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SEO Lingo

By Vickie J. Scanlon





SEO Lingo-what is It? From the title you can assume it some type of language or jargon. Is it necessary for you to know? If you want to use SEO it is wise to have some knowledge of the jargon. You may even say to yourself, why do I need this. I just want a website to make money. Right. The answer is simple. You need it to attract the search engines or you will not make money. So what is the lingo, and what is SEO?



SEO and the search engines.

SEO is the process by which you help the search engines find your site, as well as, determine what your site is about. How do you do that? Some of the pieces you need is the domain name, the title, keywords, meta tags, alt attributes and content.

The search engines use an "Algorithm" - which is simply a set of instructions to follow in determining the importance of the web page, and other niceties, such as page rank. They use your keywords to determine your placement in a certain category, such as: Computers, Exotic birds, etc.


Page Rank

Page rank is determined by the number and the quantity of inbound links coming into your site. If your web page or pages are relevant to other webmasters, then the search engines will reward you for it, with a higher rank. Sounds easy, but the weight of the rank can be diminished if a site that is not all that relevant to your site, links to you. Google has tried to diminish the importance of page rank, but, it's still in the algorithm.


Algorithms and the Human Factor

Many webmasters in the past had been very inventive at work-arounds with the search engines algorithms -- thus pushing their websites up to the front of the line in search engine ranking. But that is changing, Google has made their algorithms a little more unpredictable, making it more difficult for webmasters to predict what technique would work to get the ranking.

But Google has pushed the envelope, so to speak, and has gone a little farther. They are now beginning to approach it from more with the eyes of a human viewer. Granted there are still bugs-and you still see on occasional, websites that may have some irrelevant data - but it's getting better.


SEO Lingo- The Basics

Here are some of the basics to SEO and the explanation of each, and how it applies to SEO.

Meta tags- A meta tag is a tag that is a general-purpose tag. It's used between the "head" portion of the web page. This includes such tags as: meta description, meta keywords, and the Title tags. These tags are position at the beginning of your web page between the "head" html.

Keywords- keywords are specific words that identify what your web page is about. Keywords should be within the body of the copy, within the title tag and in the meta tag description, at the least. It should be specific to the web page. What does that mean? It means that your Title and meta description should not be the same for every page. 

Title- Identifies the page. If you want the search engines to find you, do not leave the title tag blank, or place your Company name in the tag, unless it is relevant, or leave it as Home Page.

One final note: The meta tags, such as the title tag, keyword tag, and description tag, should be after the head tag, but before the ending head tag.


So what's the bottom line.

The bottom line is this. Yes, meta tags, keywords, title, and domain name are important. But your content is just as, or more important. If the content is not relevant to the keywords, tags, title, etc. then you're not going to get a ranking by the search engines.

To conclude, know the lingo, and you have a third of the battle won. The other two-thirds requires work on your part and, a commitment to quality content.



About the Author:

Vickie J Scanlon  -- Visit her site at: My Affiliate Place for articles, to learn more about SEO check out  SEO Basics for your website on my website. It will give you some helpful information and discuss SEO in more detail .