Your Ad Here

Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization Dictionary

There are many unique terms associated with search engine optimization and search engine marketing. This glossary is always growing and adjusting. Please bookmark this page for future reference.

Here a few terms comunly us in search engine optimization :
  • Algorithm
    • A search Algorithm is a formula that takes a problem (the search query) as input and returns a solution to the problem, (the search results)
  • Anchor Text
    • The anchor text, link label or link title is the visible, clickable text in a hyperlink. The words contained in the Anchor text can determine the ranking that the page will receive by search engines. This counts very much for a successful search engine optimization campaign
  • Backlink
    • Backlinks are incoming links to a website or web page. In the search engine optimization (SEO) world, the number of backlinks is one indication of the popularity or importance of that website or page (though other measures, such as PageRank, are likely to be more important). Outside of search engine optimization, the backlinks of a webpage may be of significant personal, cultural or semantic interest: they indicate who is paying attention to that page.
  • Black hat
    • Black hat search optimization tactics, also called spamdexing, attempt to redirect search results to particular target pages in a fashion that is against the search engines' terms of service, whereas white hat methods are generally approved by the search engines. Some of the blackhat search engine optimization tactics include: keyword stuffing, hidden text and links, doorway and cloaked pages, link farming and blog comment spam.
  • Blog
    • A blog (a contraction of the term weblog) is a type of website, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video.
  • Cloaking
    • Cloaking is a black hat search engine optimization (SEO) technique in which the content presented to the search engine spider is different to that presented to the user's browser. This is done by delivering content based on the IP addresses or the User-Agent HTTP header of the user requesting the page. When a user is identified as a search engine spider, a server-side script delivers a different version of the web page, one that contains content not present on the visible page. The purpose of cloaking is to deceive search engines so they display the page when it would not otherwise be displayed.
  • Conversion Rate
    • In internet marketing, conversion rate is the ratio of visitors who convert casual content views or website visits into desired actions based on subtle or direct requests from marketers, advertisers, and content creators.
  • Cost Per Click
    • Cost per click (CPC) is the amount of money an advertiser pays search engines and other Internet publishers for a single click on its advertisement that brings one visitor to its website.
  • Cost Per Thousand
    • Cost per mille (CPM), also called cost ‰ and cost per thousand (CPT) (in Latin mille means thousand) , is a commonly used measurement in advertising. Radio, television, newspaper, magazine, Out-of-home advertising and online advertising can be purchased on the basis of what it costs to show the ad to one thousand viewers (CPM). It is used in marketing as a benchmark to calculate the relative cost of an advertising campaign or an ad message in a given medium. Rather than an absolute cost, CPM estimates the cost per 1000 views of the ad.
  • Crawler
    • A crawler is a program that visits Web sites and reads their pages and other information in order to create entries for a search engine index. The major search engines on the Web all have such a program, which is also known as a “spider” or a “bot.”
  • Directory
    • Generally, a directory, as used in computing and telephony, refers to a repository or database of information which is heavily optimized for reading, under the assumption that data updates are very rare compared to data reads. Commonly, a directory supports search and browsing in addition to simple lookups. A website which offer access to a categorized listing of other websites optimized for lookup, search, or browsing is a directory, a web directory. The Open Directory Project is an example of a web directory. Directories a a good way to get backlinks for your search engine optimization campaign
  • Keyword
    • An index term, subject term, subject heading, or descriptor, in information retrieval, is a term that captures the essence of the topic of a document. Index terms make up a controlled vocabulary for use in bibliographic records.
  • Landing Page
    • In online marketing a landing page, sometimes known as a lead capture page, is the page that appears when a potential customer clicks on an advertisement or a search-engine result link. The page will usually display content that is a logical extension of the advertisement or link, and that is optimized to feature specific keywords or phrases for indexing by search engines.
  • Link Text
    • The anchor text, link label or link title is the visible, clickable text in a hyperlink. The words contained in the Anchor text can determine the ranking that the page will receive by search engines. Since 1998, some web browsers have added the ability to show a tooltip for a hyperlink before it is selected. Not all links have anchor texts because it may be obvious where the link will lead due to the context it is used in. Anchor texts normally remain below 60 characters. Different browsers will display anchor texts differently.
