The all important SEO terms and definitions.

Have you ever been looking into SEO and come across some words or terms that just left you baffled? I spent a good hour thinking up common terms searching for the exact meanings, so here you go, a comprehensive list of SEO terms and definitions.

SEO – Search Engine Optimization; The process of configuring Web content in order to gain the highest potential rankings for a given search engine.

SEM – The paid process of promoting websites by way of advertising on search engines. As opposed to SEO, which is trying to optimize your site to get “free” traffic in what are called the “organic rankings”

Search Engine -A program for the retrieval of data, files, or documents from a database or network, esp. the Internet.

Search Algorithm – an algorithm for finding an item with specified properties among a collection of items. Google’s has a highly secretive program used to scan and rank pages based on content. According to Google, each page is considered on over 200 factors to determine its value in response to the particular search in question.

SERP -A Search Engine Results Page, is the listing of web pages returned by a search engine in response to a keyword query. The results normally include a list of web pages with titles, a link to the page, and a short description showing where the keywords have matched content within the page.

Content – The things that are held or included in something. All of the pictures, articles, blog posts, advertising, etc included on a web site

PageRank – A link analysis algorithm, named after Larry Page, used by the Google Internet search engine that a assigns a numerical weighting to each element of a hyper-linked
 set of documents, such as the World Wide Web, with the purpose of “measuring” its relative importance within the set

Title Tag – An HTML element is an individual component of an HTML document. HTML documents are composed of a tree of HTML elements and other nodes, such as text nodes. Each element can have attributes specified. Elements can also have content, including other elements and text

Meta Tags – HTML or XHTML elements used to provide structured metadata about a Web page. Such elements must be placed as tags in the head section of an HTML or XHTML document.

Backlink – incoming links to a website or web page. Inbound links were originally important (prior to the emergence of search engines) as a primary means of web navigation; today their significance lies in search engine optimization (SEO).

Keyword Density – Keyword density is the percentage of times a keyword or phrase appears on a web page compared to the total number of words on the page.

Keyword Stuffing – Where a keyword or phrase is used excessively in page content or alt tags in an attempt to gain higher rankings. Can result in page penalties or bans.

Web Crawler – a computer program that browses the World Wide Web in a methodical, automated manner or in an orderly fashion. Other terms for Web crawlers are ants, automatic indexers, bots, or Web spiders, Web robots, or—especially in the FOAF community—Web scutters

Robots.txt – A file in the root directory of a website which has been created to direct the activity of search engine crawlers or spiders.

Linkbait -Link bait is any content or feature, within a website, designed specifically to gain attention or encourage others to link to the website. Matt Cutts defines link bait as anything “interesting enough to catch people’s attention

Link Farm – a group of web sites that all hyperlink to every other site in the group. Although some link farms can be created by hand, most are created through automated programs and services

Anchor text – The link label or link title; the visible, clickable text in a hyperlink. The words contained in the anchor text can determine the ranking that the page will receive by search engines

NoFollow – A link which carries the rel=”nofollow” attribute. A link with the rel=”nofollow” attribute, will not pass juice, and does not count towards overall link authority and PageRank.

Sandbox – a separate index, the sandbox, where it places all newly discovered and penalized websites. When websites are on the sandbox, they won’t appear in the search results for normal search queries. Once Google verifies that the website is legitimate, it will move it out of the sandbox and into the main index.

Duplicate Content – Using the same content on more than one page. Aka plagiarism The practice of taking someone else’s work or ideas and passing them off as one’s own

EMD URL – Exact Match Domain; a domain name made of a long-tail keyword phrase, company name, etc. ex “www.freecreditreport.com” to rank for the phrase “free credit report”

Canonical URL – Canonicalization is a process for converting data that has more than one possible representation into a “standard” canonical representation. A canonical URL, therefore, is the standard URL for accessing a specific page within your website. For instance, the canonical version of your domain might be http://www.domain.com instead of http://domain.com.

Got it?…. Good! Ha! Feel free to come back anytime or bookmark this as a reference! I also encourage you to sign up for our newsletter for more  tips and tricks!

SMB budgets in 2012 have seen a large increase in digital spending.

