SEO / Search Marketing

SEO / Search Marketing terms

1. .htaccess Apache directory-level configuration file which can be used to password protect or redirect files. As a note of caution, make sure you copy your current .
2. 200 Status OK - The file request was successful. For example, a page or image was found and loaded properly in a browser.
3. 301 Moved Permanently - The file has been moved permanently to a new location. This is the preferred method of redirecting for most pages or websites.
4. 302 Found - The file has been found, but is temporarily located at another URI. Generally, as it relates to SEO, it is typically best to avoid using 302…
5. 404 Not Found - The server was unable to locate the URL. Some content management systems send 404 status codes when documents do exist.
6. Above the Fold A term traditionally used to describe the top portion of a newspaper. In email or web marketing it means the area of content viewable prior to scrolling.
7. Absolute Link A link which shows the full URL of the page being linked at. Some links only show relative link paths instead of having the entire reference URL within…
8. accessibility An aggregate measure of how reachable locations are from a given location. The ACCESSIBILITY command computes values for accessibility as a function of…
9. AdCenter Microsoft's cost per click ad network. While it has a few cool features (including dayparting and demographic based bidding) it is still quite nascent in…
10. Adjacency A property of the relationship between words in a search engine (or directory) query.
11. AdSense Google's contextual advertising network. Publishers large and small may automatically publish relevant advertisements near their content and share the…
12. AdWords Google's advertisement and link auction network. Most of Google's ads are keyword targeted and sold on a cost per click basis in an auction which factors…
13. Affiliate Marketing Affiliate marketing programs allows merchants to expand their market reach and mindshare by paying independent agents on a cost per action (CPA) basis.
14. Age Some social networks or search systems may take site age, page age, user account age, and related historical data into account when determining how much…
15. Agent Name This is the name of the Crawler/spider that is currently visiting a page. Spider is a robot sent out by search engines to catalogue websites on the…
16. Agent Name Delivery The process of sending search engine spiders to a tailored page, yet directing your visitors to what you want them to see.
17. AJAX Asynchronous JavaScript and XML is a technique which allows a web page to request additional data from a server without requiring a new page to load.
18. Alexa Amazon.com owned search service which measures website traffic. Alexa is heavily biased toward sites that focus on marketing and webmaster communities.
19. Algorithm A detailed formula or set of steps for solving a particular problem. To be an algorithm, a set of rules must be unambiguous and have a clear stopping…
20. AllTheWeb Search engine which was created by Fast, then bought by Overture, which was bought by Yahoo.
21. Alt Attribute Blind people and most major search engines are not able to easily distinguish what is in an image.
22. Alt tags Alt tags alternate text associated with a web page graphic that gets displayed when the Internet user hovers the mouse over the graphic.
23. AltaVista Search engine bought out by Overture prior to Overture being bought by Yahoo. AltaVista was an early powerhouse in search, but on October 25, 1999 they…
24. Amazon.com The largest internet retailing website. Amazon.com is rich in consumer generated media.
25. Analytics Software which allows you to track your page views, user paths, and conversion statistics based upon interpreting your log files or through including a…
26. Anchor text An Anchor text is the textual components of web hyperlinks (text links or ‘alt' text associated with image hyperlinks).
27. Animated Ad An ad with movement, often an interactive Java applet or Shockwave or GIF89a file.
28. announce site to search engines "Announce" a website to the engines by adding a link to it from another site; that is, one that's already indexed (by the search engines). Beware!
29. Announcing See Submitting Definition
30. AOL Popular web portal which merged with Time Warner.
31. API Ascent-Phase Intercept.
32. applet Applets are Java programs based around the Applet or JApplet classes. They are most closely associated with the ability to provide active content within…
33. Arbitrage Arbitrage is the technique of simultaneously buying at a lower price in one market and selling at a higher price in another market to make a profit on the…
34. Ask The ask price (a shortening of asked price) is the price at which a market maker or broker offers to sell a security or commodity.
35. ASP (1) Airborne Surveillance Platform. (2) Advanced Sensor Program. (3) Advanced Sensor Platform. (4) Annual Service Practice.
36. Authorities Topical authorities are sites which are well trusted and well cited by experts within their topical community.
37. Authority One dimension of search relevancy. This indicates that the document is considered to be an authority for this query.
38. Automated Bid Management Software Pay per click search engines are growing increasingly complex in their offerings.
39. Automated Submitting Automated Submitting is using automated software such as WebPosition Gold or an Application Service Provider (ASP) such as Microsoft b-central's Submit-It…
40. Back links Back links are inbound links pointing to a web page. See: Inbound Links Definition
41. Bait and Switch The provision of one page for a search engine or directory and a different page for other user agents at the same URL. Various methods can be used, e.g.
42. Banned When a search engine blocks your site from appearing in its search results.
43. Banner Blindness During the first web boom many businesses were based on eyeballs more than actually building real value.
44. Battelle, John Popular search and media blogger who co-founded The Industry Standard and Wired, and authored a popular book on search called The Search.
45. Beacon A line of code placed in an ad or on a web page that helps track the visitor's actions, such as registrations or purchases.
46. Behavioral Targeting Ad targeting based on past recent experience and/or implied intent. For example, if I recently searched for mortgages then am later reading a book review…
47. Beyond The Banner Any advertisement that is not a banner, such as an interstitial or a pop-up ad.
48. bias (BY-us) In a scientific research study or clinical trial, a flaw in the study design or the method of collecting or interpreting information.
49. Bid management tool Software or an ASP service used to manage bids on pay-per-click search engines such as Yahoo Search Marketing (formerly Overture) and Google AdWords.
