SEO Glossary

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

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.

Below the fold - Content of a web page that is not seen by the consumer unless the consumer scrolls down.

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

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

CPA - Cost Per Action.

CPC - Cost Per Click.

CPM - Cost per 1,000 impressions.

CSS - Cascading Style Sheets.

CTR - Click Through Ratio.

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

EPV - Earnings Per Visitor.

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

Hit - A single access request made to the server.

IBL - Inbound Link. A link from another site to your site.

LS - LookSmart

ODP - The Open Directory Project (http://dmoz.org/)

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

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

PPC - Pay Per Click.

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

RFP - Request for Proposal.

ROI - Return ob Investment.

SE - Search engine.

SEM - Search engine marketing.

SEO - Search engine optimization.

SEP - Search engine placement.

SERP - Search Engine (Search) Results Page.

Stemming - Word variations. For example, if I entered the query "swim", a search engine that supports stemming might return results that include "swimming" or "swims".

Stop Word - A word which is ignored in a query because the word is so commonly used that it makes no contribution to relevancy. Examples are common net words such as computer and web, and general words like get, I, me, the and you.

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

URL - Universal Resource Locator.

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. It states that in order for advertising to be effective, it must address three elements:

Browser

A browser is a program used by a computer to view pages on the internet. Common browsers include various versions of AOL, Internet Explorer, Netscape and Opera.

Cloaking:

Cloaking is a system of delivering custom content to a spider but hiding the code and / or content from a user.  Cloaking can be a dangerous method of getting listed in the search engines and may not be recommended.

Directory:

A directory is a site that is similar to a search engine in that people conduct searches to find particular products or services of interest by typing in a keyword phrase.  However, unlike a search engine, directories are normally managed by human editors.  When a site is submitted to a directory, it will be viewed and indexed by an actual person.

Domain Name:
A domain name is a particular address on the internet that ends with a top level domain that describes the type of organization. The most common top level domains are:

.com - Companies
.net - Internet Service Providers
.edu - Educational Institutions
.mil - Military
.org - Non-profit organizations
.gov - Government

Domain Name Registration:
Registering a domain name with an approved registrar.

Doorway/Entryway/Gateway/Splash Pages:
A doorway page is normally set up to target specific requirements for an individual search engine to achieve desired ranking.  Doorway pages can be an effective method to gain desired results, but must be used with caution.  This page should look like any other page on your site and must contain quality, informative information for your visitors.

Frames:
Building a site with frames will make the site seem to have multiple windows within one browser by using a certain HTML format.  It is recommended that frames are not used in the design of a site because they can cause browser compatibility problems and because many search engines can not index a site designed in frames.

Hidden Text:
Using hidden text is the act of using the same color text on the same color background.  This is never recommended and can be considered spamming by many search engines.

HTML (Hypertext Markup Language):
HTML is used to define what a webpage contains, what the page does, how it looks and where links go.

Hyperlink (also link):
A hyperlink is text that when clicked on with your mouse, will take you to another web page.

Index Page:
An index page is the main entrance page of a web site that normally describes the sites contents.

Internet:
The world's largest computer network, made up of thousands of smaller networks and computers all connected together.

Keyword Density:
Keyword density is a measurement of how often a certain keyword appears within a page compared to the total number of words on the page.

Keyword Stuffing:
Keyword stuffing is filling a page up with keywords within the tags and body of a page. This can be considered as spamming and may get your site banned from many search engines.

Link Popularity:
Link popularity is the amount of other sites that are linking to your web site.  Most search engines will place importance on the relevancy of the links pointing to your site.  Stay consistent with the overall theme of your site when attempting to gain link popularity.

Meta Tags:
Meta Tags can be included in the <head></head> area of your site and contain information such as your title, description, keywords, author, etc.  Some engines place importance on meta tags and will use the content within them to rank a page.  Others will completely ignore them.

Rank/Position/Placement:
These are all words used for a particular position a site holds in a search engine.

Refresh Tag:
Meta Refresh tag reloads a page at a set time.  It is not recommended that you use this tag on pages you are submitting to search engines.

Relevance:
A search engines estimate of how closely your search results matched your keywords.  Most search engines rank the results by relevance, showing you the best matches first.

Results:
The list of Web pages and documents that match the keywords typed by a user.

robots.txt:
robots.txt is a text file that can be placed on a web site, that lists pages and sub-folders that should or should not be indexed by all or some search engine robots.

Search Engine:
A search engine is an internet tool that allows one to find particular information of interest on the internet.  Keywords are typed in a field and the search engine will produce results in order of relevancy to match your keywords.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO):
Optimizing a site to a search engines criteria.

Server:
A computer that processes information or does tasks by handling requests from client computers.  For example, a file server is a computer on which files are stored, so that users can transfer files to and from the server.

Spam:
The act of sending any article, often advertisements, to a large amount of people who have not indicated they have an interest in receiving the article.  At the least, it is annoying to receivers and is a bad violation of good internet practices.

Spamdexing:
Spamdexing is used to decrease the quality of a search engines results to attempt to gain more traffic.  One method of spamdexing is to design a page to rank well for a particular keyword when that keyword has nothing to do with the sites content.

Spider (also bot, robot, crawler):
An automated computer program that searches the Internet.  Many search engines use spiders to catalog information on the Internet.

Submission:
Submitting a web page to a search engine or to a directory.

Theme Engine:
A theme engine will crawl and index an entire site as one page using the most relevant keywords throughout the site to determine a theme.  By doing this, more accurate results can be returned.