Adword
A system used by Google to drive its CPC [Cost Per Click] advertising system.
Alt tag
The alternate text associated with a web page graphic that gets displayed when the Internet user hovers the mouse over the graphic. Alt tags should convey what the graphic is for or about and contain good relevant keywords. Alt tags also make web pages more accessible to the disabled. For example, a vision-impaired user may have a web browser that reads aloud the text and alt tags on a page. (For those familiar with html, "alt" isn't actually a tag by itself but an attribute to the "img" tag.).
Automated submitting
Using automated software such as WebPosition Gold or an Application Service Provider (ASP) such as Microsoft b-central's Submit-It service to submit your web pages to the search engines. This tactic is frowned upon by the search engines. Indeed, some search engines such as AltaVista have completely automated submissions by requiring the user to re-key in a one-time use submission code that is displayed on the submission page as a graphic.
Anchor Text
This is the actual text part of a link. Used by search engines as a ranking factor in their hypertextual algorithm.
Agent Name
This is the name of the Crawler/spider that is currently visiting a page. Spider is a robot sent out by search engines to catalogue websites on the internet. When a spider indexes a particular website, this is known as 'being spidered'.
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 Flash) accessible websites tend to have better search engine rankings than inaccessible websites.
announce site to search engines
"Announce" a website to the engines by adding a link to it from another site; that is, one that's already indexed (by the search engines).
Beware! Search engine submission services which promise higher visibility in the SERPS are total a rip-off.
Banned
When a search engine blocks your site domain from appearing in its 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.
Bid management tool
software or an ASP service used to manage bids on pay-per-click search engines such as Overture.
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. In Overture, the top three bids are "featured" on Overture's partners' sites, including AOL, Altavista, Infospace, and others. The minimum bid amount on Overture is 5 cents per clickthrough.
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.
Body copy
the 'meaty' textual content of a web page. Body copy refers to text visible to users, doesn't include graphical content, navigation, or information hidden in the HTML source code.
Bridge page
see "doorway page"
Bulk submission services
an ASP that submits many URLs to the search engines on your behalf. For example: SubmitWolf. Search engines don't like these. (see "automated submitting")
Bot
Short for robot. See "spider"
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. Google is unusual among search engines in that it allows Internet users to view the cached version of web pages in its index. Simply click on the word "Cache" next to the search result of interest and you will be taken to a copy of the page as Googlebot discovered and indexed it.This feature of Google makes it easy to spot cloaking.
Clickthrough rate
the rate at which people click on a link such as a search engine listing or a banner ad. Studies show that clickthrough rates are six times higher for search engine listings than banner ads.
Cloaking
serving different content to search engine spiders than to human visitors. Cloaking is basically a "bait and switch" tactic, where the web server feeds visiting spiders content that is keyword-rich, thus fooling the search engine into placing that page higher in the search results. Yet when the visitor clicks on the link they are given different content, which may be totally unrelated. Search engines frown upon this practice and some will penalize or ban sites that they catch doing it.
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)
Conversion Rate
the rate at which visitors get converted to customers or are moved a step closer to customer acquisition.
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. Other data that may get stored in a cookie include an order number, email address, referring advertiser, etc.
Cost Per Action
the cost incurred or price paid for a specific action, such as signing up for an email newsletter, entering a contest, registering on the site, completing a survey, downloading trial software, printing a coupon, etc.
Cost Per Click
the cost incurred or price paid for a clickthrough to your landing page.
Cost Per Thousand
the cost incurred or price paid for a thousand impressions
Crawler
see "spider"
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, a search box so the user can conduct a search, and a look-and-feel that matches the rest of the site, including navigation of course. Creating a custom 404 error page not only helps keep visitors in your site, it is also an important part of the search engine optimization process. Inevitably pages on your site will get moved and removed over time. When a search engine spider returns to your site to reindex those now non-existent pages, they will have a set of links to explore in the form of the site map on the custom 404 page. You can test for whether a site has a custom 404 error page by trying to access a web page with a nonsense filename after the domain name in the web site address. For example: www.yourcompany.com/sample
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 website
Database-driven
As in "database-driven web site." Means that the website is connected to a database and web page content is based in part on information extracted from those databases.
Database-generated
As in "database-generated web page." Means that a web page is created dynamically 'on-the-fly' from a database, in contrast with a static HTML page.
Deep submitting
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.
Directory
Human editors group websites into categories and provide site descriptions or edit descriptions that are submitted to them. With a directory, picking the right category and composing a description rich in key phrases will ensure maximum visibility. Contrast this with a search engine, which is unedited and concerned primarily with the HTML of a site's constituent pages.
