SEO Glossary

Search Engine: A search engine is a database that helps people find information on websites based on a keyword search. Search engines generally use robots called "spiders" or "crawlers" to scan and catalog websites.

ALT tags: The HTML tags describing an image that appears when the mouse is rolled over the image on a Web page. Helpful for people who view pages in text-only mode. Some search engines look for keywords in ALT tags.

Body Text: The text that appears on a website.

Click through: User action that requires clicking on a link in a search engine results page to visit an indexed site. Also refers to clicking on a Web page, banner ad, or email message link.

Client: When a computer interacts with a network (e.g., logging on to the Internet) it becomes the "client" of the "server" computer hosting the files on that network.

Cloaking: The hiding of page content. Involves providing one page for a search engine or directory and a different page for other user agents at the same URL. Legitimate method for stopping page thieves from stealing optimized pages, but frowned upon by some search engines resulting in penalties.

Comment tags: This HTML tag <!--comments --> is used to insert comments that won't be viewed by users into your pages. Some search engines read comment tags, which can include keyword text and descriptions. Comment tags are also used to hide javascript code from non-compliant browsers.

Crawler: A crawler is much like a spider except it is programmed to constantly surf the web, following any and all links it comes across. As it visits new websites, it checks its own database to see if the site is listed. If the site is already listed, it makes note of any changes and calculates a search engine ranking for the site. If the site has not been previously listed, the crawler will record all important information, add the website to the database, and assign a ranking to it.

Directory: Directories are very much like search engines except they often use live human editors to review and catalog websites submitted to their databases. Most directories sort websites based on topical categories such as Arts & Humanities, or Business & Economics. Yahoo! is the most well known directory.

Doorway page: A Web page submitted to individual search engine spiders to meet specific relevancy algorithms. The doorway page presents information to the spider while obscuring it from human viewers. The purpose of doorway pages is to present the spider with the format it needs for optimum rankings while presenting a more appropriate version to human viewers. It's also a way for Webmasters to avoid publicly disclosing placement tactics. The use of doorway pages customizes submission to each individual search engine. Also known as gateway pages, bridge pages, entry pages, portals or portal pages.

Dynamic content: Web page content that changes or is changed automatically based on database content or user information. You can usually spot dynamic sites when the URL ends with .asp, .cfm, .cgi or .shtml, but it's also possible to serve dynamic content with standard static pages (.htm or .html). Many search engines index dynamic content, but some don't if there's a "?" character in the URL.

Document: An item of information that users want to retrieve. It could be a text file, a Web page, a newsgroup posting, a picture, etc.

Frames: A website design technique used to split the screen into two or more sections. Websites designed using frames are notoriously difficult to promote to search engines without effective website optimization work.

FTP: File Transfer Protocol

Heading tags: This HTML tag contains the headings or subtitles visible on a page. Your headings provide a summary of page content and ideally should contain strategic keywords to be read by search engine spiders.

Host Server: The computer on which a website resides. Generally host servers are associated with Internet Service Provides.

HTML: - Hyper Text Mark-up Language is the basic programming code for the web.

Image: An image is a graphic used in a website. Not every image is a picture. Images can include photos, buttons, banners, and other non-text elements.

Index: The component of a search engine or directory used for data storage, update and retrieval (i.e., the database).

Indexing: The process of converting a collection of data into a database suitable for easy search and retrieval.

Information Retrieval: The study of systems for indexing, searching, and recalling data, particularly text or other unstructured forms.

Keyword Phrase: A combination of keywords used by people looking for information on a search engine.

Keyword Ratio: The number of keywords in your body text measured against the total number of words in the body text.

Keyword search: A search for documents containing one or more words specified by a user in a search engine text box.

Keyword stacking Placing gibberish sentences and phrases on a web page in order to artificially boost keyword density, keyword prominence, and keyword proximity. Keyword stacking often occurs in title tags, meta tags, and invisible text.

Keyword stuffingPlacing gibberish sentences and phrases inside graphic images or CSS layers. Often has the same meaning as keyword stacking.

Keywords: Words used by people looking for information on a search engine. (eg: Tennis Shoe might be used when looking for running shoes.)

Keywords tag: A meta tag that allows the author to emphasize the importance of strategic words and phrases used within a Web page. Some search engines respond to this information, others ignore it. Don't use quotes around keywords or key phrases.

Link Density: The number of links directed to your website originating from outside sources, combined with the number of links on your website pointing to outside sources.

Link Popularity: A measure of how many other websites link to your website.

Log File: A file maintained on a server showing where all files accessed are stored. Log file analysis reveals the visitors to your site, where they came from, and which queries were used to access your site. WebTrends is an example of log file analysis software.

Manual Submission: The process of submitting Websites or Web pages to search engines and directories for inclusion in their databases using specific guidelines unique to each index.

Meta Search Engine: A server that passes queries on to many search engines and directories, then summarizes the results. Ask Jeeves, Dogpile, Metacrawler, Metafind and Metasearch are meta search engines.

Meta Tags: Found in the source code (or invisible background) of each web page, meta tags are sets of instructions and/or identifiers for search engine spiders to read which describe the content that is included on your web page. At one time, search engines used this information solely to decide where your web site should be placed within their database. Now search engines use Meta Tags only in part when calculating your web site's ultimate placement.

No Frames: A meta tag used to provide readable information for search engine spiders when a site is designed using frames.

Optimization: The process of making your website or web page search engine friendly

Pay-per-Click: Pay-per-click search tools allow website managers to bid for placement. Bids are most often measured as an amount per click-through, or each time a user visits a website, the bid amount is extracted from the bidder's account.

