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marți, 1 februarie 2011

SEOptimise

30 (New) SEO Terms You Have to Know in 2011

Posted: 31 Jan 2011 04:44 AM PST

Recently I bookmarked a good entry level SEO glossary of current SEO terms. A few weeks ago I complained about some people still using obsolete and inaccurate SEO terms such as “keyword density”.

Additionally, I missed many new or important terms on this list which I read about and often use, but many people, on the Web at least, don’t. Thus I won’t assume that everybody knows them already. Instead I want to define here 30 (new) SEO terms you have to know in 2011.

Some of them have been around for years but have been largely ignored by the SEO industry. Others are well known by SEO practicioners but completely off the radar for the general public, it seems. Last but not least there are terms from adjacent industries we now have to deal with in SEO. It’s 2011 – we have flying cars by now! – so it’s time to adopt new terminology as well.

503

Most of you probably know what a 404 code is. SEO pros use 301 redirects as well. What is a 503 though? It’s a code telling the Google bot that a site is temporarily unavailable and not broken for good. You need it when performing site maintenance resulting in downtime. See:

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/01/how-to-deal-with-planned-site-downtime.html

A/B Testing

The process of comparing two (or more) versions of a page to find out the best performing one, i.e. the one that is yielding the highest conversion rate. See:

http://www.seoptimise.com/blog/2010/07/30-multivariate-ab-split-testing-tools-tutorials-resources.html

Advanced segments

Advanced segments allow you to show only particular parts of your site’s traffic in a Google Analytics report. You can customize and save them to return to the same report again. If you are serious about SEO, you use them all the time. A common advanced segment is social media traffic, for instance. See:

http://analytics.blogspot.com/2009/02/urban-apparel-and-advanced-segments.html

http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/2008/10/google-analytics-releases-advanced-segmentation.html

Citation

Citation is the equivalent of a link for local SEO, but of course it’s not really the same as a link. It’s more a mention and a link on a site that is relevant for the Google Places algorithm. In a way, citations are even harder to get than links, as only a select few sites get counted for citations. See:

http://www.davidmihm.com/blog/general-marketing/local-seo-citation-is-new-link/

http://www.sitevisibility.co.uk/blog/2010/03/31/creating-a-citation-plan-to-rank-higher-in-google-local-listings/

Content farm

A content farm is a site, often a huge one, that produces large amounts of keyword laden, low quality content to flood the search engines. Blekko and Google consider them to be almost as bad as webspam. See:

http://www.seo-theory.com/2011/01/21/what-is-a-content-farm/

Via @mmhemani

Content marketing

Content marketing is a new term describing all the means to promote your site online, be it text, images, video or other “rich media”. Content marketing replaces, to some extent, simple copywriting. See:

http://www.copyblogger.com/content-marketing-copywriting/

CRO

Conversion Rate Optimization, or CRO for short, is sometimes referred to as conversion optimization, and is the art and science of streamlining traffic once it reaches your site. In other words, it’s a set of techniques to make the user do what you want them to do on your site, e.g. clicking ads, subscribing, buying. See:

http://www.smartinsights.com/conversion-optimization/conversion-rate-optimisation/

Deep link ratio

Any site with a natural link profile has at least some links leading to its content that is not the homepage itself. Back in the days, overzealous SEO practicioners would build hundreds or thousands of links to a website’s homepage, leading to a very low deep link ratio and thus being obviously “over optimized”. See:

http://www.stateofsearch.com/deep-link-ratio-backlink-profile-natural/

Editorial links

Editorial links are not links in the editorial but links set by site owners, bloggers or content creators within a text itself. Also, editorial links are mostly natural in that they are given voluntarily (in contrast to paid links). While many people talk about paid links even years after they have been discounted by Google, most SEO pundits still rarely use the term ‘editorial links’. See:

http://www.stonetemple.com/blog/?p=196

Internal link hub

An internal link hub is a very important page on your site which has collected many inbound links from other sites, and thus can have a big impact on the overall distribution of your site’s authority. See:

http://www.wolf-howl.com/seo/link-hub/

Intelligent content

The definition of intelligent content is not one you can summarize in one sentence I’m afraid. Intelligent content has many characteristics, like being available in many formats, on many platforms and readable on different devices. See:

http://thecontentwrangler.com/2011/01/17/what-is-intelligent-content/

Jaamit

A jaamit is a very strong link, a human bond that results in a link on a website. A jaamit is a link that outlasts the link building efforts or even the link builder. A jaamit link reflects trust, friendship, mutual respect and overall appreciation.

http://seo2.0.onreact.com/how-to-build-links-like-jaamit

LDA

As far as I understand, LDA or “Latent Dirichlet Allocation” refers to the way a search engine might analyze word combinations or context on a page. Example: a page about the sky would also contain the words “blue”, “limit”, “high”, “reaching”, “scraper”. So Google might expect these terms to appear, while on a low quality page they wouldn’t. I’d be glad to find a better definition somewhere though. See:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/lda-is-onpage-optimization-the-seo-secret

Link decay

Link decay is the process of a link losing its value over time. See:

http://searchnewscentral.com/2010112997/Link-Building/how-link-decay-can-cause-cavities-in-your-link-profile.html