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.
Dynamic
generated 'on-the-fly' from a database. Also see "database-driven."
Download Speed
The number of seconds required to access a file via a particular connection, i.e. dialup, broadband, etc. check your website download speed
Findability
How easily found your site is using search engines.
Flash
a technology developed by MacroMedia Corp. that allows a web designer to embed interactive multimedia into web pages. Often used for Flash intros, games, and animating navigation. If you visit a web page and see letters and numbers flying around with a funky beat in the background, chances are it was done in Flash. Flash requires a plug-in installed in the Internet user's web browser. Search engines can't 'read' content embedded in Flash. As such, this content will be invisible to the search engines and will not get indexed.
Flash intro
an animated 'short' created using Flash that Internet users are made to sit through upon entry to a home page. Flash intros annoy users. They also typically take the place of text content on a home page, and since search engines can't 'read' content embedded in Flash, the rankings of a home page that's just a Flash intro will suffer.
Frames
when separate web pages are combined into one, each potentially with its own scrollbar. You know you're on a framed website when part of the page scrolls while the rest of the page stays in place. Frames frustrate people because much of the time when the person tries to bookmark a specific page, it doesn't actually work but instead bookmarks the "frameset" page which is typically the home page. Search engines don't like frames. A framed web site is at a severe disadvantage compared to non-framed sites in terms of search engine marketing. Most search engines support frames, but only, as Google says in its FAQ section, "to the extent that [we] can." Searchers clicking through to a framed page from search results sometimes end up on an orphaned page.
Google bombing
when a group of sites such as blogs join forces to link to an unflattering page about a company such that this page rises to the top of the search results in Google. Google bombing takes advantage of the power of hyperlink text and of PageRank. For example, if a group of sites with high PageRank all link to a page about XYZ Company's inappropriate behavior with hyperlink text of "XYZ Company sucks" then the linked page can shoot to the top of Google's search results for the term "XYZ Company."
Google cache
see "Cache"
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.
Hits
a download of a file from a web server. Hits do not correlate with web page visits. Every graphic on a web page counts as a hit. Thus, a single access of a web page with 20 unique graphics on it register as 21 hits - 20 for the graphics and 1 for the HTML page. Web metrics guru Jim Sterne says hits "stand for How Idiots Track Success." People who talk in terms of hits are usually either ignorant or are trying to snow their boss into thinking the website is doing better than it really is.
HTML
Stands for HyperText Markup Language. The programming language used to mark up web content and display it in a formatted manner. It's up to the web browser software, e.g. Microsoft Internet Explorer or Netscape, to render HTML source.
HTML Source
The raw, unrendered programming code. It can be accessed in Internet Explorer by going to the "View" menu then selecting "Source".
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. Also see "Google bombing."
Hyperlinks
see "links"
Inbound links
links that point to your site from sites other than your own. Inbound links are an important asset that will improve your site's PageRank.
Index
a search engine's database in which it stores textual content from every web page that its spider visits.
Invisible Web, The
a term that refers to the vast amount of information on the web that is not indexed by the search engines. Coined in 1994 by Dr. Jill Ellsworth.
Java applets
small programs written in the Java programming language that can be embedded into web pages. Applet programs run on the Internet user's computer rather than the web server's computer. Search engines can not run Java applets. Consequently, if navigation or content is embedded in a Java applet, it will be invisible to the search engines and will not get indexed. Java source code gets compiled into executable code called "bytecode."
JavaScripts
JavaScript is client-side scripting language mainly used for validations. JavaScripts run on the Internet user's computer rather than the web server's computer. Search engines can not run JavaScripts. Consequently, if navigation or content is embedded in a JavaScript, it will be invisible to the search engines and will not get indexed. JavaScript programs are not compiled, i.e. the source code and the executable code are one in the same. Thus, an Internet user can view your site's JavaScript source code simply by choosing the "View Source" option in their web browser.
Key phrase (or keyword phrase)
a search phrase made up of keywords. See "keyword."
Keyword
a word that a search engine user might use to find relevant web page(s). If a keyword doesn't appear anywhere in the text of your web page, it's highly unlikely your page will appear in the search results (unless of course you have bid on that keyword in a pay-per-click search engine).
Keyword density
the number of occurrences that a given keyword appears on a web page. The more times that a given word appears on your page (within reason), the more weight that word is assigned by the search engine when that word matches a keyword search done by a search engine user. Keyword Density=Total number of keyword occurences on a page/Total number of words. Most experts agree that 4-8% shoud be the maximum keyword density.
