One of the most confusing aspects of marketing your local business online is trying to understand the various internet marketing terms. Here are some SEO terms and their definition to help shed some light.
- SEO – this stands for Search Engine Optimization and is a general term used to describe methods and strategies that will help your site rank better in the search engine listings.
- On page SEO – these are methods and strategies you use internally on your own website to help it rank better.
- Off page SEO – this covers methods and strategies used externally on other websites, blogs, social media, etc., to help your website rank better.
- Backlinking – this off page SEO method involves creating links on other people’s websites that point to your website. These links would be considered “off-page” SEO.
- “No follow” links – these are backlinks that do not carry the “power/authority” of the page they are located on over to your website.
- “Do follow” links – these are backlinks that do have the authority of the site they are located on flowing through them to your site.
- White hat SEO – these are ethical SEO tactics used by a site owner to promote his/her site, that are looked upon favorably by search engines – like creating good content.
- Black hat SEO – these are unethical SEO tactics used by a site owner to promote his/her site, which are not desirable and may result in getting banned by search engines.
- Backlink Value – this is a calculation of the power of the backlinks a site has roughly equaling the number of backlinks built, multiplied by the strength of each backlink (based on the authority of the site where the backlink originates).
- Anchor Text – this is the clickable part of text within an article or other piece of content that when clicked, will direct the user to another page or site.
- Contextual links – these are backlinks that are embedded within the text of piece of content and are surrounded by other content.
- Keyword density – the number of times a keyword appears in a piece of content, expressed as a percentage. Currently, the ideal target is 1-3%.
- Outbound Links – these are links you create from your website to external websites.
- Indexing – a term used to describe when a search engine finds content on your website and lists it in its search results.
If you have any questions about how any of these play a part in your online marketing, just send me an email – I’m glad to help.
About the Author: Ken Ivey, affectionately dubbed ‘the Web Czar’ by peers – has been helping businesses embrace technology for 27 years. Contact him at ken@livingwaterdigital.com or call 920-645-2700
