SEO Glossary //

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N / O / P / Q / R / S / T / U / V / W / X / Y / Z

A //

above the fold

The section of a webpage that is visible without scrolling. It is considered more valuable because the user views it first, but may be affected by the users' monitor size and resolution, or any toolbars, status bars, or headers placed by online email programs.

affiliate

A marketing partner that promotes your products or services under a payment-on-results agreement.

algorithm

The mathematical equation that search engines use to determine which webpages are displayed in their search results, and how they are ranked in response to a particular query.

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B2B

Business-to-business. An exchange of products and/or services between businesses.

B2C

Business-to-consumer. An exchange of products and/or services between a business and consumer.

backlinks

See inbound links.

backward links

See inbound links.

bridge page

See doorway page.

bot

See spider.

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click-through

The act of clicking on a link to visit an indexed site, usually within a set of search engine results. This is important in the process of receiving visitors to a site; good ranking may be ineffective if users do not click on the link which leads to the indexed site. See also CTR.

cloaking

A spamming method of hiding page content from users or robots. This technique is used both to disguise actual page content from page thieves and to falsely present a more search engine friendly website to visiting spiders. Cloaking is considered an unacceptable practice by all major search engines and can be cause for penalization or ban.

comment tag

HTML tag that is used to hide text from browsers. Some search engines ignore the text between these symbols, but others index as if the tags weren't there.

CPA

Cost-per-action. A method of online advertising where payment is based solely on qualifying actions such as sales or registrations.

CPC

Cost-per-click. See PPC.

CPM

Cost-per-thousand. A method of online advertising where the ads cost money, even if they don't generate a click. See also CPA and PPC.

crawler

See spider.

CTR

Click-through rate. The number of users clicking on a link out of the total number who see the link calculated as a percentage.

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dead link

A link which doesn't lead to a page or site, probably because the server is down or the page has moved or no longer exists. Most search engines have techniques for removing dead links from their listings automatically, but it is becoming increasingly difficult for a search engine to regularly check all the pages in the index.

deep link

The act of linking to a page deep within a website rather than linking to the main URL. Directories discourage the submission of deep links as a way to keep their indexes clean and organized.

de-listing

The removal of pages from a search engine's index.

directory

A server or a collection of servers dedicated to indexing internet webpages organized by topical subject or geographical region and returning lists of pages which match particular queries. Directories, also known as indexes, are normally compiled manually, by user submission, and often involve an editorial selection and/or categorization process. Yahoo! and The Open Directory Project (DMOZ) are two of the most popular directories on the web.

domain

The address of a website. Domains are hierarchical, with lower-levels referring to sub-sections of the base website. They are available with a variety of extensions, the most popular of which are .com, .edu, .gov, and .org. There are also various geographic (e.g. .ca, .ar, .fr, .ro) referring to particular countries.

doorway page

A webpage designed to rank highly on a particular search engine by utilizing methods that are known to produce the best results on that engine. These pages are most often designed to be visible to a search engine spider, but to be hidden from a human visitor. Doorway pages are currently considered a recognized spam tactic and are banned by most of the major engines and directories. Also known as bridge page or gateway page.

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entry page

See doorway page.

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false drop

A webpage retrieved from a search engine or directory that isn't relevant to the query.

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gateway page

See doorway page.

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hidden text

Text on a webpage that is readable to search engine spiders, but not visible to users. This is done to falsely inflate the keyword density of a website without affecting its visual appearance. Hidden text is now detectable as spam by the majority of the major search engines and sites are penalized for using this tactic.

hit

The measure of the number of webpages matching a query returned by a search engine or directory.

HTML

HyperText Markup Language. The main scripting language used to define the content and appearance of a webpage.

HTTP

HyperText Transfer Protocol. The main protocol used to communicate between web servers and web browsers.

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impression

A single view of one page by a single user. It is often used in calculating advertising rates.

inbound links

All the links pointing at a particular webpage. Inbound links are counted to produce a measure of the page popularity. Also referred to as backlinks or backward links.

index

The database of webpages maintained by a search engine or directory. See also search engine and directory.

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junk hit

A visit that yields neither relevant data for the user, nor a good lead for the website owner. See also false drop.

