Web site terms define a web site

A good web site design has no session time limit and is accessible to people with disabilities. An assistive technology, user friendly web site.

Every industry develops jargon to explain specific actions, events or job descriptions. The web site development and digital design industry is no different. Unfortunately, many common terms have been borrowed from other industries and that creates confusion. We avoid the use of jargon wherever possible. Web site buzzwords rarely convey any valuable information to a client. You know your business, we know ours. Truly knowledgeable and experienced professionals can explain terms in simple English! You do it for customers everyday. As our customer, you deserve the same consideration. It is important that a business web site explains the terms, abbreviations and acronyms used to describe the business activities, in simple terms. It's how to explain a website. Do you know how to explain a good website name, a good sitemap or a good menu?

This web site was designed and written, to provide easy to understand web site design and search engine optimization information for business web site owners. It is not intended to provide do it yourself information for web site designers, even though it certainly does! Our goal is to provide a business web site client with all the necessary business information, to make an informed web site investment decision.

The following terms used on web sites may be familiar to visitors trying to find a web site designer or a good search engine optimizer. If we missed any terms that are important to you, please send us an email and we will help to explain them.

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Define web site terms ( by-pass the Terms Menu)

Each term is a link to detailed explanation of that term.

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Our Terms of Use protects visitors

Please read the following website terms and conditions carefully before using this web site (seowebsitesdesigners.com Site).

By using this Site, you agree to accept and be bound by the following terms and conditions concerning your use of the Site. (Website Terms of Use) and our Website privacy issues page. The opinions expressed on this website are solely those of the page author(s) and should not be accepted without further research and verification. We may revise the Terms of Use, Privacy Policy Statement and Website terms of service at any time, without further notice to you. You may not access this web site at any time, should you not agree to be bound by these terms of use. At any time that the Terms of Use are modified, the modification shall be effective immediately upon posting. By your access and use of this Site, you agree to periodically review our website's Terms of Use and shall be conclusively bound by any such future modifications.

Certain areas of this web site may have different Terms of Use posted. Where there is a conflict between these Terms of Use and the Terms of Use posted for a specific area of the Site, the latter shall have precedence for that area of the site.

All contents included on this site including, but not limited to text, graphics, logos buttons, images, digital down-loads, data, software, html and xhtml code, xml code, dhtml code and icons, are the property of SEO Website Designers. All software used on this site is the property of SEO Website Designers or its software suppliers and is protected by Canada and International copyright laws. Any use of this material without the prior written consent of SEO Website Designers is strictly prohibited. All inquiries regarding a request for usage should be directed to SEO Website Designers.

Exceptions: You may use (appropriately) any of the information contained on this site. We request that you place a link back to www.asite.seowebsitesdesigners.com to let your visitors know where the information came from.

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Website terms explanations

The website terms above are presented in random order. You can quickly return to the Terms Menu from any of our terms pages, by pressing any Term Heading.

HTML?

Hyper Text Markup Language was developed by the originator of the world wide web. Although it continues to be revised and expanded as the technologies evolve, it is still the foundation on which all good web pages are built. What is valid html?

Hyper text markup (or beyond simple words) allows visitors to read common language words on their display screen, that also activate links to other areas on a page, other websites, or other pages on the same website. There are more than 100 hyper-text links on this page and hundreds more on the rest of the pages of our website.

What is a link?

As a simple example:

This is a hyper link that takes you to our Home Page. Please read about: The importance of good links and link use affecting the accessibility of this site.

XHTML 1.0

Our web site is written in valid XHTML. We chose to write our website in XHTML 1.0 Strict, to show our visitors that it is not necessary to use older document types like HTML 4.01 Transitional to produce interesting web pages that still conform to strict markup requirements. What is valid xhtml?

A major advantage of XHTML over HTML is in it's compatibility with most browser types and devices (including cell phones and similar hand held technologies). Since more people will be accessing the world wide web using portable devices, writing a business website in XHTML will become far more important.

ALGORITHM — (al·go·rythm)

Search engines have become far more sophisticated than the original simple database systems of the early days. They now consider semantics and information relevance far more important, than simply counting the number of times a certain keyword appears on a page. Each web page is filtered through their algorithm to determine it's real information content. Some search engine algorithms can contain millions of steps, before ranking each page. (The word is derived from the name of the Persian mathematician Al-Khwarizmi.)

Search Engine Algorithm ? Major search engines are constantly trying to improve their search results services. They do this, by making changes to the way their algorithm analyzes each web page. Attempting to approach human reasoning will eventually allow search engines to anticipate what information their users are actually searching for! Until then, web content developers will need to anticipate which key-phrases or questions are most likely to be used by a potential visitor and incorporate them into specific web pages and specific page titles.

URL — Hi, My name is Earl

Web pages are actually called resources or information resources in the cyber world. The W3C developed a uniform way to describe the location of each page published on the web. To locate and retrieve a specific web page, knowing it's exact location on the web, is very important! The complete URL for this page is:

http ://www.seowebsitesdesigners .com/website_terms. html

Spiders! (are not arachnids)

Search engines need a method for retrieving web-pages before they can analyze and rank them. Spiders (aka. robots) are actually computer programs that each search engine uses to scan the web for web pages.

Search engines have spiders? Search engine spiders are required to follow the rules too. Every website should have a robots.txt file, which tells the spiders what information to take, which files and folders to ignore and which search engines are not permitted to take files from the site.

