Glossary

This glossary is by no means definitive but merely provides definitions for the most commonly used terms in the search engine optimization industry.

404
Error code returned by a web server when a page cannot be found, sometimes called a 404 page. Dynamic 404 pages can be used to serve content depending on what the visitor was looking for.

AdSense
Google's contextual advertising program whereby different ads are displayed on your site depending on the content of a particular page on your site. Google pay the site owner a small amount per click through.

Adult Words
Naughty words that are censored or filtered in some way by a search engine. These words are usually included in a search engine's stop word list and can be used to filter content to protect children.

AdWords
Google's advertising program, for example the ads on the right hand side of the search results page in Google shows AdWords ads.

Algorithm
The mathematical system the search engine uses to define which pages and in what order to display the websites in it's database that match your search term.

Anchor Text
The text you click in a web link. The term for the linking code is "anchor" and you click the text within the anchor hence "anchor text".

Authority Site
A site that is deemed by a search engine to be authoratative in it's chosen field of subject matter. For example a search for "Artificial Intelligence" may return the site for the American Association of Artificial Intelligence or MIT University as they are recognized as leading experts in that particular subject.

Back Link (or Backlink)
Links pointing to your site are called back links or backlinks and make up your Link Popularity.

Blog
An online journal, news site or diary. Blog is an abbreviation of web log, the log part being the diary and the web part because the diary is on the Internet/World Wide Web.

Click Through (or Click Thru)
When a user clicks on a hyperlink on a webpage to visit a site or page. Click Throughs on adverts are often monitored as part of a marketing strategy to measure Return of Investment (ROI)

Click Tracking
Counting clicks on links usually via a counter script or program that then redirects the user to the destination URL.

Cloaking
Using a system of either code or a web server to hide content from either users or robots or to deliver customised content depending on the user/robot's IP address and/or user agent.

Comment Tag
An HTML tag used in coding websites to leave comments for other developers of the same site to read such as "place content here" but are invisible to users. Comment tags are sometimes used in SEO to boost the keyword density of a page by filling these comment tags with keywords, known as "comment spam."

Conversion Rate
The ratio of visitors to sales/sign ups.

CPC
Cost Per Click, the amount it costs the advertiser per click on their advert.

CPL
Cost Per Lead. If a click results in a new lead being generated (someone inquires about your service or product) then this is monitored in your Cost Per Lead statistics.

CPM
Cost Per Thousand (Roman numeral M equals 1000).

Crawler
A type of Robot that follows (or crawls) links on websites.

Cross Linking
Linking domains owned by the same company/individual together in an attempt to increase link popularity or Page Rank.

CSS
Cascading Style Sheets are used to define aspects of a website's look and feel.

CTR
Click Through Rate, usually displayed as a percentage of the number of people who have clicked an advert versus the number of times the advert has been displayed (page views).

Cyber Squatting
Buying a domain name (usually of a trademarked or famous name) in the hope that the brand owner or celebrity will pay for the domain at an inflated price.

Deep Linking
Linking to a page that is usually not easily accessible from the site's home page.

Directory
A directory is a site that displays listings of web sites by topics or categories. Search engines list pages whereas directories list sites.

Domain
A web address such as denialdesign.co.uk

Doorways
Specially created web pages targetted at a specific keyphrase that serves as an entry point to the main site.

DMOZ
The Open Directory (DMOZ.org), a free directory edited by volunteer editors.

Dynamic Content
A page that is generated just as the user visits the page, or "on the fly", usually drawing on content from a database.

Entry Page
Usually the home page of a site and typically consists of a logo or animation and a "click to enter" link.

EPC
Earnings Per Click

EPV
Earnings Per Visitor

FFA
Free For All. These sites are pages and pages of links that anyone can submit their website to without any kind of vetting.

Filter Words
A list of common words (of, and, or, it, etc.) that the search engine filters out to save database space.

