SEO Business Solutions Glossary of Search Engine Optimization Terms

Welcome to our SEO Business Solutions Glossary

If you are going to hire an SEO company to do your search engine optimization, you would be well served to
become familiar with the terms listed in this Glossary; knowing the language will help you understand what the
SEO company is or isn't going to do for you. You can always hire SEO Business Solutions to do your SEO. If
there is something that you don't understand or don't feel comfortable with, we would be more than happy to
explain everything to your satisfaction and for your proper understanding.

Glossary Terms
000 to 999

200
Status OK - The file request was successful. For example, a page or image was found and loaded properly in a
browser.

Some poorly developed content management systems return 200 status codes even when a file does not exist.
The proper response for file not found is a 404.

See also: W3C HTTP 1.1 Status Code Definitions

301
Moved Permanently - The file has been moved permanently to a new location. This is the preferred method of
redirecting for most pages or websites. If you are going to move an entire site to a new location you may want to
test moving a file or folder first, and then if that ranks well you may want to proceed with moving the entire site.
Depending on your site authority and crawl frequency it may take anywhere from a few days to a month or so for
the 301 redirect to be picked up.

See also: W3C HTTP 1.1 Status Code Definitions
On Apache servers you can redirect URLs in a .htaccess file or via in the headers of some dynamic pages. Most
web hosts run on Apache.
On IIS servers you can redirect using ASP or ASP.net, or from within the internet manager.

302
Found - The file has been found, but is temporarily located at another URI.
Generally, as it relates to SEO, it is typically best to avoid using 302 redirects. Some search engines struggle with
redirect handling. Due to poor processing of 302 redirects some search engines have allowed competing
businesses to hijack the listings of competitors.

See also:

W3C HTTP 1.1 Status Code Definitions

404
Not Found - The server was unable to locate the URL.
Some content management systems send 404 status codes when documents do exist. Ensure files that exist do
give a 200 status code and requests for files that do not exist give a 404 status code. You may also want to
check with your host to see if you can set up a custom 404 error page which makes it easy for site visitors to

view your most popular and / or most relevant navigational options
report navigational problems within your site
Search engines request a robots.txt file to see what portions of your site they are allowed to crawl. Many
browsers request a favicon.ico file when loading your site. While neither of these files are necessary, creating
them will help keep your log files clean so you can focus on whatever other errors your site might have.

See also:

W3C HTTP 1.1 Status Code Definitions

A

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