Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Glossary

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Glossary

Definitions to the terms used to describe actions and event in the world of Search Engine Marketing. Search Terms
The words or phrases used by people when performing searches in search engines. Also called keywords, query terms or query.

Ad Pimp
A website that has too many ads on it in an obvious attempt to monetize the site.

Ad Rank
Google AdWords multiplies Quality Score (QS) and the maximum CPC (Max CPC) to reach an Ad Rank for each ad.

Added Value Affiliates
Provide a value-added service to visitors in addition to affiliate links and affiliate content.






AdSense Arbitrage
The process of buying traffic with pay-per-click programs, sending traffic to highly optimized Adsense pages and collecting the difference.

AdSense Link Clicking Bots
Automated programs that try to spoof random IP addresses to click through AdWords displayed on a site.

Adwords
Google’s - Cost Per Click (CPC) based advertising system.

Affiliate Sniper
People who save money on purchases by switching your affiliate ID with their own.

Agent Name
An agent name is the name of the software accessing a web page.

Aggregator
Software that lets you automatically download content to your computer

AIDA
Attention, Interest, Desire, Action: A term used to describe a formula to increase conversions.

Algorithm
A mathematical formula used to determine the value of a page when compared against others.

AlltheWeb
Second Tier search engine.

ALT Text
The text that appears when you put your mouse on top of an image or a picture.

AltaVista
Used to be the #1 search engine until Google came along.

Anchor Text
Also known as Link Text, the clickable text of a hyperlink.

AOL
America On-Line - Great for novice users, uses Google as part of it's search results.

API
Application Programming Interface.

ASCII
American Standard Code for Information Interchange

Ask
Trying to be considered as one of the "Top Dogs" along with Yahoo and MSN, following Google.

ASP
Dual meanings: Microsoft Active Server Pages (filename.asp) or Application Service Provider (e.g. a provider of web based applications)

Astroturfing
The practice of faking, pushing or help to mold a “grass roots” movement.

ATF (Above the Fold)
This is the part of the user's screen that is always displayed.

Audioblog
An audio web log in MP3 format and available for download to an MP3 player or a computer.

Authority Site
A site that has many In-Bound links coming to it, and very little outbound links.

Back link
A text link to your website from another website.

Banned
A term that means a site has been removed from a search engine's index.

Banner Blindness
The act of web visitors to ignoring advertisements on the site whether it is a graphic or text ad.

BAP (Blog and Ping)
A method (ab)used to get the search engines to quickly index your blog's content.

Black Hat SEO
A term referring to the practice of “unethical” SEO. These techniques are used to gain an advantage over your competition.

Blind Traffic
This is traffic that is extremely low quality often by low relevance pages.

Blog
A "Web Log" that is updated frequently and is usually the opinion of one person. Also joking stands for Better Listing on Google.

Blogged
Term referring to have bookmarked a blog in your browser.






Blogola
The emerging practice of giving free stuff (from tote bags to travel junkets) to bloggers, in return for a sympathetic review.

Blook
A book that is serialized on a blog site. Chapters are published one by one as blog posts.

Bot
Short for robot. Often used to refer to a search engine spider.

Browser
Software application used to browse the internet - Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer are the 2 most popular browsers.

BTF (Below the Fold)
This is the part of the user's screen that is hidden unless the user scrolls down on the page.

C Class IP
This is the third block of numbers found in an IP Address.

Cache
A copy of web pages stored within a search engine's database.

CAPTCHA
Stands for : Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart

Catablog
A blog that describes products for sale.

Click Arbitrage
Purchasing PPC ads and hoping that traffic leaves with a click on your ads.

Click Distance
The minimum number of clicks it takes a visitor to get from one page to another.

Click Flipping
The process of identifying and maximizing, multiple profit pathways, using PPC traffic and converting that traffic with Cost Per Action offers.

Click Pirates
Peuple who click on ads, knowingly and proudly, stealing from advertisers, as they encourage others to join with them in this quest.

Click Poison
The process of using blatant phrases such as "Cool New Idea" and "Click here for Travel Tips" to get a site buried on sites such as digg and netscape.