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KEI

Keyword Effectiveness Index. KEI is a mathematical formula that reveals the most effective keyword phrases and terms to use for website optimization.

keyphrase

See keyword phrase.

keyword

A word that is used in a search engine query. Optimizing a site involves researching the keyword or keyword phrases that users enter to find websites, then optimizing a website around those terms. See also keyword phrase, query, and search term.

keyword density

Refers to a webpage that contains relevant content to the topic at hand. It usually refers to the need to repeat keyword phrases within the body copy of a website. Search engine algorithms give higher ranking to a site that contains the keyword phrases that a user is searching for. See also KEI.

keyword domain name

The use of keywords as part of the URL to a website. Ranking is improved on some search engines when keywords are reinforced in the URL.

keyword phrase

A phrase which forms a search engine query. See also keyword, query, and search term.

keyword research

The act of researching what particular words and phrases are used to search for websites, thereby allowing the content of a site to be written in a manner that will help it rank highly on these particular terms.

keyword stuffing

The repetition of keywords and keyword phrases in META tags, hidden text or elsewhere on a webpage.

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landing page

A webpage viewed after clicking on a link within a search engine listing. Also referred to as a bounce page, or click page.

link building

A search engine optimization technique where the number and quality of inbound links from outside sites are increased to improve a webpage's link popularity, thereby boosting a webpage's rank in the search engines.

link farm

A set of webpages that have been built for the sole purpose of increasing the number of incoming links to a website to increase link popularity and search engine rankings. Link farms usually require a reciprocal link from sites seeking listings. Link farms are a known spam tactic and participating sites are likely to be penalized or banned from the major search engines.

link popularity

A measure of the number and quality of inbound links to a particular webpage. Many search engines are increasingly using this number as part of their ranking process; links from sites with high link popularity will have more weight in the search engine's algorithm than links from unpopular or irrelevant sites.

link rot

What happens when links go bad over time, either because a website has shut down or has stopped supporting a unique landing page. Also known as a dead link.

log file

A file maintained on a server in which details of all file accesses are stored. Analyzing log files can be a powerful way to find out about a website's visitors, where they arrive from, and which queries are used to access a site.

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meta tag

An HTML tag placed within a website's header code that is visible only to spiders and not as a visual part of the website. Originally designed to provide information about website content to assist search engines in indexing, but because the tags were so easily abused, few search engines still read their content. See also meta description tag and meta keywords tag.

meta description tag

Allows page authors to state how they would like their pages described when listed by search engines. Not all search engines use the tag in their algorithmic formulas.

meta keywords tag

Allows page authors to add text to a page to help with the search engine ranking process. Not all search engines use the tag in their algorithmic formulas.

mirror sites

Sites that are designed to be duplicates of an original site, but are hosted at a separate domain. Mirror sites are often used in SEO to allow for the use of keyword rich domain names. This is a recognized spam tactic and is penalized by many of the major search engines.

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natural listing

See organic listings.

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organic listings

Listings that search engines do not sell that appear naturally in the SERPs. Instead, sites appear only because a search engine has deemed them editorially important for inclusion regardless of payment. Paid inclusion content is also often considered "organic" even though it is paid for. This is because that content usually appears intermixed with unpaid organic results.

outbound links

Links on a particular webpage leading to other webpages, whether they are within the same website or other websites.

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page view

Used in site statistics as a measure of pages viewed rather than server hits. Many server hits may be made to access a single page, causing many separate log file entries. Analysis software can determine that these server hits were generated when a visitor viewed a single page, and group them together to provide this more useful method of counting visitors. See also hit and unique visitor.

paid inclusion

Advertising program where pages are guaranteed to appear in a search engine's index in exchange for payment, though no guarantee of ranking well is typically given. In contrast, organic listings are not sold. See also paid placement.

paid listings

See paid inclusion.

paid placement

Advertising program where listings are guaranteed to appear in response to particular search terms, with higher ranking typically obtained by paying more than other advertisers. See also paid inclusion.

pay-per-performance

See PPC.

position

See rank.

positioning

See ranking.

PPC

Pay-per-click. A method of paying for advertising where the purchaser agrees to pay a set price for each click-through that result from the advertisement. Also known as pay-per-performance. See also CPC.

PR

Page Rank. The name given to Google's method of measuring link popularity. PR is determined by measuring both the quantity and quality of incoming links to a website and is a major factor in the Google ranking algorithm.

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query

The word(s) a searcher enters into a search engine's search box. See also keyword, keyword phrase and search term.

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rank

In search engine marketing terms, rank is the position of a page within the search engine results page. The higher the rank, the more likely your page will be clicked on by the searcher. Also known as position.

ranking

The process of ordering websites or webpages by a search engine or a directory so that the most relevant sites appear first in the search results for a particular query. Also known as positioning.

reciprocal link

An exchange between two sites that agree to link to each other.

referrer

The URL of the webpage that a visitor has come from. This information is encoded in the server's referrer log file and can be used to determine which search engines or websites are delivering traffic to your website.

registration

See submission.

re-submission

Repeating the search engine registration process one or more times for the same page or site. Under certain circumstances, this is regarded with suspicion by the search engines, as it could indicate that someone is experimenting with spamming techniques.

robot

See spider.

robots.txt

A text file stored in the top level directory of a website to deny access by robots to certain pages or sub-directories of the site. Only robots which comply with the Robots Exclusion Standard will read and obey the commands in this file. The robots will read this file on each visit, so that pages or areas of sites can be made public or private at any time by changing the content of robots.txt before re-submitting to the search engines.