Indexing web pages

Creating a space for a web page in a search engine's database is called indexing. However, once indexed, a search engine can delete all records for a website, if they determine that the content is simply spam or so poorly written that it can't be accurately given a page ranking. Once a search engine de-indexes your website, getting that domain name re-indexed can be difficult, expensive and time consuming.

Search Engine Indexing Who has the biggest and/or best index? The term "best," is a matter of personal preference. Checking the top search results pages from several search engines, will usually give you better (relevant) information resources than simply going through many pages of the same search engine's results. Major search engines each have Billions of web pages indexed. Do you know how to search?

SEO — (Search Engine Optimization)

Search engine optimization is the act of writing or re-writing a web page to be more accessible and rank higher in the search results pages of the major search engines. Having a web page appear near the top of the search results will usually mean that more people will see it and visit your website, since most people don't look through page after page of search results. The better the page ranking, the more visitors generated. For a business website, this means finding more customers.

Search Engine Optimized websites are easier for search engines to both index and rank. To be a search engine optimized website most if not all, of the web pages on the website are titled and written to provide good information about a specific topic. Topic relevant page title, headings and high quality information content. Also known as a: Search Engine Friendly Website.

Search Engine Optimizer - Google's optimizer definition is pretty good. Reading it carefully will help you determine the Search Engine Optimizer you don't want working on your website!

A website?

A web site is simply a collection of web pages in a server folder, at a common ip address. Every computer or web server connected to the Internet has a unique address referred to as it's Internet Protocol address. An IP address is four numbers separated by dots, for example: 65.46.56.689. An ip address is not the same as your website name or Domain Name, although they each identify your website's location.

Business web sites are a specific type of web resource. To be a valuable source of information, you need to tell your visitors about what you do, how you do it and why in detail. All this valuable information must be presented from your visitors' perspective. It's all about your visitor, what they need and how your business website will solve their problem! A business site is not advertising! Every new company web site is not a good web site or a good business web site. Please read: What is a website?, What is a good web page and a good site map?

Web graphics - Pictures

One of the most costly web site design mistakes made by business website designers, is their over or misuse of graphics. People love pictures. A great deal of emotional response can be generated by colors and appropriate pictures. Unfortunately, search engines are cold, emotionless creatures who are driven by programming logic alone. They can't see the beautiful pictures of information! Search engine spiders can only read text information. It's easy to fill a web page with pretty pictures and still have a blank web page! Search engines only "see," the alt text ( Choose your terms, carefully).

General term describing: Pictures, diagrams and decorative web page elements. Any "visual only," still or motion element that only exists for the benefit of sighted people, viewing the web page on a computer monitor screen.

Flash Websites present dynamic or animated movie graphics using proprietary software. The user will usually be required to also have specific, additional plugin software installed in their computer. Although Macromedia.com is working on improving accessibility and user independent features, flash website graphics should probably be left to professional developers. You can waste many thousands of dollars to design a beautiful, animated website that never gets indexed by a search engine!

Internet or (World Wide Web)

The Internet was conceived and designed to be a fail-proof communications system for the U.S. military (in 1962). The World Wide Web began much later (1990). (see history of the WWW) Although the word "Internet" has come to mean Free Information to most people, it is still being developed. " The World Wide Web (known as "WWW", "Web" or "W3C") is the universe of network-accessible information, the embodiment of human knowledge.

Use the Internet wisely and it will reward you with new customers. Although it may not have originally been intended for business use, The WWW has become a necessary business marketing tool. If a business website owner remembers to provide free, relevant human knowledge to the public, they are helping to fulfill the promise of the WWW. Read also: How to search the web.

CSS - (Cascading Style Sheets)

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) allow web page designers to add presentation effects without creating messy or specific browser dependant web pages. Our site allows users to choose the style sheet they prefer. You can check any website for CSS validity.

Cascading Style Sheets allow website designers/owners to change the look of their site by editing only one page. Changing the font color or size periodically, keeps your web site fresh. Multiple cascading style sheets aid in web site accessibility.

Database (digital data storage)

A database is simply organized digital information. Website databases can store your company's public information. Everything from inventory reports for "in stock" information for your customers, to lists of your suppliers, addresses and phone numbers can be stored in your website databases. Search engine databases are huge collections of individual web pages. They are used to store and (once filtered) rank web pages!

Your database choice will be determined by the type of business you operate, the type of data you need to share with your customers and your budget. Custom built databases can be very costly.

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Understanding website design terms should not be YOUR problem!

To make good design decisions, you need to find good information. The design terms can be confusing to anyone not familiar with the industry jargon. We encourage every website shopper to familiarize themselves with the terms used to describe website design, optimizing and publishing, before hiring a web designer. Knowledge is necessary to make well informed decisions. There's a lot of snake oil for sale on the WWW! Yes, meta tags are important, but not for the reasons you might still believe.

Should you find our web site information valuable and wish to link to this web page, simply copy and paste the following link text onto any of your site's pages:

<a href="http://www.asite.seowebsitesdesigners.com/website_terms.html">Website terms?</a>

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A web search for more web site terms information?

Please note: Google does not permit direct link searches from non-exclusive business web sites and so they are not included on the search engine list. Please search Google directly at www.google.com

Search multiple search engines: yahoo . yahoo.ca . msn . msn.ca . alta vista . ask by pressing each search engine name.