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H K M S T

Hashtags

Hashtags are keywords that are preceded by a pound symbol, allowing posts on supported platforms to be tagged.  They became popular on Twitter as a way of grouping together a large number of (publicly viewable) posts from authors with no other connection.

It allows for mass numbers of quick responses to a topic.  For instance, when there’s an earthquake in Los Angeles, dozens of posts will show up within second under #earthquake.

Some missteps have been made with hashtags, such as TV shows including live hashtagged tweets on TV without proper filtering, leading to a rush of offensive digital graffiti.

Twitter users converting to Facebook started using hashtags on their posts, despite the Facebook platform not supporting the hashtag system.  This lead to annoyed and amused Facebook users posting mocking and ironic hashtags.  The tables were turned when Facebook decided to support hashtags, retroactively enabling the ironic tags in old posts.

Keywords

Keywords are the words and phrases that define a piece of content posted online.  They’re used frequently within the content, and are often the words and phrases for which the writer wants the content to rank highly on in search engines.

Several years ago, having the right keywords in the meta description (meta tags) of a website would alert the search engines of the importance of those keywords in your content.  Later, simply repeating those keywords within the content of the site would show their importance.  These days, after the Google Penguin updates, it’s harder to control which specific keywords a page ranks for, though keywords are still relevant.

Finding the right set of keywords to try to rank for will make the best use of the time and energy put into designing a site.  If a keyword has a high search volume on the search engines, but there aren’t many sites writing about it, then there are a lot of potential visitors available if you create the right piece of content to fill that niche.

Keywords also come into play in hashtags on supported platforms.

Meta Tags

Meta tags are keywords that are set within the HTML code of a website, which help explain what the site is about.  They were of great importance ~10 years ago, but over time got to be abused by sketchy programmers and are no longer of any particular importance.

While some argue that you should put in meta tags even though search engines ignore them, it may be for the best to leave them out so that you don’t give competitors an easy way of seeing exactly which keywords you’re trying to rank for.

Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of refining a website so that it gets as many useful visits from search engines as possible.  It can involve adding or restructuring content, changing the way it’s displayed, focusing on different keywords, or improving the code that runs behind the scenes.

The goals of SEO can be to rank highly when specific keywords are searched, to rank highly across a great number of long-tail keywords, to rank higher for keywords that are more specific to a niche, or to change the appearance of the site on search engines to make it more appealing.

While in the strictest definition SEO refers to on-site changes, most people think of it as an umbrella that includes link building and social media presence.

Tag

A keyword that’s been associated with a piece of content (post, article, site, video, etc.) which makes it easier to index and categorize.