In this week’s edition of the Mediavine SEO series, we’re asking you to stop what you’re doing for a few moments and consider a few hundred words about stop words. Terribly unfunny intros aside, what does that even mean?

In this week’s installment of Mediavine’s SEO series, we’re taking our ongoing discussion of keywords to a whole new level. We began at the start, with the basics of what is a keyword — a more complicated question than many people might think.

When it comes to SEO, keywords are everything. Fundamentally, keywords are what you think they are: The search terms, or key words, that you’re targeting — the lifeblood of web traffic.

In the previous edition of Mediavine’s SEO series, we discussed the importance of external links, or links you send out to other websites. On the other side of the SEO coin, and perhaps even more fundamental to your longterm website health, are inbound links or backlinks. The terminology can be confusing.

In today’s edition of the Mediavine SEO series, we’re going to delve into the role of the external link. What is an external link? It’s exactly what you think it is — an outbound link from your web page that points to a third-party site, or a different domain or sub-domain than your site.

Welcome to another installment of the Mediavine SEO series, in which we break down the best practices for optimizing content as you build your website. SEO or search engine optimization, involves a little technical know-how, smart keyword usage, well-formatted content and making the best use of links. Links are mentioned more than anything else in the SEO starter guide, and are literally the foundation upon which search engine rankings are built.