Latent Semantic Indexing or LSI is the creation of word associations within a context, which search engines are able to use to help establish the topic of any given web page.
Long tail keyword phrases typically contain more than 3 words in length and are more specific in nature than frequently searched generic phrases. These types of phrases are usually used by people seacrhing for a specific product of service and are more likely to convert into a sale or enquiry because the user intentions are already more specific.
black hat -Search engine optimization tactics that are counter to best practices such as the Google Webmaster Guidelines.
Reciprocal Link - The practice of placing a link from website A to website B strictly because website B is linking to website A. I scratch your back, you scratch my back.
Off Page SEO refers to the external factors which affect the ranking of your website such as the analysis of keywords and external links pages. Off-Page search engine optimisation is difficult to establish and maintain but is critical in order to achieve top rankings on all of the popular search engines.
On Page SEO refers to the controllable internal factors which affect the ranking of your website such as the coding and accessibility of your website. For example, the correct use of titles, headings and copywriting.
Pay per click refers to paid for adverts and listings such as Google AdWords. The costs associated with PPC far out-weigh those of SEO, however PPC produces guaranteed instant results whereas SEO is more of an ongoing long-term strategy which cannot ever be guaranteed.
RSS is an XML format for syndicating (publishing) web content. A website that wants to allow other sites to publish some of its content creates an RSS document and registers the document with an RSS publisher. A user that can read RSS-distributed content can use the content on a different site. Syndicated content includes such data as news feeds, events listings, news stories, headlines, project updates, excerpts from discussion forums or even corporate information.
XML Sitemaps are datafiles that have been created using the XML format that lists every url on a website, and is made available to search engine spiders to enhance their ability to index the site more fully.
Organic Search - Search results in a search engine that are not paid advertisements. The results that come up naturally based on their indexing within a search engine. Organic search results are good. We all want to come up on top for organic searches using keywords we are optimized for. For example, searching for "george ajazi" will return this website in organic search results.
A 301 Redirect is a status code that appears when a visitor, either human or a search engine, goes on to a web page that no longer exists. The code tells the visitor that the page has been permanently moved to a new location whilst also informing the visitor of the new location of the webpage.
cloaking - a black hat system of delivering customcontent to an engine spider but hiding the code or content from visitors
dofollow - standard incoming links that do not have the nofollow attribute
blog -A website which presents content in a more or less chronological series. Content may or may not be time sensitive. Most blogs us a Content Management System such as WordPress rather than individually crafted WebPages. Because of this, the Blogger can chose to concentrate on content creation instead of arcane code.
bot -(robot, spider, crawler) A program which performs a task more or less autonomously. Search engines use bots to find and add web pages to their search indexes. Spammers often use bots to “scrape” content for the purpose of plagiarizing it for exploitation by the Spammer.
doorway page - a webpage designed to draw in internet traffic and then redirect this traffic to another website. Also known as bridge, entry, gateway, jump and zebra pages [a probable engine penalty]
white hat SEO - techniques for high rank that follow search engine guidelines
authority site -A website which has many incoming links from other related expert/hub sites. Because of this simultaneous citation from trusted hubs an authority site usually has high trust, pagerank, and search results placement. Wikipedia, is an example of an authority site.
http - hypertext transfer protocol: Transfers information between servers and browsers
https - Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure: Transfers encrypted info
image alt tag - the alternative text that the browser displays when the website visitor does not want to or cannot see an image on a website. Placed in the image tag like this: <img src="seo.gif" alt="SEO">
IP address - Internet Protocol address. A unique identifier that has four numbers separated by dots, like this: 57.247.271.73. All computers across the internet are assigned one. They are used like street addresses. The below Google Gadget shows your computer's true IP address and more:
Paid Link Building - Websites who are willing to link back to your site for a fee in order to boost your rankings/weight in the search engines.
META tags - write-up placed within the HTML <head> </head> tags of a webpage, providing information that is not visible to browsers.
PR - Google PageRank: a numerical value that represents the popularity of a website. Found on the Google Toolbar
SEM - search engine marketing
web 2.0 - the second generation of internet-based services that let people collaborate and share information online in ways previously unavailable. For example: social networking sites, wikis, communication tools and folksonomies.
SERP - search engine results page. The page that users see after clicking Search at an engine
Spider - Programs written to scour the web automatically for various reasons (to index web pages, for spamming purposes, etc.) aka web robots, web crawlers, bots, internet bots.