Terms and Definitions

Search engine - is an information retrieval system designed to help find information stored on a computer system, such as on the World Wide Web, inside a corporate or proprietary network, or in a personal computer.

Search engines optimization - process of using various on and off site factors to rank a webpage in search engines

Search engine results page - or SERP, is the listing of web pages returned by a search engine in response to a keyword query.

Organic seo - refers to the manual type of page optimization vs. automatic submittal and page alteration.

Keyword in an Internet search - is one of the words used to find matching web pages.

Keyword density - density is a combination of the number of times a keyword or a keyword phrase, in proportion with other words, appears on a Web page. The more times the keyword appears in relation to the total number of on page words, the greater the overall keyword density.

Meta tags - are information inserted into the "head" area of your web pages. It is not seen by those viewing your pages in browsers. Meta tags, for example, can tell a browser what "character set" to use or whether a web page has self-rated itself in terms of adult content.

Backlinks - are incoming links to a website or web page. The number of backlinks is an indication of the popularity or importance of that website or page. Backlinks are also called incoming links, inbound links, inlinks, and inward links.

PageRank - is the algorithm used by the Google search engine. It is based on the premise, prevalent in the world of academia, that the importance of a research paper can be judged by the number of citations the paper has from other research papers.

"Search engine submission" refers to the act of getting your web site listed with search engines. Another term for this is search engine registration

Terms such as "search engine marketing" or "search engine promotion" refer to the overall process of marketing a site on search engines. This includes submission, optimization, managing paid listings and more.

Terms such as "search engine placement," "search engine positioning" and "search engine ranking" refer to a site actually doing well for particular terms or for a range of terms at search engines. This is the ultimate goal for many people -- to get that "top ten" ranking for a particular keyword or search terms.