Random SEO terms you may not be familiar with

People keep talking to me this morning so I have decided to just toss out some concepts I probably haven’t discussed before.

All-Purpose Optimization - Standard page-coding and/or link acquisition techniques that express no thought or finesse. You find these techniques on many blogs, in many tutorials. This is the basic stuff that everyone is expected to know or understand. It gets you a little ways down the road and in most queries is usually enough.

Competitive Rating System - A system for categorizing Web sites on the basis of select criteria. For example, a Web site with fewer than 100 backlinks could be assigned a 0, 100 to 1000 backlinks could be assigned a 1, etc. Another example, a Web site that uses targeted keywords in a title, H1, and page URL could be assigned a 1; a site that also uses targeted keywords in outbound link anchors, image ALT=, and boilerplate margin text could be assigned a 2; a site that uses targeted keywords in more than one body copy paragraph could be assigned a 3; etc.

Macro Optimization, Macro SEO - Macro optimization (or Macro search engine optimization) is concerned with improving the results of a segment or “vertical”. Search engineers are more likely to be macro optimizers than Web site promoters. Google Spam Team chief Matt Cutts, for example, practices macro optimization. Industry groups may also help with macro optimization by setting standards or requirements. Most macro optimization, however, is driven by marketers with pre-packaged affiliate programs. Their cookie-cutter affiliate sites consume entire query spaces.

Micro Optimization, Micro SEO - Micro optimization is basically traditional search engine optimization. It’s single site-oriented (or, where social media is concerned, partial-site oriented).

Search Results Page Metric - A metric for evaluating search results pages. For example, you can count the number of outbound links on a page (which might be useful in Universal Search analysis), the number of ads displayed on a page (which might be useful in PPC query analysis), or the number of uncached listings on a page (which might be useful in competitive analysis or algorithm analysis).

Stealth Optimization - Stealth SEO is the art of optimizing search listings “off the radar”. This does not include cloaking, spamming blogs and forums with links, or doing other obvious things. Stealth SEO has been around for years but really hasn’t gotten much attention. Most spammers do NOT practice stealth SEO. Stealth SEO strives to be as unnoticeable, as unobtrusive as possible. Stealth SEO’s primary goal is to keep search results looking as natural as possible without showing up on any of the usual SEO tools.