Demistifying Internet Buzzwords

Mike Diamond

Wednesday February 10, 2010

I'd like to take a minute for our readers and help take some of the mystery out of some buzz words that get used a lot in the web development industry. As you look into getting your website created you may come across terms like RSS, SEO, and CMS and wonder what they mean. It's pretty common throughout the web community to use acronyms for everything possible. Personally, I think this comes from the current trend in society of wanting to get a lot of information faster and in a more concise format, but there could be many reasons for it.

It's important to not only have an understanding of how your website works, but the terminology that surrounds the industry. Now, I'm not asking you to become an Internet guru, or the creator of the next Google. What I am asking is for you to put just a few minutes into increasing your knowledge base of what makes the world wide web go around in the 21st century.

I've tried to keep the list somewhat general, so if this is review for some of you, I apologize. For those of you who are not already familiar, take some time and read through the list, maybe even research on other sites. I would never say that my opinion is the end all be all, opinions can vary pretty widely on the web.

RSS - Really Simple Syndication

News, Updates, and even weekly restaurant specials come out on RSS feeds. These feeds are news postings published by a website that other people can subscribe to. In this way, they can stay up to date on what is going on, even if they don't go back to the main site everyday. Think of it as the teasers you see on TV for the nightly news. It gives a few lines of information and can allow people to follow a link to the site to read the full article. RSS feeds have become widely popular in today's marketplace, and are especially seeing growth in the mobile web arena. This stems mostly from the speed at which they are available. Instead of going to the actual site, which the user might not have the time for, people have the ability to open one application and get all the news for the day or hour, depending on how often the site updates it.

One of the most obvious advantages of an RSS feed is the ability to stay in contact with your visitors and customers. The more contact you have with your visitors the easier it is to market your product and service to them . RSS feeds are easy to sign up for, and most sites use a relatively common symbol for them. Other websites can also monitor your RSS feed and post updates when you add content. For example; when this blog was posted here on the MomentumWorkshop site, our Facebook group and Twitter account posted up dates to all our followers and fans.

SEO - Search Engine Optimization

This is probably the most commonly used buzzword in the web market today. Nothing in the world wide web comes close to the almighty SEO, which stands for Search Engine Optimization. People have written books and become millionaires by producing new marketing and SEO ideas. The base idea behind optimization is the ability to increase your overall rank on certain internet search engines, Google being the top target. People pay SEO firms thousand of dollars per year to keep them on the very top of these results, and in return they see the most potential for traffic on the sites they are putting up.

But before you go running off to spend a large amount of your yearly marketing budget on Search Engine Optimization, there's a second edge to this Internet sword. Google and other large search engines like Yahoo!, keep a fairly close eye on websites that try to game the system and push their rankings higher than they actually should be. It can be done in various ways, from spamming links everywhere to hiding background colored key words so they can't be seen on the website, but search engines still pick them up. The problem with this is two fold; first and foremost, engines like Google want to produce the most accurate results for the people searching the web. When sites game the system, the programs that search engines use to create their ranking systems flag those sites and drop their ranking considerably. Once you've been down ranked it's very hard to regain a good standing.

Secondly, firms can charge a hefty price for aggressive SEO packages . Once this price is paid to the firm, they do their work and some won't care if you get down ranked six to twelve months later. Now you're out a considerable amount of money and the major search engines have caught you trying to cheat their carefully created system. In the end, you need to be careful about what types of SEO marketing are done for your site, and ask questions about how it will be done. This will ensure that your money is well spent and your site doesn't end up near the bottom of search engine results.

CMS - Content Managment System

A new form of interactivity gaining popularity in today's web world is the use of a Content Management System (or CMS). Inherently people like being able to control their environment, and the things that they see and hear. In one of my previous posts, Websites Are Like Houses, I talked about crafting your website to show people what you want them to see, much like you arrange the furniture in your house. A CMS gives you the ability to move that furniture around without calling your Web developer to make the changes for you (or charge you for the time it takes). It gives the buyer the ability to modify and change the text and pictures displayed on each page of their site, giving them control of when updates happen. Let's say a restaurant decides to change the menu for lunch or dinner, a dentist wants to show off the remodeling of his new office, or the college football team wants to show this year's varsity roster. All of these are examples of changes that can be done to the website by the user.

It goes without saying that this can save you a lot of money in the long run. The interaction with the content that is on your site gives you the ability to add your own creative touch to your site. The only limitations of a CMS enhanced website are the design parameters of the site itself. Of course there will be things that you can't change; the base design of the site usually isn't available for modification, which is why choosing the right design for the site -even when using CMS- is critical.

Each CMS engine, no matter who creates it, has a type of login for you to access the areas of the site that are changeable. Many of them have “MS Word” type text editors and interactive image gallery features that make changing your website content a snap. The real question when picking a CMS engine is how often it is updated. Technology is always advancing, and when it does new features and plug-ins become available for certain CMS engines. Find out the cost of these upgrades, or if they are included with the purchase of the CMS.

The world of web design is filled with buzzwords, and without question there are many more. I could probably blog everyday about a new one, and fill an entire year up without exhausting them all. The more you know about the terminology out there, the more comfortable you'll be with searching out the right web firm. You'll understand more about what you're looking for and be less likely to get taken advantage of by firms that try to dazzle you with geek speak.