Alphabet Soup

We all know how important the web has become in our daily lives; whether it’s for our work, home life, education, shopping, communication, or just about anything else. And as the web continues to evolve and become more useful everyday, there is a constant stream of new acronyms, abbreviations, and words that have been invented to describe the ever-changing applications and services available on the web today. Here is a list of some common terms that you may have seen lately, with a brief explanation of each:

• SEO: Search Engine Optimization — SEO is the process of modifying a web site to achieve better search engine rankings, and to influence the search engines’ judgment regarding the site’s relevance to important search terms and phrases.
• SERP: Search Engine Results Page — SERP is the listing of web page links that are returned in response to a user query on a search engine.
• BLOGS: Short for “Web Logs”, Blogs are a collection of articles or comments that are posted by using blog software. Blogs can accommodate a wide range of content types, including text, video, photos, podcasts, and are typically collaborative, allowing users to post information that is visible to all other users of the blog.
• SOCIAL MEDIA: Often referred to as Web 2.0, these are the interactive components of web sites that allow users to share video, photos, podcasts, and other applications that promote user participation. Blogs, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace are all examples of social media applications.
• CSS: Short for Cascading Style Sheets, CSS is a specific language used to define how a web page written HTML or XHTML should display in web browsers. CSS provides behind-the-scenes capability for coding web sites so they are more powerful, efficient, and also more search engine friendly.
• RSS: Really Simple Syndication — RSS is a way to syndicate content from web sites, news sites, social media sites, and blogs where the content is frequently updated. It uses a feed-based technology that “feeds” content from a site to an RSS reader, enabling users to track information and current news through the RSS feeds they have set up.
• PPC: Abbreviation for Pay-Per-Click, PPC is an advertising model that allows advertisers to pay their advertising fee only when users actually click on their advertisement (this is the model used in Google’s Adwords program, among others).
• PR: PageRank is a Google algorithm that measures the popularity of a web site on a scale of 1-10. PageRank is visible when the Google Toolbar is installed on a user’s browser, and indicates the value of a site compared with other sites on the web.