Click Through
The process of clicking through an online advertisement to the advertiser's destination.






Clickprint
Derived from the amount of time a user spends on a Web site and the number of pages viewed, a clickprint is a unique online fingerprint that can help a vendor identify return visitors, curb fraud, and collect personal information for "customer service." aka invasive marketing

Cloaking
A technique that shows keyword stuffed apges to a search engine, but a real page to a human user.

Clustering
In search engine search results pages, clustering is limiting each represented website to one or two listings.

Collabulary
A collaborative vocabulary for tagging Web content. Like the folksonomies used on social bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, collabularies are generated by a community. But unlike folksonomies, they're automatically vetted for consistency, extracting the wisdom of the crowds from the cacophony.

Content Networks
A nicer way to say Link Farm.

Content Repurposing
A nicer way to say scraping a site for content.

Contextual Link Inventory (CLI)
Text links that are shown depending on the content that appears around them.

Conversion Optimization
Transforms your site into a selling tool - your site logically leads visitors through the sales cycle and closes sale.

Conversion Rate
The number of visitors to a website that end up performing a specific action that leads to a conversion. This could be a product purchase, newsletter sign up or anything where information is submitted.

Converting Search Phrase
A phrase that converts traffic into money.

Cookie
Information stored on a user's computer by a website.

Copy
Text found on a web page.

Cost per Thousand
The cost for each thousand impressions of your ad.

CPA - (Cost Per Action)
The price paid for each visitor's actions from a paid search.

CPC (Cost Per Click)
The amount it will cost each time a user selects your phrase or keyword.

Crawler
A bot from a search engine that reads the text found on a website in order to determine what the website is about.






Cross Linking
Having multiple websites linking to each other.

CSS (Cascading Style Sheets)
Used to define the look and navigation of a website.

CTR (Click Through Rate)
The value associated to the amount of times a paid ad is viewed.

Cybrarian
A person who finds, collects, and manages information available on the Internet.

Dangling Link
This term is applied to a web page with no links to any other pages. Also known as an Orphan Page.

Dead Link
A hyperlink pointing to a non-existent URL.

Deep Crawl
Once a month, Googlebot will crawl all of the links it has listed in it's database on your site. This is known as the Deep Crawl.

Deep Link
A link on a website that is not reachable from the home page.

Delisting
When a site gets removed from the search index of a search engine.

Deliverable
In a contract, these are the expected results of the services provided.

diggbait
Purposely creating content to get traffic from digg.com

Directory
Usually human edited, a directory contains sites that are sorted by categories.

DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act)
A declaration that protects digital works found online.

DMOZ
Also known as the Open Directory Project.

DNO
Domain Network Optimizers

DNS (Domain Name System)
A protocol that lets computers recognize each other through an IP Address, whereas the human sees a website URL.

Dooced
Fired for negative blogging about the company you work for.

Doorway Page
A web page designed to draw in Internet traffic from search engines, and then direct this traffic to another website.

Dynamic Site
A site that uses a database to store it's content and is delivered based on the variable passed to the page.

EPC (Earnings Per Click)
How much profit is made from each click from a paid ad.

EPV (Earnings Per Visitor)
The cost it takes to make profit from a site's total number of visitors.

Error 404
When a hyperlink is pointing to a location on the web that doesn't exist, it is called a 404 error.

Everflux
A term associated with the constant updating of Google's algorithm between the major updates.

External Link
A link that points to another website.

FAQ (Frequently Asked Question)
Commonly found on websites, FAQs answer questions that many users generally have about a product or service.

FFA (Free For All)
A site where anyone can list their link. Don't waste any time submitting your site to these places.

Filter Words
Words such as is, am, were, was, the, for, do, ETC, that search engines deem irrelevant for indexing purposes. Also known as Stop words.

Flog
A fake blog, a website pretending to be a blog but actually the creation of public relations firms, the mainstream media, or professional political operatives.

Folksonomy
The construction of open-ended organization systems that allow multiple internet users to sort web sites and their elements.

Frankenbuild
Pirated software cobbled together from beta versions and early releases.