50. Bidding Bidding means placing a bid price that you are willing to pay as an advertiser on a pay-per-click search engine.
51. Black Hat SEO Search engines set up guidelines that help them extract billions of dollars of ad revenue from the work of publishers and the attention of searchers.
52. Blacklist A Blacklist collects known sources of spam. Email traffic then can be filtered against a blacklist to remove spam.
53. Block Level Analysis A method used to break a page down into multiple points on the web graph by breaking its pages down into smaller blocks.
54. Blog Blogs, also referred to as Web logs, are frequent, chronological Web publications consisting of links and postings.
55. Blog Comment Spam Either manually or automatically (via a software program) adding low value or no value comments to other sites. Automated blog spam: Nice post!
56. Blogger Blogger is a free blog platform owned by Google. It allows you to publish sites on a subdomain off of Blogspot.com, or to FTP content to your own domain.
57. Blogroll Link list on a blog, usually linking to other blogs owned by the same company or friends of that blogger.
58. Body copy the 'meaty' textual content of a web page. Body copy refers to text visible to users, doesn't include graphical content, navigation, or information hidden…
59. Bold A way to make words appear in a bolder font. Words that appear in a bolder font are more likely to be read by humans that are scanning a page.
60. Bookmarks Most browsers come with the ability to bookmark your favorite pages. Many web based services have also been created to allow you to bookmark and share…
61. Boolean Search The term 'Boolean' refers to a system of logic developed by an early computer pioneer, George Boole.
62. Bot Robot. Software automaton, used to play and advance a character without human assistance or supervision.
63. Brand The emotional response associated with your company and/or products. A brand is built through controlling customer expectations and the social…
64. Branded Keywords Keywords or keyword phrases associated with a brand. Typically branded keywords occur late in the buying cycle, and are some of the highest value and…
65. Breadcrumb Navigation Navigational technique used to help search engines and website users understand the relationship between pages.
66. Bridge Page See Gateway Page.
67. Brin, Sergey Co-founder of Google. See also: Wikipedia: Sergey Brin
68. Broad Match Broad Match is a form of "keyword matching" and refers to the matching of a search listing or advertisement to selected keywords in any order.
69. Broken Link A hyperlink which is not functioning. A link which does not lead to the desired location.
70. Browser An application, such as Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator, used to view and navigate the World Wide Web and other Internet resources.
71. Bulk submission services an ASP that submits many URLs to the search engines on your behalf. For example: SubmitWolf. Search engines don't like these. (see "automated submitting")
72. Bush, Vannevar WWII scientist who wrote a seminal research paper on the concepts of hypertext and a memory extension device titled As We May Think.
73. Business.com A well trusted directory of business websites and information. Business.com is also a large pay per click arbitrage player. See also: Business.com
74. Button A white acrylic disk that indicates the (nominal) dealer. Also used to refer to the player on the button. Example: "Oh, the button raised."
75. Buying Cycle Before making large purchases consumers typically research what brands and products fit their needs and wants.
76. Cache A type a computer memory that temporarily stores frequently used information for quick access.
77. Calacanis, Jason Founder of Weblogs, Inc. Also pushed AOL to turn Netscape into a Digg clone. See also: Calacanis.com - Jason's blog
78. Call To Action A call to action is copy used in advertising to encourage a person to complete an action as defined by the advertiser.
79. Canonical URL Many content management systems are configured with errors which cause duplicate or exceptionally similar content to get indexed under multiple URLs.
80. Catch All Listing A listing used by pay per click search engines to monetize long tail terms that are not yet targeted by marketers.
81. CGI (Common Gateway Interface) Abbreviation for Common Gateway Interface (CGI). CGI is a standard that connects external programs with information servers such as Web servers or HTTP…
82. CGI Program Strictly, any program which handles its input and output data according to the CGI standard.
83. Cgi-bin a "virtual" directory contained in URLs indicates a CGI (Common Gateway Interface) script is in use.
84. Channels, Channel listings Lists of links to selected (and usually popular) web sites. The links are maintained by search engines and directories and are sorted into categories or…
85. Click through The process of clicking on a link in a search engine output page to visit an indexed site.
86. Click-down Ad or Click-within Ad An ad that allows the user to stay on the same web page, while viewing requested advertising content.
87. Clickthrough The action of clicking an ad element and causing a redirect to another web page.
88. Clickthrough rate the rate at which people click on a link such as a search engine listing or a banner ad.
89. client Any computer system that requests a service of another computer system. A workstation requesting the contents of a file from a file server is a client of…
90. Cloaking The hiding of page content. Normally carried out to stop page thieves stealing optimized pages. See also Bait-and-Switch.
91. Cluetrain Manifesto, The Book about how the web is a marketplace, and how it is different from traditional offline business.
92. Clustering Connecting two or more computers together in such a way that they appear to be a single computing resource.
93. CMS Cheyenne Mountain Support.
94. Co-citation In topical authority based search algorithms links which appear near one another on a page may be deemed to be related to one another.
95. Cold Fusion a web scripting language with limited capabilities, mostly centered around database access. ColdFusion program files are saved on the web server with a .
96. comment A piece of text intended for the human reader of a program. Compilers ignore their contents.
97. Comments Many blogs and other content management systems allow readers to leave user feedback.
98. Comments Tag Some web developers also place comments in the source code of their work to help make it easy for people to understand the code.
99. Compacted Information Information which is generally and widely associated with a product. For example, most published books have an ISBN.
100. Concept Search Searching electronic documents to determine relevance by analyzing the words and putting search requests in conceptual groupings so the true meaning of…