Absolute link – See Relative Link
AdWords – See Sponsored Links.
Ajax – JavaScript and XML based technique which allows a web page to request additional data from a server without requiring a new page to load. Generally not search engine friendly, as the engines cannot index the content without performing the actions required.
Algorithm – A complex mathematical formula used by search engines to assess the relevance and importance of websites and rank them accordingly in their search results. These algorithms are kept tightly under wraps as they are the key to the objectivity of search engines (i.e. the algorithm ensures relevant results, and relevant results bring more users, which in turn brings more advertising revenue).
ALT tag – Image tag used to describe an image to search engines and various types of browsers such as those for disabled users. Value in rankings is minimal, but can be beneficial if the tag pertains well to the page’s content.
Altavista – The top search engine in 1998 and 1999, bought out by Yahoo, who later sold it to Compaq – which made it into a portal page and alienated their users.
Anchor text – Text contained within a web link. Search engines often use the anchor text as an idea for what the destination page provides. Can also be related to “Google Bombing”
Ask – Formerly known as Ask Jeeves, owned by IAC, it is one of the main four search engines in the English language, but at this point the least used of the four.
Authority Site – Site that has been running with a good amount of information on a particular topic, generally for over a few years also. Factors that build authority include site age, link strength, unique content and history.
Backlink – A text link to your website from another website. See also link.
Baidu – Top search engine in China, which Google struggles to compete with in their market.
Bing – The new name for the MSN search engines, which Microsoft launched in 2009.
Bold Tags – Shown in coding as <b>Content</b> this determines the bold text on a page. It can help visibility to a minimum extent, and is recommended over the <strong>tag (a common variant).</strong>
Bookmarking – The ability to bookmark and share content from a site. This can also help increase a page’s link strength, as engines also follow these links into social media sites such as Del.icio.us and Stumble Upon.
Breadcrumb Trails – Navigational technique used to help search engines and website users understand the relationship between pages.
Broken Link – A link that does not reach its location, potentially due to a URL error in the coding, or the page being taken down. This often is seen by engines as a hindrance.
Cache – Copy of a page stored by the search engine itself.
Cloaking – Method of displaying different content to search engines than to users. Can get a site blacklisted from search engine results if misused, usually done by sites maliciously trying to show search engines a “more optimised” version of their content.
CMS – Content Management System
Comment tags – Source code tags used within development teams, not used by search engines to rank
Copy – The words (actual content) used on your website.
Copywriter – A professional writer who specializes in the writing of advertising copy (compelling, engaging words promoting a particular product or service). See also SEO copywriter and web copywriter.
Crawl (also known as spidering) – Search engines such as Google find pages on the World Wide Web and records their details in its index by sending out ’spiders’ or ‘robots’. These spiders make their way from page to page and site to site by following text links. To a spider, a text link is like a door.
CSS – Cascading Style Sheets, used to streamline a sites coding. More info at http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/
Deep linking – a link from another site that goes towards your site, but not to the homepage. For example, if someone linked to an article on your site instead of just linking to your homepage. These links can be more valuable as they strengthen up within your site, instead of just boosting the homepage which is usually already the strongest page.
Directory – a listing of websites manually compiled. Some of the more established ones include Yahoo Directory and Best of the Web.
DNS – Domain name server (helps identify where you are based / hosted)
Domain name – The virtual address of your website (such as www.reformdigital.com). This is what people will type when they want to visit your site. It is also what you will use as the address in any text links back to your site.
Doorway pages (also known as Gateway pages) – Pages designed solely for search optimisation that are not part of the internal user journey. Also known as entry pages, and often penalised by search engines.
Duplicate Content – Repetition of content, also frowned upon by engines, which may end up listing neither version
Dynamic Content – Database driven content that build pages from a sites template and database
Flash – A technology used to create animated web pages (and page elements). Search engines usually cannot see any content that may be within the file, nor are they able to follow any links on them.
Frames – an old design technique used to display multiple pages at once to users. However, search engines can only see one page and cannot connect to the other frames. A variation of this is the iFrame (internal frame).
Google – Top search engine in most markets, and globally. Have been the number one search engine since 2001, and have not looked back. They also provide results for several other engines such as AOL too.
Google Bombing (also known as link bombing, as it works in Yahoo too) – A practice where groups of people find keyterms with low query totals (not heavily competitive) and make links that have that term in the anchor text (link text) of various sites. One old example was when the term “failure” if queried in Google used to bring up George W. Bush’s webpage, though Google has recently made these pranks tougher to pull off.
