Search Engine Glossary

Adwords

A system to advertise on Google & partner sites on a CPC (cost per click) basis.

Algorithm

A mathematical formulae which is used in order to rank websites and web pages.

Alt tag

A tag that provides alternative text for the visually impaired.

Alt text

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

Anchor Text

The visible text for a hyperlink

Back Link

Any link on another page that points to the subject page. Also called inbound links or IBL

Bid Management

The process of managing PPC costs to maximise results and minimise costs

Bidbuddy

A bid management tool for optimising PPC campaigns other tools include:

Go Toast

DNA

Holosfind

Bot

Abbreviation for robot (also called a spider). It refers to software programs that scan the web. Bots vary in purpose from indexing web pages for search engines to harvesting e-mail addresses for spammers.

Cloaking

Cloaking describes the technique of serving a different page to a search engine spider than the human visitor sees. This technique is abused by spammers for keyword stuffing.

CPC

Cost Per Click. The unit of cost for a PPC campaign.

CPL

Cost per Lead. Where you pay for a lead i.e. is someone does something.

CPM

Cost per Thousand. Where you pay for each 1000 impressions.

CTA

Content Targeted Ad. CTA refers to the placement of relevant PPC ads on content pages for non-search engine websites.

Crawl Map

A static map built to help spiders crawl websites that hold a lot of their content in databases and onsite search boxes

CTR

Click Through Rate. The ratio of clicks per impressions in a PPC campaign.

Deep Linking

links to a web page other than your index page.

Description

The description of a web site in a web directory or SE. Human-edited web directories usually compose a description by after reviewing the site. Crawlers may use the description embedded in the page's code. For example:

Doorway Pages

Also called gateway pages. Doorway pages are designed to drive specific keyword traffic to another page. They are written for search engines to achieve high rankings on the main site. Using doorway pages is a violation of the Terms Of Service of most search engines and could be grounds for banning.

Dynamic Content

Most URLs ending with .asp, .cfm, .cgi or .shtml are serving dynamic content. Dynamic content pages are generated as a result of some action by the user. For example, search results are generated by a search engine in response to a query. Search results pages are dynamic content pages.

Dynamic IP Address

An IP address that changes each time you log onto the Internet.

Filter Words

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

Gateway Page

See Doorway pages.

Hilltop

Algorithm for determining the authority of a web page related to a keyword or search term. This score of authority is important in determining the effect that particular inbound links have on search results position.

IBL

Abbreviation for In Bound Link. Any link on another page that points to the subject page. Also called a back link.

Keyword/Keyphrase

A word or phrase which forms a search engine query

Keyword density

A measure of how often the keyword appears in relation to the text on a page.

Keyword Stuffing

Stuffing websites with excessive keywords to improve search results. Search engines often discount the importance of large blocks of disconnected keywords.

Link Farm

A link farm consists of sites that link to other sites for the sole purpose of increasing their link popularity score. Link farming can get you banned from most search engines

Link popularity

A measure of the number and quality of links to a particular page

Mirror

Mirroring is the creation of an identical or near identical website for targetting different keywords. Mirroring can get you banned from most search engines..

Outbound Link

A link from a page of your site to another site.

PageRank

A system used by Google to assign rank to web pages.

PFI

Pay For Inclusion. PFI assures frequent spidering / indexing of a site (or page). PFI does not guarantee high rankings as a site still needs to be well optimized. It provides the opportunity to quickly incorporate changes to a site into a search engine's index.

PPC

Abbreviation for Pay Per Click. An advertising model where advertisers pay only for the traffic generated by their ads.

PR

Google's Page Rank. The higher the rank the better position your website or page will have in their results. Google offers a PR viewer on their Toolbar

Referrer

The URL of the web page from which a unique visitor came.

Robots.txt

A file which spiders read to determine which parts of a website they may visit.

ROI

Return On Investment.

SEM

Search Engine Marketing. SEM encompasses SEO and search engine paid advertising options (banners, PPC, etc.)

SEO

Search Engine Optimization/Optimizer.

SERP

Search Engine (Search) Results Page.

Slurp

The name of Inktomi's crawler

Sitematch

A Yahoo service that embeds paid links into the main index. This program runs alonside their free crawl service and offers websites the opportunity to get their pages indexed more quickly

Spam

Excessive manipulation to influence search engine rankings, often for pages which contain little or no relevant content. Examples include: the use of keywords that are irrelevant to the site, the use of hidden links to increase link popularity and the use of doorway pages.

Spider

Spiders (or robots) are the software programs that search engines use to scan the web to build their indexes.

Spider Trap

A spider trap is anything that would prevent a spider from crawling your page or site. If a spider can't crawl through your site, the site won't get indexed.

Splash Page

An Introduction page that is used fo branding purposes before the user reaches the home page.

Stop Word

Stop words are words that are ignored by search engines when indexing web pages and processing search queries.

Submission

Submitting a site to a search engine or directory

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