Glossary
Address (Web Address/Universal Resource Locator/URL)
This is a unique address that identifies a website, eg. yourwebsite.com
AdSense
AdSense is an advertising program run by Google. Website owners can enroll in this program to enable text and image advertisements. Every time a visitor clicks on these ads, the website owner earns money.
AdWords
The name of Google’s Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising program. See PPC for more details.
Algorithm
A mathematical formula used by search engines to rank websites. Google became famous because of the quality of its algorithm – this enabled Google to provide highly relevant search results. A search algorithm is any search engine’s most valuable asset.
Alt text
Abbreviation for Alternative Text, in HTML terminology. It’s an “img” property that is used as a placeholder when the image is loading.
AltaVista
One of the most popular search engines of yesteryear. Now barely used, and owned by Yahoo.
Anchor text
This is the actual text part of a link. It is used heavily by search engines as a ranking factor. Instead of using the words “Click here for more” as a link, it’s better to use relevant keywords in the link text, eg. “Additional customer comments”.
Back link (or inbound link)
The links to your website from other websites. This is a crucial part of getting better search engine results. Google figures if other high-quality sites link to your site, then your site is more important compared to another site which doesn’t have as many high-quality links.
Bid
The price that you are willing to pay as an advertiser on a pay-per-click search engine for displaying your ads. Generally, the highest bid for a given keyword achieves the top spot in the PPC search results.
Bid management tool
Software used to manage bids on pay-per-click search engines.
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 directed to a website generated by misleading web promotion campaigns.
Blog
Also known as a “weblog”. An online diary with entries made on a regular if not daily basis.
Body copy
The main section of web pages having textual content. Body copy refers to text visible to users. It doesn’t include graphical content, navigation, or information hidden in the HTML source code.
Bulk submission services
A web marketing company that submits many website addresses/URLs to the search engines on your behalf.
Click through
A click on a link that redirects the user to another website.
Click tracking
Scripts (a program written in a programming language) to track users coming into and going out from a website.
Cloaking
A method of delivery that changes which page is displayed depending on the user requests. This process is used by unscrupulous webmasters to deliver highly optimised pages to search engines while end users see a different page. Such practice is considered spam by most search engines and if caught can result in being banned from the search engine.
Comment tag
HTML terminology. An HTML tag that is invisible to end-users, but can be picked up by search engines. Comment tag was used earlier for getting better search engine results, but this tag has no use now as almost all search engines ignore comment tags.
Content management system (CMS)
A CMS is a computer software system for organising and facilitating collaborative creation of documents and other content. A content management system is sometimes a web application used for managing websites and web content. Joomla, Drupal and PHP Nuke are examples of popular CMS.
Counter
Program that tracks the number of impressions to a webpage.
CPA (Cost Per Action)
The amount paid by the advertiser when a certain action is performed by a user.
CPC (Cost Per Click)
The amount paid by the advertiser when a link is clicked on.
CPM (Cost per Thousand)
Amount paid for every 1000 views of an advertisement. (M is Roman for 1000.)
Crawl
This is the process by which a search engine indexes web pages in its database. Please refer to spider for more information.
Crawler (also robot, or spider)
A robot sent out by search engines to catalogue websites on the internet.
Cross linking
Multiple sites linking to each other.
CSS (Cascading Style Sheets)
These are used in web design to allow for quick changes to a website’s look and feel. For example, you can change the colour or font size of every page by changing your style sheet, without having to make the changes to each page.
CTA (Content targeted advertising)
This refers to the placement of relevant PPC ads on content pages. For example, by subscribing to Google’s Adsense program, Google may place your hotel advert on other travel-related websites. You pay a cost for every time a user clicks on your advert, and a small commission goes to that originating website.
CTR (Click Through Rate)
The ratio that represents clicks per impressions in a PPC campaign. For example, if a site gets 1000 impressions and 50 users click the ad, then the CTR is 5%. CTR is mainly used to find out the effectiveness of a PPC campaign.
De-listing
This means that your website has been removed from a search engine’s index. There may be several possible reasons for this, including extended downtime and techniques perceived by search engines as spam.
Dead link
A link to a page that does not exist, probably because the page no longer exists or has moved, or the server is down. A dead link leads to a “404 error” page.
Description
HTML terminology. This is descriptive text that concisely explains the purpose of a page. A meta tag exists for this, and is used by some search engines for displaying the page in SERPs.
Directory
A website that categorises other websites. Such sites are usually manually compiled, depending on user submissions.