  • Listing
      • A listing or program listing is a printed list of lines of computer code or digital data (in human-readable form). In the early days of programming, it was used to hand-check a program and as permanent storage.
  • Meta Description Tag
    • The tag present in the header of a web page which is used to provide a short description of the contents of the page. Some search engines will display the text present in the Meta Description Tag when the page appears in the results of a search. Including keywords in the Meta Description Tag will be a plus for your search engine optimization campaign. However, some search engines ignore the Meta Description Tag.
  • Meta Keywords Tag
      • The tag present in the header of a web page which is used to provide alternative words for the words used in the body of the page. The Meta Keywords Tag is becoming less and less important in influencing the search engine ranking of a page. Some search engines ignore the Meta Keywords tag.
  • Meta Robots Tag
    • Gives the authors of a web page the ability to suppress the indexing of their web pages by search engines, which is especially useful for those that cannot create robots.txt files. The Robots Exclusion page provides official details.
  • Meta Search Engine
    • A meta-search engine is a search tool that sends user requests to several other search engines and/or databases and aggregates the results into a single list or displays them according to their source. Metasearch engines enable users to enter search criteria once and access several search engines simultaneously. Metasearch engines operate on the premise that the Web is too large for any one search engine to index it all and that more comprehensive search results can be obtained by combining the results from several search engines. This also may save the user from having to use multiple search engines separately.
  • Meta Tags
    • Meta elements are HTML or XHTML elements used to provide structured metadata about a Web page. Such elements must be placed as tags in the head section of an HTML or XHTML document. Meta elements can be used to specify page description, keywords and any other metadata not provided through the other head elements and attributes.
  • Natural Listings
    • Natural Listings: Also called organic listings natural listings are those that appear in the search engines in an area other than “Sponsored” listings. The presence and order of these listings are subject to the evaluation of that search engine’s algorithm and editorial policies. Search Engine Optimization is a process of trying to determine exactly what each engine is looking for and how to make the web site pages answer those requirements.
  • Outbound Link
    • Outbound Link is the opposite to an inbound link. It is a URL link embedded in your web sites page that links out to an external site.
  • Paid Inclusion
    • Paid inclusion is a search engine marketing product where the search engine company charges fees related to inclusion of websites in their search index. Paid inclusion products are provided by most search engine optimization companies, the most notable exception being Google.
  • Paid Listings
    • Listings that search engines sell to advertisers, usually through paid placement or paid inclusion programs. In contrast, organic listings are not sold.
  • Pay-Per-Click
    • Pay per click (PPC) is an Internet advertising model used on search engines, advertising networks, and content sites, such as blogs, in which advertisers pay their host only when their ad is clicked. With search engines, advertisers typically bid on keyword phrases relevant to their target market. Content sites commonly charge a fixed price per click rather than use a bidding system.
  • Page Rank
    • PageRank is a link analysis algorithm, named after Larry Page, used by the Google Internet search engine that assigns a numerical weighting to each element of a hyperlinked set of documents, such as the World Wide Web, with the purpose of "measuring" its relative importance within the set. The algorithm may be applied to any collection of entities with reciprocal quotations and references. The numerical weight that it assigns to any given element E is also called the PageRank of E and denoted by PR(E).
  • Reciprocal Link
    • A reciprocal link is a mutual link between two objects, commonly between two websites to ensure mutual traffic. Website owners often submit their sites to reciprocal link exchange directories, in order to achieve higher rankings in the search engines. Reciprocal linking between websites is an important part of the search engine optimization process because Google uses link popularity algorithms (defined as the number of links that led to a particular page and the anchor text of the link) to rank websites for relevancy. Gathering back-links is a very good search engine optimization campaign
  • ROBOTS.TXT
    • The robot exclusion standard, also known as the Robots Exclusion Protocol or robots.txt protocol, is a convention to prevent cooperating web spiders and other web robots from accessing all or part of a website which is otherwise publicly viewable. Robots are often used by search engines to categorize and archive web sites, or by webmasters to proofread source code. The standard complements Sitemaps, a robot inclusion standard for websites.
