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SEO/SEM Glossary

With search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM) such hot topics these days - and constantly evolving, it's easy to get lost in all the various terminology and words used - especially when you're starting out and trying to learn SEO/SEM strategies.

Even if you don't intend to handle search engine optimization yourself and contract the work to others, it's important to understand what your SEO person is telling you.

With some basic familiarity of SEO terminology, you'll also be able to tell if a SEO person is heading down the wrong path - possibly taking your site with them in the form of a ranking penalty.

The following list consists some common SEO/SEM terms and definitions, with links to articles in some instances discussing the topic in more detail:

301 - A server response code, meaning "page has been permanently moved to x" A 301 redirect is commonly used to redirect sites or individual pages in cases where a domain or page name is changed and is usually the preferred method of redirection by search engines.
302 - A server response meaning, "Page has temporarily moved form this location".

SEO/SEM Glossary Part 4

These are some additional terminologies used in field of SEO.

Above the Fold - The part of a Web page that is visible once the page has loaded. It is normally the top part of a Web page. This term comes from the newspaper industry and refers to the top half of the front page, which is visible when the newspaper is folded in half.
Algorithm- A set of mathematical equations or rules that a search engine uses to rank the content contained within its index in response to a particular search query.
Analytics - Technology that helps analyze the performance of a website or online marketing campaign.
Associate - A synonym for “affiliate.”
Auto-Approve- An affiliate application approval process where all applicants are automatically approved for an affiliate program.
Auto-Responder - An email feature that automatically sends an email reply to anyone who sends it a message.
Anchor Text- The visible text component of a hyperlink.
ALT Image tag - Spiders cannot able to read images as such, so the alt tag or text attribute describes what the specific image represents.
Black hat - A person engaged in or tactic used to increase search engine rankings using methods prohibited by search engines.
Bot - Used in reference to a search engine robot or spider; software applications that retrieve web page information to feed into a search engine database.
Banner Ad - An electronic billboard or ad in the form of a graphic image that comes in many sizes and resides on a Web page. Banner ad space is sold to advertisers to earn revenue for the website.
Benchmark Report - A report used to market where a website falls on a search engine’s results page for a list of key words. Subsequent search engine position reporters are compared to that.
Blog - A chronological journal that is available on the Web. Blogs are typically updated daily using software that allows people with little or no technical background to update and maintain the blog.
Blogosphere or Blogsphere - The current state of all information available on blogs and/or the subculture of those who create and use blogs.
Browser- A client software program such as Internet Explorer, Netscape or Opera that is used to look at various kinds of Internet resources.
Click and Bye - The process in which an affiliate loses a visitor to the merchant's site once they click on a merchant's banner or text link.
Click Fraud - The deceitful practice of posing as pay-per-click (PPC) traffic for the purpose of costing advertisers’ money or helping to generate false revenue by those affiliates serving the ads.
Click Through - The process of activating a link, usually on an online advertisement connecting to the advertiser’s website or landing page.
Click-Through Rate (CTR) - The percentage of those clicking on a link out of the total number who see the link. For example: if 20 people do a Web search and 10 of the 20 people all choose one particular link, that links has a 50 percent click-through rate.
Client - A software program that is used to contact and obtain data from a server software program on another computer, often across a great distance. Each client program is designed to work with one or more specific kinds of server programs and each server requires a specific kind of client. A Web browser is a specific kind of client.
Cloaking - A deceptive process that sends search engine spiders to alternative pages that are not seen by the end user. Also the process of getting a search engine to record content for a URL that is different from what the visitor sees. It is often done as a way to obtain more favorable search positions.
Co-branding - The situation where affiliates include their own logo and branding on the pages to which they send visitors through affiliate links.
Collaborative Commerce Networks - An organization of merchants and websites that work together as true business partners. Merchants give their affiliates the same support that manufacturers would give to their resellers.
Commission - The income an affiliate receives for generating a sale, lead or click-through to a merchant's website. Sometimes it is called a “referral fee,” a “finder's fee” or a “bounty.”
Context-centric - The process of matching your product or service offer closely to the visitors of an affiliate's site. By placing the product or service in an area close to related or relevant item, more people will buy.
Contextual Link - The integration of affiliates links with related text.
Contextual Merchandising - The act of placing targeted products near relevant content.
Conversion Rate - The percentage of clicks that result in a commissionable activity such as a sale or lead.
Conversion Reporting - A measurement for tracking conversions and lead generation from search engines queries. It identifies the originating search engine, keywords, specific landing pages entered and the related conversion for each.
Cookies - Small files stored on the visitor's computer that record information of interest to the merchant site. With affiliate programs, cookies have two primary functions: to keep track of what a customer purchases and to track which affiliate was responsible for generating the sale and is due a commission.
Cost Per Acquisition - Online advertising ROI model in which return is based solely on qualifying actions such as sales and registrations as measured against the marketing costs associated with that sale or registration.
Cost Per Action (CPA) - The cost metric for each time a commissionable action takes place.
Cost Per Click (CPC) - The cost metric for each click to an advertising link.
Cost Per Thousand (CPM) - The cost metric for one thousand banner advertising impressions.
Cost Per Order (CPO) - The cost metric for each time an order is transacted.
Crawler - Component of a search engine that gathers listings by automatically trolling the Web and following inks to Web pages (also called a spider or robot or bot). It makes copies of the Web pages found and stores them in the search engine’s index.