Fresh Crawl
Utilizes FreshBot to review already indexed pages and any pages where the content has been updated.






FreshBot
A sister to GoogleBot, this spider crawls highly ranked sites on a very frequent basis.

FTP (File Transfer Protocol)
Technology that allows file transfers from a local machine to a remote host.

Geo Targeting
A very tactful way to employ cloaking.

GFNR
Google First Name Rank.

Google
Currently, the world's #1 search engine.

Google AdWords
Google's PPC program.

Google Bombing
A technique where using the same text anchor links, many people link to a certain page, usually of irrelevant content.

GoogleBot
The spider that performs a deep crawl of your site.

Googlebowling
To nudge a competitor from the serps.

Googlephobia
The fear of Google taking over everything.

Googlewashing
When your content is copied and inserted into someone else's site without permission or credit.

GOOGOL
This is the term that inspired the creators of Google to use this name - it means: 10100 = 1 followed by 100 zeros





Heading Tag
Tag that designates headlines in the text of a site.

Hidden Text
Text that can't be seen normally in a browser.

Hit
A single access request made to the server.

Hoax Marketing
The creation of false stories to drive traffic to a site.

htaccess
.htaccess is an Apache file that allows server configuration instructions.

HTML
HyperText Markup Language - the basics for all web coding.

HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol)
It is a generic, stateless, protocol which can be used for many tasks.

HTTPS (HyperText Transfer Protocol Secure)
It is a generic, stateless, protocol which can be used for many tasks, but has security features enabled to protect sensitive data.

Hub
A site that has many outbound links, and few sites linking back.

IBL (In-Bound Link)
A link residing on another site that points to your site.

ICRA (Internet Content Rating Association)
The Internet Content Rating Association (ICRA) is an international, non-profit organization of internet leaders working to make the internet safer for children, while respecting the rights of content providers.

IM (Instant Messaging)
As the name implies, this protocol allows for extremely fast communication over the Internet

Index
A term used to describe the database that holds all the web pages crawled by the search engine for each website.

Indexing Assistance
An even more advanced form of cloaking.

Information Architecture
The gathering, organizing, and presenting information to serve a purpose.

Informational Query
A query about a topic where the user expects to be provided with information on the topic.

Internal Link
A link that points to another page within the same site. Most commonly used for navigation.






Internet
An interconnected system of networks that connects computers around the world via the TCP/IP protocol.

Internet Traffic Optimizer (ITO)
A broader term for a person who optimizes not only for search engines but to get traffic from other sources such as blogs, RSS feeds and articles.

Interstitials
Loads a commercial in the background of a Web page. When the user exits the page, the user gets served a full-page, between-page advertisement in Flash, an animated gif or other rich media.

Invisible Web
Web Pages that are not reachable by search engines.

IP (Internet Protocol)
This protocol allows for machines to communicate to each other via the Internet.

IP Address (Internet Protocol Address)
how data finds its way back and forth from your computer to the internet.

IP Spoofing
A method of reporting an IP address other than your own when connecting to the internet.

js (JavaScript)
A scripting language that provides browser functionality.

Keyword Density
A ratio of the number of occurrences of a keyword or "keyword phrase" to the total number of words on a page.

Keyword Effectiveness Index (KEI)
The KEI compares the number of searches for a keyword with the number of search results to pinpoint which keywords should be the most effective for your campaign.

Keyword Phrase
A group of words that form a search query.

Keyword Stuffing
Using a keyword or "keyword phrase" excessively in a web page, perhaps in the text content or meta tags.

Klog
The term used when weblogs are used in knowledge management use cases.

KW (Key Words)
Used to define the terms a user might enter into a search engine to find information on their query.

Landing Page
Usually used in conjunction with a PPC campaign, they are call-to-action pages that prompt the user to engage the site.

Link
Also known as a hyperlink, it is the "clickable" area of text or image that allows for navigation on the Internet. Also the name of the main character og the Legend of Zelda video games.

Link Bait (Linkbaiting)
The process of getting users to link to your site.

Link Farm
A site that features links in no particular order which are totally unrelated to each other.

Link Maximization
The method of getting popular sites in your industry to link to your website.

