SEO / Website Marketing Terms
Based out of Forest Hill, MD, Coastal Web Services provides search engine optimization and website marketing services for Maryland residents in Baltimore County, Harford County, Cecil County, Howard County, Anne Arundel County and Carroll County, as well as customers in Delaware and Pennsylvania. However, we will accommodate any customer in the U.S. As our company's name suggests, we serve customers from coast-to-coast.
The following is a list of web marketing and search engine optimization terms that may be used in your SEO reports. Each term has been briefly defined so that you may be a more informed consumer. Our web company takes pride in going beyond our competitors in providing you with the most thorough, detailed resources possible.
Ask. Com
One of the 4 major search engines used by Internet surfers. Ask.com constitutes about 2% of total search engine use.
Bing
Bing is MSN’s default search engine and is one of the 4 major search engines used by Internet surfers. Bing constitutes about 11% of total search engine use.
Blog
Short for “WeB Log,” a Blog is a web page that serves as a publicly-accessible personal journal. Blogs can range from any topic imaginable and often offer reviews or opinions about a specific topic. Blogs that are updated and interesting often acquire a loyal following of Internet users. They can be setup to either allow anyone to comment on the page or for comments to only get posted when an authorized user approves the content.
Bounce Rate
Indicates whether or not visitors view one page then leave your site or if they stick around and navigate your web site. Bounce rate is the percentage of single-page visits or visits in which the person left your site from the entrance. It measures visit quality. A high bounce rate indicates that the site’s entrance pages aren’t relevant.
Description Meta Tag
They are HTML tags that contain information that is read by browsers. Search engines use this information as a variable in their search engine ranking formula. It should not be any longer than 250 characters, including spaces.
Descriptive Domain
A domain is descriptive when it clearly reflects the services your business offers. Let’s say Dr. Jones is a vet in Baltimore. His current domain is DrJones.com. With that domain name, one would not know what kind of doctor Dr. Jones is or what kind of services he offers. An example of a relevant descriptive domain would be: drjonesvetclinic.com or baltimorevet.com. Relevant keywords are included in the domain, making it more likely to to appear higher within search engine results.
Domain Name
A domain name is the name of your website. For example: www.abc.com
Basically, you pay a company to give you permission to use a certain web address for a specific period of time. The more relevant your domain name is to your business, the better. When registering or paying additional time for your domain, make sure you are listed as the registrant.
Domain Age
The older a domain is, the better the search engines rank in its relevance.
Dynamic Pages
This is a page that is created only by requesting information from a database. The information is then pasted into a webpage. Search engines may not include these pages.
Directory
Is a categorized collection of information about web sites rather than containing information from web pages. Directories don’t use spiders or robots. They use only the title and description of the site, provided by submittals.
Facebook
Facebook is a popular social-networking website that has gained notable popularity in the past 6 years. First intended as a college student directory, Facebook is now considered to be a successful business-networking tool. Be aware of what photographs are posted on your Facebook, as some may reflect your business negatively to customers and potential clients.
Flash
Flash refers to a customized combination of photographs, text, images, backgrounds, audio, and/or movies that are pieced together for a short presentation to be added to your website. It can enhance overall aesthetics as well as educate and impress your web surfing visitors. This vector-graphic technology is gradually beginning to be utilized by more and more websites as it is used for many functions including showcasing products/services, training videos, or conveying your company’s message.
Flash Entrance
A Flash Entrance occurs when Flash animation plays immediately upon visiting a web page. Flash entrances are typically used on home pages.
Flash Players
This vector-graphic animation technology is bandwidth-friendly and browser-independent. It is easily played on most computers after downloading Adobe Flash Player, a free and widely-used Flash Plyer.
Frames
Cheap websites of the past generally used templates or frames to create the structure of a website. The search engines have a difficult time ready content in a frame. Stay away from frames.
Guaranteed #1 Spot
Although many companies guarantee the top spot, if you advertise with them, they cannot possibly work. If you read the fine print in the contract, it is #1 position with a specific term. That term that they use will probably not help a customer find you for the services or products that you provide. If a company claims to get you ranked #1, close you checkbook immediately- as it is a scam.
Google
The most popular of the 4 major search engines used by Internet surfers. Google comprises approximately 65% of total search engine use.
Google Analytics
This is a web analysis program that gives in-depth reports on a website’s traffic. This program displays web trends and progress within a website. We use this program for our customers reports because it shows what areas within a website can be optimized to improve SEO rankings or where marketing efforts should be targeted.
HTML
Also known as Hyper Text Markup Language, HTML is the prominent code used in structuring web documents. It denotes structural semantics such as headings, paragraphs, links, quotes, etc. for text. HTML consists of specific “tags” surrounded by angle brackets within the web page content. For example, if I wanted to make the word “computer” bold, the HTML code to do so would be <bold>computer<bold/>.
HTML Error
This error occurs when a web page’s HTML code contains a mistake, most commonly a typo or the “tag’s” brackets not being closed.
Indexing
A search engines method of cataloging information.
LinkedIn
LinkedIn is a widely-used business-networking website that helps business professionals stay informed about their industry. It also connects recommended job candidates, industry experts, and business partners. We highly recommend that websites include a link to their Linked In profile on their site.
Links
Links pointing to your site are very important. It is also important to have industry related links pointing to your site. Another option is to create a links page on your site so you can cross-link websites.
