Internet Marketing SEO Glossary – Terms of Greatest Value

This Internet Marketing SEO Glossary is an excerpt from Chapter 1: The Small Business Owner SEO Briefing of my SEO book The Small Business Owner’s Handbook to Search Engine Optimization. There are many SEO terms you could invest months in researching and studying. I have distilled all of the unwieldy and confusing jargon into an Internet Marketing SEO Glossary that provides small business owners with value for little effort. Please refer to Glossary of SEO-related Terms at the back of my SEO book if you want a comprehensive Internet Marketing SEO Glossary.

SEO Glossary – Term #1: On-page and Off-page Tactics

On-page tactics include the specific steps you take to optimize the content within the confines of your site’s pages. For example, bolding a keyword within a paragraph of content on your site is an example of an on-page tactic. Optimizing your page titles is another. Taking articles you have written and distributing them throughout the web with the goal of increasing the number of inbound links to your site is an example of an off-page tactic.

SEO Glossary – Term #2: Indexable

The content of a web page is considered indexable if the text (content) on a page can be highlighted by left-clicking your mouse and dragging it over the text. Being able to highlight the text means that the text and any associated graphics on the page are essentially in different “layers,” which is what Google needs because it can easily “index” the text-based content. Indexing is the process Google uses to scan a web page for important details and then log them into their database for future keyword searching by Google users. Google cannot index text that is layered into a graphic or photo.

SEO Glossary – Term #3: Crawl, Spider, and Bot

These are all catchy terms for the computer programs used by search engines to index your site’s content. For example, Googlebot indexes a site’s home page approximately every seven to ten days. Googlebot will come back and index an entire site approximately every 30 days. You can check the last time any web page was indexed using the Google PageRank function within the Google Toolbar.

SEO Glossary – Term #4: Page Title

This is the first of several critical pieces of real estate within each of your website’s individual content pages. The Page Title is the black text that appears in the tab of your browser window.

Some web designers/developers prefer to create a generic page title and then repeat it verbatim, or in some variation, throughout an entire website. This is a missed opportunity because the Page Title is the first place Google looks when indexing a site’s content page to determine the page’s relevance to the keywords found within the particular page’s content.

A Page Title also becomes the clickable link that Google displays within its search results. I will teach you a step-by-step process in Chapter 5 for optimizing all your Page Titles.

SEO Glossary – Term #5: META Keywords and META Description 

These fields are two more valuable pieces of real estate within each content page of your Web site. The META Keywords and META Description fields are found in your site’s HTML source code. Do not worry if you are not familiar with viewing the source code. I will show you how to do it.

• Use your browser to open any content page within your Website
• Use your mouse to click on the “View” menu next to the right of the File and Edit menus in the upper left of your browser window
• Your browsers will then give you a drop-down menu with “Page Source” as one of the options
• Click on “Page Source” and a new window will appear that displays the page’s HTML code within Notepad
• Or, if you are using Firefox as your browser, you can press the “Ctrl” and “U” keys simultaneously and a source code window will open for the Web page you are viewing.

I will specifically show you how to optimize the META Keywords and META Description fields so they work in unison with your page titles to provide Google with the information it needs to properly index your website’s content pages.

If you looked for the META Keywords and META Description fields on your web pages and did not find them. This is a common problem during the web design process because developers tend to be focused on the design and usability of the site, and not necessarily content optimization. I will teach you how to easily fill in these holes during the optimization process. You can then customize both META fields using the optimization process taught in Chapter 5.

SEO Glossary – Term #6: Keyword Prominence

Keyword prominence is the determination of how close to the start of a sentence or paragraph a keyword appears. A keyword appearing at the top of the page, at the beginning of a sentence, and at the beginning of a paragraph will be considered more relevant by Google. Instead of keywords found toward the bottom of the content.

SEO Glossary – Term #7: Keyword frequency

Keyword frequency represents the number of times a given keyword or keyword phrase is repeated within the same page of content. For example, say you had a page of content on your site targeting the keyword phrase “endurance training,” and within the content, the words “endurance training” were repeated 20 times. Your keyword frequency would be 20.

SEO Glossary – Term #8: Inbound Links

Inbound links are often referred to as “external links” and are defined as links posted on other sites linking to your website. Inbound links are extremely important because Google considers sites with more links to be more popular. Google could review two sites from the same industry with exactly the same content and optimization, and the site with the higher number of inbound links would be ranked higher because Google would consider the site to be more popular.

