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.htaccess – This is a file used by webmasters to control the cache settings and the redirection of web pages for the site.

200 – This is a code used to indicate the existence of a file that was requested properly.

404 Not Found – This is a code that shows up when the page entered by the user cannot be found or is temporarily unavailable. Likely scenarios for this code showing up is that the page has been moved, deleted or are just temporarily offline.

301 Redirect – This is a code that shows up when the user has entered on old URL or one that is being phased out. It is a redirect code that indicates to the search engine that a permanent move to the URL has occurred. The use of this will allow for the link weight that already exists to be transferred to a new page being targeted.

302 Redirect – The 302 is a redirection code like the 301, without the ability to transfer the link weight over to the page currently being used.

A

Above The Fold – This is a term used to indicate information on a page the user will not need to scroll to see.

Absolute Link – Term used to describe when the full URL for a link is shown when the link is hovered on.

AdCenter – Ad network on the Microsoft network.

AC Rank – This is a rank and the term is short for A Citation Rank. Scoring is on a scale from 0-15 with 15 being the best core. The score itself is based on the number of root linking domain linking a site may receive. To be ranked, the backlinks have to come from backlink intelligence website – Majestic SEO.

AdSense – Advertising network for Google whereby webmasters make money by having advertisements on pages.

Adwords – This is the advertising network for Google. When used, paid advertisements show up on the sides and top of the SERP utilizing a Pay Per Click (PPC) structure.

Adwords Site – This is a site that is created with Google AdSense advertisements in mind. It is similar to TV programming in the sense that it is devised strictly for advertising and is not always a bad thing, but can create a negative effect on SERPs.

Affiliate – This is a site that allows individuals to set up accounts whereby they promote products for others and earn money based on sales derived from the promotions.

Algorithm – Search engine program designed to rank websites based on a predetermined criterion.

ALT Text/Attribute – This is a part of the HTML code that is used to identify the contents of an image used on a website. The ALT attribute is used in the image text as follows: <img src=”URL” alt=”Description of Image”/>.

Anchor Text – The anchor text is the text that users will click on to visit a new site. Another name for this is a link label. Anchor text used should have significance to the site being linked to. The reason for this is not only for the user, but it provides more relevancies and tells search engines what to rank pages keywords for.

Arbitrage – This is the process whereby you take advantage of the difference in price between two or more markets where marketing inefficiencies may exist.

Article Spinning – This is a process by which multiple articles are generated from one root article by changing words or phrases within the article while maintaining the meaning of the article. Article spinning is generally used by webmasters to build massive amounts of new backlinks. Penalisation from Google may occur if spinning is discovered as it violates search engine guidelines.

Astroturfing – When a group disguises itself as a grassroots campaign on social groups or forums in order to promote the brand or increase public relations.

Authority – This refers to the ranking potential within the SERPs for a webpage or website. It includes ranking based on these 5 factors: web content, traffic trends, website age, and link equity (this is actually two parts: quantity and quality).

Authority Site – This is a website that has a lot of high quality incoming links. High PageRank is a great possibility as well as better SERP ranking placement and online visibility.

B

B2B – Acronym for Business to Business. Term used to describe any action that relates promotions from one business to another for sales or marketing purposes.

B2C – Acronym for Business to Consumer/Customer. Term used to describe any kind of action related to promotions towards individuals who will ultimately buy the product or service of a company.

Backlinks – Links from an external site including incoming and inbound links. Achieving higher ranking positions is possible when there are a lot of good quality backlinks as it indicates to the search engines that your website has relevance.

Bad Neighbourhoods – These are dangerous websites to be associated with because they utilise black hat SEO practices including link farming. If your website is found to be associated with any websites in a bad neighbourhood, it will have a negative impact on your website and can result in your website being placed on high alert.

Black Hat SEO – This is an SEO practice by which the webmaster is intentionally trying to manipulate the algorithm used by search engines to create an artificially high ranking and more traffic. These practices are in violation of the search engine guidelines. Examples of Black Hat SEO includes: article spinning, automated link schemes, excessive keyword stuffing and text cloaking.

