SEO Glossary
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- 301 Permanent Redirect
- The safest and most search engine friendly method of permanent web page redirection.
a
- Adwords
- Adwords is Google's primary advertising product and main source of revenue. This pay-per-click (PPC) system offers site-targeted advertising, allowing advertisers to pay only when a visitor clicks an ad that takes them to their website.
- Affiliate
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- Algorithm
- A term used mostly in the fields of mathematics and computer science, it is a series of instructions, or a procedure for solving a problem. Search engine algorithms are highly complex formulas designed to return results to internet searches in order of relevance, as well as other on page and off page factors. Each search engine uses its own, unique, closely guarded trade secret algorithms.
- Alt text
- The ALT attribute provides alternative text, visible to the viewer if a browser is incapable of displaying images.
- Analytics
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- Anchor text
- The clickable text contained within a hyperlink (anchor) that links to a site or web page.
b
- B2B
- Short for 'Business to Business', describes online transactions between two businesses.
- B2C
- Short for 'Business to Consumer', describes buying and selling of goods and services online between merchants and a consumers.
- Back link
- A hyperlink, recognized by search engines, of another site that links to yours. If a webpage from site A links to a webpage from site B, site B has a backlink from site A.
- Black Hat SEO
- Involves a number of unethical methods designed to manipulate search engines into giving a web site higher rankings.
- Bot
- Short for 'robot', is an automated software program (often refered to as an 'intelligent agent'), designed to do specific automated tasks. A search engine crawler (AKA spider), is a robot used to gather information from across the internet in order to index web pages
c
- Canonical URL
- Computer scientists usually define canonical as "the usual or standard state or manner of something". URL canonicalization refers to the process of directing redundant forms of the same URL to only one, often using a permanent 301 redirect in the .htaccess file of the web server's root directory. The canonicalization of http://www.example.com, http://example.com, http://www.example.com/index.html, and http://example.com/index.html would result in search engines understanding that these are all the same url; hence eliminating any misinterpreted duplicate content issues on behalf of the search engines.
- CSS
- Short for Cascading Style Sheets, a language used to describe the presentation (appearance) of documents that are written in a markup languages such as HTML and XML.
- Click Fraud
- Also known as pay-per-click fraud, a type of internet crime that occurs in PPC online advertising. Ads are clicked for the purpose of artificially inflating traffic statistics, generating a charge per click, without intending to buy from the advertiser.
- Cloaking
- A black hat SEO technique in which a web page displays content to visitors that is different from that seen by the search engine bots.
- CMS
- Short for 'Content Management system', a database driven, dynamic software application designed to facilitate the creation and organization of content on a website.
- Content
- The text, images, and media on a website - usually embeded within the elements of markup languages such as (X)HTML and XML.
- Conversion
- Typically, the process of a web visitor accepting an offer or becoming a paying customer.
- CPC
- Short for 'Cost per Click'. Refers to the amount charged to an advertiser for each click a banner ad attracts.
d
- Directory
- An extensive, online searchable collection of websites organized by subject. The listings found in directories are maintained manually, opposed to automated search engines. You may submit your website's url to both free and paid directories.
- Doorway Page
- A web page designed to drive traffic from the internet for certain keywords, and in some cases, to unethically redirect visitors to another web site altogether.
- Duplicate content
- The occurrence of substantial blocks of the same content on two or more pages of the internet - Something to avoid, since search engines strive to deliver the most varied relevant results possible for search terms.
e
f
- Frames
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g
- Gateway Page
- See Doorway Page
- Google Bomb
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- Google Dance
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- Google Sandbox
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- Googlebot
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h
- htaccess
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- Hit
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- HTML
- Short for HyperText Markup Language, the predominant authoring language used to format documents on the Web. It provides a means to describe the structural elements, rather than appearance, of text-based information for retrieval across the Internet.
i
- Incoming Link
- See Back Link.
j
k
- Key Phrase
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- Keyword
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- Keyword Density
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- Keyword Research
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l
- Link
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- Link Bait
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- Link Building
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- Link Condom
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- Link Exchange
- See Reciprocal Linking.
- Link Love
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- Link Text
- See Anchor Text.
- Link Farm
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- LSI
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m
- Meta Tags
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n
- Natural Listings
- See Organic Listings.
- Nofollow
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- Noindex
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o
- Organic Listings
- The unpaid listings that search engines return, based on complex, automated algorithms. Also known as Natural Listings, organic listings are meant to return pages of listings positioned on the Search Engine Results Pages in order of relevance.
p
- PageRank
- A value, from 0 to 10, that Google gives a webpage. The higher the PageRank, the more Google believes the webpage is important. PageRank is largely, but not solely, affected by the amount and quality of backlinks that the site or page boasts.
- PFI (Pay for Inclusion)
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- PPC (Pay Per Click)
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q
r
- Reciprocal linking
- A link exchange between two websites.
- Robots.txt
- A file named robots.txt may be placed in the public www directory of a web server, and is used to allow or block search engine robots from accessing certain areas of the website for indexing.
- ROI (Return on Investment)
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s
- Sandbox
- See Google Sandbox.
- SE (Search Engine)
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- SEM (Search Engine Marketing)
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- SEO (search Engine Optimization)
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- SERP (Search Engine Results Page)
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- Site Map
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- Social Bookmark
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- Spam
- Spamdexing
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- See Keyword Stuffing.
- Spider
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- Static Page
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- Stop Words
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- Supplemental Results
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t
- Text Link
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u
- URL
- Short for 'for Uniform Resource Locator', is the technical name for the address of a particular web page. The URL of the page you are reading at this very moment, is http://www.springboardseo.com/seo-glossary.html
v
w
- Web Crawler
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- White Hat
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x
y
z
