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Absolute Link An absolute link is a hyperlink that includes the complete URL, which is the domain name, folder or subdirectory name and file name. |
| Accessibility The practice of making websites usable by disabled people - especially blind people. Because search engines are essentially blind (ie they can't see pictures or use Ffash) accessible websites tend to have better search engine rankings than inaccessible websites. |
| Adword A system used by Google to drive its CPC [Cost Per Click] advertising system. |
| Agent Name This is the name of the browser/spider that is currently visiting a page. |
| Algorithm Mathematical formula used to rank web sites. |
| Alt Text Short form for Alternative Text, it is an < img > property that is used as a placeholder when the image is loading [and for usability purposes]. In the case of image links, it seems to have weight akin to anchor text. |
| Altavista One of the most popular search engines in the earlier development of the internet. Now barely used, and owned by Yahoo! |
| Anchor Text This is the actual text part of a link. It can be used heavily by search engines as a ranking factor. |
| API Abbreviation for Application Program Interface. An API is a set of routines, protocols and tools for building software applications; it determines how a service is invoked through the application. |
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Back Link A link from one website to another. |
| Banned When a search engine blocks your site domain from appearing in its search results. |
| Bidding placing a bid price that you are willing to pay as an advertiser on a pay-per-click search engine. The highest bid for a given keyword achieves the top spot in the PPC search results. |
| Blacklist lists that either search engines or vigilante users compile of search engine spammers, which may be used to ban those spammers from search engines or to boycott them. |
| Blind Traffic Low quality traffic that is usually generated by mis-leading advertising, spam, and traffic from any market segment. |
| Blog Also known as a "weblog". An online diary with entries made on a regular if not daily basis. Some blogs are maintained by an anonymous author who uses a nickname or handle instead of his or her real name. |
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Cache Copies of web pages stored locally on an Internet user's hard drive or within a search engine's database. A cache is the reason why web pages load so quickly when a user hits the Back button in their web browser, since the page is not being redownloaded off of the Internet. |
| Click Through A click on a link that leads to another website. |
| Click Tracking Using scripts to track clicks into and out from a website. Also can be used to shield a link from being picked up as a back link to another site. |
| Cloaking Also known as stealth, a technique used by some Web sites to deliver one page to a search engine for indexing while serving an entirely different page to everyone else. There are opposing views as to whether or not cloaking is ethical. |
| Content Generally refers to the visible text on your Web page, links leaving your Web page, the text in relation to those links, etc. |
| Conversion the act of converting a web site visitor into a customer or at least taking that visitor a step closer to customer acquisition (such as convincing them to sign up for your e-mail newsletter) |
| Cookie information placed on a visitor's computer by a web server. While the web site is being accessed, data in the visitor's cookie file can be stored or retrieved. Mostly cookies are used as unique identifiers (i.e. user IDs or session IDs) to isolate a visitor's movements from others' during that visit and subsequent visits. |
| Cost Per Click the cost incurred or price paid for a clickthrough to your landing page. |
| Counter a simple program(usually written on Java Script pr PHP) which tracks the total number of webpage impressions |
| CSS Cascading Style Sheet - used to control the design of webs |
| Custom error page You can customize the content and the look-and-feel of the default page that is displayed on your web server when a 404 File Not Found error occurs. A good 404 error page has a friendly message explaining that the page they requested doesn't exist at the location, a site map to encourage the user to continue exploring the site. |
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Deep Link Submission submitting URLs of pages deep in your site to the search engines. For example, if a webmaster of 200-page website submits each of those 200 pages. This tactic is frowned upon by some search engines because it unnecessarily clogs up their submission database when the search engine spider could find those pages on its own by exploring links starting at the home page. |
| Directories Directories are indexes of Web sites, organized by subject. They are usually compiled manually and rely on submissions from Web site owners to build their indexes. They dont utilize spiders to index Web sites. They often involve an editorial review by a human editor who will visit your Web site after you submit to the directory. The editor is the one who decides whether your Web site gets in their index. Usually you only submit your main URL to the directory since directories look at your Web site as a whole, rather than individual Web pages. |
