Search Engine Optimization Glossary

Agent Name – This is the name of the browser/spider that is currently visiting a page.

Ad words - A system used by Google to drive its CPC [Cost per Click] advertising system.

Alt Text – Short form for Alternative Text, it is an property that is used as a placeholder when the image is loading [and for usability purposes]. In the case of image links, it seems to have weight akin to anchor text.

Algorithm – Mathematical formula used to rank web sites.

Anchor Text – This is the actual text part of a link. It can be used heavily by search engines as a ranking factor.

Alta Vista – One of the most popular search engines in the earlier development of the internet. Now barely used, and owned by Yahoo!

ATW - Abbreviation for AllTheWeb, a search engine powered by FAST.

Back Link - Any link on another page that points to the subject page. Also called inbound links or IBLs.

Bot - Abbreviation for robot (also called a spider). It refers to software programs that scan the web. Bots vary in purpose from indexing web pages for search engines to harvesting e-mail addresses for spammers.

Cloaking - Cloaking describes the technique of serving a different page to a search engine spider than what a human visitor sees. This technique is abused by spammers for keyword stuffing. Cloaking is a violation of the Terms Of Service of most search engines and could be grounds for banning.

Conversion - Conversion refers to site traffic that follows through on the goal of the site (such as buying a product on-line, filling out a contact form, registering for a newsletter, etc.). Webmasters measure conversion to judge the effectiveness (and ROI) of PPC and other advertising campaigns. Effective conversion tracking requires the use of some scripting/cookies to track visitors actions within a website. Log file analysis is not sufficient for this purpose.

CPC - Abbreviation for Cost Per Click. It is the base unit of cost for a PPC campaign.

CTA - Abbreviation for Content Targeted Ad(vertising). It refers to the placement of relevant PPC ads on content pages for non-search engine websites.

CTR - Abbreviation for Click Through Rate. It is a ratio of clicks per impressions in a PPC campaign.

Doorway Page - Also called a gateway page. A doorway page exists solely for the purpose of driving traffic to another page. They are usually designed and optimized to target one specific keyphrase. Doorway pages rarely are written for human visitors. They are written for search engines to achieve high rankings and hopefully drive traffic to the main site. Using doorway pages is a violation of the Terms Of Service of most search engines and could be grounds for banning.

FFA - Abbreviation for Free For All. FFA sites post large lists of unrelated links to anyone and everyone. FFA sites and the links they provide are basically useless. Humans do not use them and search engines minimize their importance in ranking formulas.

Gateway Page - Also called a doorway page. A gateway page exists solely for the purpose of driving traffic to another page. They are usually designed and optimized to target one specific keyphrase. Gateway pages rarely are written for human visitors. They are written for search engines to achieve high rankings and hopefully drive traffic to the main site. Using gateway pages is a violation of the Terms Of Service of most search engines and could be grounds for banning.

Google Dance - Up to June, 2003, Google has updated the index for their search engine on a roughly monthly basis. While the update is in progress, search results for each of Google's nine datacenters are different. The positions of a site appears to "dance" as it fluctuates minute to minute. "Google dance" is an unofficial term coined to refer to the period when Google is performing the update to its index. Google may be changing their index calculation method to allow for a continuous update (which will effectively end the roughly monthly dances).

IBL - Abbreviation for In Bound Link. Any link on another page that points to the subject page. Also called a back link.

Ink - Abbreviation for Inktomi, the back-end search engine acquired by Yahoo. The Inktomi search engine is being phased out as Yahoo built a new search engine incorporating Inktomi's technology with elements of Yahoo's other search acquisitions.

Keyword/Keyphrase - Keywords are words which are used in search engine queries. Keyphrases are multi-word phrases used in search engine queries. SEO is the process of optimizing web pages for keywords and keyphrases so that they rank highly in the results returned for search queries.

Keyword Stuffing - Keyword stuffing refers to the practice of adding superfluous keywords to a web page. The words are added for the 'benefit' of search engines and not human visitors. The words may or may not be visible to human visitors. While not necessarily a violation of search engine Terms of Service, at least when the words are visible to humans, it detracts from the impact of a page (it looks like spam). It is also possible that search engines may discount the importance of large blocks of text that do not conform to grammatical structures (ie. lists of disconnected keywords). There is no valid reason for engaging in this practice.

Link Farm - A link farm is a group of separate, highly interlinked websites for the purposes of inflating link popularity (or PR). Engaging in a link farm is a violation of the Terms Of Service of most search engines and could be grounds for banning.

Mirror - In SEO parlance, a mirror is a near identical duplicate website (or page). Mirrors are commonly used in an effort to target different keywords/keyphrases. Using mirrors is a violation of the Terms Of Service of most search engines and could be grounds for banning.

PFI - Abbreviation for Pay For Inclusion. Many search engines offer a PFI program to assure frequent spidering / indexing of a site (or page). PFI does not guarantee that a site will be ranked highly (or at all) for a given search term. It just offers webmasters the opportunity to quickly incorporate changes to a site into a search engine's index. This can be useful for experimenting with tweaking a site and judging the resultant effects on the rankings.

Portal - Designation for websites that are either authoritative hubs for a given subject or popular content driven sites (like Yahoo) that people use as their homepage. Most portals offer significant content and offer advertising opportunities for relevant sites.

PPC - Abbreviation for Pay Per Click. An advertising model where advertisers pay only for the traffic generated by their ads.

PR - Abbreviation for PageRank - Google's trademark for their proprietary measure of link popularity for web pages. Google offers a PR viewer on their Toolbar.

Robots.txt - Robots.txt is a file which well behaved spiders read to determine which parts of a website they may visit.

SEM - Abbreviation for Search Engine Marketing. SEM encompasses SEO and search engine paid advertising options (banners, PPC, etc.)

SEO - Abbreviation for Search Engine Optimization. SEO covers the process of

* making web pages spider friendly (so search engines can read them)
* making web pages relevant to desired keyphrases

SERP - Abbreviation for Search Engine Results Page/Positioning. This refers to the organic (excluding paid listings) search results for a given query.

Spam - In the SEO vernacular, this refers to manipulation techniques that violate search engines Terms of Service and are designed to achieve higher rankings for a web page. Obviously, spam could be grounds for banning. Alan Perkins has published an excellent white paper on Search Engine Spam that is highly recommended. Here are some definitions of spam from the search engines themselves:

* Google
* Yahoo
* MSN

Spamdexing - Spamdexing was describes the efforts to spam a search engine's index. Spamdexing is a violation of the Terms Of Service of most search engines and could be grounds for banning.

Spider - Also called a bot (or robot). Spiders are software programs that scan the web. They vary in purpose from indexing web pages for search engines to harvesting e-mail addresses for spammers.

Spider Trap - A spider trap refers to either a continuous loop where spiders are requesting pages and the server is requesting data to render the page or an intentional scheme designed to identify (and "ban") spiders that do not respect robots.txt.

Splash Page - Splash pages are introduction pages to a web site that are heavy on graphics (or flash video) with no textual content. They are designed to either impress a visitor or complement some corporate branding.

Stop Word - Stop words are words that are ignored by search engines when indexing web pages and processing search queries. Common words such as the.