Link equity

Link equity is like the link budget you have on a site and the way you spend it. Do you waste it on linking to the wrong places or in the wrong way? See:

http://www.seodesignsolutions.com/blog/search-engine-optimization/spending-link-equity-wisely/

Micro conversions

While conversions ofter refer to major goals a website can have, micro-conversions can reflect any goals you choose to measure user engagement with your site – something like a lead, a sale or at least a subscription. A time on site of more than 5 minutes could be a micro-conversion, or a third returning visit. See:

http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/2008/03/excellent-analytics-tip-13-measure-macro-and-micro-conversions.html

Microformats

Microformats is a term describing a set of standards to annotate web sites in order to make them machine readable. For instance, you can tell search engines what an address is using a microformat. See:

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=146897

Via @leeodden

http://searchmarketingwisdom.com/2010/10/microformat-reference-guide-for-seo-and-developers/

Natural links

Natural links are links by people whom you haven’t asked for a link. If somebody decides to link to you out of the blue without being asked to do so, the link is natural. See:

http://www.wolf-howl.com/seo/natural-link-building-future/

QDF

QDF stands for the Query Deserves Freshness algorithm by Google, which determines the ranking for newly important queries. Breaking news is a good example. In many cases, a blog or news site can outrank old authority sites for a keyphrase because the QDF algo determines that they are the most current source on that subject at that moment. See:

http://www.conversationmarketing.com/2010/05/agile-seo-using-qdf.htm

http://www.orangesoda.com/blog/does-your-query-deserve-freshness/

QR Code

A QR code is used to enable mobile phones to read symbols from print material. They are real life links or additional data. See:

http://searchengineland.com/what-is-a-qr-code-and-why-do-you-need-one-27588

Relevant links

Relevant links are – in theory – links which have a topical connection to your site, e.g. a link from a travel site to a hotel. While the concept of relevant links is controversial in the SEO industry, it’s important to know that some links are more relevant than others. See:

http://seo.site-reference.com/traits-healthy-link-profile-link-relevancy/

Rich snippets

Rich snippets are based on the RDF format or microformats mentioned above. They are machine readable codes and provide additional information that is displayed in Google search results. See:

http://www.holisticsearch.co.uk/2010/01/24/seo-and-rich-snippets-crucial-to-your-2010-armoury/

Sales funnel

While the idea of a sales funnel is not new, it has entered the SEO arena quite recently. The sales funnel can be tracked and influenced on websites. I can’t explain it in one sentence though; you have to see it to understand the idea/metaphor. See:

http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newLDR_94.htm

http://searchengineland.com/attribution-alchemy-mining-your-sales-funnel-18721

Semantic

Semantic means “dealing with meaning”. Semantic search and SEO has been around for a while but it’s still nascent. Bing uses some semantic technologies from the semantic search engine Powerset which it acquired. Google, in contrast, doesn’t understand the meaning of a web document yet. It just analyzes the keywords contained in it. A semantic search engine can, for example, distinguish between spears and Britney Spears, while one that doesn’t will offer you both results. See:

http://seo2.0.onreact.com/semantic-seo-your-website-is-a-goldmine-with-on-site-seo-20

Shopping cart abandonment rate

You probably know the bounce rate – that is, the percentage of users leaving your site after landing on it without performing any other action on it beyond clicking an external link. On e-commerce site the SCAR leaves scars on your revenue as it’s the percentage of customers who have left in the middle of the shopping or checkout process. See:

http://www.pinnycohen.com/2008/12/29/marketing-wisdom/shopping-cart-abandonment/

Slashtag

A slashtag is a customized vertical or niche search engine on Blekko. See:

http://www.seoptimise.com/blog/2010/11/a-slashers-guide-to-blekko-the-most-advanced-search-engine-ever-created.html

Social CRM

Social CRM refers to customer relationship management before they are customers or forging relationships beyond CRM. It uses social media for that purpose. See:

http://hkotadia.com/archives/2157

http://www.smartinsights.com/blog/digital-marketing-strategy/social-crm-strategy/

User testing

User testing is a form of usability and website testing where you actually invite real users to test your site and watch/record what they are doing and where they fail. You improve the site based on these user testing findings. See:

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20030825.html

Usability is not UX/User Experience (Design); it goes beyond it. It encompasses making the user want to use something for instance. A good example is the iPhone. While many phones might be usable, the iPhone is also desirable in the UX sense. See:

http://uxmyths.com/post/1533970267/myth-27-ux-design-is-about-usability

Wonder wheel

The Google wonder wheel is an excellent Google search tool which allows you to overview keyword clusters which are related to a particular query. It has been around for almost two years now, but many people still don’t use or even know it. See:

http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2009-03-24-n84.html

Are there more terms I haven’t mentioned and explained but which you think are indispensable in 2011? Add your suggestions in the comment section!

Using the correct and current terms is a prerequisite of modern SEO. How can you grasp it when you still talk about PageRank, meta tags and search engine submission? So be sure to learn what those above mean; I still haven’t fully understood some of them, like LDA or rich snippets.