Customer Bounty - The merchant payment to an affiliate partner for every new customer that they direct to a merchant.
CSS - Cascading Style Sheets. Used mainly to decrease the amount of source code on a page, by referencing a single set of instructions on how to display various elements on web page.
Crawl - The process by which search engine spiders fetch web page information.
Deep Linking - Linking to a Web page other than a site's home page.
Delisting - When Web pages are removed from a search engine’s index.
Directories - A type of search engine where listings are gathered via human efforts rather than by automated crawling of the Web.
Email Link - An affiliate link to a merchant site in an email newsletter, signature or a dedicated email blast.
Email Marketing - The promotion of products or services via electronic mail.
Email Signature (Sig File) - The signature option allows for a brief message to be automatically inserted at the end of every email that a person sends.
eZine - The short term for an electronic magazine, which can be electronic versions of existing print magazines or exist only in digital format.
DMOZ - Directory MOZilla is a human reviewed directory, the contents of which appear on many sites, including Google. A listing in DMOZ said to assist boosting rankings in general search results.
Doorway Page - A page used for driving traffic form any page to another specific page and usually focusing on specific keywords. Generally, doorway pages are designed for search engines only, human visitors never see them - consequently, they are illegal one. Doorway pages must not be confused with landing pages, a legitimate strategy.
Dupe/Duplicate content - Usually used in reference to a penalty applied by a search engine for the same content appearing on different pages/sites.
FFA - Free For All pages; basically a link farm. You add your site link to the page; it then gets pushed down as other links are added until your link is ultimately pushed off the page. Not a standard method of promotion or link building.
Flux - A term describes the shuffling of positions in search engine results in between major updates.
G - Google, also known as The Big G or The Mighty G.
Google Algorithm - A mathematical formula used in calculating search engine ranking. The goal of any SEOP is to understand the algorithm as best as possible. Algorithms of course are very closely guarded secrets and possibly you’ll never meet anyone who has "cracked" an algorithm. Search engine algorithms change regularly to prevent anyone from guessing the system.
Grey bar - A Google PR score that can indicate a ban in place on the page currently being viewed; i.e. the page does not appear in Google search results.
Grey hat - Optimization strategies that are in an unknown area of reputability/validity.
IBL - Inbound Link. Links pointing from another site into your site.
KDA- Keyword Density Analyzer or Analysis. The ratio of keywords or key phrases in relation to other text on a page.
Keyword/Key phrase - A word or words that strongly relate to a page/site topic or search engine query.
Keyword Stuffing - Where a keyword or phrase is used excessively in page content or alt tags in an attempt to gain higher rankings. Can result in page penalties or bans.
Landing pages - Pages that are optimized and very targeted towards a particular subject. An effective/valid site optimization and sales conversion strategy.
Link Farms - Pages that consists of little else but links to other sites and usually the sites listed have links back to the farm page. The goal of a link farm is to artificially boost rankings through link popularity and is consequently at risk of penalty or ban.
Link popularity - A gauge of a site's popularity based on the number of inbound links. Link popularity is a major factor in search engine ranking and has greater strength (in theory) where inbound links are from other quality sites.
Meta tag - These mainly refer to the title, keywords and description tags. They are summary of the content that is on the page in different formats. Meta tag content does play a role in rankings for many search engines.
MSN - A reference to Microsoft's search engine.
Mirror Site - A copy of a site with some content differences to target particular keywords. Not a recommended strategy as it can trigger a penalty or ban.
OBL - Outbound Link. A link pointing from your site to another site.
ODP - Open Directory Project - DMOZ
Off-page factors - Factors such as inbound links and the popularity of sites with links pointing into your site that you have little control over, but that still play a role in your site’s rankings.
On-page factors - A reference to the elements on your site and their role in your rankings, for example, Meta Tags, Code Cleaning relevance etc.
OOP - Over Optimization Penalty. Where a search engine algorithm detects that changes you are making to a page or the way the page is constructed is to influence rankings over being useful to a site visitor.
Organic search results - the results displayed after a search engine query that are not paid for by the listed site's owner.
P2P - Pay to Play. Any search engine marketing strategy that requires payment to the search engine company.
Page jacking - the copying of a page by unauthorized parties in order to filter off traffic to another site.
PFI - Pay For Inclusion. Payment paid to a search engine company for inclusion in search results.
PPCSE - Pay per Click Search Engine.
PR / PageRank™ - A ranking used by Google that is meant to act as indication of the quality of a site and its authority status.
PR 0 / PageRank Zero - Another term relating to Google PageRank. It can indicate that a page has been spidered but appearing in general results as yet, or could also possibly indicate a penalty.
Reciprocal link - An agreement between two sites to exchange links between them. Sites exchanging links can risk a penalty or ban if they are not related topic with each other.
ROAD / ROI - Return on Advertising Dollar, or Return on Investment. The measure of effective of expenditure vs. the number of visitors received or sales.
SE - Search engine
SEM - Search Engine Marketer/Marketing
SEO - Search Engine Optimization
SEOP - Search Engine Optimization Professional. Someone who claims to have the skills to increase a clients' search engine rankings.
SEP - Search Engine Placement (or Positioning/Promotion)
SERPs - Search Engine Results Pages. The pages that display after a query is submitted.
Spamming the index - Related to black hat optimization techniques. Pages that have high ranking but are non-relevant or exist purely to redirect traffic to other sites.
Spider - A software program used by search engine companies to visit web sites and return information about pages.
Stop words - Common non-query specific words that are ignored by a search engine when a query is made. These can include words such as “I”, “and”, “if” depending on how the query is constructed.
Submission - The process by which a search engine is manually notified of a new site or page.
URL - Uniform Resource Locator. The web address of a site or page.
White hat - legitimate optimization techniques employed that are agreeable to search engine companies, such as the proper use of meta-tags, an adequate keyword saturation and spider friendly page design.