Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for your website

SEO Slang

Just like any other topic with a big online following,SEO has its own colorful vocabulary.There are

far too many terms to include here, but here’s a sampling of what you might come across in your

own SEO endeavors:

SERP

An acronym that stands for “Search Engine Results Page,”that is, the listings you see when

you use a search engine. It is our opinion (as it is with other right-minded folks) that this acronym

has an ugly ring to it, so we’ve decided to ban it from the book!

White hat/black hat

Stereotypically speaking,

white hat

refers to “squeaky clean”optimization

activities,ones that stay squarely within the search engines’guidelines.

Black hat

refers to under-

the-radar (and often below-the-belt) activities,such as quickly launching a site with poor-quality,

scraped

,or no content; making some quick cash; and then dumping the domain and starting over

with another site.There are also SEOs who proclaim to be gray hat, who do their work somewhere

in the middle.

Tripping a filter

Since search engine algorithms are almost entirely automated, infractions and

slipups are often caught and penalized via automatic analysis.When a page has set off an algorith-

mic red flag,SEOs say it has tripped a filter.This is especially common talk in forums, where you

may see someone speculate,“My page is gone from the index.I think I tripped a duplicate content

filter.”

Everflux

A term used by Matt Cutts of Google to refer to the constant addition of newly crawled

and recrawled sites into Google’s index, resulting in minor ranking shifts that occur on a daily or

even hourly basis.

Now that you’ve had your fill of background knowledge, join us in Part II where

you’ll create an SEO strategy that will set you on the right track for Your SEO Plan.

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