Findability Vocabulary
A list of vocabulary words and definitions that are useful for understanding findability and web marketing. Hope you find these helpful!
White Hat SEO White hat SEO techniques include creating keyword-dense content and Meta descriptions, following web standard guidelines, and writing semantic markup. These techniques are ethical and well-formed methods for increasing website search engine rankings.
Black hat SEO Black hat SEO involves hidden text, keyword stuffing, and additional deceptive techniques to increase search engine ranking.
Accessibility The practice of making websites usable for everyone, including those with limitations that inhibit reading or viewing all of the elements on the website. Accessible content is designing, developing, and producing content that anyone can reach, regardless of limitations such as screen readers and mobile connections. Creating accessible content involves writing semantic XHTML code, separating style and presentation from content, and using alternative text for image and media elements. Accessible content lends itself to search engine optimized content since search engine robots are the blind user that cannot see the images or other presentation elements of a website.
Long Tail Theory Long tail theory is the technique of filtering keywords that might describe your website but are so commonly searched that the keyword is not unique enough to capture specific users. Long tail keywords include combining the ‘niche’ search terms that are unique and specific to your website along with the search terms that users are most commonly going to use to search for content on your site.
Viral Marketing Viral marketing uses ‘word of mouth’ marketing and social networking to spread information about an organization, business, or other advertised event through the internet.
Web Standards Web Standards are specifications and rules that define the standards for markup language of the web. Web Standards for HTML include using ‘h1’ to ‘h6’ tags, ‘p’ tags, and other content specified information. Using web standards greatly improves search engine optimization since search engine robots look for content identifiers to understand the information on the web page and rank the page according to the quality and relevance of the information.
Keyword Density Keyword density is the percentage of times a keyword or phrase appears on a web page compared to the total number of words on a page. Optimal keyword density is 7%. Anything more than 7% keyword density could be construed as ‘keyword stuffing’ by the search engine robots and result in a ban on search engines.
Meta Descriptions Meta description is a tag that you place in the head of your HTML web document that describes the content on your web page. When search engines display the link to your web page, the meta description appears under the link to describe to the users the content on the page. Optimal meta descriptions should be no longer than . Search engines also read the meta descriptions to judge the relevancy of web page content to searches, so a well-written meta description with efficient keywords can help increase your web page search engine ranking.
Microformats Microformats use semantic HTML markup and tags to define contact information, event information, recipes, reviews, and other portable information a user would want to download. Since microformat information is identified based on the standard HTML tags, machines can read the information as it is presented to the users and the users can transport the information to their machines with the click of a button.
RSS An acronym for ‘Really Simple Syndication’ RSS is an XML-based system that lets users subscribe to feeds of their favorite websites to keep up-to-date with the information that changes on that website.
Pingback A notification that sends a message to a blog author if someone else links to their article.
Resources:
Building Findable Websites by Aarron Walter
Google Webmaster Central Blog
Wordpress.org Glossary