| DMOZ Abbreviation for Extensible Hypertext Markup Language. A reformulation of HTML, a hybrid of XML and HTML. Web pages designed in XHTML should look the same across all platforms. XHTML is the standard markup language for Web pages and the successor to HTML 4. A mixture of classic HTML and cutting edge XML, this hybrid language looks and works much like HTML but is based on XML, the webs super markup language, and brings web pages many of XMLs benefits. |
| Doorway page Also known as a "bridge page". Any page created for the sole purpose of driving website traffic from the search engines and not a functional part of the website. |
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Fresh The term that Google uses to refer to frequently changing home pages. When Googlebot ascertains that a given home page is changing frequently, Googlebot will revisit and reindex this page daily. |
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Googlebot a Googlebot is a search bot used by Google. It collects documents from the web to build a searchable index for the Google search engine. If a webmaster wishes to restrict the information on their site available to a Googlebot, or other well-behaved spider, they can do so by with the appropriate directives in a robots.txt file. |
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Hallway page a page that serves as an index to a group of pages that you would like the search engine spiders to find. Once a search engine spider indexes the hallway page, it should also follow all the links on that hallway page and in turn index those pages as well. A site map acts as a hallway page. |
| Heading tag An HTML tag that is often used to denote a page or section heading on a web page. Search engines pay special attention to text that is marked with a heading tag, as such text is set off from the rest of the page content as being more important. |
| Hidden keywords keywords that are placed in the HTML source in such a way that these words are not viewable by human visitors looking at the rendered web page. The keywords will not be seen in the website. |
| HTML Hypertext Markup Language - the main language used to write Web pages |
| Hypertext underlined text that points to another web page. Google pays particular attention to the text used in a hyperlink and associates the keywords contained in the hyperlink text to the page being linked to. |
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Inbound links An inbound link is an HTML link to a particular Web page from elsewhere, bringing traffic to that Web page. Inbound links are counted to produce a measure of the Web page or Web site popularity. |
| Index Index is a directory. Index also refers to the database of Web pages maintained by a search engine or directory. |
| Internet The Internet is actually a network of networks. It is a system of linked computer networks, international in scope, that facilitates data transfer and communication services, such as Telnet or remote login, FTP (file transfer protocol), email, newsgroups, and the World Wide Web. |
| IP address A numeric address that is given to servers and users connected to the Internet. For servers, it is translated into a domain name. |
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Keyword A keyword is a search word that people use when they are looking for a service or product on the Internet. It is thru keywords that people find your Web site. |
| Keyword Density Generally the number of times a keyword appears on Web page in relation to the other words on your Web page. If the keyword density is too high some search engines will penalize you for spamming. |
| Keyword Meta Tag The keyword meta tag allows the author to emphasize the importance of certain words and phrases used within a Web page. Some search engines will pay attention to this information, others will ignore it. |
| Keyword Phrase A keyword phrase is a phrase which forms part of a search engine query. Keyword phrases are usually a combination of two, three, four, etc. keywords. |
| Keyword Relevancy Keywords used in your Meta tags must be relevant to the content or theme of your Web page, or overall theme of your Web site. |
| Keyword Spamdexing, spamming, stuffing Repetition of a keyword over and over again in text or meta tags. Most search engines frown on this and will penalize your Web page, drop in from their index or ban your domain. |
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Landing page the web page that a visitor clicks through to from a banner ad or search results listing. |
| Link A word, phrase, or image highlighted in a HTML document to act as a navigation aid to related information. Links may be indicated with an underline, a color contrast, or a border. |
| Link building Requesting links from webmasters of other sites for the purpose of increasing your "link popularity" and/or "PageRank." |
| Link popularity When other web sites link to your site, your site will rank better in certain search engines. The more web pages that link to you, the better your link popularity. [ |
| Log file All accesses to a web site can be logged by the web server. Data that is usually logged includes date and time, filename accessed, user's IP address, referring web page, user's browser software and version, and cookie data. |
