SEO Glossary: Search Engine Optimization Terms
A
Adwords- It is an advertisement program of Google that is used for keyword Pay per Click (PPC) advertisement system.
Algorithm- It is a mathematical formula or rules used by the search engines for ranking a website.
Alt Text- Alt Text or Alternative Text is a text that appears when you place your mouse on top of any image or picture. This text is placed in the form of a code for an image in an HTML page. The text is a brief representation of the image but not the actual description and is especially useful to people using speaking browsers.
Anchor Text- Any Text or copy written on the Web page that works as a link.
Anchor Tag- An invisible HTML marker or target that allows a link to go to a specific point on a page instead of to the top of the page.
B
Back Link- Also referred as inbound link, it is a link from one website to another. This process is followed in order to get link popularity in search engine optimization.
Black Hat Practice- An unethical or illegal way adopted for optimizing the websites.
Blind Traffic- Low quality traffic generated through blind links i.e. by misleading advertisement, banners or spam that rarely generates any sale.
C
Cloaking-A process of keyword stuffing adopted by webmasters while optimizing a Web page, such trend is considered as spam by search engine but it seems normal to end users.
CPC- Cost per Click, it denotes the cost that is incurred by advertisers as site user click on their ad link
Click Through- A process of clicking on an ad link that leads to an advertisers’ website.
CTR-(Click Through Rate) - The amount associated for each click on paid ad that is to borne by an advertiser.
CSS- (Cascading Style Sheet) - A markup language that is used for an easy presentation or navigation while designing a website.
Copy- Text found on a Web Page.
Conversion Rate- It is the amount of conversion (product purchase, newsletter sign up, request for more information etc.) generated through a relationship between website and its visitors, which is often represented in the form of percentage.
Cross Linking- Number of websites linking to each other.
Cookie- Small information packets placed on your computer by a website.
D
DNS- (Domain Name System) - DNS is a system that translates Internet domain names into IP (Internet Protocol) addresses.
Dead Link- Sometimes due to server failure or non existence of website or page, an Internet link can not lead to a website or a page, such link is termed as Dead Link.
Delisting- The removal of a website from a search engine's index, may be due to unethical optimizing practices or from a bug within the search engine.
Deep Link- Process adopted for site linking in search engine optimization where link is created to some other pages of distant website instead of its home page.
Deep Crawl-Google spider Googlebot visit the Web pages once a month, this process is termed as deep crawl.
Deliverable- Referred to products and it also denotes the expected result of services provided.
Dynamic Site- Database driven website that store information in database and delivers it based on users’ setting. Site can deliver information of users’ choice, use of advanced scripting language like PHP, ASP, Mysql make website easy to navigate and flawless.
Doorway Page- It is a Web page made for search engine spiders in order to get high search engine ranking. Doorway page spam Internet traffic by showing result for particular keyword/phrase but immediately redirect you to a different page or original website.
Directory- Search engine where websites are optimized manually without the use of any automated tools.
DMOZ- Another name for Open Directory Project, the largest human edited directory on the Internet and used by many for search engine optimization.
E
External Link- It is the process of building a link with any third party site for search engine optimization. In fact, internal or inbound link is preferred over external link but building a few relevant external links seems very useful for visitors.
Entry Page- Synonymous term for Doorway Page.
F
Flash Page- An artistic page that gives a branding image to a website. It is also called splash page and designing splash page with flash sometimes cause problem in search engine optimization.
Frames- A format of Web document where multiple, independent sections (frames) are used to make a single Web page. Each frame is built as a separate HTML file but are combined to be identified as a single section.
Filter Words- Common words like a, for, the, are ignored by search engines and are assumed to be irrelevant for consideration while optimizing a website, these terms are called filter word and stop word as well.
G
Gateway Pages- Pages designed exclusively to increase search engine ranking. These pages are also called bridge pages or doorway pages and are used for different purposes like duping search engine spiders to promote Web pages that are not search engine friendly such as use of frames, flash or to target the optimization requirement of specific search engine.
Google Bombing- It is a term coined by Internet users for making an attempt to influence the ranking of a website in result listing page given by the Google.
GoogleBot- Google’s spiders that deep crawl all Web pages once a month.