I hope you found the Internet Marketing SEO Glossary helpful. The Small Business Owner’s Handbook to Search Engine Optimization can be ordered from iTunes, Amazon, Google eBooks, or Barnes & Noble.

I understand the dilemma. If you are like most of the business owners who have read this post, your daily reality likely consists of 20 top priorities that need to get done today. Not just two or three. And search engine optimization is likely not one of your top priorities. My goal in sharing the following example is to help you estimate increases in online sales so you can eliminate the guesswork regarding where to invest your time for the greatest impact.

As a starting point, you should become familiar with two key SEO-related terms as well as learn how to collect two pieces of data. The terms are:

• Click-through-rate or CTR
• Conversion rate

If you are not familiar with CTR, it simply means the percentage of time that searches click on your Website displayed in their search results versus a different site. And CTRs are impacted significantly based on your Google Website ranking for a particular keyword. For example, a site that has earned a Google Website ranking of number one for a particular keyword produces a Google click-through-rate of 42 percent versus the site that is ranked number 10, which produces a meager 6.06 percent CTR. See the chart below for more detail. The chart contains data for Google click-through-rates for Websites ranked in the Top 10 by Google (first page) for whatever keyword being searched by visitors.

Patrick Altoft and Neil Walker wrote a couple of informative blog posts about Google Website rankings, CTRs, and provide some excellent data from several studies conducted over the last four years.

The second term is conversion rate, which represents the number of monthly orders generated by your Website divided by the number of unique visitors to your site during the same period. For example, if your Website generated 50 orders last month and 2,000 unique visitors flowed through your site during the same period, then your Website’s conversion rate would be 2.5 percent (50 orders divided by 2,000 unique visitors = 2.5 percent). On average, a Website will deliver a 2 to 4 percent conversion rate of unique visitors. Measuring your conversion rate is important even if you do not sell products directly on your Website. Regardless, any Website should have some form of call-to-action such as customers submitting requests for quotes, e-mailing customer-service related questions, scheduling appointments, calling a special 800 number that only appears on your Website, etc. Each of these actions can be tracked and then used to measure the effectiveness of your search engine optimization efforts.

There may be some underlying issues with content or site navigation if your Website is not delivering a 2 to 4 percent conversion rate. I recommend reading Don’t Make Me Think, which in straightforward language makes the difficult topic of Web usability very simple and easy to understand.

And the 2 to 4 percent average conversion rate is simply that, an average. Check out Fireclick.com for more information about industry specific conversions rates.

Now on to data collection. You should only select keywords that have a proven track record for delivering traffic. Keywords that are proven performer are those words or phrases that are used every single day by searchers in Google, Yahoo, and Bing. It is a wasted effort to score a Google Website ranking of number one for a keyword that no one is using. In my experience, one of the best (and free) keyword tools is the Keyword Selector Tool at SEOBook.com. The tool will show you the number of times each day that a particular keyword is searched for via Google, Yahoo, and Bing.

I take the keyword selection process several steps further in Chapter 4 of The Small Business Owner’s Handbook to Search Engine Optimization by demonstrating how you can take the data from the SEOBook.com Keyword Suggestion Tool, along with some data from Google, and combine it to form a simple ratio that I call the “500 ratio”. With the 500 ratio, your probability for scoring a top ranking in Google is very high. Inc. Magazine highlighted my 500 ratio in their July-August 2010 issue.

We will now assume you have a list of keywords that are proven performers and your probability for scoring a Google Website ranking in the Top 10 or better is high based on the 500 ratio. Now we will combine the different data points to predict an increase in your online sales for each keyword on your list. For example, say you scored a Google Website ranking of number one for a keyword that according to the SEOBook.com Keyword Selector Tool was searched on 100 times per day in Google. According to the chart above, the site ranking number one would receive a Google click-through-rate of approximately 40 percent. This would translate into 40 visits to your Website each day (100 searches x 40 percent CTR = 40 visits), or 1,200 visits per month.

Now we will convert the 1,200 visits into dollars. For this we will assume that your Website delivers the average 2 to 4 percent conversion rate. This means that the 1,200 visits should produce approximately 24 to 48 orders per month (1,200 unique visitors x 2 to 4 percent = 24 to 48). We will also assume that your average online order is approximately $50. Therefore, a single keyword with a Google Website ranking of number one could drive between $1,200 to $2,400 of online sales for your business each month, or $14,400 to $28,800 annually.

