| Glossary |
| Algorithm |
A mathematical formula used by each search engine to determine
where a web page will rank in the search results. |
| Anchor Text |
The visible text in a hyperlink you click to go to another
page or website. Also known as "Link Text". |
| ALT tag |
Text that appears when you scroll over an image or a graphic
or when images are turned "off" on your browser. Also
used by the visually impaired as screen readers can read this
text. |
| Back Links |
The number of web pages found in a specific search engine
or across the Internet that contain a link to a specific page.
Also referred to as "inbound links" or "incoming
links". |
| Bot |
An abbreviation for robot or spider. It is a software programs
that scans the web, indexing web pages for search engines or
harvesting e-mail addresses. |
| Cache |
A snapshot of a web page the way the search engine last recorded
it. Viewing the cache version of a page will tell you what the
search engine saw that led to a page's currently placement. |
| Cloaking |
The act of presenting different information to a search engine
spider that a human visitor will see. You can find more information
on this with the Black-Hat
Search Engine Positioning Tactics. |
| Crawler |
Another name for a search engine spider. |
| Cross Linking |
Multiple sites linked together to increase link popularity.
Also referred to as "interlinking". |
| CSS |
Cascading Style Sheets. They are used to manipulate and easily
manage the design of a website. |
| Directory |
Websites that list other websites, organized into various
categories. Human editors assess each website and if approved,
they place them into the specific category in the directory.
Click here for a list of the
major directories. |
| Description |
This term typically has two uses in search engine positioning:
1. it can refer to the description meta tag which is a link
of code in the header of your page used to describe what that
page is about, or
2. it can refer to a description of your site which your would
submit to a webmaster you were interested in exchanging links
with that they would put below your link on their resources
page or directory. |
| Doorway Pages |
A page on your site not there to provide information but rather
solely to rank for a specific keyword phrase in hopes that the
visitor will go to one of your more useful pages after that.
Sometimes used in conjunction with redirects. You can find more
information on this with the Black-Hat
Search Engine Positioning Tactics. |
| Gateway Pages |
Another term for "doorway pages". |
| Google Bot or Googlebot |
Google's search engine spider. |
| Header Tag |
Code that exists on your web page yet is essentially invisible
to the visitor. This code includes the title, keyword meta tag,
description meta tag, the robots tag and can also contain scripting
and other additional information. |
| Hidden Text |
Text which is invisible to the human eye because it is set
to the same color as the background. You can find more information
on this with the Black-Hat
Search Engine Positioning Tactics. |
| Inbound Link |
Another term for "back links". |
| Keywords |
Words used to identify the theme of your website. |
| Keyword Density |
The percentage of a given keyword or phrase. ex: 1 instances
of a keyword in 100 words of page text, equals a 1% keyword
density. |
| Keyword Stuffing |
Keyword stuffing refers to the practice of adding unnecessary
keywords to a web page to lead search engines to consider the
page to be more relevant. You can find more information on this
with the Black-Hat
Search Engine Positioning Tactics. |
| Link Popularity |
Another term for "back links". |
| Meta Tags |
HTML used in the source code to provide content and site information
to search engine spiders. |
| Mirror |
A mirror is a near identical duplicate website (or page).
You can find more information on this under "duplicate
sites" on our Black-Hat
Search Engine Positioning Tactics page. |
| Offsite Optimization |
The method of increasing a web site's rankings by influencing
its relationships with other website, primarily links found
on other web sites to the target web site. |
| Optimization |
Fine tuning a website or web page with the ultimate goal being
to achieve higher rankings. |
| Outbound Link |
Linking from your website to another website. |
| PageRank |
Google's tool for measuring link popularity of web pages. |
| PPC |
Pay-Per-Click. Search engines that operate by charging website
per-click to appear higher in the rankings. You
can view some of the main PPC engines here. |
| PR |
Another term for "PageRank". |
| Reciprocal Links |
Two sites exchanging links by placing a link to each other
on each site. You can find additional information on this practice
on our White-Hat
Search Engine Positioning Tactics page. |
| Redirects |
A spam tactic used to send a visitor to a different page
than the one found in the search results. You can find more
information on this with the Black-Hat
Search Engine Positioning Tactics. |
| Robot |
A name given to a spider/bot/crawler program that travels
the web collecting data from websites. |
| Search Engine Optimization |
The practice of manipulating web pages and external factors
such as linking in order to rank a website higher on the search
engines. Also known as: SEO, search engine positioning,
search engine placement, search engine marketing, search engine
ranking and search engine promotion. |
| Search Engine Rankings Report |
A report that measures a web page or websites search engine
rankings for a range of keyword phrases across the major search
engines. For this aspect of the process we use a great program
called WebPosition
Gold. |
| SERP |
An acronym for "search engine results page". |
| Search Engine Submission |
The registering of your website to the search engines. |
| Slurp |
Yahoo's crawler. |
| Spider |
A program that visits and collects specific information from
a web page, including the URL and indexing the keywords and
text of each page it finds. |
| Splash Page |
Another term for "doorway page". |
| URL |
Uniform Resource Locator. The address where your website can
be found. e.g. www.beanstalk-inc.com. Also knows as a "domain". |