Blog – This is a shortened term for weblog. It includes posts that are informational in nature and relevant to the subject of the website. Useful information can be shared and is intended to create backlinks from those who share.

Blogroll – This is a list of links to external blogs that are within the same field or general industry as the blog itself.

Bounce Rate – Analytics figure describing the number of visitors to a site that enter as an original page impression, but leave without any further action, including scrolling or navigating within the website.

Branded Keywords – These are keywords that include the brand name of a product or service. Mentioning the name of the manufacturer or service provider is not generally used as unbranded keywords are more effective in attracting organic traffic to the website.

Bread Crumbs – Navigation existing on the side of the web page meant to help users to see where they are on the site and how they can get to the root pages as well as other areas on the site.

Broken Links – This is a term used to refer to links that lead nowhere. Typical causes are that a website/webpage being linked to has been moved or deleted. Because users dislike broken links, they should be discovered as quickly as possible and remedied.

Bounce Rate – This refers to the action of visitors to a site leaving a web page without navigating within the website or scrolling or engaging in the page in any way. This is represented as a percentage in typical analytic results.

C

Cache – Component used by websites to store data about a webpage to facilitate faster page results the next time a site is visited by a user. WordPress contains several plugins that are used to create a cache file. Among the most recommended of these cache plugins are: WP Super Cache and W3 Total Cache.

Call to Action – This is a term used in marketing to attempt at talking the user into taking a certain action. When in sales, this kind of marketing term is highly recommended. The use of the call to action keywords is also highly effective when used in the Meta description. CTA keywords include: contact, call, buy, purchase and get in touch.

Cannibalisation – Term used to describe when a keyword/term is being optimised on multiple pages. The search engine will de-rank or minimise the ranking for the pages based on cannibalisation because it is harder for it to discern which page you wanted to be optimised for the keyword.

Canonical Tags – Tag used on pages when there are multiple pages using similar content to indicate which page is the preferred page for ranking. The tag looks like this: rel=”canonical”. Since many website utilise similar content on multiple pages, it is recommended to have this tag on the preferred page for indexing.

CDN – Acronym for Content Delivery/Distribution Network. This is a network employed for use by servers providing data through multiple servers. The goal of a CDN is to facilitate faster website usage and content delivery. Free and paid CDN providers exist and provide varying levels of bandwidth. The fastest content loading times are available through CDNs as Cloudfare and MaxCDN.

Citations – References regarding your local business provided to local websites. Such metrics that should be included is the name of the business, number, fax number, address and anything else that is relevant to the business. These provide credibility in the local SERP ranking so a business is found more in local searches.

Click Fraud – Practice of clicking on an advertiser’s ad with the express intent of wasting their budget for Pay Per Click marketing.

Cloaking – Black Hat SEO technique that presents different information to a search engine spider than what the user will ultimately see.

CMS – Acronym for Content Management System (CMS). This is a program used by webmasters in developing a website using navigational back-end programming without having to learn all of the coding that goes into creating such a site. WordPress, Joomla and Magento are great examples of a CMS.

Content – Text and images used on a website to provide relevant information and materials for the visitor of the site.

Content Marketing – Content creation for the purpose of speedy distribution between different sources online such as new websites, forums and social media pages.

Conversion – This is the act by which the user is following through with the goal the website was intended for. This can include: subscribing to newsletters, signing onto a program, or making a purchase.

Conversion Rate – Rate used in analytics to determine how many of the visitors to a site converted, or took the intended action goal of the site. This is presented as a percentage for the number of visitors to a site.

CPA – Acronym for Cost Per Acquisition. Cost associated with the business end of converting a new customer through a website.

CPC – Acronym for Cost Per Click. This indicates the cost associated with a user clicking on an image or advertising link.

Crawl/Crawling – This is the term used when describing what a search engine spider does to a website to gather the relevant data used to rank the website for the search engine. Spiders report back information so it can be used in the algorithm to determine the rank of a page.

Crawler – Term used to describe the bot/spider used by Google and other search engines to read over the websites online and provide rankings on the SERPs.