With the massive amount of money spent spreading the message, it would seem that the recession we’re in is a myth! Perhaps it is true that consumer spending has taken a hit, but here are some juicy statistics from the BIA/Kelsey SMB Digital Conference in Chicago that reveal some interesting trends with online marketing.

Small business marketing expected to increase 40%  digitally in next 12 months

 This preliminary chart is from the BIA/Kelsey annual Local Commerce Monitor Survey that talks to 300 small businesses. A 40% increase is an outstanding prediction on the growth of small business marketing taking to the digital channels. With the slow improving economy and with the ever increasing media dominance of the consumer, the Internet is driving all marketers to show more focus on the digital realm.

 Small business marketing has nearly doubled using digital media channels over the last 5 years.

An increased audience fragmentation is solely due to digital marketing . I remember the days that you could just put an ad in a Yellow Pages book and attract a nice share of the market. Not the case today, small business marketing plans must promote media buys across multiple channels to get the same audience as they did in the past. Are you?

Small business marketing budgets show SMBs will spend one third on digital media

It is predicted that in the US, the total local ad spend  to be more than $130 Billion in 2013. BIA/Kelsey estimated that in 2010 SMBs spent about 20% of their budgets on digital marketing equating roughly to $5 billion. This means that 30% of small business marketing dollars in 2013 should be somewhere around $9 billion. Don’t get left behind and let your competition have a leg up!

Facebook is dominating the small business marketing digital landscape

It’s free, easy to setup and use, and has over 900 million users! FaceBook is dominating the landscape now and small business marketing has grown tremendously since FaceBook’s conception. There are so many success stories of SMBs taking advantage of FaceBook’s network and the trend is increasing each and every day.

You need a digital small business marketing plan

There is no doubt that the landscape of small business marketing is changing and with these revealing numbers, digital marketing is here to stay. Are you prepared for 2013?

Google confirms hidden SEO benefit of authorship: bonus links after a clicking the back button

Digging into useful SEO information out there for you readers is one of my favorite things to do, and in doing so, I stumbled upon something that will benefit anyone who actively stays on top of Google trends.  Today, I stumbled upon an article that confirmed the hidden SEO benefits of Google Authorship.

What is this SEO benefit?

According to Search Engine Land’s Matt McGee:

If a user returns to the search results after reading an author-tagged search result for a certain period of time, Google will add three additional links to similar articles from the same author below the originally clicked link.

Really??!! What exactly does this mean and how does this happen?

If you do a Google search and pick a result that has an author rich snippet associated with the article, read the article for a short period of time and click the back button, Google will then include “More by (author)” along with three links to other articles.

You read that correctly, Google will build you back links! You can actually do this yourself by reading your own articles as well and add this to your daily SEO routine. Search for your posts, click and read, then hit the back button. Although, you can’t do this with haste as Google is measuring time-on-site to determine if a reader enjoys the content. There is no specific information out there on how much time a user needs to spend on a post, but tests out there on the Internet determined a minimum of 2 minutes.

Google has confirmed the following:

If a user visits an article by an author and it seems like they’d be interested in finding more articles by this author, when they click the “Back” button to return to the results page, we’ll show more results by that author.

This is all very good news for us bloggers and SEO professionals out there! Link building is a challenge since Google clamped down on this past year with algorithm updates. Too many links too quick will get you penalized! This is a safe and Orangehat way– it’s also Google approved!

To learn how to use Author Rich Snippets for SEO, read my article about how to set it up so you too can take advantage of this hidden SEO feature.

Example of Authorship Snippet

Read more SEO tips and tricks by Ryan Neal

Author Rank is Google’s new way to prove page quality and authority.

In the world of SEO, it just seems that we’re constantly bombarded with updates and new technologies from the search engines. In fact, it’s reported that Google updates their algorithm nearly 500 times a year! With all of this, it is tough to know what’s what, how to do it, as well as when to start. All one can really do is stay diligent and read SEO blogs like this everyday to get a clearer picture of what’s coming.

Author Rank is indeed on its way, and if you want to stay relevant, you need to learn what it is, why you need it and how to prepare.

Google wants to leverage authors as a factor in ranking pages and sites so that the experience for users  is easier to find the work of their favorite writers.  Getting a head start in the Author Rank process and staying proactive, you will have a great opportunity to rank higher as author profiles are not being practiced very widely yet.