  • ROI
    • ROI (return on investment) is "the bottom line" on how successful an ad or campaign was in terms of what the returns (generally sales revenue) were for the money expended (invested).
  • RSS
    • RSS (most commonly translated as "Really Simple Syndication") is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated works—such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video—in a standardized format. An RSS document (which is called a "feed", "web feed", or "channel") includes full or summarized text, plus metadata such as publishing dates and authorship. Web feeds benefit publishers by letting them syndicate content automatically. They benefit readers who want to subscribe to timely updates from favored websites or to aggregate feeds from many sites into one place.
  • Search Engine
    • A Web search engine is a tool designed to search for information on the World Wide Web. The search results are usually presented in a list and are commonly called hits. The information may consist of web pages, images, information and other types of files. Some search engines also mine data available in databases or open directories. Unlike Web directories, which are maintained by human editors, search engines operate algorithmically or are a mixture of algorithmic and human input.
  • Search Engine Marketing
    • Search engine marketing, or SEM, is a form of internet marketing that seeks to promote websites by increasing their visibility in search engine result pages (SERPs) through the use of paid placement, contextual advertising, and paid inclusion. The industry peak body Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO), also includes search engine optimization (SEO) within its reporting, but search engine optimization is a separate discipline with most sources.
  • Search Engine Optimization
    • Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via "natural" ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results. Typically, the earlier a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine. Search engine optimization may target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, and industry-specific vertical search engines. This gives a web site web presence.
      As an Internet marketing strategy, search engine optimization considers how search engines work and what people search for. Optimizing a website primarily involves editing its content and HTML coding to both increase its relevance to specific keywords and to remove barriers to the indexing activities of search engines.
  • SEMPO
    • The Search Engine Optimization Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO) is an industry organization for search engine marketing firms. A non-profit professional association, SEMPO was formed in 2003, to promote search engine marketing and provide educational resources to members and consumers. Its sponsors include Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, SuperPages, and Search Engine Strategies. SEMPO's membership includes search engine marketing firms and consultants, Web developers, inhouse marketing professionals, and advertising agencies.
  • SERP
    • A search engine results page, or SERP, is the listing of web pages returned by a search engine in response to a keyword query. The results normally include a list of web pages with titles, a link to the page, and a short description showing where the keywords have matched content within the page. A SERP may refer to a single page of links returned, or to the set of all links returned for a search query.
  • Spam
    • Spam is unsolicited e-mail on the Internet. From the sender's point-of-view, it's a form of bulk mail, often to a list culled from subscribers to a Usenet discussion group or obtained by companies that specialize in creating e-mail distribution lists. To the receiver, it usually seems like junk e-mail. In general, it's not considered good netiquette to send spam. It's generally equivalent to unsolicited phone marketing calls except that the user pays for part of the message since everyone shares the cost of maintaining the Internet.
  • Spider
    • Wanderer (a computer program that prowls the internet looking for publicly accessible resources that can be added to a database; the database can then be searched with a search engine)
  • Website Promotion
    • Website promotion is the continuing process to promote a website to bring more visitors to the website. Many techniques such as web content development, search engine optimization (also known as SEO), and search engine submission, are used increase the traffic to a site.
  • White Hat
    • In recent years, the terms white hat and black hat have been applied to the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) industry. Black hat search engine optimization tactics such as spamdexing, attempt to redirect search results to particular target pages in a fashion that is against the search engines' terms of service, whereas white hat methods are generally approved by the search engines. White hats tend to produce results that last a long time, whereas black hats anticipate that their sites may eventually be banned either temporarily or permanently once the search engines discover what they are doing.
  • XML
    • Stands for extensible markup language. XML is the World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) recommended standard for creating formats and sharing data on the Web.
  • XML Feed
    • XML (Extensible Markup Language) is a general-purpose specification for creating custom markup languages. It is classified as an extensible language, because it allows the user to define the mark-up elements. XML's purpose is to aid information systems in sharing structured data, especially via the Internet, to encode documents, and to serialize data; in the last context, it compares with text-based serialization languages such as JSON, YAML and S-Expressions.