Basic Terms to Know in Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

1. Website Rank, ranking:

a website’s actual position in the free (unpaid) section of a search engine results page for a search term. It is meaningless to speak of website rank without specifying what search word or phrase you are ranked for. When someone says to you “My website is #1 on Google”, you need to ask “OK, but for which search term?”
A ranking on a search engine is a web page’s listing and relative placement on a results page (known as a SERP) for a certain search query. As an example, if you type “house plans” into the search box at Google, you will get those listings displayed (10 listings per page by default) that Google deems most relevant to the search phrase house plans, sorted in order of relative importance.
The most relevant and most important web pages are listed in descending order. For Google, page relevancy is dependent on how well a web page “matches” a specific word search. Page importance on the other hand is dependent on the quality and quantity of links that point to your web page from other websites. The concept of link quality is important as well.
If your site does not appear in the top 20 for your most important keywords (search terms), you might as well forget getting much traffic from Google or from any other search engine. Because many people never go past the first page for a search result, you really need to be in the top 10.

Google’s patented system for specifying a web page’s importance, PageRank (PR) is a single, albeit important, factor that influences ranking. Many people confuse a page’s rank (what position they are on a search results page) with a page’s PageRank (PR) value. They are totally separate.
Google Page Rank is simply Google’s way of displaying how important a webpage is. Google assumes that when 1 webpage links to another webpage, it’s actually “casting a vote” for the webpage. The more votes you have for your webpage, the more important your webpage will be.
Google also takes into account the importance of other website’s pages linking to your own webpage. If many webpages link to the website’s webpage linking to you (i.e. They have a lot of “votes”) then their vote will be of more importance and will increase your Page Rank more.

Keywords for those words and phrases that define what a web page is all about. When someone enters a search term or phrase into Google, Google tries to find those web pages that match the search phrase best. Some people confuse keywords with the META “Keywords” tag. They are not the same thing.
To find out more about Keyword Usage for Search Engine Optimization, read the other article called “Keyword Factors Involved in Search Engine Optimization”. It has more complete information about how Keywords apply and how to use them.

The title of a web page is the text contained between the <TITLE></TITLE> tags at the beginning of an HTML file and is displayed in the top bar of a browser. It is not the first heading of a web page or any other large text that may be displayed at the top of a web page. This is an important distinction to know.

SEO factors influencing rank that are associated with elements on YOUR website, such as content, title tags, navigation links and code.
Keyword factors are also taken into account and basically mean how, where and when keywords are used. That in turn means how well your website is optimized for your most important keywords, and if those same keywords appear in your content and in links. Keyword factors determine page relevance. To know more about Keyword Factors, read my other article called “Keyword Factors Involved in Search Engine Optimization”.

SEO factors influencing rank that are associated with elements on OTHER websites, primarily links that point to your website.
Link factors mean the quantity and quality of links that point to your site. Link factors determine page importance and are related to Google PageRank (PR). Links play a VERY important role in getting high rankings, particularly for competitive markets.