This process forms the basis for a good practical and tactical analysis. However, it is important to remember how CTRs drop off precipitously after the number one position. This reinforces the need to keep your Website ranked in Google’s Top 10 or higher (first page of search results) for the keywords that matter to your business. Otherwise, a large percentage of your customers and prospects will not find your Website if Google has you ranked beyond their first page of search results.

I would never recommend that any business owner invest time or money toward something that does not provide a measurable return on investment. And the results from viral social networking are highly measurable. So, I have collected a few of my thoughts from my latest book (Increase Online Sales through Viral Social Networking) to share about social networking aggregation tools. Theoretically, social networking aggregation tools are designed to reduce a person’s time commitment in managing all of their accounts.

Some of the aggregation tools are excellent, and in my opinion, one tool shines above the rest. See what you think.

Q: How many different social media accounts do you manage?

A: I personally manage accounts on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

Q: How do you go about managing all the different accounts?

A: I invest approximately 10-minutes per day toward managing the accounts. I follow the 15-step viral social networking process that is detailed in my current book. The process produces maximum results in the least amount of time possible.

Q: Are you using any aggregation tools?

A: I have experimented with HootSuite, TweetDeck, and Ping.fm with varying success in managing my online brand community. Right now, my favorite aggregator tool is by far NutShellMail.com from Constant Contact. I have experimented with NutShellMail for the last several weeks, and to say that I am impressed, would be a significant understatement. I recommend NutShellMail to small business owners because it compiles the activity taking place within your online brand community (compilation of your Facebook friends, Twitter followers, and LinkedIn connections) and delivers it right to your e-mail Inbox in about 10, easy-to-manages batches a day. NutShellMail is an excellent tool for anyone interested in reducing their social networking time commitment.

However, reducing one’s time commitment with social networking is actually less about the aggregation tools that are used. Being efficient is primarily rooted in only investing time toward knowing what works and what does not. For example, did you know that sending more than two tweets per day on Twitter is essentially hypertweeting. In fact, more people will likely “unfollow” than will begin following you. Avoiding these types of common mistakes will save a business owner a ton of time and help boost results.

Q: Is it a good idea to aggregate since the audiences on various social networks can be different?

A: I have made mistakes using Ping.fm to distribute a single status update across Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. What I did not realize at the time was that the context of the post was personal in nature and therefore more relevant to my Twitter followers and Facebook friends but not appropriate for my LinkedIn connections. I later received negative feedback (constructive criticism) from one of my LinkedIn connections who let me know that personal-related updates where not appropriate. That was great feedback because it helped me refocus and greatly improve my 15-step viral social networking process.

Q: What are some tips, besides tools, to simply your social media streams?

A: One of the best ways a business owner can simplify or reduce their social networking time commitment is to only tweet or write status-network updates regarding content that really matters to the members of their online brand community (Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn). A business owner should also avoid the temptation of getting involved in time consuming Facebook games or other applications…entertaining but they do not serve a business purpose. Instead, focus on writing two posts or status updates per day on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

A business owner should also resist the temptation to turn their online brand community into a selling free-for-all by following a simple six to one (6:1) ratio. A business owner can maximize results by writing six life or professional-related posts-tweets to every one product or service-related post. This will provide your online brand community members with balanced and valuable content. Your Facebook friends, Twitter followers, and LinkedIn connections will feel informed versus being sold. This is such an important point that I devoted all of Chapter 7 to explaining it precise detail.

I decided to write a book on viral social networking because none of the current books attempting to cover the subject even came close to providing readers with a practical and tactical social networking strategy that could be implemented. And having a specific action plan to follow is so important based on my experience in working with hundreds and hundreds of business owners. Initial successes in social networking produces confidence, which leads to momentum, which leads to more social networking successes!

But really…can viral social networking truly provide business benefit? Social networking, when done correctly, can represent over 20 percent of a Website’s traffic. Plus, a Website’s conversion rate of online sales from traffic referred from social networking sites can be as high as 22 percent versus the typical 2 to 4 percent. This translates into a 500 percent increase! Bottom line: viral social networking can deliver significant business benefits, which makes this book ideal for anyone looking for a practical strategy to increase online sales by using Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

You will learn a 15-step viral social networking process that has been proven to increase Website traffic and online sales. The easy-to-follow steps in this book will also provide you with the tools you need to reduce your social networking time investment while showing you how to measure results.

You will get started by learning the fundamentals of Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn as well as the criteria for deciding which social networking site(s) are the best for your business goals. You will also learn how to harness the power of the three Cs of viral social networking: 1) creating Conversation, 2) building Community, and 3) generating Commerce.

