look like they are part of the various web pages. By blending the ads with your content you will increase the likelyhood of people clicking on the ads.
4. Content is king! Keep them coming back for more with relevant and interesting content. If you can’t think of something interesting to write or add to your site, hire someone to write for you. Also, write something in which you know something about. The Digital Point Forum has people wanting to write original content, and at reasonable prices.
5. Some have found that less content means a higher CTR. The belief is that you are leaving your readers wanting more and that they will click around looking for more information. Unfortunately, others disagree with this theory. You may want to experiment.
Google Proxy Issue - Any Third Party Can De-Index you!
Posted by reviews on Aug 21, 2007
As Dan Thies points out in his blog entry on his SEOFastStart.com site, it is possible for the Google spiders to crawl “your” site’s pages through a proxy. The problem is that Google will then no longer see the real url as the correct url, but instead view the proxy’s url as valid. Your url will then be de-indexed by Google (and possibly other search engines). Imagine how many visitors could be lost because your site is no longer coming up in the SERPs (search engine results page)! Imagine also, how this could effect other areas of income if your PageRank drops to zero because of this!
They did notify Google about this over a year ago, but to date Google has done nothing. As time has passed, more advanced proxies have come into existence. These advanced proxies no longer pass the user-agent and other valuable information, making it even more difficult to prevent this from occurring.
How Can I Tell if I’ve been Proxified?
A simple test is to do a search for a keyword or phrase (or combination of phrases) that are unique to the page on your site that you are testing. If you find a duplicate page via the search engine then you may have been proxy hacked. A typical proxy url may look something like: www.example.com/nph-proxy.pl/655486/http/www.yoursite.com/
An Implementation Guide is available on Jaime Sirovich’s blog to walk you through some possible preventative measures.
Hopefully Google and the like take this seriously and fix it soon!
Generate Tons of Traffic for Your Site!
Posted by reviews on Aug 20, 2007
1) PPC Traffic
Pay-Per Click traffic with Google Adwords and the like can bring good, traffic however it can be a very expensive method of bringing visitors to your site.
2) Writing Articles
Writing articles and submitting them to sites or Article Directories can be a great way of generating backlinks and possibly some targetted traffic to your site.
3) Social Networking websites
The first one that springs to mind is StumbleUpon. However, the traffic from stumbleupon is not targeted.
Here’s a huge List of Social Networking websites
Yahoo Answers! - This is an excellent resource to get traffic. It is indexed daily and you will have a very good chance of getting some targetted traffic. It is nofollow, so you will not get any link juice.
5) Blogs, Forums, Press Releases
The more ways you can announce your website or talk about your product, the better. If you can generate some buzz and get people talking, you will find an increased number of visitors.
6) Forum Signatures
Take part in related forums. The more active you are, the more other users of the forum will likely see your posts and therefore your signature.