Link Partner
A website who is willing to put a link to your site from their website. Quite often link partners engage in reciprocal linking.

Link Popularity
How many sites link to your website.

Link Text
The clickable part of a hyperlink. Also known as Anchor Text or Anchor Link.

Linkerati
People who are the target of linkbait - bloggers, forum users, social taggers, etc.

Listings
The results that a search engine returns for a particular search term.






Mashups
Commonly thought of as a way of merging two different items, or scraping more than one source.

Meta Description Tag
Hold the description of the content found on the page.

Meta Keywords Tag
Holds the keywords that are found on the page.

Meta Search Engine
A search engine that relies on the meta data found in meta tags to determine relevancy.

Meta Tag Masking
An old trick that uses CGI codes to hide the Meta tags from browsers while allowing search engines to actually see the Meta tags.

Meta Tags
Header tags that provide information about the content of a site.

Metadata
META Tags or what are officially referred to as Metadata Elements, are found within the section of your web pages.

Metajacking
The use of copyrighted names and slogans in META tags.

MFA (Made For AdSense)
A term that describes websites that are created entirely for the purpose of gaming Google Adsense to make money.

MFD
Made For Digg - Similar to MFA (Made for AdSense) sites, these sites try to get traffic from digg by having entire sites full of funny images or postings.

Microchunk
To split up a product or service sold traditionally as a package, offering each piece to buyers a la carte.

MicroFormats
Designed for humans first and machines second, microformats are a set of simple, open data formats built upon existing and widely adopted standards. Instead of throwing away what works today, microformats intend to solve simpler problems first by adapting to current behaviors and usage patterns (e.g. XHTML, blogging). - taken from (http://microformats.org/about/)

Mirror Sites
A mirror site is a site that exacltly duplicates another site.

Mobisode
TV shows shot exclusively for mobile phones.

MoBlog
Short for "My Mobile Blog", a service from Blogger that when you send an email to go@blogger.com from your cellphone, it automatically creates a new blog.

Mociology
The study of how people adapt and use wireless technologies.

Most Wanted Response (MWR)
This is what you want your customer to do on your site.

Mowser
Short for Mobile Browser.

MP3
Stands for “MPEG Third Layer.” A standard for storing and transmitting music in digital format across the Internet.

MSN (MicroSoft Network)
Microsoft's search engine.

Narrowcasting
Creating a program aimed at a small and specific niche or group of people.

Natural Listing
A listing that appears below the sponsored ads, also known as Organic Listings.

Navigational Query
A query that normally has only one satisfactory result.

NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement)
Usually required as part of a contract to protect the company engaging in services.

Necroing
The act of posting to old threads to bring them back up. Also known as "bumping".

Niche
A specialized segment of a market that is usually geared towards one specific purpose.

Niche Aggregators
Another way of saying Spam site.

NOFOLLOW
An attribute used in a hyperlink to instruct search engines not to follow the link. (And pass PageRank)

Off-Page Factors
Factors that alter search engine positions that occur externally from other website's. By having many links from other sites pointing to yours is an example of Off-Page Factors.

On-Page Factors
Factors that determine search engine positions that occur internally within a page of a website. This can include site copy, page titles, and navigational structure of the site.






OOP (Over Optimization Penalty)
A theory that applies if one targets only 1 keyword or phrase, and the search engines view the linking efforts to be spam.

OpenRank (Open Source PageRank)
A suggestion to make a web-wide ranking system as opposed to Google's Pagerank.

Opt-In
When a user willing joins a subscription to a newsletter or some other service.

Organic Listing
The natural results returned by a search engine.

Orphan Page
A page that has a link to it, but has no links to any other sites.

Outbound Link
A link from your site to any other site.

Page View
Anytime a user looks at any page on a website through their browser.

PageMatch
A cost-per-click advertising program that serves your site's ad on a page that contains related content.

PageRank Drain
When a page has no outbound links, it causes pagerank drain because it cannot pass any value to another web page.

Paid Inclusion
A submission service where you pay a fee to a search engine and the search engine guarantees that your website will be included in its index. Paid inclusion programs will also ensure that your website is indexed very fast and crawled on regular basis. It can also be used as a term to include fee based directory submission.

