SEO Glossary

Algorithm - The formula that determines how a web page will rank in the search results pages of a search engine.

ALT tags - used to display a short text description of an image when the pointer is hovered over it. Using keywords in ALT tags increases keyword density as seen by robots.

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

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

blacklisted - Refers to being banned from submitting to a particular search engine.

Blind Traffic - Low quality traffic generated by misleading banners or SPAM.

Broken link - the target page of the link has been deleted or moved; disliked by search engines, always check any link from your pages is and remains live.

Click through - clicking on a link, usually an advertisement, to visit a web vendor.

Cloaking - serving one version of a page to a human visitor and a different version to the search engines. The cloaked version usually contains a list of targeted keyword unintelligible to humans. Presently considered unacceptable by most major search engines.

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

Content - the text of a web page crawled by search robots.

Copy -used in sales to refer to the content of an advertisement.

Crawler - robot.

CPA - Cost Per Action.

CPC - Cost Per Click.

CPM - Cost per 1,000 impressions.

CSS - Cascading Style Sheets.

CTR - Click Through Ratio.

Density - The number of keywords on a page compared to the total number of words - expressed as a percent.

Description - an HTML tag of the summary of a web page's content, often used in search engine results pages (SERP's).
<META NAME="description" CONTENT="Your description here.">

Directory - a categorised list of websites, maintained by human editors instead of robots. Yahoo is the most widely recognized directory on the web.

Domain Name Server - computer that translates human-friendly URLs into computer-friendly IP addresses. This process occurs every time a user requests a page from a website.

Googlebot - the crawler Google uses to find and index new web pages.

Google Toolbar - a downloadable toolbar for Internet Explorer that allows a Google search without going to the Google website.

Hit - A single access request made to the server.

IP Address - a unique Internet Protocol Address assigned to every computer that connects to the internet.

Keyword - A word or phrase that a user believes is relevant to the information he or she is seeking. The user enters keywords into an online search form. The search engine then examines each record in its database to find those documents that match the keywords. A keyword search is a search for documents containing one or more words specified by the user.

Keywords (Meta Tag) - an HTML tag that lists all of the main keywords and key phrases that are a web page. Ignored by some search engines.
<META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="your keywords here">

Link Popularity - the number and quality of inbound links pointing to a web page.

Link Reputation - A general term referring to how closely link text matches the title of the page the link is on and, more importantly, the text on the page that the link points to.

Meta Data - Meta data is data that expresses the context or relativity of data. Examples of meta data include data element descriptions, data type descriptions, attribute/property descriptions, range/domain descriptions and process/method descriptions. The repository environment encompasses all corporate meta data resources: database catalogs, data dictionaries and navigation services. Meta data includes name, length, valid values and description of a data element. Meta data is stored in a data dictionary and repository. It insulates the data warehouse from changes in the schema of operational systems.

Meta Search Engine - an application that takes a search term and queries several search engines and directories, then shows those results.

Mirror Sites - identical websites on different domains.

Outbound Link - A link from a page of your site to another site.

PageRank - a score out of ten assigned by Google to each indexed web page.

Page Views - The number of times distinct pages of a website are served.

Paid Inclusion - directories that only consider including your site in their database if you pay them an inclusion fee. This does not always guarantee your site will be included.

PPC - Pay Per Click. The size of the fee is usually determined by bidding on keywords. The two largest PPC schemes are Overture and Google AdWords.

Query - The execution of a search on a search engine.

Rankings - Search engines rank the web pages based upon relevancy to your search terms according to their algorithm.

Redirect - sends users to a different page from the one they clicked on in the SERP's. Considered unacceptable by most search engines.

Referrer- the URL of the page where a visitor clicked a link to get to your site.

Robot - a program used by an engine to crawl the web to ind, rank and index pages.

Robots.txt - a file used to exclude some or all robots from crawling some or all the files site.

RFP - Request for Proposal.

ROI - Return ob Investment.

Search Engines - A search engine is a database of many web pages. An engine will return the result of a search ranked by 'that search engines' indexing criteria. This formula (called algorithms) vary widely between search engines.

Search engine friendly - a web page optimized for high search engine rankings. Pages should be rich in keywords.

Search Engine Opimization - changing and/or adding various HTML tags, such as Meta Tags, summary, title, alt, and content which prepares the page to be spidered by a robot/crawler and, if done correctly, to rank very high in the results of a particular search.

SEM - Search engine marketing.

SEO - Search engine optimization.

SEP - Search engine placement.

SERP - Search Engine Results Page.

Unique Visitor - An instance of a unique site connecting to your server.

URL - Universal Resource Locator.