Keyword popularity
the number of occurrences of searches done by Internet users of a given keyword during a period of time. Both WordTracker.com and Overture's Search Term Popularity Tool (http://inventory.overture.com) provide keyword popularity numbers.
Keyword prominence
the location (i.e placement) of a given keyword in the HTML source code of a web page. The higher up in the page a particular word is, the more prominent it is and thus the more weight that word is assigned by the search engine when that word matches a keyword search done by a search engine user. Consequently, it's best to have your first paragraph be chock full of important keywords rather than superfluous marketingspeak. This concept also applies to the location of important keywords within individual HTML tags, such as heading tags, title tags, or hyperlink text. So get in the habit of starting off your title tags with a good keyword rather than "Welcome to."
Keyword-rich
when a given page or bit of text is chock full of good keywords rather than a bunch of meaningless words (e.g. "welcome", "click here") or irrelevant words (e.g. "solution").
Keyword stuffing
Placing excessive amounts of keywords into the page copy and the HTML in such a way that it detracts from the readability and usability of a given page for the purpose of boosting the page's rankings in the search engines. This includes hiding keywords on the page by making the text the same color as the background, hiding keywords in comment tags, overfilling alt tags with long strings of keywords, etc. Keyword stuffing is just another shady way of gaming the search engines and, as such, its use should be strongly discouraged.
Keyword Research
Determining the words and phrases that people use to find something, then compiling them into a list for use on web pages, etc.
Landing page
the web page that a visitor clicks through to from a banner ad or search results listing.
Link building
Requesting links from webmasters of other sites for the purpose of increasing your "link popularity" and/or "PageRank."
Considerations for link building can include directory submissions and press release syndication.
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.
Links
text or graphics that, when clicked on, take the Internet user to another web page location. Links are expressed as URLs.
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.
Meta description
a meta tag hidden in the HTML that describes the page's content. Should be relatively short; around 12 to 20 words is suggested. The meta description provides an opportunity to influence how your Web page is described in the search results. Of the major search engines, Inktomi, AltaVista, Teoma, Lycos, and Alltheweb utilize the meta description tag to varying degrees. Make sure they reflect the page content or you may be accused of spamming.
Meta keywords
a meta tag hidden in the HTML that lists keywords relevant to the page's content. Because search engine spammers have abused this tag so much, nearly all of the major search engines ignore this tag completely. Of the major search engines, only Inktomi still pays any attention to the meta keywords tag.
Meta tags
Meta-information (information about information) that is associated with a web page and placed in the HTML but not displayed on the page for the user to see. There are a range of meta tags, only a few of which are relevant to search engine spiders. Two of the most well-known meta tags are the meta description and meta keywords; unfortunately these are ignored by most major search engines, including Google.
outbound links
links that direct "off-site" to another website
Page title
See "title tag"
PageRank
Google uses a weighted form of link popularity called PageRank™. Not all links are created equal. Google differentiates a link from an important site (such as CNN.com) as being better than a link from Jim-Bob's personal home page. The Google Toolbar (which is a free download from http://toolbar.google.com) has a PageRank meter built into it, to see which web pages are considered important by Google and which aren't. PageRank scoring ranges from 0 to 10, 10 being the best. PageRank scores get exponentially harder to achieve the closer to 10 they are. For example, increasing your own homepage's PageRank from a 2 to 3 is easy with not a lot of additional links, jumping from a 7 to an 8 is very difficult to achieve. The higher the PageRank of the page that's linking to you, the more your site's PageRank will benefit. The better your PageRank, the better you'll do in Google, all else being equal.
Paid inclusion
paying a search engine to have your web pages included in that search engine's index.
Paid placement
paying a search engine to have your listing show up prominently. These listings are usually denoted as "sponsored listings."
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. Overture is an example of a search engine which charges advertisers on a pay-per-click basis.
Pay-for-performance
a pricing model based on delivering sales or something else that can be directly attributed to the bottom line. Contrast this with traditional banner advertising which is based on impressions, a chunk of which come from people you have no desire or ability to do business with.
Pop-under
A pop-up that appears underneath the currently active web browser window. An annoying, if not shady, tactic used by some web advertisers.
Pop-up
A web page that displays within a new, typically smaller, web browser window, rather than the currently active browser window. Search engine spiders don't typically follow pop-up (or pop-under) links. Pop-ups are often times used for promotions, ads, email newsletter invitations, survey invitations, and the like.
Pull-down list
On a web form, where the user chooses from a list of items. For example, if you are asked to identify which country you are from, this will typically be done using a pull-down list. A pull-down list is usually displayed with the first item within a box and a down arrow immediately to the right. Clicking on the down arrow will display the full list to choose from. Search engine spiders can't fill out forms or pull down on lists, so content that is only accessible through pull-down lists will not be indexed and will be part of the "Invisible Web."