Pay-Per-Click Management
Strategy, Planning and Placement of targeted keywords in the paid search results.

PFI (Pay For Inclusion)
A system in which a site pays to get a guaranteed listing.

PFP (Pay For Performance)
A system in which payment for services is only made when a conversion takes place.

Podcasting
A Podcast is just an audio file that is syndicated via an RSS feed, that is downloaded and listened to with a computer or a portable device such as an iPod.

Podcatching
The process of subscribing to podcasts.

PPC (Pay Per Click)
A technique where placements are determined by how much id bid on a particular keyword or phrase. Can become very expensive.

PR (Google's PageRank)
Google's unique system of how it tries to predict the value of a pages rank.

Pro Blogging
A person who makes a living by blogging.

Query
An inquiry that is entered into a search engine in order to get results.

Rank - Ranking
The actual position of a website on a search engine results page for a certain search term or phrase.

Reciprocal Link
When two sites link to each other.

Redirects
Either server side or scripting language that tells the search engine to go to another URL automatically.

Referral Spam
Sending multiple requests to a website spoofing the header to make it look like real traffic is being sent to another site.

Referrer
A referrer is the URL of the page that the visitor came from when he entered a website.






Relevance Rank (RR)
A system in which the search engine tries to determine the theme of a site that a link is coming from

Relevancy
Term used to describe how close the content of a page is in relation to the keyword phrase used to search.

Results Page
When a user conducts a search, the page that is displayed, is called the results page. Sometimes it may be called SERPs, which stands for "search engine results page."

RFP (Request for Proposal)
Used to send out to multiple companies in order to get a list of services to be delivered and at what cost.

Rich Internet Applications (RIA)
Applications such as Ajax and Flash that provide a better user experience by delivering content in an on-demand web environment.

Robot
Often used to refer to a search engine spider.

ROC (Return on Customer)
The value each customer brings.

ROI (Return on Investment)
The cost it takes to in order to see success on your marketing investment.

RSS Feed (Rich Site Summary or Rich Site Syndication)
RSS feeds use an XML document to publish information.

Scope Creep
When the contracted amount of work to be completed changes because of client changes or technology advances.

SE (Search Engine)
A web based information retrieval program.

Search Engine
Best described as a database of websites users can search using search terms. Every search engine has its own algorithm which defines how the results are displayed.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
The practice of getting a website found on the internet

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
The act of altering code to a website to have optimum relevance to a search engine spider.

Search Friendly Optimization (SFO)
As the term implies, this is the process of making a website search engine friendly.

Search Query
The text entered into the search box on a search engine.

SEOlebirty
Famous people in the world of search.

SERP (Search Engine Results Page)
The results that are displayed after making a query into a search box.

SFO
Search Friendly Optimization.

Sitemap (Site Map)
A page that lists all of the critical navigation points of a website.

Slurp
The name of Yahoo's Search Engine Spider.

Smishing
Phishing via text message. Smishers bombard cell phones with SMS versions of standard phishing solicitations, directing victims to Web sites that install spyware on their computers.

Snippet
The text displayed from a search query.

Social Media Poisoning
A technique where unscrupulous marketers will try to sabotage a competitor's web site by engaging in social media communications and link seeding/spamming tactics that they hope will spark a rash of bad publicity, and maybe even trigger some sort of rankings and/or reputational search penalty against their competitor.

SPAM
Unwanted email or irrelevant content delivered. (or as some say, Site Placed Above Mine)

Spam Cannon
A term used in conjunction with sites that use email sign-ups for spamming purposes - the latimes.com is an example.

Spamming
The act of delivering unwanted messages to the masses.

Spamouflage
The method or result of concealing or disguising search engine spam to make it appear to be legitimate.






Spider
The software that crawls your site to try and determine the content it finds.

Spiderbaiting
A technique that makes a search engine spider find your site.

Splash Page
A page displayed for viewing before reaching the main page.

Stemming
The main part of a word to which affixes are added.

Stickiness
How influential your site is in keeping a visitor on your page.