Promenincy:

Promotion Map: Promotion Maps enable search engine spiders and live-directory editors to easily and quickly move through a website. The Promotion Mapping technique is an essential part of the Corporate Placement Packages.

Query: A word, phrase or group of words characterizing the information a user seeks from search engines and directories. The search engine subsequently locates Web pages to match the query.

Referrer: The URL of the Web page from which a visitor came, as indicated by a server's referrer log file. If a visitor comes directly from a search engine listing, the query used to find the page will usually be encoded in the referrer URL, making it possible to see which keywords are bringing in visitors.

Registration: The process of requesting a search engine or directory to index a new Web page or Web site.

Relevance: A subjective measure of how well a document satisfies the user's information need. Ideally, your search tool should retrieve all of the documents relevant to your search. However, this is subjective and difficult to quantify.

Relevancy Algorithm: The method used by search engines and directories to match the keywords in a query with the content of all the Web pages in their database so the Web pages found can be suitably ranked in the query results. Each search engine and directory uses a different algorithm and frequently changes this formula to improve relevancy.

Relevancy: The degree to which a document or Web page provides the information the user is looking for, in terms of user needs.

Re-submission: Repeating the search engine registration process one or more times for the same page or Website. This is regarded with suspicion by search engines because it can be indicative of spamming techniques. Some search engines will de-list sites for repeated re-submission. Others limit the number of submissions of the same page in a 24 hour period. Occasional re-submission of changed pages is usually not a problem.

Robot: Any browser program that follows hypertext links and accesses Web pages but is not directly under human control. Example: search engine spiders, the harvesting software programs that extract e-mail addresses or other data from Web pages.

Roll-over Image: An image that changes as your mouse moves over it.

Search Engine: A search engine is a searchable online database of internet resources. It has several components: search engine software, spider software, an index (database), and a relevancy algorithm (rules for ranking). The search engine software consists of a server or a collection of servers dedicated to indexing Internet Web pages, storing the results and returning lists of pages to match user queries. The spidering software constantly crawls the Web collecting Web page data for the index. The index is a database for storing the data. The relevancy algorithm determines how to rank queries. Examples of major search engines are Google, AOL, MSN and Lycos, etc.. Examples of major directories are Yahoo!, LookSmart and ODP.

Search String: Search strings or terms are the words entered by users into a search engine or directory to locate needed information.

Search Term: A single word or group of words used in a search engine document query. It also refers to the strategic keywords used to optimize Web page content.

Server: A powerful computer that holds data to be shared over a network. Can be used to store critical data for retrieval. A server also acts the communications gateway between many computers connected to it, responding to requests for information from client computers. On the Internet, all Web pages are held on servers. This includes search engine and directory data accessible from the Internet. Typically, the computers running the server software are dedicated to that purpose.

Site Map: A set of text links used to direct human visitors or search engine spiders throughout the site.

Source Code: The programming code used to write the website. Source code is often identifiable by the use of the
< & > symbols.

Spamdexing: The alteration or creation of a document with intent to deceive an electronic catalog or filing system. Any technique that increases the potential positioning of a site at the expense of the quality of the search engine's database is regarded as spamdexing, also referred to as spamming or spoofing.

Spider: A spider is a tool used by search engines to view and rank websites submitted to its search engine. Spiders are electronic robots programmed to visit websites submitted to a search engine.

Stop Word: Words ignored in a query because they are so commonly used that they can't contribute to relevancy. Includes conjunctions, prepositions, and articles such as and, to and a.

Submitting to Search Engines: The process of posting websites to search engines.

Theme Engines: - Theme Engines are the newest generation of search engines. Basing their site ranking formulas on multiple factors such as relevancy, link densities and textual continuity, theme engines are designed to produce better search results.

Theme Site/s: Themed sites are individual web sites that consist of useful, original and relevant content on a specific product or service.

Title: The name of the website. The title appears across the very top of your search browser window, (in the area the minimize/maximize buttons are placed.)

Title tag: An HTML tag with text describing a specific Web page (but not visually displayed on the page). The title tag should contain strategic keywords for the page and be constructed following specific guidelines. The title tag is important because it usually becomes the text link to the page found in search engine listings, and because search engines pay special attention to the title text when indexing pages.

Traffic: The number of visitors to a Web page or Website. Refers to the number of visitors, hits, page accesses, etc., over a given time period. As a general term, it describes data traveling around the Internet.

Top 20 Listing: Being in the top 20 generally means that you will be found on one of the first two pages of reference links returned when a set of keywords is entered into a search engine. The majority of search engine users will switch to another search engine if they do not find the results they are looking for in the first 20 references.

Unique Visitor: A real visitor to a Website (versus a visit by a search engine robot). Web servers record the IP addresses of each visitor, and this is used to determine the number of real people who have visited a Web site. If someone visits twenty pages within your site, the server will count only one unique visitor and twenty page accesses (the page accesses are all associated with the same IP address).

User: The person visiting a website or using a piece of technology.

URL: Universal Resource Locator. An address that can specify any Internet resource uniquely. The beginning of the address indicates the type of resource: http: for Web pages, ftp: for file transfers or mailto: for e-mail addresses.

View-Source: - "View-Souce" means to look at the source-code of a website. To do so, point your mouse to the View option in the top menu bar. Choose source from the drop down menu. The text that appears is the source code of the website.

Web Page: A single page of information posted on the web, or a single page within a larger site.

Web Site: All the pages contained in a specific URL.