And if you are like most businesspeople, you may be wondering what things in your life or business are “that interesting” that they should be shared with the world via Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Sound familiar? If so, this book will help by providing you with suggested topic categories and recommendations regarding the type of content your social networking community will find interesting and valuable.

However, developing the right content is only one piece in a viral social networking strategy. So this book will also show you how to effectively share your content with the social networking community you have worked so hard to build. You will also learn how to apply a proven 6:1 ratio of making six personal or life-related posts or status updates to your social networks for every one product or service-related post. The 6:1 ratio will help you avoid the mistake of turning your viral social networks into a selling free-for-all.

And how will you know if you have accomplished your goals? This book will also demonstrate how to track and measure your performance using Google Analytics so you can observe how your efforts are affecting your site traffic and online sales.

This book will help keep you focused because it summarizes all the steps into a tactical, action-oriented social networking checklist. This viral social networking blueprint will serve as your roadmap and can guide your daily to-do list. And lastly, this book includes several real-world social networking success stories and frequently asked questions so you can benefit from the experiences of others.

However, despite the efficiency and effectiveness of my SEO process, I am frequently asked by business owners during my live SEO training programs the following question: “Yeah but Stephen…within your 15-steps, are there any steps you think are the most critical?” And my answer is always the same. Absolutely! In fact, there are three steps within the overall process that focus on optimizing what I call the three most valuable pieces of real estate on any content page. They are: 1) page title, 2) META Keywords, and 3) META Description.

In fact, if you did nothing else after reviewing this post or reading my book, I strongly urge you to optimize your page titles, META Keywords, and META Descriptions on each page you plan to leverage as part of your strategy to bring more traffic to your Web site. Based on my experience, you will be much farther ahead than the vast majority of your competitors by taking advantage of this real estate.

So what are page titles, META Keywords, and META Descriptions? And where can you find them?

Page Title

The page title is the white text over the blue background in the upper left corner of your browser window. It doesn’t matter if you are using Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox. The position of the page title is the same. And it is possible to place the most searched keywords inside the page title so instead of reading something generic like “Company XYZ’s Services”, the page title should include keywords relevant to the specific content of the page. Google also uses a content page’s page title to create the link it displays within its search results. By including most searched keywords related to content page within your page titles, you are making the link to your Web site more attractive for users to click on when they see it within Google’s search results. Including keywords within your page title helps Google rank your content page higher and you increase your opportunity to attract more visitors to your Web site. A nice double bonus!

META Keywords Field

The META Keywords field is part of the HTML source code within a content page. It was very common in the past for business owners and Web developers alike to put 20, 30, or as many 50 keywords inside the META Keywords field in an effort to make a content page rank well for everyone. This tactic does not work at all anymore. Google wants specific content pages (See step 9 of my 15-step process) versus pages that try to be everything to everyone. Consequently, you should reuse the same most searched keywords from the page title by placing them directly into the META Keywords field. This accomplishes two things: 1) it further clarifies the theme of the content page for Google and 2) it creates keyword repetition and consistency, which are extremely important to Google. Some participants in my live SEO training programs have questioned whether or not the META Keywords field is even relevant anymore. I always affirm that yes it is, when it used properly. Syncing the META Keywords field with the page title is the perfect strategy.

META Description Field

The META Description field is the final piece of valuable real estate. Writing a quality META Description is critical because Google uses this content to create the little snippet of text displayed underneath the various links within its search results. A properly formatted META Description should be 23 words or less and repeat the same search keywords used within the page title and META Keywords field.

So why are the three pieces of real estate so critical to your success? Because these are the first places that Google looks when “indexing” or cataloging your content pages into their database. Placing keywords into these fields gives Google an immediate overview of what a particular content page is about. And because Google values these fields so highly, it uses the keywords found there to create the search results it displays. And then searchers see the keywords within the Google results because the words are bolded within the links and snippet descriptions. So next time you do a Google search, pay attention the links and the description snippets. I suspect you will uncover some opportunities and see how easy it would be to jump past your competitors in Google’s rankings.

Selecting the Most Searched Keywords

Now, there’s one more thing. Selecting keywords that deliver proven results is the critical first step to this process. If you use the wrong keywords, you will be wasting your time. Chapter 4 of The Small Business Owner’s Handbook to Search Engine Optimization will walk you step-by-step through the keyword selection process so you never waste time optimizing content around ineffective search keywords. Only select search keywords that are proven performers!

I wish you the best of success!

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