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Manual Submission Submitting by hand to an individual search engine, rather than using an automated submission tool or service. Manual submitting is the more polite way to submit, and as such is less likely to land you in trouble with the search engines. But the best approach is not to submit at all and let the search engine spiders find your site through links from other sites to your site. |
| Meta Tags Meta tags are non displayed text written in HTML intended to describe your Web page for the purpose of cataloging the content of your Web page. |
| Mirror Site A Web site that is a replica of an already existing site, used to reduce network traffic (hits on a server) or improve the availability of the original site. Mirror sites are useful when the original site generates too much traffic for a single server to support. |
| Mod_rewrite It's a module in apache servers that can be used to rewrite requested URLs on the fly It supports an unlimited number of rules and an unlimited number of attached rule conditions for each rule to provide a really flexible and powerful URL manipulation mechanism. Which can be used to offer both user and search engine friendly URLs, thus increasing indexing chances for a dynamic database driven website like this. |
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Optimization Optimization is the process of making your Web site or Web page search engine friendly. Changes made to a Web page to improve the positioning of that page with one or more search engines. |
| outbound links Links that direct users from the current page to another website (off site) |
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PageRank PageRank is a numeric value that represents how important a page is on the web. Google figures that when one page links to another page, it is effectively casting a vote for the other page. The more votes that are cast for a page, the more important the page must be. Also, the importance of the page that is casting the vote determines how important the vote itself is. Google calculates a page's importance from the votes cast for it. Importance of each vote is taken into account when a page's PageRank is calculated. PageRank is Google's way of deciding a page's importance. It matters because it is one of the factors that determines a page's ranking in the search results. It isn't the only factor that Google uses to rank pages, but it is an important one. PageRank scoring ranges from 0 to 10, 10 being the best. |
| Paid inclusion paying a search engine, directory or a website to have your web pages included in that search engine's index, listings or webpages. |
| Pay-per-click (PPC) a pay-for-performance pricing model where advertising (such as banners or paid search engine listings) is priced based on number of clickthroughs rather than impressions or other criteria. |
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Query A question or request posed by a searcher using a word or phrase to find information, a particular file, record or web site in a database or search engine. |
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Rank The numerical spot a particular web page or web site is listed in the search engine results for a certain keyword or phrase. For example, 3rd out of 100. Rank is also referred to as position. |
| Reciprocal Links the practice of trading links between websites. |
| Redirect where the Internet user is automatically taken to another web page address without him/her clicking on anything. Redirects are generally not good for search engine rankings, as they dilute PageRank. There is also the risk that the search engine spider will not follow your redirect. [ |
| Redirect where the Internet user is automatically taken to another web page address without him/her clicking on anything. Redirects are generally not good for search engine rankings, as they dilute PageRank. There is also the risk that the search engine spider will not follow your redirect. |
| Referrer a web page, containing a link to your web page, that delivered your visitor to your web page. |
| Relative Link A relative link is a hyperlink that does not include an entire domain name, folder or subdirectory name and file name together in the URL. A link that is defined by its relative position to the current URL. For example: glossary.html |
| Robots.txt Text file placed in a websites root directory and linked in the html code. Allows for SEO's to control the actions of search engine spiders on the site or even deny them access. |
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Search engine On the Internet the phrase usually refers to the large databases of Web sites that are automatically generated. These Internet search engines use a software robot or spider that seeks out and indexes Web sites. Some search engines include other Internet resources in addition to Web sites. Such as Google. |
| Search engine marketing (SEM) strategies and tactics undertaken to increase the amount and quality of leads generated by the search engines. |
| Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Acronym for search engine optimization, refers to a person or company that does search engine optimization. |
| Search Terms Words a searcher enters into a search engine's search box. Also referred to as keywords or query. |
