SEO: an ever-changing, hard-to-pin-down, elusive and confusing aspect of marketing. You’ve most likely heard of it as well as some of the jargon that surrounds it – keywords, search ranking, spidering, algorithms. There is so much to learn and understand that it can seem completely overwhelming for the marketing layman. Never fear, the corecubed aging care marketing experts are here to explain some of the main points of SEO in layman terms.

Black Hat SEO: Black Hat SEO refers to the use of aggressive and unethical SEO strategies, techniques and tactics that focus only on manipulating search engines. These tactics violate the rules of search engines, like Google, and can result in a site being blacklisted, or un-indexed from a search engine. Being penalized in this way can be very difficult and costly from which to recover.

Dynamic Content: Website or blog content that is updated frequently, providing relevant information that engages the reader.

Exact Match Domains (EMDs): Domain names based on keywords such as ‘best-homecare-in-atlanta.com’. Once a way to get better positioning in search results, it is now a discouraged practice which search engines tend to regard as manipulative.

Flash: Graphics-based animation software which makes websites look rich and interactive. However, because flash sites contain mostly animation and little relevant content, search engines struggle indexing and ranking flash websites. Flash does not work on iPads or iPhones and is generally discouraged in modern website design.

Gray Hat SEO: SEO tactics and techniques that fall in the “gray area” between White Hat SEO (ethical) and Black Hat SEO (unethical) techniques. These types of SEO tactics, which may work today, could easily be no-no’s tomorrow.

Inbound Link: A link pointing to your website from another website. Also known as “back links,” inbound links are important in determining the popularity (or importance) of your website. Google often views sites with more inbound links to be more relevant in search results pages – especially when those links are built naturally rather than purchased or otherwise arranged.

Keyword: Keywords are words or phrases that Internet users type into a search engine when searching for a particular product, service, idea, etc.

Keyword Density: The measure of how many relevant keywords appear within each page of a website.

Keyword Stuffing: Writing copy that uses excessive amounts of keywords. While keyword stuffing was once an effective way to increase a site’s search engine ranking, because Google’s search ranking algorithm has changed, keyword density is no longer an important SEO factor, and keyword stuffing is considered a Black Hat SEO tactic.

Link Building: The process of increasing the number and quality of  relevant inbound links to a page which help your website achieve higher ranking with the major search engines. The best way to acquire links is to provide content on your website to which people would want to link.

Organic SEO: Organic SEO refers to the processes of obtaining a natural placement on organic search engine results pages (SERPs). Some examples of techniques used for organic SEO include backlinking, link building, and writing relevant content for your target audience.

SEM: Search Engine Marketing. Marketing a website in search engines. SEM encompasses SEO and paid search advertising as well as social media management.

SEO: Search Engine Optimization. Optimizing a website with the goal of positioning it high in search engine results.

SERP: Search Engine Results Page (or Placement). This is the page on which the search engines show the results for a search query.

Spider: An automated program search engine companies use to ‘crawl’ through websites and web pages on the Internet, finding content and indexing it to be made searchable.

Title: An important aspect of SEO, the HTML title tag is the title of a web page. According to seobook.com, Each page title should be:

• Unique to that page: Not the same for every page of a site!
• Descriptive: What important ideas does that page cover?
• Not excessively long: Typically page titles should be kept to 8 to 10 words or less (or 65 characters), with some of the most important words occurring near the beginning of the page title.

Additionally, you want to avoid keyword stuffing in your title tags.

White Hat SEO: SEO techniques that follow the rules and guidelines set forth by the major search engines.

We hope this list helps you gain a better understanding of the world of SEO. Still need SEO help? The corecubed team is always happy to help. Give us a call today.