All the above terms refer the same thing that is a computer program developed for the sake of the search engines to browse an array of websites and download information if found relevant to the search made. The information that is downloaded is the HTML source code that is stored in a massive database.

Search Engine Optimization is not a difficult task, but just that it involves lot of tedious work and patience to manually make the needed changes in the HTML coding. Moreover, it also involves anxious period of waiting to see the results of optimization.

Primarily one should be having the right tools readily available. These tools include, keywords density analyzers, server header checkers, meta tag analyzers, spider stimulators etc.

The second step involves selection of keywords most appropriate to your website which should have been preceded by an in depth analyses of possible search words that the searchers would be using to look for the information your website might contain.

There is no strict optimization procedure as it varies from one search engine to another and from time to time. The best place to get needed tips on optimization for any for given search engine is to gain access to the SEO forums. Based on the tips, necessary changes have to be made to the directory structure of the website, filenames and to the resources.

It normally takes around 6 to 8 weeks before you can see any effects of optimization. This period is to allow the search engines to update their database. Search engines such as Google use sophisticated technology which allows it to update the database much faster sometimes even less than 24 hours. It takes a stroke of luck to get your website details updated fast.

Virtual/Name based hosting will not be an issue as almost all search engines and their respective spiders can handle multiple. Though virtual hosting has no major disadvantages, having a unique IP address has its own advantages.

It is not an acceptable practice to have hidden text or texts of any nature that can only be viewed by the spiders. It is almost a taboo in the search engine culture. Several sites in the past have been banned from search engines as they contained hidden texts. This is an unethical practice and search engines require no special tool to detect the presence of hidden texts. If you wish to attain any success in improving your page rank, the first point to be remembered is to keep yourself eligible for the search engines to include your site into its database.

Though dynamic pages with straight forward extensions such as .php, .asp, generally do not have any harmful effects on page rankings, dynamic pages using "query strings" in their URL's may have real bad effect on your page rankings. The use of strings such as "param=yes&other=no" will almost block the spiders from crawling your website just to save expensive resources and bandwidth.

Reciprocal link is nothing but a two way sharing of links. For instance if Site A places its link in Site B while Site B provides a link to Site A simultaneously then it is reciprocal link exchange. In this case, both websites Site A and Site B are linked to each other.

Page Rank which has now become a generalized term for the position of a website in any search engine listings, is basically a trademarked term of Google Inc. and it refers to the position or the rank of a website in Google's grading on the importance of a website on the chosen set of keywords search. One of the crucial factors used by search engines to rank the importance of a website is the number of quality inbound links contained in a website, greater the number of quality inbound links, higher the page rank.

Inbound links are nothing but a link from a site outside of your site. The term "inbound link" because these are links coming to a given website from an external sources that serve as leads to a particular site.

It is not possible to calculate the accurate number of inbound links coming into a website. However, one can use Google using the search query "link: www.pagerankdoubler.com" through which it is possible to make a search for inbound links.

Search Engines' ranking psychology has changed dramatically over the past two years. Search engines more than ever, now a days concentrate on inbound links to rank a website. The popularity of the website is judged rather decided based on the number of quality inbound links a website has. One of the tips to be remembered with regard to inbound links is that all the inbound links should use the same target keywords as the link text.

It is not possible to know for sure whether a search engine has banned your site but one of the clues can be that if your site which has been listed suddenly disappears from the listing can mean that your site has been banned for mal practices such as the usage of hidden text, URL cloaking, or that it has been link from the link farm. It has to be remembered that once the site is banned by a search engine there is on way it can be re-indexed in that search engine.

Cloaking is one of the forbidden practices whereby the sites try to cheat the search engines by giving optimized content that are free from frames, java, flash and other media insertions to the spiders while the regular users will view a different content. Then the page or the website is said to be cloaked.

Yes, PageRank certainly affects your website ranks in Google. PageRank is a system by which Google decides how a page should rank. However, it should be noted that PageRank and top placement are not always related to each other at directly proportional ratios. Sometimes if a page with a lower PageRank is optimized well it can be placed at the top while a page with higher PageRank placed low.

Doorway Pages are HTML pages developed to increase the page rank and the traffic of a website. They use optimization techniques that will forward traffic to a website's index. One of the techniques used is that the keyword or key phrase will be repeated often in order to trick the search engines to rank these pages high. The visitor will never get to see the doorway pages but will be directed to the main website.

Unethical SEO refers to the practice of optimization that uses any form of spamming or hidden texts or doorway pages to trick the search engines into better ranking of the website.

It is not generally advisable to use frames as it makes it difficult for the spiders to crawl. However, this can be over come to a certain extent by the appropriate meta tags such as <noframes> tag with a considerable amount of text content there followed by links to other pages of the site.

Using Flash work such as Flash introductions, Flash navigation buttons, Flash interactions in websites reduce page's ranking largely.