If you ever write anything for a website chances are you will be writing SEO. That is, your content has to be search engine optimization ready, meaning that search engines will link it to trustworthy sites and deem the information accurate. Conversely, if you are reading from a website (and who doesn’t these days?) you want the information to be trustworthy and relevant to the site you are on. After all, search engines like Google and Yahoo rank pages that are more relevant to a search higher than those that are not.
So, that’s SEO, but what about the other crazy sounding words that are associated with it? What does all this tech stuff mean?
A pagerank for example is a value between 0 and 1 that is assigned by a search engine algorithm. If your page rank is good it’ll be higher than one that is deemed bad by the search engine, and this means more people will visit your site.
What is MFA? Well, it’s a page that is Made For Advertisers. The whole site is built as a site for ads and ads alone, which may sound like something you want to avoid, but in fact for some pages it’s a great gimmick.
SEM is search engine marketing, something that is associated with submitting, positioning and researching a site within search engines to get the maximum exposure for that site.
When you land on a website one of the most useful things there is a site map. This is a page or group of pages that link to all of the accessible pages on a site. Getting you where you need to be quickly and without a lot of stuff you don’t want to see.
What is a portal? It is a web service that offers a wide set of features. Think Yahoo and comparable sites and you’re on the right track.
If you surf the web chances are you have been redirected a few times. This simply means that the address of the landing page has changed and you are then taken to the right site, no muss, no fuss.
And finally, a mashup is a page that has single purpose software and other programs or links to programs that make it quick and easy to use. These are very popular with users as they get their information quickly and easily right where they want it.