Google Everflux- An abnormality seen in newly added Web pages where they quickly appear and then instantly disappear from Google page ranking.
H
HTTP- (Hypertext Transfer Protocol)
A network communication protocol for identifying, sending and receiving Web documents like text, graphic image, sound, video and other multimedia files on the World Wide Web.
Hidden Text- A technique used to incorporate more keywords during search engine optimization where both text and background are made same so that text becomes visible to search engine but not to humans.
Hyperlink- Simply referred as link, it is the navigation element that links one subject of the document to other subject of the same or different document.
HTML (HyperText Markup Language)
HTML is a basic software and authoring language used to create documents on the World Wide Web.
Header Tag- It is a tag that defines Title, Description and other Meta information of the Web page.
I
Index- A term used to denote database that stores all the Web information crawled by search engine spiders for each website.
Inbound Link- A Link received from site other than your own. It helps send more visitors to your website.
IP (Internet Protocol)- A packet-based protocol for delivering data across networks. IP with higher level protocol is called Transport Control Protocol (TCP), which establishes a virtual connection between a destination and a source.
IP Address- Internet protocol address is a unique number used by network devices to identify and communicate with each other on a computer network utilizing Internet Protocol standard.
Invisible Web- Web portion that is not indexed by search engines.
Internet Traffic Optimizer (ITO)- A person who optimizes the website not only for search engine but also focus on driving traffic from other sources like blogs, RSS feeds and articles.
J
JavaScript - A scripting language that can be embedded into the HTML of a web page to add functionality. Search engine spiders can not crawl the links prepared by using JavaScript and can cause obstruction for search engine indexing.
K
Key Phrase- Phrase means group of words conveying a meaning, so key phrase is the group of words that hits the website’s theme.
Keyword- It is a word that represents the business theme and used while searching for information on the Internet.
Keyword Density- It is the ratio between the number of keywords or phrases to the total number of words in a page. Keyword density is the major factor considered in search engine optimization.
Keyword Stuffing- It is the process of stuffing of keywords irrelevantly to be crawled easily by search engine spiders during site optimization. Major search engines consider this process as spam and penalize or ban the website
completely from search engine.
Keyword Ranking- Alternate name for search engine ranking.
L
Link Popularity- It is the measure of the number and quality of inbound links. Link popularity is an important factor that decides the search engine ranking of a website in search engine ranking page. Better the link popularity better will be the search engine ranking.
Landing Page- It is a specific Web page shown to site visitors when they click on advertised link. Content of landing page is made unique and is mainly used for search engine optimization or for paid search advertising.
Link Farm- Link farm is the set of web pages that have large amount of unrelated, useless links on their site. It is a practice followed during search engine optimization to increase link popularity and search engine ranking.
Log File- It is a file that maintains and records the activity on a Web server. It contains details like date, time of file accessed, who accessed the file, his/her IP address, HTTP status, bytes sent or received etc. Log file is useful in searching targeted keywords in search engine optimization and in tracking search engine referrals.
M
Metacrawler- A meta search engine that crawls other search engines to provide a summarized and easy to read information to its users.
Meta Search-A process of making further searches for any queries by a search engine to other search engines to provide most compiled and relevant information after sorting out duplicate and inappropriate information to searcher. Metacrawler is a meta search engine.
Mirror Sites- In order to get artificial relevancy of a site in different servers, multiple copies of a website is submitted, these copies of a website is called mirror sites. Search engine considers this act as spamdexing and remove these sites from search engine indexing.
Meta Tag- It is a tag in the HTML that provides information in a Web document and it is often used by search engine to index a Web page. The meta tag is placed at the top of the HTML in a Web page as a heading and it provides information like author, date of creation or latest update for the page, and keywords which indicate the subject matter. Two most important meta tag for search engine indexing are the keywords meta tag and the description meta tag.
N
Natural Listing- Also called Organic listing; it is a free or unpaid way of listing of website in a search engine result page (SERP). It is achieved by following different search engine optimization technique. Paid inclusion is often adopted to acquire natural listing in SERP.
O
On-page Optimization- In order to make site most relevant to search engine, some modification in its keyword density, URL, title, headings, meta tags, hypertext link, body contents is done. This process is called On Page Optimization.
