SEO Glossary

Absolute Link: a link that displays the full path of a website URL that is linked to.
Adsense: Google’s contextual advertising network.
Adwords: Google’s advertisement and link auction network.
Alt Attribute: the description text that is associated with an image.
Analytics: the statistics and metrics used to measure and analyze a website performance.
Anchor Text: the text that is clicked on to activate and follow a hyperlink to another web page.
Backlink: a link to a website.
Black Hat: a term used to describe any SEO techniques utilized to manipulate the search engines.
Blog: short for web log, a blog is a website that is typically used as a publicly accessible personal journal for an individual.
Click Through Rate (CTR): the number of clicks on a link, as a percentage of the number of views of the link.  (( # of clicks / # of views ) x 100)
Cloaking: a black-hat SEO technique that manipulates search engines by displaying specific content served up to the search engine spider that is different then what the normal surfer sees.
Conversion Rate: metric to evaluate the effectiveness of a conversion effort – the number of visitors who took the desired action divided by the total number of visitors in a given time period.
Cost Per Click (CPC): the amount an advertiser pays an ad host each time a visitor clicks on the advertiser’s link. (see Pay Per Click)
Cost Per Thousand (CPM): the cost per thousand people viewing an ad or listing.
Crawl: the action of search engines traversing through the Internet while updating their database of websites.
Delisting: the removal of a web page from a search engine’s results.
Description Meta Tag: a meta tag describing the content of the web page.
Directory: a search site whose index is compiled by human editors.
Domain Name Server (DNS): a computer that translates human-friendly URLs (words) into computer-friendly IP addresses.
External Link: a link from another website that links to yours.
Google: the most used search engine in the world today, also known as the Big G.
HTML: Hypertext Markup Language is the set of markup symbols inserted into a file intended for display on a World Wide Web browser page.
Index: a search engine’s database, consisting of all the web pages it has crawled and recorded.
Internal Link: a link that exists and links to other web pages within your website.
Keyword: the word(s) or phrase(s) a person types into a search box.
Keyword Density: a formula to determine the frequency a keyword is displayed on a web page. The formula is the total number of words in al keyword mentions divided by the total number of words on a page. Keywords should fall between 2 and 8 % density. (see keyword stuffing)
Keyword Meta Tag: a meta tag listing the main keywords and keyphrases that are contained on that web page.
Keyword Stuffing: a blackhat technique to manipulate search engines by overly displaying a keyword or keyphrase, unnecessarily.
Landing Page: the destination page a visitor arrives when clicking on a link.
Link Bait: a technique to acquire external links generated by creating a useful piece of content material that is worthy of linking back to your site.
Link Spamming: a black hat technique used to generate and acquire bogus external links to manipulate search engine rankings.
Long Tail: a term given for a group of keywords that is more targeted (example: dogs vs. brown male shih tzus)
M?Meta Tag: are html elements used to provide structured metadata about a web page.
One Way Link: an external link that does not require your website to link back to that site.
Outbound Link: a link from your website to an external website.
On-Page: relates to SEO factors that are internal to a web-page’s source code.
Off-Page: relates to SEO factors that are external to a web-page’s source code.
Organic Traffic: traffic generated as a result of being indexed within a search engine (vs. paid traffic).
PageRank: Google’s indicator of a particular page’s value.
Paid Traffic: traffic generated as a result of using paid advertisements (vs. organic traffic).
Pay Per Click (PPC): the amount an advertiser pays an ad host each time a visitor clicks on the advertiser’s link. (see Cost Per Click)
Rank: the position of a web page within a search engine.
Reciprocal Link: a link from a website that links back to your site, in exchange for linking to that website.
Robots File: A text file placed in a site’s root directory that instructs search engine spiders to ignore certain pages or directories. Some spiders respect these instructions, others disregard them.
Sandbox: a theory that refers to a time probationary period that a website must go through.
Search Engine: A site or software that allows Internet users to search a database of web pages, documents and other information on the web. The most popular search engines are Google, Yahoo, and Bing.
SEO: Search Engine Optimization – the planning and adjusting of the content of a web page in order to improve its position in natural, organic search results, including modifications to code and displayed content.
SEM: Search Engine Marketing – any marketing activity involving a search site, including advertising on search result pages, paying for placement.
SERP: Search Engine Result Page, the page that display the results of a search.
Sitemap: a file created in XML format that helps search engine spiders distinguish the structure of your website and instructs them how often to crawl certain pages on your website (not to be confused with an HTML sitemap).
SMO: Social Media Optimization
Spider: a piece of code (packet) that is sent out from a search engine to crawl the web to build and edit its search engine database.
URI: uniform resource indicator – refers to a link that is one deeper than the website’s home/index page. (example: http://www.seomomo.com/seo.html)
URL: universal resource locator – a general term referring to a website link.
White Hat: a term used to describe SEO techniques that adheres to proper and acceptable on-page and off-page optimization.