Continuing on from Part One a couple of weeks ago, here we do some more jargon-busting to explain the SEO terms that are be puzzling you.
Meta tags
Meta tags give a search engine additional information about a webpage. Each page on your site can (and should) have unique Meta tags that describe what that particular page is about. There’s a great number of meta tags you can have on a page, each with its own function. Fut for SEO, you should at least have the ‘description’ Meta tag which for the Sky Sports website looks like:
<meta name=”description” content=”The best sports coverage from around the world, covering: Football, Cricket, Golf, Rugby, WWE, Boxing, Tennis and much more...” />
A search engine can choose to show this in search results if it thinks it is an accurate description for your site:
Google chose to use the description meta tag in its search results page
You should therefore make your it informative and attempt to entice searcher to click the link and visit your site.
SERP – Search Engines Results Page
SERP stands for Search Engine Results Page. This is the list of (usually 10) results that a search engine shows in response to a query. The picture above is one such result. Ideally of course, you want to be top of the SERP!
Black Hat Techniques
Sneaky tactics that attempt to trick a search engine into ranking your site above others are known as Black Hat techniques. These include keyword stuffing, paid linking and hidden text but there’s many more. Search engines are becoming increasingly better at spotting sites that employ Black Hat techniques and if caught, can result in you being removed from search engine results completely. In short, don’t use them!
White Hat Techniques
In contrast, White Hat techniques are the honest way of doing things and what SEO Consult use for our clients. They include implementing sitemaps, having strong internal linking and a logical URL structure on the site. These techniques are above board and recommended by the likes of Google and other search engines.
There’s still plenty more jargon busting come in Part 3, and if you didn’t read Part One, check it out.