It is highly likely your competitors haven’t looked into Author Rank markup yet.

How Author Rank Works

In Google’s words (Author rank was originally Agent Rank)

The name of the writer can be used to influence the ranking of web search results by indicating the writer responsible for a particular content piece … Assuming that a given writer has a high reputational score, representing an established reputation for authoring valuable content, then additional content authored and signed by that writer will be promoted relative to unsigned content or content from less reputable writers in search results.

Here is a nice graphic from Mike Arnesen’s Author Rank post on SEOMOZ that paints a picture of the concept:

As you can see here, the left side is before and the right is after. What is happening in this example is the authors that have setup the Author Rich Snippets are being rewarded. They have author rich snippets integrated into their page or post and this allows them to show a photo, give the name of the author, how many people are following this author and more content from the author. Author Rank adds a lot of credibility to the content and Google will reward that.

Which ones in the example look like a credible source? Which would you choose to view?

How to prepare for Author Rank.

There’s only one way to make sure you’re ready, and I wrote about it in my post about author rich snippets as they help will help with Author Rank. Follow the steps in that post, and you will be ready!

As I mentioned above, SEO, search engines, content marketing is not the easiest subject to tackle. GuruBloggers is here to help you learn or assist! So subscribe to our blog and newsletters to stay on top of the trends or give us a call if you need our assistance with your business marketing needs. We are here to help you!

I have been on the search for advice on monetizing my blog designs and web templates.

I don’t just mean the most elegant looking of blog designs, but a template that is designed to get the most out of the traffic that my website and blog may get. So, in the nature of GuruBloggers, I thought I would share with you some of my findings…

Study on blog designs and websites

This is a screen shot of a study done on blog designs and website layouts with eye tracking software. The colors represent areas of where random people’s eyes concentrate on while viewing different blog designs and website layouts. The red area represents where eyes view the blog designs content, and where blog designs get the most attention. The yellow comes in next, with blue being last and rarely viewed with any attention at all.

On the far left, we have one example of many blog designs that is a text rich piece of content. We can see where the content has nearly all the web surfer’s attention. Notice the where the red is concentrated the most, this is how much focus the article actually received. Keep your content short but keep it interesting and do a soft sale in the last 100 words!

In the middle we have a website that has banners, a large image placed on top, an ad on the top far right and the content in the middle. Notice how the most concentrated on part of the content only shows red at the beginning of the lines— this means the content is barely looked at the further right and down as the text in the article continues…

On the far right, we have a search result screen shot from Google. This shot is probably the most important reason we blog, work and play on social media, as well as spend time and money on enhancing the SEO on websites. This shows where people pay most attention to in the search engines, and it’s not the ads on the far right. It is the organic search results. It seems to be a familiar result, I too often look to the first 3 results in Google!

15 tips to know about websites and blog designs.

• Text actually captivates an audience more than pictures.
• People begin viewing websites from the top left, much like a book!
• Banners often get ignored.
• Don’t use fancy fonts in blog designs, people tend to ignore those too.
• Lower parts websites are usually just scanned, so keep the good stuff at the top.
• Short paragraphs will keep your audience’s attention, keep it around 300 words.
• Blog design and websites with the ads on the top or left part of the content to get the most views.
• Place ads in your content or right below and get more views.
• Big pictures catch more eyes than smaller ones.
• Headlines draw attention and make your pieces more credible and convincing. Choosing the right CSS for blog designs can make a headline really stand out.
• Web users spend more time navigating menus of blog designs and looking at the buttons of a website.
• Bullet points are better at keeping readers’ attention compared to large paragraphs the also.
• Some will skip large chunks of text.
• Nothing wrong with white space! It helps blog designs stay neat and organized.
• Place menus on the top part of a website, web-surfers are used to looking up for navigation.

While we may not implement some of these tips here on GuruBloggers, it is nice to know for our clients’ blog designs and we like to share information that we find even more! So when you in the creating process, keep all of this in mind to make the most out of layout!

Be on the look out for blog designs and web templates from GuruBloggers for you to download!

Sources: BBC News | GoogleBlog | DreamGrow