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FAQ's and Glossary
Our glossary is being added to week by week according to a new feature on the Froggblog. No prizes for guessing what the name of this regular feature is; search 'word of the week!'
'Black Hat'
Most search engines publish their own set of guidelines for Webmasters. In essence, these are the rules you need to play by if you want to have your site included in a search engines index. They are by no means specific instructions on how to 'optimise' your site but are certainly considered a good place to start in learning the do's and don'ts.
A search marketer adopting any one of a number of 'black hat' techniques is generally acknowledged to be partly or wholly ignoring these guidelines. Instead, techniques are adopted which are often designed to fool the search engine into showing content that it would not otherwise. Effectively, 'black hat' techniques are adopted to 'game' the system. For more information, see our brief guide to ethical SEO.
'Bounce Rate'
Any half decent web analytics package will provide bounce rate data. The bounce rate measures, as a percentage, the number of visitors who enter a webpage but then leave without viewing any further pages.
In theory, having a high bounce rate is not a good thing. It means there is undoubtedly something wrong with the page itself if it fails to encourage the visitor to navigate further through the site.
However, it cannot account for certain instances, such as the visitor who finds the content of a page appealing, and because your contact details are visible on the page, they simply do not need to navigate any further. You've sold them on the content and they've picked up the phone!
Therefore, be careful in making assumptions based purely on bounce rate data.
'Conversion'
A 'conversion' is when a measurable goal for a website is achieved. Such a goal might be to fill in an enquiry form, sign up to a newsletter or complete a sale online. Conversions can be tracked and measured by a decent analytics package.
Mistakenly, some see the objective of their search engine optimisation campaign to achieve a top ranking on a search engine. Remember, a ranking is really only a means to an end. Just because you are ranking number one on Google, it means nothing if your website fails to convert traffic to meet the objective (s).
'Google Dance'
Many moons ago, it was reputed that Google's spider was unleashed across the web roughly once a month. At this time, website owners would study the search engine results pages' (SERP's) with great interest (and often anxiety) to monitor any change in position for their keywords. Why? Because during this time, Google would update a number of ranking factors that could result in a website jumping up the listings or on the other hand, moving downwards.
Nowadays, Google is constantly updating it's index so spiders are always on the move. For a popular and trusted site no longer do you have to wait for the once monthly 'dance'. We have seen many examples of new content being spidered in a matter of hours, a likely reflection of how search engines need to be for more regular in their spidering due to constantly updated information, such as blogs.
'Index'
Think of an index as a database; a database of stored web pages and the content which sits upon these pages. The index is created by the process of 'spidering'. A spider (robot, bot, crawler) is a program used by search engines to follow links from web page to web page. As it goes on its merry travels it takes a copy of each page to store in its index.
Link'
A link is an area on a web page, perhaps an image or a word, which can be clicked upon to take the user to another page or area on the same page. Links are the primary means by which search engines spider websites and thereby create their indices.
'Redirect'
A 'redirection' is when a webpage automatically redirects any visitor to another web page. They are commonly used to allow one page to be viewed from a number of different addresses without ending up with duplicate versions of the page.
There are many, many different types of redirects that can be used across the web. For you non-techie types we have picked the most common one in relation to search marketing.
'301 permanement redirect' - this used to tell the search engines that a particular page or site has been taken offline permenantly and has been superceded by another page. This redirect is particularly important as it not only means your site visitors will not get an error when viewing a page that no longer exists but also tells the search engines to transfer the 'link popularity' of the old page to the new one. This minimises the loss of rankings when changing any page urls.
Redirects can also be known as domain forwarding or redirection.
Most search engines publish their own set of guidelines for Webmasters. In essence, these are the rules you need to play by if you want to have your site included in a search engines index. They are by no means specific instructions on how to 'optimise' your site but are certainly considered a good place to start in learning the do's and don'ts.
A search marketer adopting any one of a number of 'black hat' techniques is generally acknowledged to be partly or wholly ignoring these guidelines. Instead, techniques are adopted which are often designed to fool the search engine into showing content that it would not otherwise. Effectively, 'black hat' techniques are adopted to 'game' the system. For more information, see our brief guide to ethical SEO.
'Bounce Rate'
Any half decent web analytics package will provide bounce rate data. The bounce rate measures, as a percentage, the number of visitors who enter a webpage but then leave without viewing any further pages.
In theory, having a high bounce rate is not a good thing. It means there is undoubtedly something wrong with the page itself if it fails to encourage the visitor to navigate further through the site.
However, it cannot account for certain instances, such as the visitor who finds the content of a page appealing, and because your contact details are visible on the page, they simply do not need to navigate any further. You've sold them on the content and they've picked up the phone!
Therefore, be careful in making assumptions based purely on bounce rate data.
'Conversion'
A 'conversion' is when a measurable goal for a website is achieved. Such a goal might be to fill in an enquiry form, sign up to a newsletter or complete a sale online. Conversions can be tracked and measured by a decent analytics package.
Mistakenly, some see the objective of their search engine optimisation campaign to achieve a top ranking on a search engine. Remember, a ranking is really only a means to an end. Just because you are ranking number one on Google, it means nothing if your website fails to convert traffic to meet the objective (s).
'Google Dance'
Many moons ago, it was reputed that Google's spider was unleashed across the web roughly once a month. At this time, website owners would study the search engine results pages' (SERP's) with great interest (and often anxiety) to monitor any change in position for their keywords. Why? Because during this time, Google would update a number of ranking factors that could result in a website jumping up the listings or on the other hand, moving downwards.
Nowadays, Google is constantly updating it's index so spiders are always on the move. For a popular and trusted site no longer do you have to wait for the once monthly 'dance'. We have seen many examples of new content being spidered in a matter of hours, a likely reflection of how search engines need to be for more regular in their spidering due to constantly updated information, such as blogs.
'Index'
Think of an index as a database; a database of stored web pages and the content which sits upon these pages. The index is created by the process of 'spidering'. A spider (robot, bot, crawler) is a program used by search engines to follow links from web page to web page. As it goes on its merry travels it takes a copy of each page to store in its index.
Link'
A link is an area on a web page, perhaps an image or a word, which can be clicked upon to take the user to another page or area on the same page. Links are the primary means by which search engines spider websites and thereby create their indices.
'Redirect'
A 'redirection' is when a webpage automatically redirects any visitor to another web page. They are commonly used to allow one page to be viewed from a number of different addresses without ending up with duplicate versions of the page.
There are many, many different types of redirects that can be used across the web. For you non-techie types we have picked the most common one in relation to search marketing.
'301 permanement redirect' - this used to tell the search engines that a particular page or site has been taken offline permenantly and has been superceded by another page. This redirect is particularly important as it not only means your site visitors will not get an error when viewing a page that no longer exists but also tells the search engines to transfer the 'link popularity' of the old page to the new one. This minimises the loss of rankings when changing any page urls.
Redirects can also be known as domain forwarding or redirection.