Google PageRank (also known as Page Strength) – Nothing to do with the actual ranking, but more so about a scale on which Google scores a website’s strength. It gives all sites a mark out of 10. Higher marks give a site a potential advantage for ranking, as Google deems it a stronger site. However, a high mark doesn’t mean the site is optimised. It just means that there is a good amount of content and links towards the site, and if done right, it could do quite well. For example, BBC.co.uk is a 9.
Header Tags – The heading element briefly describes the subject of the section it introduces.
Heading elements go from H1 to H5 with the lower numbered headings being most important (generally just the first three). You should only use an H1 tag once on each page, and may want to use multiple other heading elements to structure a document. An H1 element source would look like:
<h1>Name of page</h1>
Heading elements may be pre-determined using CSS sheets also.
htaccess – Commonly used file to determine redirects such as non-www to www, and pages within.
HTML – HTML (HyperText Markup Language) is the coding language used to create much of the information on the World Wide Web. Web browsers read the HTML code and display the page that code describes.
Inbound link (one way) – A link towards your website that does not require your site to link back to them, recommended for building link strength with. An internal link is similar, but within the site – such as across from one section to another.
JavaScript – A programming language used to create dynamic website pages (e.g. interactivity). Dynamic pages such as these cannot often be seen by search engines as usually a user has to enter data or perform particular actions in order to make the destination page appear. Search engine spiders will never enter data (fill out forms, etc).
Keyword – A word which your customers search for and which you use frequently on your site in order to be relevant to those searches. This use known as targeting a keyword. Most websites actually target ‘keyword phrases’ because single keywords are too generic, gets a very low rate of click throughs, and for smaller sites, can be very difficult to rank highly for them.
Keyword density – A measure of the frequency of your keyword in relation to the total wordcount of the page. So if your page has 200 words, and your keyword phrase appears 10 times, its density is 5%.
Keyword phrase (also known as “keyterm”) – A phrase which your users /customers search for and which you use frequently on your site in order to be relevant to those searches.
Keyword Research – Procedure of determining which keyword get queried more by users.
Link – A word or image on a web page which the reader can click to visit another page. There are normally visual cues to indicate to the reader that the word or image is a link.
Link baiting – A way of creating information that other sites want to link up to yours for, thus generating link strength. One example is to create a new offering, or a widget for users to share.
Link building – Process of getting more sites to link to yours, which can be done in several ways. This then makes engines deem your site to be more relevant and related to the pages it is linked from.
Link farm – A site built simply to list lots of links within, yet providing no relevant content.
Link path – Using text links to connect a series of page (i.e. page 1 connects to page 2, page 2 connects to page 3, page 3 connects to page 4, and so on). Search engine ’spiders’ and ‘robots’ use text links to jump from page to page as they gather information about it, so it’s a good idea to allow them traverse your entire site via text links. One example is mentioning pages that are similar to the page a user is on at the bottom of the page so that they can navigate towards them.
Link popularity – The number of links to your website. Link popularity is a key factor in a high search engine ranking. Web sites use a number of methods to increase their site’s link popularity including providing useful resources, articles, link exchanging with other sites (reciprocal linking), link buying, and link directories. However, the value of the site linking to you is important. A link from a major news site for instance is better than 10 links from sites that are not of any use to anyone.
Link text – (also see Anchor text) The part of a text link that is visible to the reader. When generating links to your own site, they are most effective (in terms of ranking) if they include your keyword.
LSI – Latent Semantic Indexing – a commonly cited way that search engines can base your content on
terms that are similar (but not actually on the page content). For example, a page about “car insurance” may help the site rank for “motor insurance”.
Meta tags – A short note within the header of the HTML of your web page which describes some aspect of that page. These meta tags are read by the search engines and used to help assess the relevance of a site to a particular search. Common ones include:
Meta Descriptions – how search engines list your site in engines. Generally not an influence in ranking on most engines, it still gets shown as text to support a listing in natural search and does influence click through rate and relevance.
Meta Keywords – not a factor in Google currently, but other engines use it to relate content to groups of keyterms with this
Meta Refresh – Signals how often a page should be indexed (not recommended)
Meta Robots – a Page by page method of telling search robots to index or follow content. Example – tells all robots to not index or follow the page (the latter forces it to not pass on link strength also). This rule however does get overwritten if the root folder has a list that contradicts it.
Natural search results (also known as organic search results) – Results provided by search engine algorithms, which are not paid for by the website – these represent the majority of search engine traffic, and are a representation of how the site is branded online.
