SEO Glossary

Online marketing has it’s own language.  Here’s what we mean when we use these terms:

.htaccess

Hypertext access file, a directory level files that allows for the augmentation and control of the web server for changes such as URL rewrites.

301 Redirect

A piece of code that allows for the permanent redirection of a URL for both spiders and visitors.

404 Error

A ‘Not Found’ error message sent by a server when it is unable to locate a page

A/B Split

A testing method in which one baseline control is tested against a variable. In online marketing this method is commonly used to refine landing pages and increase conversions.

Alt Tag Attribute

The Alt tag is an HTML tag used to describe an image in the event the image does not appear on the site. These tags are also SEO friendly

Anchor Text

Anchor text is the click-able text in a link. This is generally an area where keywords are used for SEO purposes.

App

Short for Application, a piece of software that works within the framework of hardware. Commonly used in the context of mobile devices and tablets, apps also include programs like Microsoft Office.

Backlink

A link from an external site that points (or links) to your website.

Black Hat

A term used to refer to SEO techniques deemed to be in violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.

Blog

A combination of the words ‘web’ and ‘log’, a blog is basically a content heavy website which allows for social interaction through commenting, sharing, and RSS feeds.

Blogroll

A list of other blogs that a blogger recommends to readers.

Blogger

A person who blogs. Also a blogging software owned by Google.

Bounce Rate

A measure of visitors who come to your website and leave without visiting a second page. Most analytics programs measure bounce rate.

Broad Match

A term used by Google AdWords for refining keywords in AdWords campaigns. Broad Match allows for any keyword set that closely matches your selected keywords to trigger your ad to show.

Canonical

In simplest form, the original source. Often used in online marketing to specify how information is organized in a hierarchy.

Citation

In local SEO, a citation is an external source which verifies your business listing, location, and other information about your business.

Cloaking

A black hat technique where search engines are shown a different version of the page than human visitors.

Content Management System

A system that allows for the organization, storage, and manipulation of data online. Examples include WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, Expression Engine. Also referred to as a CMS.

Comment Spam

A Gray Hat SEO technique in which backlinks are generated by commenting on blogs.

Conversion

Any desired action completed by a website visitor. This could include completing a form, making a purchase or downloading a whitepaper.

Crawl

The term used to describe how search engine bots or spiders index websites and the web.

CSS

Cascading Style Sheets, a stylesheet language used to separate the content of a website from the presentation with the aim of improving accessibility for visitors.

Call to Action

Also known as CTA, this generally refers to the area(s) of the website which express the action in which the visitor is intended to take.

Click Through Rate

Also known as CTR, the click through rate is used Google AdWords as a measure of how many times your ad was clicked divided by how many times it was shown.

Digital Native

Someone who was born in the age of technology and who has a general understanding of online technology and interaction.

Direct Traffic

Traffic that visits your website either by typing in a URL to your website or by accessing a bookmark.

Domain Name

A domain name is an identification label for locating a network resource using the Domain Name System (DNS). You probably know it as a website’s address. Example: www.dynamicwebsolutions.com

Duplicate Content

Identical content found within multiple pages of the same site or across multiple sites. Google’s bots recognize and often devalue duplicate content.

Dynamic Keyword Insertion

A method of inserting a keyword into a Google AdWords ad automatically based on search queries with the aim of improving CTR.

Exact Match

A term used by Google AdWords for refining keywords in AdWords campaigns. Exact Match filters out all keyword combinations except for those explicitly stated by the account holder.

Exit Page

The last page viewed on your website before a visitor leaves. Often displayed in analytics software’s.

Facebook Marketing

A form of marketing which utilized Facebook Ads to reach targeted audiences with the Facebook application.

Followed Link

A link which passes link juice from the source of the link to the destination of the link. The desired type of link for SEO’s creating backlinks for clients.

Forum

Open, online meeting place for Q&A and conversations based on certain topics. Often targeted for easy SEO backlinks.

FTP

File Transfer Protocol, a standard protocol used to transfer files from one source to another online. Examples include Filezilla and FTPClient.

Geo Targeting

A concept used in online marketing for specifying how Ads display or the selection of keywords based on geographic locations.

Google Analytics

A free analytics tool created by Google for monitoring a website’s performance online. A critical piece of any online marketing campaign.

Google Bot

The term used to refer to the search engine spider/robot deployed by Google to crawl and index the web.

Google Webmaster Tools

A free tool for webmasters created by Google which provides important feedback about a website’s performance including page speed, 404 errors, crawl stats, impressions and clicks (organic search) and more.

Gray Hat

An SEO technique which doesn’t directly violate Google Webmaster Guidelines but may be subject to scrutiny by search engines.

Hit

An antiquated and imprecise measure of website traffic.

Indented Search Result

A search engine listing in which multiple pages of a site can be accessed from a single search engine result. Search engines determine which sites receive indented search results and when they appear.

Infographic

A visual used to convey data.

JavaScript

A dynamic scripting language primarily used to move information within a website

Keyword Density

The quantity or frequency of keywords as they appear within a web page or web site.

Keyword

Words or phrases which directly correspond to the subject of a website. These words and phrases are what business want to rank for in search engines.

Key Performance Indicator

A measure of a website’s performance generally assigned by actions taken, levels of engagement met, or other metrics determined by client and marketing company. Commonly referred to KPI.

Landing Page

A web page which is specifically designed for visitors coming from a predefined source and for which a specific action is required.

Link Bait

Any content or feature specifically designed to gain attention for the purpose of gaining links.

Link Building

The process of creating backlinks to a website in an effort to improve search engine rankings.

Link Farm

A website that has no real value and provide cheap backlinks.

Link Juice

Also know as link equity, a measure of the relative value of a backlink pointing to your site.

