Glossary
Sometimes we forget that not everybody is as nerdy as us, and that they might have a bit of a problem understanding some of the terms we use. We try and keep everything simple, but for those who need a little more information we’ve created this handy-dandy glossary.
CSS
CSS is used to control the stylistic elements of the websites Sizzle creates, with XHTML controlling the structure. It’s a brilliantly flexible language which is easy for computers to understand. Using CSS files to control the style of a site results in faster download times and sites which work just as well on devices like mobile phones.
Directories
The Internet is a confusing place, and if you don’t know where to look, finding things can be hard. That’s why there are now plenty of online directories, providing categorised indexes of businesses and websites. They can be ‘general’ or ‘niche’. General directories are not normally much use (although a few big ones are) because they’re more likely to be filled with spammy links and low-quality sites. Niche ones are much better. They’re normally more tightly controlled, linking to sites of a specific theme. If you choose Sizzle for your SEO marketing, we try and get your site on as many niche directories as possible, building up valuable links.
Link Farms
A link farm is a network of inter-linked sites, designed to spam search engines by manipulating their algorithms. While they might provide results for a short while, the search engines will inevitably find out about them, and all sites involved will be penalised. Link farms are a form of shady SEO.
Paid Links
If you want your site to rank higher on search engine results pages, you need more people to link to it. This can be done through creating quality, unique content, submitting your site to relevant directories, and generally providing a good service. Or, if you’re a bit of a slimeball, it can be done by sending money to related sites and asking them to link to you. This is cheating, and search engines don’t like people doing it. If they catch you, you’ll be penalised, possibly by being entirely removed from the index. Sizzle never buys links, because we’re too nice.
Search Engines
Search Engines are sites like Google, Yahoo, Ask, and Dogpile. They maintain huge indexes of websites which can be easily searched, using complicated and closely-guarded algorithms to determine the order of their results. As the majority of people use search engines to find things online, it is very important that sites are developed with them in mind.
Search Engine Optimisation
SEO refers to the process of promoting a site through link-building campaigns and page tweaks, with the goal of driving more traffic to the site and therefore generating more leads. It comes in two distinct flavours - ’ethical‘ and ’shady‘. Shady SEO means stuff like spamming, link farming, and paid links. We don’t do any of these types of things, because the results are unreliable, there’s a high risk of punishment, and mostly because we’re just too nice. We adhere to the ethical side of things, such as submitting your site to niche directories, building natural links from related sites, writing unique content, and tweaking your site’s structure to better reflect your keywords. This provides long-lasting results and ensures your site won’t get banned from search engines, because it’s doing nothing wrong.
Spam
Spam is a catch-all term which refers to any abuse of electronic systems for commercial gain, usually through bulk unsolicited messages or the manipulation of online services in order to unfairly boost a site’s online profile, such as off-topic blog comment spamming or spamming forums with links to your site. If you get caught spamming, you could end up with severe penalties, including legal proceedings, because spam is against the law here in the UK. We hate spam at Sizzle, and never participate in spammy activities. We like our reputation too much!
XHTML
We build websites in XHTML and CSS. XHTML is the latest update to the HTML specification and resolves a lot of the problems associated with HTML. It’s designed to be easily interpreted by browsers through removal of the ambiguity which resulted in HTML pages being interpreted in different ways by different browsers. It’s the latest and greated, and will likely be the standard for a considerable time yet.
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