New SEO lingo

When Henk van Ess released possibly confidential information regarding Google’s human-rated evaluation lab, he caused quite a stir. There is much talk and debate about it at WebmasterWorld and SEW. For all the details and to get the downloads that are causing the uproar, you need to go to Henk’s blog at http://www.searchbistro.com/.

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I am a Blue Collar SEO

Some SEOs have a big reputation because they have Fortune 500 clients. I call these firms White Collar SEOs. I mean no disrespect towards these SEOs when I say this, but I mean really, how hard would it be to optimize for a company that is so well-known that it comes with hundreds of thousands of backlinks built-in? And let’s not forget the substantial budget you’d have to work with. The SEO work would most often focus on some simple on-page changes, or worst case, dealing with a badly seo’d dynamic site. Have a staff of trained underlings make these changes, and the mega-company will easily rank. Ok, let’s back up a bit. These White Collar SEOs need to work hard at meeting with and pleasing the upper echelon of business society. They also need to have a good understanding of how best to spend those large budgets. They also have to be able to manage and run a business that involves employees. These are all things I would not be good at doing.

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Ethical SEO – A DazzlinDonna Definition

The ethics of SEO are often debated. It is a hot button topic that quickly turns into a flame-war whenever it is brought up. So what are my opinions on SEO ethics? I’m glad you asked. Take my definition with as many grains of salt as you feel are needed.

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Result Crowding

The filter that prevents more than two results from the same domain showing up in the Google SERPs (one indented below the other). Adding &filter=0 to the end of the URL address after performing a search, will turn the Result Crowding filter off. &filter=0 apparently filters for other things as well, but these things are unknown at this time.

What is a robots.txt file?

A robots.txt file is a simple text file that lets search engines know what NOT to crawl and index. If your intention is to allow all search engines to crawl and index all aspects of your site, then you do not need a robots.txt file at all. If, however, you want to block some or all of the search engines from indexing some or all of your site, then you will need to create a robots.txt file. My favorite robots.txt tutorial can be found at http://www.gnc-web-creations.com/creating_robotstxt_file.htm.

SEO vs SEM

SEM (Search Engine Marketing) is a broad spectrum of website marketing including paid placement, trusted feeds, PPC, traditional advertising, branding, email marketing, sales copy, roi tracking and SEO. SEO (Search Engine Optimization) involves understanding search engine algorithms (as much as possible) so as to better optimize web site pages for organic search engine rankings. SEO usually also involves managing link building campaigns as well. SEO, then is a subset of SEM.

What is ROI?

ROI stands for Return On Investment, or basically the profits or losses received from an online advertising campaign.

What is Paid Placement?

Paid placement is a guarantee of a particular ranking in a search engine in return for a payment. Generally, the more you pay, the higher the ranking will be. Usually, these rankings are separated from the organic SERPs, and are sometimes called sponsored results.

What is Paid Inclusion?

Paid inclusion is a program whereby search engines promise to list your site in return for a payment. Generally, however, a paid listing does not guarantee that the site will rank well (or at all) for any particular keyword phrase. It often comes with a guarantee that your site will be re-spidered on an ongoing basis, usually every 48 hours. This can be useful if your content changes often.

What is PPC?

PPC stands for Pay-Per-Click – when a company or advertiser pays a search engine or affiliate for each click-through generated by a user.

What is Keyword Density?

Keyword density is the percentage of keywords contained within the total number of indexable words within a web page, or to put it another way, the ratio of a keyword or key phrases to the total number of words on that page. If the keyword density is too high, you run the risk of keyword stuffing. If the density is too low, you run the risk of not ranking well. There is no right or wrong keyword density, as the proper level can be different for every phrase. Some pages rank well with rather high density, some with very low density. If you’ve used your keywords a few times within the page, and the page makes sense when read by a human, you’ve probably hit upon a fairly decent density. Like everything, keyword density is only one of many ranking factors, so don’t spend all your time stressing about it. You can use the free keyword density analyzer below to compare the density between your page and your competitor’s page.

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What is Keyword Proximity?

Keyword Proximity refers to the distance between two words or phrases, or how close keywords are to each other within a body of text. The closer the two keywords are to each other, the higher the weight for that phrase. Consider these two examples:

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What is a fresh date?

Ever wonder what the dates mean that you see within some of the Google search results? That date is generally called a fresh date, and it is the date that Google last crawled that page. So why do some results show a fresh date and some do not? According to Google sources, the date will only be listed for those pages that have been freshly crawled within 2-3 days of the date you are looking at the SERPs.

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