De-mystifying website jargon

Search Engines - Just to point out that the main players are of cause Google, and Yahoo/Microsoft's 'BING' in that order, with the other's way behind. So with Google currently at 65-80% market share is obviously the front runner, so as far as SEO (See below) is concerned you work with both in mind but Google is the main one.

SEO - Search Engine optimisation is the ability to produce a good clean honest site that not only pleases the human reader but is also within the rules of the Search Engines as well, they have very sophisticated software in them nowadays, or algorithms as they call them and recognize if it is useful and informative to the user and the more relevant the better they like you, therefore, the closer you are to the top spot. They actually look at the content and determine the 'theme' and basically judge if it does what it says on the tin!

The other element that increases this ranking process is they look for how many inbound links are going to your site, the more relevant and informative they are the better the chance of improving your sites position. If they think your cheating you can be banned and relegate you to outer stratosphere of the Internet Web world.....Scary!

For a more detailed explanation on SEO according to Widipedia.

SERP's - Search Engine Results Pages are the organic (and free) listings that you get whenever you make a search on any search engine. The trick of cause is to get somewhere near the top of the heap. For a more information on this very subject I've written an article about it.

Internet Provider(IP) - These are the Companies who rent out space, at a (should be) reasonable cost, on their Servers on to which you upload your website which is then distributed on the World Wide Web network. Theoretically you can even, if your so inclined, and with the relevant software run it from a PC (preferably a dedicated one) which then acts as a server.

Key Phrases or Words - When anybody enters a query string into the box on any Search Engine and if your site has been indexed by that search engine, meaning it has stored it in their database (cashed). If then the SEO (see above) has been done properly and you've applied all their rules. They can then establish the theme along with keywords or phrases that relate to that query which helps them to ascertain whether your site is relevant to the Searcher's question, therefore the higher up the 'relevancy ladder' as you can call it (or SERP's see above) you will be. (If you understand that I'm impressed!!)

On Page Optimisation - This is everything to do with SEO locally on that page and nothing outside of it.

OVP - Or Online Video Provider. These are companies that provide on-demand online video platform offering businesses top-to-bottom video solutions including content ingestion of any format, encoding to multiple formats, storage, content management, monetization, analytics, and playback in customized video players that match and perpetuate your brand via viral features such as email, embed code, permalinks, and posting to your favourite social site.

Off Page Optimisation - This is everything to do with SEO outside of the web page like inbound links from other relevant sites which then help boost your ranking with the Search Engines.

Sitemaps - A Sitemap is a special file that helps the Search Engine crawlers (the software that Search Engines use to find the billions of websites that are now on the internet) find your site and gives them additional information on all the pages that you have included in the file, on your site. Without it the Search Engines might index one or two pages but not the whole site. Or you can instruct a page that is updated a lot to be indexed more frequently.

Robots File - A Robots file is a file that the Search Engines look at and tells them of any pages or files, on your site that you might not want to be included in their index. You can exclude the whole site if you want to. You can also instruct them to exclude certain Search Engines. Generally, however, you tell them there are no restrictions.