SEO terminology

As previously mentioned, I am very new to the SEO / web development world. Sure, in high school I had my own little website (back when frames were the "in" thing) but it's been a while since I got to play directly with html and reformatting of websites and what not - and there's a whole lot to remember. I mean one little word or tag or punctuation mark messed up can just blow the whole page. Does that make anyone else nervous? Luckily, I'm a bit OCD when it comes to reading and rereading anything I write, be it scripting, articles, blogs, etc.

The thing I'm working on now is getting the terminology down. I find that I actually knew a lot more about SEOing than I originally thought - I just didn't realize it or use the correct terminology.

For example - when I came across the word link bait, I just kept thinking about fishing (it's finally Spring and it's about time I got my license and spent some lazy afternoons AWAY from my computer). NOW, of course, I realize, that link bait is just a word referring to anything cool on a site that draws people in - such as extremely useful info, special/discount promotions, videos, etc - just content that gets people talking and more importantly, linking!

Something else I wondered about - WHY do people have so many urls for one site - ex: http://www.domain.com, http://domain.com, http://www.domain.com/index, etc.

What I never realized was those sites CAN be to totally different and non related pages - but most sites will get all those domain names for themselves and just redirect traffic to the main page. If your site is www.domain.com, well then, you might want to pick up domain.com and www.domain.com/index and whenever someone types in those urls, it is redirected to your MAIN site, www.domain.com.

Once again, I know about that sort of thing - I just never knew there was a TERM for it - canonical url - and canonicalization is just the process of of picking the best url when there are different choices. I still haven't quite grasped all the ins and outs of it, but Google's Matt Cutts laid it out better than I can in his post.

So for now, it's all about reading and learning anything I can on web development and SEO in general. Anything I find interesting and useful will get posted right on here, because actually, when I learn a new concept, it helps for me to write it on out. Hopefully other people will find what I share useful, if not, well, it sure is helping me!

FYI, SEOBook has a great Search Engine Marketing Glossary. It's definitely been a lifesaver.

As a side note - Web Xtreme is just an AWESOME place to work. This Thursday Rory, Steve and Dave are treating all their employees to food and drink at the Brickyard here in Lancaster, PA. And Rory just got done running around the halls getting everyone hyped up for their weekly podcast. He is totally the Flavor-Flav of the business/real estate world.