SEO terms

The following is a list of terms used when talking about search engine optimization techniques.

SEO - Search Engine Optimization

SERP - Search Engine Result Page; The higher your website is on the SERPs for a certain keyword, the more traffic you will get

spider, bot, robot, crawler - a program that visits your website, follows your links and stores this information

to be indexed - to appear in the SERPs

black-hat SEO - Search Engine Optimization techniques that involve unethical methods such as hidden links, doorway pages etc. The aim is to improve their position in the SERPs by any means. It is strongly recommended NOT to use such methods because search engines will ban your website.

outbound link - describes a link situated on your website and pointing to another website

inbound link - describes a link situated on another website and pointing to your website

PR - Page Rank; it is a number between 0 and 10 used by Google to determine the importance of a page. You can find out the PR of an URL by installing the Google tollbar for your browser. Although some say that it is pointless, out of date and does not have any influence over the SERPs, it is still a factor used by many webmasters to determine the importance of another website. (in case of link exchanges for example). The algorithm of determining the PR depends mainly upon the number of pages linking to your page and the importance of those too.

ODP or DMOZ - The Open Directory Project (dmoz.org); this is the most important human edited directory not only because it is very popular but also because many other websites use it's database. So if you get listed on DMOZ, you will soon have a link on other directories as well.

W3C - World Wide Web Consortium (w3.org); they are responsible for setting web standards