SEO Lingo

Summary of this Page

You may have had trouble already understanding what some of the words I was using in the last page were, or meant. So I'm writing this page to help you understand the SEO terms I will use in the comming pages. If you are somewhat familiar with SEO, then you might want to just skin this section instead.

The Lingo

Directory

A directory is a compilied list of website, and are often put into catagories, which are sometimes searchable. One of the most famous directoris, which is free to get into, is DMOZ. This directory is open-source. Meaning you dont have to pay to get in it, and you can use the directory content freely, as we did on this site, in the Directory section.

SEO

SEO is an acronyn which stands for Search Engine Optimization. Search Engine Optimization is defined as various methods of improving ranking on search engines in their listings. For example, when trying to SEO your website for google, one of your concerns should be your PageRank, which is explained in this section. To get a PR, you must have lots of websites linking to you. So the process of getting sites to link to you, to build a PageRank, can be considered SEO for your website.

SERP

SERPs are "Search Engine Result Pages". So if you rank #1 for some term, lets say "cool cars" then you just say "I have the #1 SERP for 'cool cars'". This term may not be used as often as it should be, but it is still a good thing to know what it means.

PageRank (or PR)

Pagerank is a technology Google uses to help determine the rank for a website for certain terms. Google's PageRank is based on a scale of 0-10. A new site starts at a PR 0. And the higher up on the scale you get, the more "important" that page becomes according to Google. This whole concept will be discussed in later sections of this guide. Note: PageRank is often reffered to as PR. They mean the same thing.

Web Rank

Web Rank is a number Yahoo gives you which, much like PageRank, determines how important that page is according to Yahoo. Web Rank is based on a scale from 1-10. The higher Web Rank you have, the higher you will rank in SERPs in Yahoo. Basicly, the more pages that link to your page determines how high your Web Rank is. But the real algorithm is unknown. This will be discussed more in deph in later sections.

Alexa Rank

Alexa(.com) has a technology that gives your site a "Rank". The rank is determined purely on the amount of people that visit your website with the Alexa Toolbar installed. Sites with alot of traffic, like google, is ranked very low, and has a low rank. But sites with barely any traffic, rank as over 4,000,000 sometimes. This will be discussed more throughout this guide.

Search Engine

Friendly Something that is often said in the webmaster would is "Search Engine Friendly". This term is something that is used to describe a website that has been SEO'd, or a website that has been optimized for search engines, or a website that search engines can crawl freely, with no problems.

Inbound Links (IBL)

Inbound Links are links going from someone else's site to yours. So if you own www.examplesite.com and you have an inbound link from www.testwebsite.com it means that testwebsite.com is linking to your page. Inbound Links are also known as backlinks.

Outbound Links (OBL)

Outbound Links are links going from your website to someone else's. So if you have an Outbound Link to www.google.com it means that you have a link on your page to google.