ROI

Return on investment. The percentage of profit or revenue generated from a specific activity.

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S //

search engine

A searchable index of websites that is traditionally compiled by a robot that visits webpages and stores the information from each page in a database. Each search engine uses a proprietary algorithm to create its index so that, ideally, only relevant webpages are returned for each query. The term search engine is also used to describe directories such as Yahoo!.

search term

The word a search engine marketer hopes a particular page will be found for. Also called keyword, keyphrase, or keyword phrase. See also query.

SEM

Search engine marketing. The process of online marketing using search engines to increase the number of visitors to a website. This includes, but is not limited to, improving rank in organic listings through SEO methods, management of paid advertising listings on search engines, or any combination of these and other search engine-related activities. The higher a website ranks in the results of a search, the greater the chance that site will be visited by a user, so where a site ranks in a search is essential for directing more traffic toward the site.

SEMPO

Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization. A non-profit association formed to increase the awareness of and educate people on the value of search engine marketing.

SEO

Search engine optimization. Originally used as a term for any type of search engine marketing activity, it now refers to the process of designing or modifying a website to increase its ranking in the results pages of search engines and directories. It may involve design and layout changes to the content and code of a website including rewriting body copy, altering title and meta tags, removing frames or Flash content, and link building.

SERP

Search engine results page. The list of search results that are returned by a search engine or directory in response to a search query.

spamdexing

See spamming.

spam(ming)

The popular name for unsolicited commercial email or email no longer wanted even if it comes from a mailing list joined voluntarily. However, it also refers to any search engine marketing method that a search engine deems to be detrimental to its efforts to deliver relevant search results. Examples of spam include the use of doorway pages, keyword stuffing, and hidden text. Also known as spamdexing.

spider

An automated browser program that follows links to visit websites but is not directly under human control. Robots then process and index the code and content of a webpage to be stored in the search engine's database. Also known as robot or crawler.

splash page

Similar to a gateway page but provides an initial display which must be viewed before a visitor reaches the main page. This usually acts as a kind of "opening title" sequence, and can be extremely annoying.

spoofing

The alteration or creation of a document with intent to deceive an electronic catalog or filing system. Any technique that increases the potential position of a site at the expense of the quality of the search engine's database. See also spamming.

stop word

A word so commonly used in a query that is often ignored because of its irrelevancy in a search query. They are rarely indexed by search engines. Examples are common net words such as computer and web, and general words like and, get, I, me, the, you.

submission

The process of submitting a URL for inclusion into a search engine or directory. Unless done through paid inclusion, submission generally does not guarantee listing. In addition, submission does not help with rank improvement on crawler-based search engines unless search engine optimization efforts have been taken.

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title

The text contained between the start and end HTML tags of the same name and is displayed at the top of the window by the web browser. Title text is important because it normally forms the link to the page from the search engine listings, and because the search engines pay special attention to the title text when indexing the page.

traffic

The visitors to a webpage or website. Also refers to the number of unique visitors, hits, and page views over a given period.

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unique visitor

A real visitor to a website. Web servers record the IP addresses of each visitor, and this is used to determine the number of actual people who have visited a website. For example, if someone visits 10 pages within a website, the server will count only one unique visitor but 10 page views. See also hit and page view.

URL

Universal Resource Locator. An address which can specify any internet resource uniquely. The beginning of the address indicates the type of resource. Examples include http (webpages), ftp (file transfers), telnet (computer login sessions), or mailto (email addresses).

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virtual domain

A single IP address is shared between multiple domains.

visibility

The position of a web page in search engines or directories. See also rank.

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web copywriting

The writing of body copy text specifically for a webpage. Good web copywriting can have a great effect on search engine positioning, thereby forming a major part of SEM and SEO.

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XML feed

Extensible Markup Language Feed. A form of paid inclusion where a search engine is "fed" information about pages via XML, rather than gathering that information through crawling actual pages. Marketers can pay to have their pages included in a spider-based search engine either annually per URL or on a PPC basis based on an XML document representing each page on the site.

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Y //

Yahoo!

Similar to a search engine, but with a database generated by hand, this is the world's most used directory of websites.

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