Keyword Meta Tag
Keywords are used by web surfers to find your site. It is important for your web pages to include keywords that are relevant to that specific page. It is also important to keep, at this time, 2 good phrases, up to 4 words in length for each web page. You will also need to be specific and avoid very competitive keywords. Single words are no longer effective because of the number of web pages out there. Also, it is important to avoid popular phrase searches because they are now used by millions of other pages. To be in the number 1 position, with a single word or common phrase, is about as easy as winning the lottery. They should not be any longer than 12 words per page and each page should have different keywords.
Keywords for your market
Here are the following 3 types of surfers you will encounter:
Keywords for Browsing
This is important for all initial searches.
Keywords for Comparing
This will be used to compare your products (shopping cart sites or pre-order sites) before a purchase is made.
Keywords for Buying
This is used when a customer knows exactly what manufacture and model # he/she wants to purchase.
Keyword Density
This is how many times you use your keywords in the text of your page. If you say in your text: “we provide cars”, and the keyword is cars, you used a keyword density of 33.33%. This number is too high but hopefully you get the point. Anything over 50% will raise flags with the search engines. If it is too high, search engines may penalize you. If it is too low, search engines may not think that page is relevant. This number may be different for all search engines, as they can change the parameters at any time.
Multimedia
Multimedia is audio and video in your website You should consider limiting your site to a small amount of multimedia in order to increase your performance with search engines. It may work great once someone gets to your site but you have to get them there first.
Online Yellow Pages
This type of website lists local and national businesses. This website acquires over 125 million monthly searches and can be a great business tool for increasing your online presence.
PDF files
PDF, also known as Portable Document Format files are viewable and printable on nearly every platform. PDF’s can capture complex documents such as images, fonts, vector graphics, and text and preserve them into a viewer-friendly document. Although sometimes necessary to include in websites, we do not suggest using a PDF based website.
PHP files
PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor is a scripting language that is widely-used to produce web pages. PHP code embedded in a web page is interpreted by a web server with a PHP processer and is then generated into a HTML code containing the web page’s content, showing user-friendly data and hiding private coding and information. After translation into HTML, this is then sent to the user’s web browser and is viewed as a web page.
PPC
Pay Per Click is a way for search engine companies to create revenue for their company while they allow you to be more easily found during a search. Notice next time you search if you see an area on the right or top of your search that states something like “Sponsored Links”. They are paid links that once you click on, you will be charged for that specific click. That’s why they call it pay per click because you only pay for that form of advertising if they click on it. The cool thing about this form of advertising is that you can get more people to your site even with a small budget.
Readable Pages
This is a page that the search engines can read. Search engines read text and not images or programming that has to load (not in html on that page). If your first page is a flash program, all graphics, etc., the search engines cannot recognize those pages/sites causing it to be an unreadable page.
Robots.txt File
This file give instructions to search engine “spiders” about what pages web robots cannot index. These files prevent spiders from indexing certain areas of your site within search engines.
Search
Search is an engine Google Analytics often displays on your Search Engines results page. Although this search engine is not as well-known as Google, Bing, Yahoo, and Ask, it is still widely-used through CBS-affiliated sites.
Search Engines
Search Engines aka, search indexes – are the best way to get new visitors. How they work is somewhat a mystery. They use spiders or robots to grab web pages and read the information stored in them. Then, they take part of that information and apply that information to a complex algorithm. They also use directories to find sites.
SEO - Search Engine Optimization
A series of methods used to help web pages improve their chances of being found by search engines. The lower the number, in the results pages, the better. The number 1 is the best.
Search Phrase
A search phrase is two or more words that you type in a search engine. For example, go to google.com and type in the phrase: American cars. I received 10,700,000 pages. Now use a search phrase by using quotations. For example: “American cars”. I now received only 87,200 pages. Not great, but the search results are much less. That’s because it searched for the specific phrase “American cars” and not just “American” and “cars.”
Sitemap
This page links to the different areas of your site and displays your site’s entire structure. This makes the navigation of your site easier for viewers. Having an updated sitemap also improves your SEO rankings, as they are an important way of communication with search engines as it indicates where you’d like them to index.
Social Media
Social media is designed in a way where information can be shared with a wide audience through an accessible, easy-to-use medium. Information can be shared almost instantaneously through technologies such as Internet forums, blogs, podcasts, online videos, e-mail, instant messaging, and wall-postings. Social media can be integrated and shared through social networks and is working its way into the American way-of-life.
Social Network
A social network is an online platform that connects other users or account holders. Popular social networks include Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin.
Spiders
Spiders crawl the internet to find web pages. They use the title, description and keywords from your site. Google does not use spiders.
Static Pages
This is the graphical text driven front end of web site pages (has no database programming).
Title Tags
This is used as the description for search engines when they display your page. It should be approximately 40 to 60 characters. The key phrase should also be at the beginning of the text.
Twitter
Twitter is an increasingly-popular social media tool that displays an up-to-the-second status of users activities or opinions.
W3C Complaint
W3C, or the World Wide Web Consortium, is where international community organizations, staff, and the public work together to develop web standards so that the web can reach its full-potential. W3C is considered the ultimate authority when validating websites. The most common W3C complaints are missing end “tags,” in coding, the use of height in inappropriate places in tables and cells, and missing Image Alt tags.
Welcome Page
A welcome page is an optional website page that greets website visitors and often redirects users to the Home page.
Yahoo
This is the second-most popular of the 4 major search engines used by Internet surfers. Yahoo comprises approximately 16% of total search engine use.
