If you have an online business, sooner or later you will start looking into search engine optimization. Better known as “SEO”, the field is full of jargon. Here is a little clarity on some of the terms used.
Insight to SEO Jargon
As you probably know, the internet has evolved a language all its own. Email and text messages come with all kinds of abbreviations from ROTFL [rolling on the floor laughing] to btw [by the way] and some others that I can’t include here due to their colorful nature. Search engine optimization is no different and here are a few of the more common abbreviations with explanations.
1. SERPs – This abbreviation stands for search engine result pages. It is typically used to in relation to rankings on a particular search engine, to wit, “the SERPS on Google just changed for the keyword phrase…”
2. Black Hat – This term refers to strategies used to obtain traffic through optimization. Although the exact definition is highly contested, it essentially means using tricks or tactics that violate search engine standards to obtain a desired result. For instance, cloaking is considered a black hat tactic.
3. Cloaking - Cloaking is a strategy whereby a search engine spider is told one thing is on a site page while visitors see something else.
4. White Hat – White hat is simply the opposite of black hat optimization, to wit, standards are followed.
5. KD – Stands for keyword density and refers to the number of times the keyword phrase you are optimizing for appears on the site page in question.
6. Spiders/Bots – refers to the programs that search engines use to crawl the web and index sites. There is Googlebot, YahooSlurp and MSNbot to mention only a few.
7. Metas – The term refers to the meta tags that are on a site. Meta tags simply tell a search engine spider or bot what is on the page in question. There are three meta tags – meta title, meta keywords and meta description – that are most commonly used. Previously were critical to search engine optimization efforts, but much less so today.
8. Anchor Text – This refers to the visible text in a hyperlink. When trading links or publishing articles, one typically wants to use anchor text that matches the keyword phrase on the page being linked to.
9. Google Dance – Google used to do updates every few months where all the rankings would change across all keywords. This was called a “dance” for some reason. It was either a very good or bad day for your optimization efforts. Google does still dance occasionally, but has moved more to a daily or weekly change in its rankings.
10. IBL – This refers to links pointing to your site. The goal is to get other trusted sites that are authorities for certain subjects similar to your own to link to you.
Obviously, there are many other terms and abbreviations that are used in SEO. This list, however, should at least give you an idea of who is saying what.