DMOZ
Also known as Open Directory Project. This is a very large directory run by volunteers. This database is used by many search engines. We recommend you consider listing your business in DMOZ.
Doorway page
An optimised page submitted to search engines in order to rank high for very specific keywords. A doorway page generally has little or no text except for the optimised text and adds little value to the visitor of the website. With the rise of link popularity as an integral part in ranking algorithms, this technique has become redundant. Such practice is considered spam by most search engines.
Dynamic page (or Content)
This is a webpage that changes its content depending on database information or user settings. A scripting language such as PHP or ASP is usually used to bring about such a result. Search engines are now advanced enough to index such pages.
FFA (Free For All)
“Free for All” link-exchange sites. Usually denotes a page where a link can be added by anyone. Should be avoided at all costs as search engines consider FFA sites as spam.
Filter word
Or “Stop Word”. Common words that are ignored by search engines because they do not add to relevancy. Words such as “the”, “it”, “a” and “for” are considered stop words and ignored by many search engines.
Flash page
While being similar to a doorway page, the purpose of a flash page is more artistic – it’s a grand entryway to a website. The use of a flash page is not good for effective search engine optimisation.
Frames
This is an HTML technique that allows a webmaster to display two or more separate web pages within a single browser screen. Sites using frames are quite problematic for search engines to crawl and may not be indexed properly. Search engines often will only index pages linked within the “NOFRAMES” tag.
Gateway page
An optimised page submitted to search engines in order to rank highly for very specific keywords. With the rise of link popularity as an integral part in ranking algorithms, this technique has become redundant. Such practice is considered spam by some search engines.
Google
The largest and most popular internet search engine.
Google everflux
An anomaly by which pages can quickly appear and then disappear in Google page rankings. Usually occurs to newly added web pages.
Google Sandbox Effect
To discourage spammers from trying to manipulate search engine rankings, Google puts new sites in a “tank” until they have proven their viability to exist for more than a period of “x” months. The usual holding period seems to be between four and eight months before a site starts appearing in Google’s search results.
GoogleBot
The Spider used by Google to index web pages.
Header/Headings
HTML terminology. These are standard HTML tags such as “h1″ and “h2″. Most search engines give extra weight and importance to text found within these tags. It is also considered good practice to use headings within your website.
Hidden text
Text on a website that is hidden to users but visible to search engines. Simple tricks include using the same background colour for the text; more elaborate ones using CSS can be used to obtain this effect. All search engines see hidden text as spam. If caught, your website could be banned from search engines.
Hit
Depending on the context, a hit can mean different things. A hit occurs every time a file on a website is accessed. With a single webpage having links to multiple images and embedded files, a single page load can cause multiple hits. For example, a page with 10 images will count as 11 hits (10 images and the page itself). In the context of a search engine, a hit is the number of clicks sent from a search engine to a particular webpage.
HTML
This is an acronym of Hyper Text Markup Language. It is the primary markup language used to create websites.
HTML tags
Tags used by HTML, eg. “strong” for bold text, “body” defining the body of the website etc.
Impression
A web visitor accessing a page or banner ad.
Inbound link
This is a hypertext link to a page from another site, bringing traffic to that page. Inbound links are used to calculate link popularity, and are critical for search engine optimisation.
Index
The search engine’s database which stores textual content from every web page that its spider visits.
Invisible web
The term that refers to the vast amount of information on the web that is not indexed by search engines.
Java applets
Small programs written in the Java programming language that can be embedded into web pages. Applet programs run on the user’s computer rather than the web server’s computer. Search engines cannot 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 Scripts
Programs written in the JavaScript programming language. JavaScripts run on the user’s computer rather than the web server’s computer. Search engines cannot read JavaScripts. Consequently, if navigation or content is embedded in a JavaScript, it will be invisible to the search engines and will not get indexed.
Joomla
Joomla is a PHP-based open-source content-management system that is released under GNU GPL License.
Key phrase (or keyword phrase)
A search phrase made up of keywords. Eg. “luxury hotel accommodation Paris”
Keyword density
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 occurrences on a page/total number of words. Most experts agree that 4-8% should be the maximum keyword density.
Keyword domain name
A technique that helps in getting top search engine ranking wherein a domain usually has all target keywords embedded in the domain name. The keywords are usually separated by hyphens. An example would be www.buy-blue-red-green-cheap-widgets.com
Keyword popularity
The number of searches for a specific keyword during a given period of time. WordTracker.com provides keyword popularity numbers.
Keyword prominence
The specific location of keywords in a web page. The higher up in the page a particular word is, the more prominent it is, 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.
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.
