First you need to know what SEO is. It is search engine optimization and this will be the first definition I provide the rest will be in alphabetical order.

Search Engine Optimization – SEO – This is using various methods to get your website to turn up in the search engines when people search for specific words. In other words, if you want to be the first result that people see on Google or Yahoo! when they search the term, “starting steps” you need to make sure that your website is optimized for the keyword “starting steps”

Anchor Text – this is the text that you see when a text link is created. For example Blogging Beginners is a link and the anchor text for that link is Blogging Beginners.

Backlinks – are links on the internet that are not on your site but do link directly to your site. (also see reciprocal links, three way links and one way links)

Black Hat SEO – this is a term that is used for questionable or outright disallowed methods of search engine optimization. These methods might work in the short term but usually end up getting you so far back in the search engine rankings that your site will never see the light of day. Once you get flagged by the search engines for your website for using Black Hat techniques it is almost impossible to get good rankings.

Browser – a browser is a software program that lets you view websites on the internet. There are numerous browsers that include; Internet Explorer, Flock, Firefox, Safari, Chrome and a few others. The title tag of a web page

Cascading Style Sheets – CSS – like the name implies these are style sheets that control the appearance of your webpage (I am not sure where the cascading comes from). The main advantage to these is that they can be put in an external file and clean up the code on your page. The cleaner the code the more the search engines like it.

Content – this is basically anything people can see on your website, images, text, video, etc. but is most commonly referring to the text that people read.

H Tags – these are heading tags. They are used to make words the heading of a topic, paragraph or page stand out by varying the sizes and making them bold. These carry more weight with the search engines (unless you over use them) the lower the number the larger it makes the text and the more weight it carries with the search engines. They go from H1 to H6 with H1 being the largest and most important. The appearance of these can be changed through CSS style sheets while still keeping the relevance of the H tag for the search engines.

Keyword or Keyword Phrase – this is the specific word or word phrase that you are using to describe your website, business or service that you want to show up in the search engines. Ideally these are terms that your potential customers will search for to find you.

Keyword Density – this is actually a percentage for the number of appearances of your keyword. You take the number of words in a page and divide it by the number of times your keyword shows up. This used to carry a lot of weight with the search engines but with the use of latent semantic indexing it more often hurts your ranking for having your keyword too often instead of helping you. Your keyword should be included in your page and in your title but if you hear anyone tell you to use it X% of the time run.

Keyword Research – finding what keywords are being searched for your business and defining which are most likely to bring people to your website. This is usually done with the aid of a software program or by extensive manual research. The manual research (if done properly) usually provides the best results while the software programs give you a good place to start. Using the right keywords can make the difference between success and failure of a web site.

Keyword Stuffing – this is where you repeat your keyword numerous times in a title, anchor text, alt tag, description or almost anywhere else to try to help your placement in the search engines. This technique worked when I first started doing SEO (1997) but it doesn’t work any more and if you abuse it you will actually be penalized. Do not put your keyword anywhere, other than you main content, more than twice and in some places no more than once.

Latent Semantic Indexing – LSI – this is just a fancy term for similar terms. The search engines have learned to expect similar terms when ever you talk about a specific topic and these terms can help your website rank higher. For example: if a webpage is about a car the term horse power, power steering and custom paint are all similar terms and work well in a promotion for a type of car; in a different way airplane, train and bus are similar terms and would work well with a keyword phrase about transportation. The more related your key terms are the higher you will rank in the search engines.

Long Tail Keywords – this is a keyword phrase that consists of three or more keywords that are used to describe your business. These are usually the easiest to rank highly in the search engines.

Meta Tags – These are little snippets of code that go into your webpage but aren’t shown on the webpage itself. They are designed to be read by spiders and robots used by the search engines and directory services to collect information. The only two you need to worry about for SEO are description and keyword meta tags. Any others won’t hurt but they won’t help either.

Natural Results – when talking about search engine results these results that you don’t pay for. Most search engines have sponsored results on the pages when you do a search. These are usually marked as sponsored results and most of the time they have a different colored background. The sponsored results are paid for and can be quite effective but they can also be quite costly if you aren’t careful.

On Site Optimization – this is optimizing your site pages themselves to turn up in the search engines using the other terms used here, such as title tags, meta tags, H tags and other methods.

One Way Links – these are backlinks that come directly to your site with out you reciprocating in any way. This is the most valuable of the backlinks as far as the search engines are concerned.

Off Site Optimization – this is a method of building your search engine ranking by developing backlinks preferably with targeted anchor text.

Organic Results – another term for natural results

Reciprocal Links – these are backlinks where you enter into an agreement with another website where you put a link to their site and they put a link to your site. These don’t carry as much weight with the search engines as one way links.

Search Engine Optimization – SEO – This is using various methods to get your website to turn up in the search engines when people search for specific words. In other words, if you want to be the first result that people see on Google or Yahoo! when they search the term, “starting steps” you need to make sure that your website is optimized for the keyword “starting steps”

Search Engine Response Pages – SERP’s – this is the number of pages that turn up in the search engine when you search a specific term. It is usually listed at the top of search engine page and says something like “Showing 1 – 10 of 2,384,000.

Three Way Links – these are backlinks a lot like reciprocal links where you enter an agreement with numerous other websites and you point your links at one website but they don’t necessarily point a link back at your site. For example if you have three sites (hence the name) Site A links to Site B. Site B links to Site C and Site C links to Site A this gives the appearance of one way links which the search engines prefer.

Title Tag – While this is often considered a meta tag it is actually a HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) tag that puts the title of the page in the top of your browser. This is a very important tag for search engine optimization because, if used properly, it defines the topic of your page.

White Hat SEO – this is the term for using current commonly acceptable methods of search engine optimization. The reason I use the term current is because search engine change their algorithm and their rules when they catch anyone using Black Hat methods and unfortunately this can affect people that are doing everything the right way. White Hat SEO techniques are usually more work and more time consuming but if done properly will get your site to the top of the search engines and it should stay there for a long time.

XML SiteMap – this is a file that is for the search engines that provides them with information on when your site is updated and how important you think your information is. This is a good way to let the search engines know you have new content.

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