Frames
An HTML tag used to divide a web page into sections or windows within one browser window. Frames can cause problems for search engines and will not be indexed properly.

Freshbot
A term used to describe Google's search engine indexing robot "Googlebot" when it visits a site every 24 to 72 hours looking for fresh content on high ranking or frequently updated sites.

Googlebot
Google's search engine indexing robot.

Heading Tag
An HTML tag to make text large and bold, also known as a headline tag and it's use is similar to headline sizes used in newspapers.

Hidden Text
Text that is invisible to the human eye through some kind of code manipulation such as white text on a white background. Hidden text is used to increase the keyword density of a page whilst not displaying to the public.

HTML
Hypertext Markup Language, the code used in web pages.

Inbound Link
A link to your site from someone else's site.

Java
A computer language commonly used to deliver tiny programs (called applets) to a web browser.

JavaScript
A language used in website development that runs in the browser or "client side" usually when the user performs an action. Many search engine robots ignore javascript code when spidering a page.

Keyword
A word entered in as a query into a search engine, for example if someone is looking for a site about widgets then the keyword they enter would be "widgets."

Keyword Density
The number of times a specific word occurs on a web page, usually displayed as a percentage of the keyword occurence versus the total number of words on the page.

Keyword Phrase / Keyphrase
Two or more keywords, e.g.: "blue widgets"

Keyword Research
Researching the number of times a keyword or keyphrase or it's derivatives (plurals, etc) is searched for.

Keyword Stuffing
Excessive repetition of a keyword on a page or part of a page.

Link Farm
See FFA

Link Popularity
The number of links pointing to your site from other websites.

Meta Tag
An HTML tag that holds meta data about the contents of the page, most commonly keywords and a brief description.

Mis-spellings
Intentionally spelling a word wrongly on your site in an attempt to rank in the search engines when users mis-spell the word in their query.

Off Page Criteria
Factors used by a search engine to rank your page that are not actually part of your site such as link popularity.

Open Directory Project
See DMOZ

Optimisation
The process of tweaking a site to gain higher rankings in a search engine's results.

Page Rank
A method developed and patented by Stanford University and Larry Page (co-founder of Google) to rank search engine results. PageRank gives a unique ranking to every page on the internet. The ranking number is based on the number and quality of inbound links pointing at a page amongst other factors.

PPC
Pay Per Click

PPL
Pay Per Lead

PR0
Page Rank Zero, a site has no PageRank, either through penalty or because the site is too new to have been assigned a PageRank.

Query
A search of a search engine's database.

Ranking
The position of a page in the search engine results.

Reciprocal Link
When two websites link to each other.

Robot
Also known as a spider or crawler.

robots.txt
A text file that defines what directories on a web server a robot can view.

ROI
Return Of Investment

Search Engine
A program that searches a database and returns the results. Internet search engines contain a database of websites that can be searched on.

Search Term
The word or phrase a user enters into a search engine.

SEM
Search Engine Marketing.

SEO
Search Engine Optimisation/Optimization.

SERP
Search Engine Results Page, the page generated by a search engine in response to a query.

Spider
see Robot.

Spidering
As a robot downloads and examines your website's pages, it is called spidering or crawling.

Splash Page
see Entry Page

Stemming
Expanding on an original query such as "fish" to return "fishing", "fisherman" etc.

Stop Words
Words that stop a robot from spidering a site, most commonly adult words.

Submission
Submitting a site to a search engine or directory in an attempt to get it included in the search engine or directory's index of sites.

Throw Away Domain
A domain bought with the express purpose of being easily discarded, usually for hosting doorway pages or other dubious SEO techniques.

Title
The contents of the HTML title tag. Usually displayed in the top of the browser window.

TLD
Top-Level Domain, com, net, uk, etc. are all top-level domains.

Traffic
The number of visitors to a website.

URL
Universal Resource Locator, a web address.

User Agent
The identifier of the type of browser software the user is connecting to the Internet with, ie: Firefox, Internet Explorer, etc.