Link Profile

The profile of a website’s backlinks and internal links which is monitored and evaluated for SEO effectiveness.

Local SEO

A branch of SEO focused on delivering localized results based on a specific geography. Often a part of a larger SEO program.

Long Tail Keyword

A keyword phrase, generally containing more than 3 words, in which there is generally less search volume, lower competition, and above average conversion rates.

Meta Description

The meta tag often used by search engines on a results page to provide a brief description of the web page being linked to. This meta description has little to no SEO value but is a great opportunity to “sell the click”.

Meta Keywords

A meta tag once used to tell search engines what your site was about. This meta tag no longer has any SEO value and no real value.

Meta Tag

HTML or XHTML elements which act as indicators to search engine spiders, generally found in the head section of a website’s source code.

Negative Keywords

User defined keywords in Google AdWords to define which keywords NOT to show an ad for. This type of refinement can make AdWord campaigns more effective.

No Follow Link

A link with an attribute which doesn’t not allow link juice or link equity to be passed between sites. This type of link has very limited value for SEO purposes.

Open DirectoryProject

Originally Dmoz, an open listing or directory of web links. For SEO purposes, a meta snipet commonly referred to as ‘no odp’ which instructs spiders not to pull snippets about a website from the Open Directory Project but to instead use the meta tags found on the site itself. The code itself is displayed like this: <meta name=”robots” content=”noodp, noydir”/>

Off-Page SEO

SEO done to improve rankings and conversions which is done externally. Typically this involves creating backlinks, monitoring link profiles, setting up Places pages, etc.

On-Page SEO

SEO done to improve rankings and conversions within the site. Typically this involves such work as meta optimization, usability studies, javascript optimization, anchor text reviews, alt tag reviews, etc.

Organic Traffic

Also known as non-paid search, this traffic arrives at your website via search engines.

Page Views

A metric of how many views a certain page within a website has received. Most analytics software offer some version of this metric.

Paid link

A backlink which is purchased. Generally paid links are frowned up by search engines but may offer good link juice.

Pay Per Click

Also known as PPC, a form of online marketing where you pay every time an ad is clicked on. You do not pay every time the ad is shown.

Page Rank

Often referred to as PR, Page Rank is an algorithm (named after Google co-founder Larry Page) which denotes the relative authority of a website or web page. Pages with a PR of 1 are said to have low authority while sites with a PR of 10 are said to have much authority. At one point, this was the gold standard for determining where to get the best links. Recently Google has demphasized the importance of PR in it’s ranking algorithm, but PR still plays a role in rankings.

Quality Score

A metric used by Google to measure relevance of keywords, ad copy and landing page. The higher the quality score, the lower the CPC as Google deems the ad to be extremely relevant.

Query

A search.

Reciprocal Link

An instance where two websites “trade” links to eachother’s site. The goal is to find relevant sites with which to share information.

Robots.txt

A text based file which resides on the root folder of a website for the purpose of allowing or dissallowing website spiders from crawling certain pages. Some robots.txt files also allow for the inclusion of a sitemap.

Root Directory

The top level file directory in the hierarchy of a website.

RSS

Real Simple Syndication, or the process of sharing content through a feed in an RSS Reader. Essentially allowing you to aggregate data from around the web into one easy place for reading.

Search Engine

An engine designed to search for information on the web. The search engine’s job is to return the most relevant results based on the keywords entered in the search bar.

SEM

Search Engine Marketing, or the process of marketing a business through search engines. This marketing includes pay per click advertising and search engine optimization.

SEO

Search Engine Optimization, or the process of optimizing a website so that it is more relevant for certain keyword terms and appears higher in search engine results.

SERP

Search Engine Results Page, a page of results returned by a search engine when a search query is entered by a visitor.

Sitemap

A list of all the pages located on a website. There are HTML sitemaps which can be accessed by visitors to find pages on your site, and there are XML sitemaps which provide data about your site to seach engine spiders.

Social Bookmarking

A way to social share bookmarks across the internet with other users. Meant to be a way to learn about new sites and information on the internet, now largely used as an SEO link building technique.

Social Media

A blanket term used to reference any medium where users interact with eachother and share content. Examples are blogs, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn.

Source Code

The actual raw code of a website. Generally you can right-click on any browser to see the source code of a website.

Spam

Unwanted and unuseful content on the internet.

Spider

Term used for search engine robots which crawl and index the web.

Spider Emulator

A software that generally displays how a website is crawled and seen by spiders.

Static Page

A page that is unchanged, and sent to the viewer exactly how it is stored on the server.

Sub Domain

A domain that is part of a larger domain. For example, mail.yourwebsite.com

Title Tag

A meta tag which represents the title of a web page. It also serves as the anchor text which links to your site from search engines. Title tags are an important component of SEO.

Traffic Source

Used to describe how visitors came to your website. Examples include Direct Traffic, Referral Traffic and Non-Paid Search Traffic.

User Generated Content

Also known as UGC, this is content that appears on blogs or other social platforms which is created by visitors, not necessarily the website owner.

Absolute Unique Views

A measure of the unique visitors to your website. This measurement is more acurate that looking at hits or traffic numbers.

URL

Uniform Resource Locator, used to identify a unique page within a webiste. Example: www.yourdomain.com/contact

URL Shortener

A software tool that shortens URLS and may add tracking parameters. A popular URL shortener is bit.ly

Usability

In web design, this is the study and application of how users interact with a website in an effort to improve the user experience.

Visit

Visits occur when someone lands on your website.

White Hat SEO

SEO techniques for improving website visibility which abides by the Google Webmaster Guidelines.

Widget

An application that allows a visitor to interact with a site, perform a function, or add a function to another site.

XML Sitemap

A sitemap written for search engine robots for improved crawling and indexing of a web page.