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Abelgraphics.co.uk - glossary of engineering Category: Electronics and Engineering > seo Date & country: 24/09/2007, UK Words: 60

Algorithm
a statistical formula used by a search engine to rank a web page

ALT tags
used to display a short text description of an image when the pointer is hovered over it. Using keywords in ALT tags increases keyword density as seen by robots.

Anchor text
see Link anchor text

Authority site
a measure of the quality (in the all-powerful opinion of the search engine company) of a given site, gauged by some combination of size, importance, relevance. A link from an authority site to your own is more valuable than just any old site.

Backlink
any link from another web page to your own (aka Incoming link).

Bad neighbourhood (to be in...)
sharing a server or IP block with sites penalized for using dubious SEO tactics, such as hidden text or link farms.

Broken link
the target page of the link has been deleted or moved; disliked by search engines, always check any link from your pages is and remains live.

Click-Through
clicking on a link, usually an advertisement, to visit a web vendor.

Click-Through-Rate (CTR)
the number of times a link is clicked on divided by the number of impressions.

Cloaking
serving one version of a page to a human visitor and a different version to the search engines. The cloaked version usually contains a list of targeted keyword unintelligible to humans. Presently considered unacceptable by most major search engines.

Content
in this regard, the text of a web page, visible or not, examined by search robots.

Counter
a small software application (written in perl, php etc) that counts the number of hits, unique visitors, and/or page views that a web page receives.

Crawler
nowadays, synonymous with robot.

Dead Link
See Broken Link.

Description
a summary of a web page's content, often used verbatim in search engine results pages.

Description Meta Tag
a meta tag describing the content of the web page. Used by some search engines for keyword density purposes.It is recommended that you use a couple of your targeted keywords in the description meta tag.

Directory
a categorised list of websites, maintained by human editors instead of robots. Yahoo is the most widely recognized directory on the web.

DNS Propagation
when a new domain name is registered (or an existing one is transferred to a new DNS), the information must make its way around the entire internet. This process usually takes around 24 hours, during which time the domain will be inaccessible to many or all users.

Domain Name Server
computer that translates human-friendly URLs (words)into computer-friendly IP addresses. This process occurs every time a user requests a page from a website.

Doorway Page
a page optimised for a particular search engine and/or search term, followed by a redirect to the usable page. Multiple doorway pages are often used to help ensure that the same basic content is ranked well on several different search engines. Frowned upon. (aka gateway page)

Duplicate Content
separate web pages with substantially the same content, which may attract a penalty from search engines.

Google Desktop
downloadable application, providing a search function for files on the user's computer. The future, apparently...

Google Toolbar
a downloadable toolbar for Internet Explorer that allows a user to do a Google search without visiting the Google website.

Googlebot
the crawler Google uses on a daily basis to find and index new web pages.

Hidden text (and hidden links)
used to increase artificially a web page's keyword density for a given word or phrase. For example, white text on white background, or very very small print. Search engines can detect and may penalize.

Hits
vague term, differently calculated depending on stats counter used

Home Directory
the directory in which your site's main index page is located. usually named /public_html/, or /www/ or /web/.

Image Map
placing hyperlinks on different areas of an image. Not search engine friendly.

Inbound link
see Backlink.

IP Address
a unique numeric Internet Protocol Address assigned to every computer that connects to the internet. IP addresses can be either static or dynamic (changes with every internet connection).

IP Spoofing
returning an IP address that is different from the one that is actually assigned to the destination website.

Keyword (Key Phrase)
a word (or phrase) typed into a search, producing web pages that contain that word or phrase.

Keywords Meta Tag
an HTML tag that lists all of the main keywords and key phrases that are contained on that web page. Some search engines pay attention to this tag, some do not.

Link Anchor Text
the visible (perhaps underlined) text of a link.

Link Farm
a site created solely for search engine ranking purposes that consists almost entirely of a long list of unrelated links. These types of pages are penalized by almost all search engines.

Link Popularity
the number and quality of inbound links pointing to a given web page.

Meta Search Engine
an application (website or software) that takes a search term and queries several search engines and directories, then aggregates the results.

Mirror Sites
identical websites on different domains. Used legitimately by large websites to share heavy server loads, but by search engine spammers to generate more search engine referrals.

Outbound Links
links from your web page to another web page.

Page views
each time a web page on a site is accessed by a visitor, it counts as one page view, whether or not the same user viewed the same page 5 minutes ago. (aka pageload)

PageRank (PR)
a score out of ten assigned by Google to each indexed web page. The visible result of the algorithm, but note that the 'public' PR is not the same as the 'true' PR and is only updated infrequently.

PageRank For Money
selling or buying a link from a web page with a high PR for the express purpose of increasing the other page's PR.

Paid Inclusion
some directories will only consider including your site (especially commercial ones) in their database if you pay them an 'evaluation' fee. Note that in some cases this fee does not guarantee your site will be accepted.

Pay-Per-Click (PPC)
a search engine or directory places your link in their database and charges you a fee every time your URL comes up in a search and is clicked on. The size of the fee is usually determined by bidding on keywords. The two largest PPC schemes are Overture and Google AdWords.

Reciprocal link
a link to another website placed on your site in exchange for a link to your site from theirs. Once very effective in achieving high search engine rankings, now of less proven value.

Redirect
a tactic used to send a user to a different page from the one clicked on in the search results, the final page being less relevant. Considered unacceptable by search engines, except when they employ it, when it becomes known as 'an enhancement of the user experience.'

Referrer or Referring URL
the URL of the web page where a visitor clicked a link to come to your site.

Relevancy
the degree to which the content on a web page returned in a list of search results matches the topic the user is searching for.

Robot
a programme used by a search engine to roam the web, finding, ranking, and indexing web pages. (spider, webcrawler, crawler, web-bot, bot)

Robots.txt
a file used to exclude some or all robots from crawling some or all the files or directories on a website. This file should be placed in your website's root directory.

Sandbox
allegedly used by one large search engine as a probation period for new sites. Gaining a high PR is inhibited during this period.

Search engine
strictly, the programme(s) used to provide internet users with a search facility. Nowadays, the megacorporation that owns same.

Search engine friendly
a web page designed and optimized for high search engine rankings. Such pages are rich in keywords and structured for ease of crawling.

SEM
Search Engine Marketing; encompasses SEO and further marketing methods, eg. paid advertising options.

SEO
Search Engine Optimisation.

SERPS
Search Engine Results Pages.

Spider
see Robot.

Stop word
small common word, a, as, the, ignored by search engines when indexing web pages and processing search queries.

Traffic
visitors to a website, measured in a variety of ways, including unique visitors and total page views, or the rather meaningless 'hits'.

URL (Uniform Resource Locator)
a fancy name for what most people call web address.