Organic Search – Another name for “natural search”
Page Rank (Google) – A term used to designate the strength a page has, and not the actual ranking of a page. Deemed on a scale of 0-10, it takes several factors from Google’s algorithm to determine.
Paid Links for Natural Search (or Text link advertising) – Process of buying link text in other sites, and often deemed unethical by all search engines.
PPC (Pay-Per-Click advertising) – or PFP (pay for performance advertising) – See Sponsored Links.
Quality link – A link to your site, that holds good value (e.g: from a reputable source). All algorithms will favour 10 quality links over 100 of a lesser value for example.
Ranking – Your position in the search results that display when someone searches for a particular word at a search engine.
Redirect Codes – Can influence how engines rank your pages, for instance, a 301 tells the spiders to permanently update that link to the new one, while a 302 is deemed temporary, and hence wont get the page updated.
Main types of Redirects:
301 – Moved Permanently – The file has been moved permanently to a new location. The preferred method of redirecting for most pages or websites.
302 – Moved Temporarily – The file has been found, but is temporarily located at another URL, ideally not used in any optimised site.
Reciprocal link – A mutual agreement between two webmasters to exchange links (i.e. they both add a link to the other’s website on their own website). Most search engines (certainly Google) are sophisticated enough to detect reciprocal linking and they don’t view it very favorably because it is clearly a manufactured method of generating links. Websites with an abundance of reciprocal links risk being penalized.
Relative Link – A link which shows the relation of the current URL to the URL of the page being linked at. Due to several issues it is typically preferred to use absolute links over relative links in the source code.
Example of a relative link <a href=”../folder/filename.html”>tv shows</a>
Example of a absolute link <a href=”http://www.nameofsite.com/folder/filename.html”>name of file</a>
Robot – See spider.
Robots.txt file – A file which is used to inform the search engine spider which pages on a site should (or should not) be indexed. This file sits in your site’s root directory on the web server. (Alternatively, you can do a similar thing by placing tags in the header section of your HTML for search engine robots/spiders to read.
Root Page – Generally the homepage, a term used to name the main page of a particular website.
RSS Feed – A file which is often used to make a news section, or latest offers section available to users. Users can plug the file into their RSS reader or browser (will be available on the upcoming Windows / Internet Explorer release and already available on all other browsers) and see the latest pages the second it goes live. This also helps get deeper links within a website, as many directories and aggregates pick up RSS feed content too.
SERP – short for Search Engine Ranking Position
Sandbox – Many SEO experts believe that Google ’sandboxes’ new websites. Whenever it detects a new website, it withholds its rightful ranking for a period while it determines whether your site is a genuine, credible, long term site. It does this to discourage the creation of fly-by night SPAM websites (sites which serve no useful purpose other than to boost the ranking of some other site). Likewise, if Google detects a sudden increase (i.e. many hundreds or thousands) in the number of links back to your site, it may sandbox them for a period (or in fact penalize you by lowering your ranking or blacklisting your site altogether). From our experience some sites get indexed right away while some do take longer, but usually a few links built will help kickstart it.
Second tier engine – A search engine that merely filters results from other engines. For example, Tiscali uses Google results.
SEO – Search Engine Optimization. – The art of making your website relevant and important so that it ranks high in the search results for a particular word.
SEO copywriter – A ‘copywriter’ who is not only proficient at web copy, but also experienced in writing copy which is optimized for search engines (and will therefore help you achieve a better search engine ranking for your website).
Search engine – A search engine is an online tool which allows you to search for websites which contain a particular word or phrase. The four major search engines are Google, Yahoo, Ask and MSN. There are a few lesser known engines with their own algorithm also, such as Gigablast.
Site map – static version is a single page which contains a list of text links to every page in the site (and every page contains a text link back to the site map). It helps both users and search engine spiders find a centre point in a website to follow links from. The XML version consists of a feed like page that lists URL’s.
Social Media – Website which allows user generated content, such as social bookmarking sites.
SPAM – Generally refers to unwanted and unrequested email sent en-masse to private email addresses. Also used to refer to websites which appear high in search results without having any useful content. The creators of these sites set them up simply to cash in on their high ranking by selling advertising space, links to other sites, or by linking to other sites of their own and thereby increasing the ranking of those sites. The search engines are becoming increasingly sophisticated, and already have very efficient ways to detect SPAM websites and penalize them.
Spider – Search engines find pages on the World Wide Web and records their details in its index by sending out ’spiders’ or ‘robots’. These spiders make their way from page to page and site to site by following text links. Common ones can include, Googlebot, Slurp (Yahoo’s bot)
Splash pages – Pages designed for advertising, and generally not search engine or user friendly.
