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Etched’s Marketing Academy

The SEO Terms You Need to Know

This week in the Marketing Academy, we’re going to talk about the SEO definitions you need to know. I know SEO is an area that can seem scary or super technical. Honestly, it can be. I’ve left meetings with my head spinning because of all the technical SEO items we needed to address for a client. However, it’s not always that complicated.

We’re going to start with some basic SEO terms that will help you in your efforts.

Starting at the beginning

• SEO is an acronym that stands for Search Engine Optimization. The process of optimizing a website or blog for the search engines is important because it helps the search engine spiders understand what your website or blog is about. And when they know your information, it’s easier for them to rank your website or blog.
• Organic or Natural Search is “Free” Traffic for your website. You don’t pay for organic search traffic, it’s technically free, however, to perform well, you must work to build this channel.
• Search Engine is what someone uses to find your website. Traditional search engines include Google, Yahoo!, Duck Duck Go, and Ask.com. A user enters a term they want information on in the search engine.
• Search Engine Spiders – are the crawlers (hence the nickname Spider) that the search engines use to crawl your website or blog. They move from link to link to your website; this is why internal linking is important (more on that later).
• Google Bot – is the name of Google’s search engine spider.
• A Search Engine Results Page is called a SERP. When a user has entered the search query (or search terms) they want information on in the search engine; a results page is created with the information the search engine believes is the most relevant to their inquiry.
• Meta Data is the information that you enter on your website or a blog page that’s returned in the search engine result. This includes the Title Tag and Meta Description.
• Keyword is what the searcher is looking for and what you are trying to optimize your blog or website for. It’s shown in bold on the Search Engine Results Page.

• Your site’s Title Tag is the most important element in your Search Engine Result. It needs to entice the searcher to visit your website or blog. Think of it as the title of your story. It needs to be engaging. Adding a call-to-action can help increase your click-through rates.
• Your site’s Meta Description should be a summary of the information on the page or in the post. It’s an introduction to your content and should help the reader determine if they want to click to learn more.
• Include your most important keyword in both the Title Tag and Meta Description.

If you’d like to learn more about SEO, request a copy of my SEO Checklist so you know what to do for SEO on every new page you create.