Stop Word
A stop word is a "common word" which is ignored in a query because the word makes no contribution to the relevancy of the query.

Stop Word
Stop words are very common words such as ‘a, the, and & that’ and are filtered out of your search query. Search engines do this in order to try to serve the best results for a user query.

Strategic Linking
A thought out approach to getting websites to link to your site.

Submission
The process of submitting URL(s) to search engines or directories.

SWOT
A methodic way of identifying your Strengths and Weaknesses, and of examining the Opportunities and Threats you face.

Syntax
The proper use of language when coding a website.

Tag Soup
Tag soup is HTML code written without regard for the rules of HTML structure and semantics.

The Deep Web
The content in databases that rarely shows up in Web searches. It is estimated that there are 500 billion Web pages that could potentially be hidden.

Theme
What the site's main topic is about.

Thin Affiliates
Doorways that send visitors to affiliate programs, earning a commission for doing so, while providing little or no value-added content or service to the user.

Title Tag
It should be used to describe the web page using targeted keywords using no more that 60 characters, including spaces.

TLD (Top Level Domain)
Most commonly thought of as a ".com", also includes ".org" and ".edu"

TOM (Tactical Online Marketing)
The process of informing the customer of your services from various sources.

TOS (Terms of Service)
Usually found in a contract, also known as the contracts "deliverables".

Tracking URL
Usually used in PPC campaigns, it is a URL that has special code added to it so that results can be monitored.

Traffic
The number of visitors a website receives over a given period. Usually reported on a monthly basis.

Transactional Query
A query where the user expects to conduct a transaction.

Trusted Feed
A form of paid inclusion which uses bulk a XML feed to directly send website content to search engines for indexing. The feed can be optimized so that your website can take advantage better rankings and therefore more traffic

TrustRank
A method of using a combination of limited human site review in conjunction with a search engines algorithm.

Typosquatting
Relies on typographical errors by users to serve up websites that look like Google to launch viruses and trojans to unsuspecting users.

Unique Visitor
When a user visits a website, his/her IP address is logged so if he/she returns later on that day, the visit won’t be counted as a unique visit but as a page impression.

Universal Search
Launched on May 16, 2007, this is Google's attempt to deliver the best result from the web. This can include video, images, news, podcasts or any other form of digital content.

URL (Uniform Resource Locator)
Commonly referred to as the domain name, this is how humans navigate through the Internet, whereas computers use IP addresses.

User Agent
A User agent name is the name of the software accessing a web page. (Another term for Agent Name)

USP (Unique Selling Proposition)
Sometimes mistakenly defined as Unique Selling Point. The Unique Selling Proposition concept was first developed by Rosser Reeves of the Ted Bates Agency. Basically, it's what sets you apart from your competition.

VEO
Visitor Enhanced Optimization






VoIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol)
VoIP converts the voice signal from your telephone into a digital signal that travels over the internet then converts it back at the other end so you can speak to anyone with a regular phone number.

Web Saturation
How many pages of your site are indexed by the search engines collectively.

Webneck
Slang term for a person who spends most of their time on the internet, most of their friends are netpals, and they are uncomfortable if they can't get online.

White Hat SEO
A term that refers to ethical practice of SEO methodologies that adhere to search engine Terms of Service.

White Paper
A White Paper is your statement about how a problem should be solved.

Whois Data
Registration data such as the company name, address and telephone number when registering a domain name.

Whore Trains
A list of people on MySpace that you add yourself to and keep reposting the list so that you can get a lot of people requesting to be your friends.

Wi-Fi (certification mark)
Used to certify the interoperability of wireless computer networking devices.

WikiSoldiers
Users who enjoy the process of building and defending wikipedia.

Wilf
What was I looking for?

WWW (World Wide Web)
Another term to describe the Internet.

XML (Extensible Markup Language (filename.xml))
A scripting language that allows the programmer to define the properties of the document.

Yahoo!
The #2 Search Engine in the world.

Zeitgeist (Google Zeitgesit)
A service provided that shows snippets of the emerging and declining trends of what people are searching for through the Google search engine.