CSS – Acronym for Cascading Style Sheet. Refers to the tool used to control the appearance and style of a website.

CTR – Acronym for Click Through Rate. This refers to the number of times that a link is clicked on as opposed to how many times it has been viewed. Represented as a percentage rate in analytics.

D

Deep Links – Term used to describe a web page that is deep in the hierarchy of a particular website. As website that might have a root domain of www.genericwebsite.com would have a deep link of www.genericwebsite.com/category/style.htm.

De-Index – Term used to describe the action taken by a search engine whereby a website is removed or excluded based on unethical optimisation practices including Black Hat SEO practices.

Directory – Sites offering backlink building by adding a link to your site on the directory. Categorisation is a general method to be shown on these kinds of websites, but to be included, the Webmaster has to submit the website for categorisation.

Dofollow Links – Links that pass link weight to the targeted URL. These links work to increase the authority of a website as well as increasing the SERP and the page ranking.

Domain Age – This is the amount of time that a website’s domain has been registered. Priority is given to older domains over those that have just recently been registered.

Domain Trust (DT) – This is trust-worthiness a domain is given from the search engine. Among the factors that will determine the DT for a domain include: domain age, incoming link diversity, high quality link percentage, and structure of internal linking.

Duplicate Content – This is where two websites have the same or very similar content on the page. Search engines will rank websites with duplicate content very lowly in the SERPs because the content is viewed as being untrusted.

E

E Commerce Site – Website dedicated to selling to consumers online.

EMD – Acronym for Exact Match Domain. This is the term used when the keyword on a site exactly matches the domain name. An example of this would be if the main keyword was Generic Website for www.genericwebsite.com. While these used to be weight heavily by the search engines, they have recently fallen out of favour for lack of authority.

Educational Links – These are links from .edu domains. They are weighted heavily by the search engines due in large part to the difficulty of obtaining an .edu domain in the first place. Websites with educational links are deemed to have the greatest importance.

Evergreen Content – Content that will not be deemed worthless after a given period of time. Absence of time passage that will become obsolete in the future and information that will not change with the passing years are examples of evergreen content. The search engines have included this content in the algorithm as a result of the importance of the content.

F

FFA – Acronym for Free for All. This is a term used for sites that act as a link farm. They generate many links leading to sites that are unrelated in terms of content and contain little to no content that is unique or useful to the user. Because they are intended only for spiders and to generate traffic, the websites and any website related to them are penalised when discovered.

Frames – This is a web design used to show two or more full documents at the same time on a web page. The problem with this kind of a design is that it is bad for ranking because the spider cannot properly read the page through navigation. As important, users do not like frames because it makes it more difficult to read the page.

Footer – This is the information listed at the bottom of the web page. Standard information included here are the internal links to contact information and such. These are weighted very low in terms of link equity.

G

Gateway Page – Also known as a doorway page, this is where users are redirected to another site from the one the search engine directs users to. Similar to cloaking only in that the content on the search engine is different.

Gizmo – Also known as a gadget or a widget, this is a term use to describe the different additions to a page to provide functions like an IP address display or a hit counter. These are sometimes used for link bait.

GoogleBot – These are also known as spiders and they are exclusive to Google used for data collection for all the websites online.

Google Analytics – This is a free service offered through Google that tracks data for your website and presents it as percentages and statistics for gauging the effectiveness of a website. Included is information about things like: integrated AdWords data, conversion rates, organic search queries, traffic sources and website traffic.

Google Bomb – When several webmasters group together to create a humorous change to the search engine results.

Google Bowling – Practice of negatively effecting a competitor’s website by linking a high volume of low quality links to the website. This practice is also known as negative-SEO.

Google Checkout – Payment processing service offered by Google to assist with purchase and payments made online by the user. It offers fraud protection and the ability to offer users payment options sites might not normally be set up to offer.

Google Dance – Term used to describe the constant movement up and down in SERP rankings as affected by indexing updates and changes to the Google algorithm.

Google Juice – Also known as the authority that Google offers a website, it is the ranking that is passed to another linked site.

Google Keyword Tool – Tool used by webmasters to determine how many search queries a keyword receives every month as well as competition data, related keywords and more.