Off Page Optimization- To improve search engine ranking page, reformation of a website can be done by improving its inbound and outbound links. This technique is called Off Page Optimization.
One Way Link- A kind of link where link is received from a website but if reciprocal link is not created with that site, such type of link is called One Way Link. One Way Link is more valued than reciprocal link in search engine optimization.
Open Directory Project- Another name for DMOZ. It is the largest and most comprehensive human edited directory of the Web which is constructed and maintained by global community of volunteer editors.
Outbound Links- Links, which goes out from a website to another website is called outbound links and some believes that outbound links cause page rank leakage.
Overture- It is a Web search advertising company acquired by Yahoo in 2003. GoTo.com changes to Overture.com and today, Overture is known by a new name Yahoo Search Marketing.
P
Paid Search- It is an online marketing strategy that allows advertising the website (product or services) for guaranteed search engine placement by paying amount to search engine. In other sense, it is a way of purchasing traffic from search engine with an agreement of paying for each click on ad link made by the visitors.
PFI- It stands for Pay for Inclusion which is a synonymous phrase of Pay for Placement. This is the methodologies adopted by many search engines except Google that takes money for guaranteed placement of website in a search engine ranking page.
R
Reciprocal Linking- To and fro linking between two websites in order to gain link popularity but it is assumed that reciprocal linking is of less importance in comparison to one way link.
Return on Investment (ROI) - It is the comparison of the money earned or lost on an investment to the amount of money invested. ROI facilitate to understand the benefits and effectiveness of a task performed by the amount you invested for doing that task and search engine marketing focus on ROI.
Ranking- The exact position acquired by a website in different search engines based upon theme based keyword or phrases.
Relevancy- Term that describes how accurate the contents are in terms of keywords or phrases that is used to search information on the Web.
Robot- It is a kind of browser program and just like a search engine spider that accesses Web pages.
Robot Text- This is a small text file that resides in your home page, search engine visits that file before crawling your website. It tells search engine spiders which file or directories they are not allowed to index and help you to prevent indexing of incomplete site as well as prevent exposing of files that you do not want listed.
S
Search Engine (SE) - It is the software and algorithms used to carry out desired searches on the Web. Major search engines favored by the people are Google, Yahoo and MSN.
Search Engine Marketing- Marketing strategy adopted through search engine optimization to gain prominent Web visibility and more traffic on website.
Search Engine Result Page- Web page that shows list of result based upon the keyword that is used for search.
SEO Copywriting- SEO copywriting is to prepare a persuasive content by using relevant keywords for the website that not only tells high about website’s services but also focus on improving search engine ranking.
Spider- It is a software program that automatically discover, download, analyze and index web pages for its associated search engine.
Splash Page- A specific page that appears before the home page. Generally, it is a graphical representation to the site that ultimately leads the visitor to the home page. It is prepared by using Macromedia Flash technology and is often called as Flash Page.
Stop Word- Also termed as filter words, it includes terms like a, for, the, which are ignored by search engine and considers inappropriate for relevancy calculation.
T
Title Tag-HTML tag used to define the text at the top line of Web browser. It is used by search engine as the title of search listings and should be of 60-90 characters.
Traffic- It represents site visitors that determine the conversion rate of a website. More the traffic is more will be the conversion rate.
Theme-
Tracking URL- Usually used in PPC, it is a special internal URL with code that helps in monitoring the number of clicks received by each advertised listing.
U
URL- Uniform resource locator.
Uniform Resource Locator- It is the system that locates the resources on the Internet usually consisting of the access protocol (http), the domain name (www.abcd.com), and Sometimes the path that leads to a file or resources.
W
WebCrawler- Another name for search engine spider that continuously browse the websites in a methodical, automated manner to discover, download, analyze and index web pages for its associated search engine to facilitate site users with instant search result.
White Hat- Phrase related to search engine optimization that favors the ethical way of optimizing the website and believes any manipulation to search engine ranking is unethical or black hat practice of site optimization.
Word Tracker- It is the most popular fee-based keyword and Key phrases analyzer preferably used by well-known search engines.
X
XML- Short form of extensible Markup Language that encodes services and information to meaningful structure and semantics that computers and humans can be easily understand and promises efficient and organized data delivery over the Internet.
XHTML- XML version of HTML.