Sponsored Links – Paid advertising which displays next to the natural search results, sometimes on the right hand side of the page, sometimes on the very top and bottom within a shaded colour area, and sometimes both.
Customers can click on the ad to visit the advertiser’s website. This is how the search engines make their money. Advertisers set their ads up to display whenever someone searches for a word which is related to their product or service. These ads look similar to the natural search results, but are normally labeled “Sponsored Links.” These ads work on a Pay-Per-Click (PPC) basis (i.e. the advertiser only pays when someone clicks on their ad).
Static content – Non-dynamic and non-changing text content.
Text link – A word on a web page which the reader can click to visit another page. Text links are normally blue and underlined. Text links are what ’spiders’ or ‘robots’ use to jump from page to page and website to website. A common mistake is to use “click here” on a text link, which only optimises the term “click here.”
For example – instead of saying “Download the latest seo report – click here” – it would say “Download the latest seo report”
Text Link Ads (Also known as Link Buying) – Advertisements which are formatted as text links and can have an impact on natural search visibility.
Title tag – One of the most valuable aspects of SEO on a page. Each title must be unique to that page and contain some keywords related to the page’s content. Title tags should not exceed 80 characters.
URL – Uniform Resource Locator. The address of a particular page published on the Internet.
URL rewrite – a script to make URL’s more search friendly. For instance changing www.nameofsite.com/folder/123421sdasda23.html to www.nameofsite.com/folder/name.html
Common types of rewrites includes Apache mod rewrites (http://httpd.apache.org/docs/1.3/mod/mod_rewrite.html) and ISAPI rewrites (http://www.isapirewrite.com/)
Webmaster – A person responsible for the management of a particular website.
Wordcount – The number of words on a particular web page. Search engines favour a good amount of content on a webpage, but not too much. As may be the case with this page!
XHTML – “Extensible HyperText Markup Language” is a class of specifications designed to move HTML to conform to XML formatting. More details at http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/
XML – “Extensible Markup Language” is a simple, very flexible text format used to make it easy to syndicate or format information using technologies such as RSS feeds. More details at http://www.w3.org/XML/
Yahoo – The oldest of the major search engines, it still tops the market share in Japan and a few other countries, while staying in 2nd place behind Google in most others. While Google has the lead in search, Yahoo does have an advantage in other services such as email and shopping, where Google’s versions fall short.
PPC Glossary
Account – The main location of your PPC activity
Adgroup – The third level or organisation, multiple adgroups can sit within a PPC campaign
Average Position – The average position that your ad is showing up in on a Search Results page
Campaign – The second level of organisation, multiple campaigns can sit within a PPC account
Content Network – An option that some Search Engines offer where your ad is shown next to relevant articles on a network of websites
CPC – Stands for cost per click, the amount you have paid for each particular click on one of your ads
CPA – Stands for Cost per Acquisition, the amount that each Acquisition (whether this be a sale, lead, enquiry, etc) has cost you
CTR – Stands for Click Through Rate and expressed as a percentage to show those who have clicked on your ad after seeing it
Day Parting – Setting your ads to only show during certain hours of the day or on certain days
Destination URL – The URL of the page that you wish to land customers to
Dynamic Keyword Insertion – An option provided by some Search Engines that allows a users search
Geotargeting – Targeting your activity to a specific geographical area
Impression – An impression is simply any time that your ad is displayed on the screen
Keyword – You bid on keywords in Paid Search to tell the Search Engine which search queries you want your ad to show against
Match Type – Refers to the options you give to a Search Engine for showing your ad on a certain keyword that you are bidding on.
Broad Match – Where the Search Engine will show your ad on search queries similar to the keyword you are bidding on, (e.g. your ad being shown on pears when you are bidding on apples)
Phrase Match – Where the Search Engine will show your ad when your keyword is part of a longer phrase (e.g. your ad showing on “red apples” when you are bidding on “apples”)
Exact Match – Where the Search Engine will show your ad only when your keyword exactly matches the search query.
Negative Match – Where you specify what ads you do not want your adgroup showing; can be allocated at adgroup, campaign or account level dependant on the Search Engine
Maximum Bid -The maximum amount that you are willing to pay for a click in the PPC auction
Quality Score – The scoring system used by Google to judge the relevance of your ad for the keywords that you are advertising against. A high Quality Score can mean a lower CPC. Google doesn’t reveal the exact formula that is used to calculate QS but it accounts for factors such as historic Click Through Rate, the relevance of the landing page, and how relevant the ad creative is.