SEO 101

by Cody See, SEO Specialist for Mudd Digital  Sometimes (most of the time) I talk and nobody understands what I’m saying. While I can’t say this is anything new, I can say the amount of time spent explaining what I mean has only gone up since becoming an SEO. To be fair, this stuff is complex. By no means do I expect others to understand how we (SEOs) do what we do, but it would be nice if they had a basic understanding of the terminology. In my opinion, these are the basics. SERP – A SERP is a search engine results page. When you search for something and it shows you the results, that’s a SERP. Title Tag / Page Title – The title tag (or page title) is one of the single most important on-page ranking factors. As you can see, it shows up in the SERP and at the top of your browser. It should accurately describe what a given page is about. Meta Description – The meta description shows up underneath the title tag in the SERP. It should support the title tag and entice searchers to click and visit your website. Anchor Text – I think it’s fair to assume that most people know what a link is. Anchor text is visible part of a link. For example, in this image “Puppy for Sale” in the anchor text for the URL “http://www.dailypuppy.com/results.php?searchTerm=Puppy+for+Sale”. Search engines use anchor text to help determine what a webpage is about. Alt Attribute (Alternative Text) – Computers don’t have eyes (duh), so they rely on us to tell them what an image is about. Alt text is a description inserted into the code for search engines to read and understand what a picture shows. A good alt text for this picture might be “Tired Golden Retriever Puppy” and would look like so: Image Source: Flickr Aaand we’ll stop there. If people find this information useful and would like me to continue, I’ll write an SEO 102 and include more terms in my next post.