| SERP Short for search engine results page, the Web page that a search engine returns with the results of its search. The major search engines typically display three kinds of listings on their SERPs. Listings that have been indexed by the search engine's spider, listings that have been indexed into the search engine's directory by a human, and listings that are paid to be listed by the search engine. |
| Spamming or Spamdexing The submission of Web pages that are intended to rank artificially high by various unethical techniques. These can include submitting hundreds of slightly different Web pages designed to rank high, small invisible text, or word scrambled pages. Most of these techniques are flagged by search engines as spam. |
| Spiders Also referred to as crawlers. A spider is the main program used by search engines to retrieve Web pages to include in their database. A spider is a type of robot that roams the Internet, visiting Web sites and databases, and keeps the search engine databases of Web pages up to date. They obtain new Web pages, update known Web pages, and delete obsolete ones. Their findings are then integrated into the home database. Most large search engines operate several robots all the time. Google, FAST Search, Inktomi, Teoma and AltaVista are spider based search engines. |
| Splash page a home page for the most part devoid of content. Splash pages usually say something to the effect of "Enter Here" or "Choose our Flash-enabled site or the HTML version". Splash pages are an annoyance to Internet users as they introduce an extra hoop that the user has to jump through before they get to any meaningful content. Splash pages are also damaging to search engine rankings. |
| Stop Words A stop word is a word that is so common on the Internet that search engines ignore them. Some stop words are homepage, home page, www, Web, Web page, the, of, that, is and, to, etc. |
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Title A title is what the search engine displays when they list your Web page in the results of a keyword search. It is also what appears in the browser bar. The text placed between the |
| Traffic The visitors to a Web page or Web site. Also refers to the number of visitors, hits, accesses etc. over a given period. |
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Unique visitors a count of individual users who have accessed your web site. It should be noted that the "user session" metric does not yield an accurate unique visitor count, as multiple user sessions can be generated by one unique visitor. |
| URL Uniform Resource Locator. The unique address of any Web site. The basis of how we find Web sites on the Internet. It is the address of an individual Web page on the Internet. Every Web page on a Web site on the Internet has a URL. |
| User session an instance of an Internet user accessing your web site for a length of time, then leaving. During a user session any number of pages may be accessed. A user session is considered finished once an arbitrarily chosen period of inactivity - typically 30 minutes - is exceeded. |
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Validation Validation means the CSS, HTML or XHTML of your Web page is error free and that you have tested your HTML or XHTML and CSS to make certain that it contains only W3C-approved tags and properly authored Cascading Style Sheets. It's the process of Kosherizing your XHTML and CSS. A validator is a computer program that checks the HTML of a Web page to ensure that the syntax of the HTML is correct. |
| Visibility how well-placed your web site is in the search engines for relevant keyword searches. Also see "Invisible Web." |
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web analytics A methodology to analyze data for your site's activity measuring its performance and visitor behavior. Marketers and site owners can track trends from these metrics and modify their site to improve both its visibility and usability. |
| Web browser Software installed on the Internet user's computer that allows him or her to view web pages. |
| Web Copywriting The writing of text especially for a Web page. Similar to the writing of copy for any other type of publication, good Web copywriting can have a great effect on search engine positioning, so it forms a major part of optimization |
| Web Standards The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) guidelines or recommendations on how a Web page should be markedup with HTML, XHTML and CSS and how browsers should display that markup. |
| What is URL ? Short form for Universal Resource Locator. This is a unique address that identifies a website. |
| World Wide Web (www) World Wide Web, aka WWW, The Web, as it is more commonly called, can be described as a collection of graphical pages, such as HTML pages, images, sounds, animations, and video on the Internet that can be read and interacted with by computer. |
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XHTML Abbreviation for Extensible Hypertext Markup Language. A reformulation of HTML, a hybrid of XML and HTML. Web pages designed in XHTML should look the same across all platforms. XHTML is the standard markup language for Web pages and the successor to HTML 4. A mixture of classic HTML and cutting edge XML, this hybrid language looks and works much like HTML but is based on XML, the webs super markup language, and brings web pages many of XMLs benefits. |
| XML XML stands for Extensible Markup Language (filename.xml) - a scripting language that allows the programmer to define the properties of the document. |