Seo Faq

[Chatmaster]

Hi everyone

I have compiled a couple of FAQ's for this section. Here we go!

What is SEO?
It is the process that enable search engines to access and understand the content of a site with the end result of improved positioning on the SERPS of relevant search engines in order to obtain relevant targeted referrals with improved conversion ratios, from search engines.

What is Cloaking?
In short cloaking means to determine who visits the website and then presenting the applicable visitor with the site content relevant to their needs. In other words serving Google bot with a different page than for example the Yahoo! spider is cloaking. This will definitely result in a banning of the relevant site in a search engine, if discovered. Enabling actual human visitors to view only information relevant to their needs is not considdered cloaking. Cloaking's main objective is fooling search engines.

What is an Algo?
The abbreviation for algorithm. This is a mathematical formula that determines the ranking of pages in the relevant search engines search results.

[Chatmaster]

What is hidden text?
This is text that is visible to a search engine spider as it views the HTML source code but it is not visually visible to a human visitor. Webmasters usually make use of style sheets and the class attribute to fool search engines. This will definitely end up with a removal and penalty by a search engine when detected.

What is a Doorway page?
These are normally single pages created with the sole purpose to target specific keywords. It usually do not reflect the rest of the site. A splash page can be mistaken as a doorway page and should be avoided as search engines can penalize a domain for the use of doorway pages.

My web design company submitted my site to 1000’s of search engines, do I still need to do SEO?
Submission software is to a large degree a selling mechanism that means nothing to the website. Only a handful of search engines being submitted to are actually useful and those will focus on other factors to determine your site’s rankings. It is a well known fact that Google uses more than 200 factors to rank a website. The only thing that submission software does is letting search engines know that your site is out there. Obtaining backlinks from sites already being indexed however has the same result.

[Chatmaster]

What is a reciprocal link?
Reciprocal linking is when you link to a site and they link to your site in return.

What is a triangular link?
This is a link strategy whereby you link to a site form your one domain and they link back to another of your domains.

What is Natural rank
This the rankings that you obtain without paying for position. In Google the paid rankings normally is located on the right hand side of their search results and the natural rankings are the results listed on the entire left hand side of the search results.

[Chatmaster]

Does meta tags make your site rank better?
This is NOT true. The fact is that according to the W3C HTML coding standards it is good coding practice to make use of Meta tags. Meta tags are also used by some directories and Yahoo! also admited at looking at meta tags 2 years ago. It is also true that search engines like Google DO NOT care much for meta tags. Meta tags therefore does very little if any for your rankings. It is also good practice not to stuff a bunch of keywords in your meta tags but that the meta tags should be relevant to the theme and keywords targeted on the specific page it is located on.

Is page titles important?
Yes, a good page title assist the search engine in determining the targeted theme of the page. Each page must have it’s own unique title that are representative of the page content. Also just target a single keyword phrase per page title.

Should I target many keywords on a single page?
No, the best strategy is to target a single keyword phrase for every individual page. This can cause a single page to rank for several keywords relevant to the incoming backlinks and the keywords targeted by the page.

[Koz]

Great definitions Chatmaster!

I wrote a bit on different Affilate Marketing terms in our blog if anyone is interested.

Best Affiliate Marketing For Your Needs

>

[shelly levin]

What is an Affiliate Program?
A mutually beneficial relationship between a website and a company. The company seeks to either generate more web traffic, sell more products, or seek out potential customers through leads. The website seeks to make a profit by selling ad revenue on the site. Affiliate programs come in many shapes and forms.

What is an Affiliate Network?
This is by far the quickest and easiest way to begin selling advertising on your website. A secondary company called an affiliate network acts as a liaison between the advertiser and your website. The affiliate network sells ad space on your site and then takes a cut of the profit generated from this advertising. This can be an especially good method for small sites or people just starting in the advertising market, because it is extremely difficult to find individual advertisers on your own. In addition, the hardware and software needed to run and track an advertising campaign is all taken care of by the affiliate network.

What is CPS (Cost Per Sale)?
The cost an advertiser pays per sale. This is a very common method of selling advertising. You receive a credit for a sale when a web surfer clicks on one of the ads on your site and ends up buying something from your advertiser's site. A sale does not always occur directly after the click as most advertisers will have a certain time during which both the sale and click through must occur in order to receive credit. This time period is often called the 'cookie duration'.

What is CPL (Cost Per Lead)?
The cost an advertiser pays per lead. This is a very common method of selling advertising. A lead can be anything from an email address for a newsletter to a complete survey that needs to be completely filled out and verified in order to get credit. CPL prices can range greatly depending on the program.

What is CPA (Cost Per Action)?
This term refers to pay per lead and pay per sale affiliate programs.

What is CPC (Cost Per Click)?
The cost an advertiser pays per click.

[AntonK]

What is social bookmarking?
Social bookmarking can help to a great extent in the Search Engine Optimization process. Social bookmarking web sites like (http://www.digg.com, http://www.stumbleupon.com, http://www.delicious.com/) have a high page rank (PR) ranging from 4 to 9 and they can help in gaining one way links to your website.

What is a xml sitemap?
An XML sitemap is a list of all the pages contained in your website written in a fairly standard web language called XML. Search engines like Google and Yahoo both rely on XML sitemaps to tell them where all the pages on your web site is. With a XML sitemap you can link your sitemap directly to Google (webmasters tool) and Yahoo (site explorer) and they can better index your site. With Google's webmasters tool and Yahoo site explorer you can exactly see how many pages are indexed by using the XML sitemap. By regularly updating your sitemap you can be sure that search engines will see your new content.