Query
A keyword, or phrase inquiry entered into a search engine.
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. For example, if Google's search results (for example on a search for "impact direct ") contained a link to a page on your site and the user clicked on that link to access your page, the referrer's URL might be http://www.google.com/search?q=Impact+direct
Relevance
the likelihood that a given web page will be of interest or useful to a search engine user for a keyword search.
Robot
see "spider"
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.
reciprocal linking
the practice of trading links between websites.
Search engine
a web site that offers its visitors the ability to search the content of numerous web pages on the Internet. Search engines periodically explore all the pages of a website and add the text on those pages into a large database that users can then search. With a search engine, publishing web pages that incorporate relevant key phrases, prominently positioned in particular ways, is critical. Contrast this with directories, which don't siphon content out of the HTML of a site's constituent pages, but instead are comprised solely of site names and descriptions written or edited by human reviewers.
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)
strategies and tactics undertaken to improve web pages so they gain a higher ranking in the search engines.
Search term
a keyword, or phrase used to conduct a search engine query
Search term popularity
see "keyword popularity"
Spamming
as in "spamming the search engines". Spamming is most commonly associated with the act of sending unsolicited commercial email, but in the context of search engine optimization, spamming refers to using disreputable tactics to achieve high search engine rankings. Such spamming tactics include bulk submitting spamglish-containing doorway pages.
Spider
Also known as a bot, robot, or crawler. Spiders are programs used by a search engine to periodically explore your web site, download the HTML content (not including graphics) of your pages, strip out whatever it considers superfluous and redundant out of the HTML, and store the rest in a database (i.e. it's index).
A web crawler (also known as a web spider or ant) is a program which browses the World Wide Web in a methodical, automated manner.
Web crawlers are mainly used to create a copy of all the visited pages for later processing by a search engine, that will index the downloaded pages to provide fast searches. Crawlers can also be used for automating maintenance tasks on a web site, such as checking links or validating HTML code. Also, crawlers can be used to gather specific types of information from Web pages, such as harvesting e-mail addresses (usually for spam).
A web crawler is one type of bot, or software agent. In general, it starts with a list of URLs to visit. As it visits these URLs, it identifies all the hyperlinks in the page and adds them to the list of URLs to visit, recursively browsing the Web according to a set of policies.
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. Consider that your home page is typically considered by search engines as the most important page of your site. If your home page is a content-less splash page, then it's a wasted opportunity.
Static
As in "static web page." Means that the web page was not created dynamically from a database, but instead previously created and saved as a HTML file.
Submitting
submitting a web page address to a search engine in the hopes that it will index it. Submitting your pages using an automated tool (see "automated submitting"), submitting multiple pages of the same web site (see "deep submitting"), or submitting multiple times (see "resubmitting"), particularly if those pages are already indexed, are techniques typically frowned upon by search engines. It is suspected that some search engines apply a penalty factor to pages that were submitted versus those that the search engine spiders found on their own. Indeed, Inktomi was engaging in this practice before they discontinued accepting free submissions altogether.
SERPs
plural for SERP (search engine results pages)
SEM
search engine marketing
search engine algorithm
operational programming rules that determine how a search engine indexes content and displays the results to its users.
Title tag
the text displayed in the blue bar at the very top of the browser window, above "Back," "Forward," "Refresh," "Print," etc. Although inconspicuous to the user, the title tag is the most important bit of text on a web page as far as the search engines are concerned. Search engines not only assign the words in the title tag more weight, they also typically display the title tag in the search results, making the title tag an important potential call-to-action as well. Thus, the wording of each page's title tag should be thought through carefully. Also see "keyword prominence."
Traffic
The amount of users that surf to a site.
URL
used interchangeably with web address. Acronym stands for Uniform Resource Locator. URLs can specify the location of a web page, an email address, or a file on an FTP server, among other things.
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.
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.
Visibility
how well-placed your web site is in the search engines for relevant keyword searches. Also see "Invisible Web."
Visit
see "user session"
Web browser
Software installed on the Internet user's computer that allows him or her to view web pages. Popular web browsers include Microsoft Internet Explorer, Netscape, and Opera.
Web Standards
Web standards sites separate content from presentation using valid xhtml and css.
Because Web Standards sites are coded correctly they tend to do better in search engines.
AKA: Standards compliant
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.
XML
XML stands for Extensible Markup Language (filename.xml) - a scripting language that allows the programmer to define the properties of the document.
Zip
Can refer to a file compression format.
