SEO|The Full Insider SEO Details Exposed

Algorithm. A set of rules that a search engine uses to rank the pages contained within its index in response to a particular query. No search engine reveals exactly how its algorithm works, to protect itself both from competitors and from those who wish to spam the search engine.

Back links. These are links to a website from external sources, including other web pages, directories, and advertising.

Banned. When pages are removed from a search engine’s index because the search engine has deemed them to be spamming, or violating one of the search engines other rules.

Click-through rate. How many people clicked on a link, as a percentage of the total number of people that saw the link.

Cloaking. The act of serving content to search engine spiders that is different to what normal visitors would see. Search engines will ban you if they find you doing this.

Contextual links. Contextual links are displayed on web pages when the content on the page indicates to an ad server that the page is a good match for specific keywords or phrases.

Conversion rate. The percentage of visitors to a website who buy something.

Cost per click (CPC). A system where an advertiser pays an agreed amount for each click someone makes on a link leading to their website.

Cost per mille (CPM). A system where an advertiser pays an agreed amount for the number of times an ad is seen, regardless of how many people actually click through. The mille refers to one thousand viewings of the ad.

Crawler. A component of a search engine that gathers listings by automatically crawling the web, following links to understand how pages are connected.

De-listing. This is when pages are removed from a search engines index, usually because they havent been updated for a long time.

Directories. A type of search engine where listings are gathered by humans, rather than by automated web crawlers.

Doorway page. A web page created in the hope of improving another pages ranking in a search engines listings. Doorway pages dont give much information to the people viewing them.

Graphical inventory. Banners and other ads that appear depending on the keywords a page contains. This includes pop-ups, browser toolbars and rich media.

Index. The collection of information a search engine has that searchers can query.

Landing page. The web page that a visitor reaches after clicking your search engine listing.

Link popularity. A count of how popular a page is based on the number of other pages that link to it.

Link. A link is text that you can click on to go to another website, or another page on the same website.

Listings. The information that appears on a search engine’s results page in response to a search.

Meta-search engine. A search engine that returns listings from two or more other search engines, instead of using its own index.

Meta tags. Tags placed in a web pages code that pass information to search engine crawlers, browser software and some other applications.

Meta description tag. This meta tag allows pages to provide descriptions to search engines.

Meta keywords tag. Allows authors to add text to a page to help with the search engine ranking process.

Meta robots tag. Allows page authors to keep some web pages from being indexed by search engines. Similar to a robots.txt file.

Natural listings. The listings that search engines do not sell. Instead, sites appear solely because a search engine believes it is important for them to be included, regardless of payment. Note that paid inclusion listings are still treated as natural listings by many search engines.

Outbound links. Links on one website that lead to other websites.

Paid inclusion. An advertising program where pages are guaranteed to be spidered and included in a search engine’s index in exchange for payment.

PPC. Pay-per-click means the same as cost per click (CPC).

Paid listings. Listings that search engines sell to advertisers, usually through paid placement or paid inclusion programs.

Pay-for-performance. A term popularized by some search engines as a synonym for pay-per-click. It stresses to advertisers that they are only paying for ads that “perform” in terms of delivering traffic, as opposed to CPM-based ads, where ads cost money even if no-one clicks on them.

Paid placement. An advertising program where listings appear in response to particular search terms, with higher rankings typically obtained by paying more than other advertisers.

Rank. The order in which web pages are listed in search engine results.

Reciprocal link. A link exchange in which two sites link to each other.

Results page. The page that appears after a user enters their search terms.

Robots.txt. A file used to keep web pages from being indexed by search engines.

Search engine. A service designed to allow users to search the web, or another database of information.

Search engine marketing (SEM). Marketing a website using search engines, whether youre improving your ranking in natural listings, purchasing paid listings or some combination of the two.

Search engine optimization (SEO). Altering a website so that it ranks higher in the search engines.

Search terms. The words a searcher enters into a search engine’s search box.

Shopping search. Shopping search engines allow shoppers to search the web for products and their prices.

Spam. Any search engine marketing method that a search engine decides is detrimental to its efforts to deliver relevant search results.

Spider. See crawler.

Submission. The act of sending a URL to a search engine, for inclusion in its index.

XML feeds. A process in which information about a page is fed to the index without using a crawler, for example using RSS.

The best advice is to follow a good search engine promotion system. Keep track of when you submit your sites and how soon theyre indexed — checking once a week is sufficient.

Ranking systems can be confusing and there are often complex factors involved, but you do not need to be an expert in the field to achieve top results. Take a chance after all, you have nothing to lose.

Many thanks to Danny Sullivan, Kevin Lee, Ikonya Nginyo, and all the other volunteers who contributed

First, go to the search engine where you want to check your sites ranking, and enter the keywords you want to check. Your result pages will come up, and you will need to look through them until you find your website. SEO experts recommend that if you arent listed in at least the top 20 then you should continue to optimize, as most people wont look any further than that. This is simply common sense. When you are determining if your rank is high enough simply think to yourself, Would I look for this long for this page?

You will want to do this with each search engine and directory until you have some idea of where you are. Check your website’s rankings regularly, because changes to algorithms can affect them drastically and quickly. Keep in mind also that thousands of new web pages are added daily, and many of them are actively trying to get ranked ahead of you. Thats right. There are thousands of other in on the same game as you so you must keep sharp. Your competitors may be reading these same articles and using these same tricks!

If you cant find your website in a search engines results, you should enter site: your domain name in the keyword field to see whether you are listed at all. If your URL appears with the name or description of your site then you are somewhere in the search engines index. If all you get back is a blank page, then youre not in the search engines database at all you need to wait longer. This trick of typing site:www.yourdomain.com also helps you to determine how many pages you have indexed on each particular search engine. The more pages that are indexed, the more likely somebody is to encounter your site.

It you find that your website is miles away from the top 20, dont be discouraged you can change that! You may need to re-evaluate your keywords, and try to find new ones that are more relevant to your site. Many search engines have human-edited rankings for the most commonly searched-for phrases, and it is often difficult to get in that list. Good content is the best way to increase your chances of getting a high ranking for a certain topic. The more popular that your page is with the masses, the more popular it will be with search engines.

Search engines are a perfect example of the chicken or the egg. In this case, there is an answer! Search engines attempt to deliver sites that the populous has deemed important, not the other way around. This is why it is so important that you have good, relevant content and plenty of it.

If you want to check to see if a single web page on your site has been indexed, visit the search engine and enter the complete URL, like this: http://www.yourpage.com/yourpagename.html.

If the search engine has indexed that particular page then it will come back with a description of it. If it hasnt then youll see a message saying something like Sorry, no information is available for that URL.

On Google, if your URL has been indexed, this page will offer you to show the cached version of the page, or to find similar pages, as well as pages that link to your page or that contain your URL on the page.

You could go ahead and use these manual tracking methods, but we would recommend that you consider using online tools or downloadable software that will allow you to check these things more quickly. It can be a very tedious and time-consuming job to do by hand, especially if you have several sites to monitor.

Top25web.com is one such search engine-ranking tool. You can find out where your website ranks in Google, Inktomi and AltaVista for free. You can also analyze the results of a particular keyword search, to create a plan for improving your sites ranking.

URL Ranker offers instant, online reports of website rankings in 17 top search engines, including Google, Yahoo, AOL Search, MSN, AllTheWeb and AltaVista, again for free. It will tell you if your site is listed in each engine, and tell you the ranking if it is.

These tools alone offer an excellent way of checking your sites rankings. Once you know where you stand, you can continue with your SEO plan, and move on to other aspects of marketing too.