Twitter Facebook LinkedIn Flipboard 0 The Golden Rule of SEO is: “say what you mean and mean what you say.” If SEO clients and professionals follow this simple rule most confusion and crisis can be avoided. In this spirit here are ten terms or phrases often heard during SEO and SEM endeavors with their frills removed for communicators that prefer minimalism: 1. Algorithm – In SEO context, 99% of the time this refers to Google’s algorithm, which is the computer code Google uses to decide where your web site should rank in search results. 99.9% of the time you will not meet anyone who knows how this piece of code ranks your web site. If someone tells you they have this precise information assume they are going to rip you off. If someone tells you they have an educated guess at how Google’s algorithm will rank your site that is ok. 2. Anchor Text – Words you can click. This is anchor text to twitter.com. This is not anchor text. Anchor text that exactly describes where a person will go when clicked is good. Anchor text that is misleading is bad. 3. Backlink – This is just a link from a website to your website. Backlinks from honest websites are good. Backlinks from shady websites are bad. 4. Conversion – An instance of one person coming to your website and doing what you want them to do: buy, subscribe or provide information. A conversion rate is calculated by the number of people that come to your website and do what you want divided by the number of people who just come to your website and leave. Conversions are your bottom line. 5. Engagement – Currently more of a social media term but social media and SEO are becoming inseparable so make sure you know what it means: that people who come to your website, Twitter, Facebook or any social media page are communicating with you. If engagements are not turning into marriages (conversions) reconsider your strategy. If you feel your strategy is sound reconsider your suitors. Engaging the wrong ones is a waste of time and money. 6. Impression – One impression means one person saw a webpage with your link on it. They may or may not of clicked on your link. They may or may not have noticed your link. The point is that they had the opportunity to notice and click your link. If your goal is conversions impressions alone are not impressive. Impressions need to be turned into clicks and clicks need to be turned into conversions. 7. Keyword – This is a word or group of words you want your website to show up under when people search for that word or phrase on a search engine. 8. Landing Page – This is the webpage people go to when they click on your link. You may hear “optimizing landing page(s)” and this usually means changes need to be made because your landing page or pages are being closed or abandoned before conversions are made. 9. Long-tail Keyword – This usually means you cannot afford to compete with other companies in your industry for the most obvious keywords so you need to be slick about it by adding more or changing keywords to a phrase to make it niche. Let’s say you want to show up in searches for “used cars” but you can’t get there with your budget. You may want to go after “used red Mazda” searches because there is less competition and therefore less work to be done to get a high ranking position on that search results page. 10. Usability – If people get frustrated and leave your website before turning into a conversion you may have a usability problem. Simply put: your website is not usable so people get mad and leave. If your content is simple making your website more usable is common sense. If you have a website with a great deal of information you may benefit from the input of a specialist. Twitter Tweet Facebook Share Email This article was written for Business 2 Community by Amanda McNeill.Learn how to publish your content on B2C Author: Amanda McNeill Follow @amandamcneill I've worked as a consultant in online marketing for most of the last 10 years. Now I mostly write about it. … View full profile ›More by this author:20 Cures for Content Writer’s BlockOnline Marketers: Don’t Put All Your Eggs in the SEO CasketBitter on Twitter? Confessions of a Hypocrite