Keyword stuffing/spamming
The practice of placing excessive amounts of keywords into the page copy 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 colour as the background, hiding keywords in comment tags, and overfilling alt tags with long strings of keywords.
Keyword-rich
When a given page or bit of text is full of good keywords rather than a bunch of meaningless words (eg. “welcome”, “click here”) or irrelevant words (eg. “solution”).
Keywords
Words used to find relevant web page(s). eg ‘accomodation’ 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).
Landing page
The web page that a visitor clicks through to reach the destination website/web page (usually 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 page rank. Considerations for link building can include directory submissions and press-release syndication.
Link popularity
A measure of both the number and the quality of inbound links. Most search engines take this factor into considering when ranking websites in Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).
Links
Text or graphics that, when clicked on, takes the user to another web page location. Links are expressed as URLs.
Log file
Log files are generated and maintained by the server and contain all details of all file access requests. This includes data such as file accessed, date and time accessed, referring page, and user agent. Log files are used to track search engine referrals and are a good way to find SEO keywords.
Meta search
Some meta search engines such as Metacrawler.com, DogPile.com search among results taken from various search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN etc.) and then consolidated into a single Search Engine Result Page (SERP).
Meta tags
HTML terminology. Meta tags are HTML entities that are placed within the section of a webpage. The most relevant section to search engines are the keywords and description tags. The keywords tag is used to place emphasis on specific keywords that the author believes is relevant to the webpage. While no longer as important as they once were, these tags are still used by some search engines.
Mirror sites
Multiple copies of a site, usually for redundancy and on different servers, are called mirror sites. Registering such sites can be seen as spam by some search engines, and it wise to let only the primary site be crawled.
Misspellings
People will often misspell words when searching for them. Often, intelligent marketers will also optimise sites for misspellings in order to capture this sort of traffic.
Navigation bar (nav bar)
A website’s navigation icons, usually arranged in a row down the left hand side or along the top. This plays a crucial role in getting site visitors to view more than just the home page.
On-theme
Refers to content specific to a particular topic.
Open directory project
Also known as DMOZ. This is a free very large directory run by volunteers. This database is used by many search engines on the internet. We recommend you consider listing your business in DMOZ.
Optimisation
This term refers to the process of modifying and marketing a website for higher rankings in search engine results.
Outbound links
Links on your website that direct traffic “off-site” to another website (opposite of “inbound links”).
Overture
The original leader in PPC engines, now owned by Yahoo! Delivers PPC services to many search engines.
PageRank (PR)
A technical asset of Google. It is an exponential-based value that signifies importance of a webpage. Google allows one to view a site’s PR [on an exponential 10-base] using their toolbar. 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. However, Google is increasingly downplaying the importance of PageRank.
Page view
Also known as “impressions”, this is a measure of the number of pages viewed by end users. It is a more accurate reflection of how popular a website is (moreso than using the term “hits” for example).
Pagejacking
Stealing high-ranking web page content from another site and placing it on your site in the hopes of increasing your own site’s search engine rankings. Pagejacking is yet another shady way of optimisation and, as such, its use is strongly discouraged.
Paid inclusion
Paying a search engine to have your web pages included in that search engine’s index.
Paid placement
The practice of paying search engines for prominent listings in SERPs. These listings are usually denoted as sponsored listings.
Pay-for-Performance
A pricing model based on delivering sales or something else that can be directly attributed to the bottom line.
Pay-per-click (PPC)
A pay-for-performance pricing model where advertising (such as banners or paid search engine listings) is priced based on the number of click-throughs rather than impressions or other criteria. Google is an example of a search engine that charges advertisers on a pay-per-click basis.
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
An unsolicited window that opens on top of a browser window. Many users make use of pop-up blockers to stop these often unwelcome visitors.
Portal
This is a generic term that refers to a website with a large population of users. This includes directories such as Yahoo! and search engines such as Google. In a more specific context, a portal is a website that is the leading authority on a specific subject.
Positioning
This refers to the process by which search engines display websites so that the most relevant websites appear on the top. Search engine optimisation is a technique by which high rankings may be obtained.
Ranking
This refers to the process by which search engines display websites so that the most relevant websites appear on the top. Search engine optimisation is a technique by which high rankings are obtained.
Reciprocal linking
The practice of trading links between websites.
Redirect
Where the user is automatically taken to another web 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
The referrer is the URL of the web page that a user was at before reaching yours. The servers’ logs capture referral URLs and store them in their log files. Furthermore, if a user used a search engine to find your website, the key phrases they used to find your site will be embedded in the referring URL. Intelligent log analysers can then take this data to track how many visitors originate from each key phrase.
