Are you looking forward to becoming a successful Search Engine Optimizer? Have you ever heard of Canonical URL or 404 error?
If no, then you don’t have to feel baffled. There is a sea of mystifying terms present in SEO. They do sound perplexing but, they really aren’t.
14 Basic SEO Jargons
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Let’s have a look at some of the basic terms of SEO which will empower you beforehand:
301 redirect: It is the permanent redirect of the page. It tells that the page does no longer exist and it has moved to another URL. It is used to redirect the users from the previous URL to the new active page. It negates the confusion amongst the users.
302 redirect: It is a temporary redirect of the page. It states that the page does not exist currently due to some reason and it will be back later on.
404 not found error: This error means that the pages does not exist anymore and is not even transferred to any other URL. In simple terms, this error occurs when neither 301 nor 302 redirect is used.
Alt text: It is a description of the image which permits the users to comprehend the purpose of the picture. It is advised that every image on the sites must have an alt text for the visitors as well as search engines.
Anchor text: It’s is a term used for hyperlinked text. The anchor text became prevalent when the SEO’s discovered that keyword rich anchor text helps to enhance rankings.
Canonical URL: It’s a tag that helps the search engines to differentiate between the duplicate content and original URL of the page. To understand this term, you can imagine a scenario: You are selling a product which is available in a variety of colors. You have set separate pages for each of the colors. It will be difficult for the search engine to comprehend the one to be indexed because all the pages look alike. Here comes the role of Canonical URL. It’s used to specify the search engine that which page should be given preference in the search engine.
Backlinks/ inbound links: It is an imperative SEO practice. A Backlink is a link on other websites that lead to your website. Search engine recognizes these backlinks as the votes of popularity. The more backlinks, the better your search rank will be. But, don’t try to attain the backlinks in an unethical manner.
Black Hat SEO: These are the unethical and improper strategies used to empower the website ranking. The unethical techniques include spamming, keyword stuffing and link schemes. It does increase your rank but at a huge cost.
Gray Hat SEO: It makes use of Black and White hat techniques. The examples include cloaking and duplicate content. Cloaking is a technique which presents two separate and different contents to search engine and the user.
White Hat SEO: These are the slow yet ethical techniques which are geared for the human audience instead of search engines.
Indexing: It is the process carried out by the search engine to collect and store the data in their database. Search engines are constantly scouring the web for updated and new pages.
Keyword: Have you ever heard this term before? It’s most commonly used in SEO. Keywords are the phrases entered by the people in the search engine. They are used to exemplify the brand, its services and products. The overuse of keywords might hurt your ranking.
Title tag: It contains the title of the website page which is visible in tabs on browser or headline of search results. The keywords are incorporated in the title tag. It is used to tell the user about the page.
Meta descriptions: It’s a unique and relevant description of the page along with keywords. It can be maximum 160 characters and shows up under the title tag.
Did you understand each and every term given above? Good! It means you’re way through the basics. Well, that was just the tip of the iceberg; SEO is far more than that. But, it will help you in starting up the strategy.
- The 14 Basic SEO Jargon You Should Know! - February 18, 2017