Relevance
The likelihood that a given web page will be of interest or useful to a search engine user for a keyword search.
Robot (also crawler, or spider)
This is an automated program sent out by search engines that roams the internet with the intention of cataloguing/indexing all the sites it visits in the search engines database.
Robots.txt
This is a text file that is used to control spiders that visit your website. Only spiders that conform to the robots exclusion standard will obey the contents of the robots.txt file. This file allows you to grant exclusive access to certain folders, file types, and specific files depending on the robot accessing the site. This file is not necessary for your site.
Search engine
A website 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.
Search engine algorithm
A mathematical formula used by search engines to rank websites. Google became famous because of the quality of its algorithm – this enabled Google to provide highly relevant search results. A search algorithm is any search engine’s most valuable asset.
Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
Strategies and tactics to increase the amount and quality of leads generated by the search engines.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
Strategies and tactics 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.
SERP (Search Engine Results Pages)
When a user types in a keyword into a search engine, the resulting list of results is called the SERP.
Spamdexing
While spamming is generally used to refer to unsolicited bulk mail, spamming with respect to search engines refer to the process of manipulating search engines results in order to obtain higher rankings. Such techniques are not tolerated by search engines and if caught, will result in a ban.
Spamglish
Keyword-rich gibberish used as search engine fodder instead of thoughtfully written, interesting content. Spamglish often includes meaningless sentences and keyword repetition in order to improve search engine rankings.
Spider (also robot, or crawler)
Spiders are automated programs used by search engine to periodically explore your website, 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 (ie. its index). When a spider indexes a website, this is known as “being spidered”.
Spider trap
An infinite loop, where a search engine spider gets caught when it explores a dynamic site where the URLs of pages keep changing. For example, a home page may have a different URL and the search engine may not be able to ascertain that it is the home page that it has already indexed but under another URL.
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 can also be damaging to search engine rankings.
Stemming
Search engines such as Google use a process called stemming to deliver results based on a word’s root spelling. An example would be similar search results returned for “clothes” as for the word “clothing”.
Stop character
Certain characters – such as ampersand (&), equals sign (=), and question mark (?) – when in a web page’s URL, tip off a search engine that the page in question is dynamic. Search engines are cautious of indexing dynamic pages for fear of spider traps, thus pages that contain stop characters in their URL run the risk of not getting indexed and becoming part of the “Invisible Web”. Google won’t crawl more than one dynamic level deep. So, dynamic pages with stop characters in its URL should get indexed if a static page links to it. Eliminating stop characters from all URLs on your site will go a long way in ensuring that your entire site gets indexed by Google.
Stop words
Certain words, such as “the”, “a”, “an”, “of” and “with”, are so common and meaningless that a search engine won’t bother including them in their index, or database, of web-page content. In effect, the stop words on your web pages are ignored as if those words weren’t on your pages at all. Including a lot of stop words in your title tag waters down the title tag’s keyword density.
Streaming media
Audio-visual content that is played as it is being downloaded. Thus, an user could begin watching a video clip as the footage downloads rather than having to wait for the clip to download in its entirety beforehand.
Submission
Submitting a web page address to a search engine in the hope that it will index it. It is suspected that some search engines apply a penalty factor to pages that were submitted versus those that are found by the search engine spiders.
Title tag
HTML terminology. The title of a page is the string of text found between the “title” tags in the header of an HTML document. This text is not displayed directly on the website, but is often seen in the title of the browser being used. While the title is often duplicated in the actual web page, it is important to remember that the two are separate elements.
Traffic
This refers to the visitors that visit a website.
Unique visitor
Visitors to a website. It is the best measurement of how many people actually come to a website.
URL
Abbreviation of Universal Resource Locator. This is a unique address that identifies a website. Eg. yourwebsite.com.au
User session
Instance of a user accessing your website for a certain period of time. 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 website is in the search engines for relevant keyword searches. If potential customers can’t find you on search engines, your lack of visibility means you’re missing an awesome opportunity.
Web browser
Software installed on the user’s computer that allows them to view web pages. Popular web browsers include Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Internet Explorer, Netscape, and Opera.
Web standards
Web standards is a set of standardised best practices for building websites, and a broader philosophy of web design and development that includes those methods. Because Web Standards sites are coded correctly they tend to do better in search engines. For more info, please check www.w3.org.
Xenu
A software tool to check broken links in websites.
XML
Short for eXtensible Markup Language. It promises more efficient and organised delivery of data over the internet. XHTML is the XML version of HTML.