Google Labs – Testing ground for all new Google innovations. Many of the most popular Google products started in Google Labs before graduating into being regular products used throughout the internet.

Google Pack – Software offered by Google that allows you the ability to use the software with just a few clicks and without the worry that there will be any spyware or other problems.

Google Webmaster Tools – Tool supplied by Google to help webmasters with analysis of indexation of the website, health of the website and other important information.

Grey Hat SEO – These are SEO practices that fall somewhere in between White Hat SEO and Black Hat SEO practices.

Guest Posting – Process by which content is added by someone other than the owner of the blog. Guest blogging is generally done to promote, create backlinks and at times just to provide useful content.

GYM – Acronym used to describe the top three search engines online: Google, Yahoo and Microsoft (Bing).

H

Header – This is the top section of a web page. Normally included in this section is the logo for the website as well as general navigational tools such as tabs.

Heading Tags (H1, H2, and H3) – These are the tags that are used to provide the page headings that describe the page and are considered by search engines to determine the relevance of the web page.

Hidden Keywords – These are the keywords that will not be seen by the user as they are located within the HTML for the site and meant to attract the attention of the spiders.

Hidden Text – This is a spam technique designed to increase the page ranking while managing what is seen on the page by the user. While all text is visible to the spider navigating the page, the user will only see a part of the text used for SEO purposes. This is a violation of the search engine guidelines and can result in penalization.

Hijacking – This is a form of cloaking in that it makes the search engine believe that the actual website exists in a different location. Mirror websites can be an example of hijacking a website.

Hit – Term used to describe the action by which a page sends information including pictures, text or files. Once the standard for judging traffic, it has been replaced by the terms page views as it more accurately describes how many people have visited a site.

Home Page – This is the main page or the home page for the website and is located on the root domain or the main page.

HTML – Acronym for HyperText Mark-up Language (HTML). This is the programming language websites utilise for website creation so the pages can be viewed by web browsers.

HTML Source – Raw code as viewed using the “view” selection under the “source” tab in the internet explorer. It is the code that makes up the viewable content on the site.

Hub – This is the page that related pages might be linked to as a trusted/authority page with high quality content.

Hyperlink – HTML term for a basic link that leads a user to a new page once the link has been clicked on.

I

Impression – Also known as page view, this is the term used to describe when a visitor has viewed a webpage.

Inbound Link – Also known as an incoming link or an inlink, this is a term used to describe when there is a link directed at the page from a trusted/authority site with related content.

Inbound Marketing – Means by which interest in generated in a company to develop trust and attention for a business. Methods for creating inbound marketing include content marketing, blogs, videos, social media marketing and SEO. This is in opposition to outbound marketing that attempts to persuade people of a company’s worth.

Indexed/Indexation – Process by which a web page is registered with the SERPs. Checking number of pages indexed is possible with the use of the Google Universal Search: site:yourwebsitehere.com.

Infographic – This is a visual representation of all the information regarding a website. Included are text content, graphs and data to create an efficient way to see all information at once.

Insertion Order – Contract with SEO company to detail the specifics of a search advertising campaign. It can include details about language options, geo-targeting, pricing, landing page information, ad creation, keyword usage, and where items are placed.

Internal Linking – Links that lead to other pages listed on the same root domain. Internal links are crawled faster and provide a convenient rate for those using the site and the links provided on the site.

Interstitial Ad – This is a page used as an advertisement that is also known as a transition page, Flash page or splash page. It exists for only a short period of time before the requested page is displayed

Invisible Web – Term used to describe all of the additional information never seen on the actual page.

J

Jump Page Ad – Site using links to head back to your site. It is a small site (microsite) that is reached through the use of a button or a banner.

K

Keywords – Queries users put into search engines in an attempt to find relevant web pages to what they are searching for. The best conversion rates come from long keywords that are highly descriptive rather than short keywords with a lot of searches on a monthly basis.

Keyword Density – This is the number of times that a keyword has been used in the body of a web page as opposed to the number of words in the overall page. The basic guidelines have always been to never exceed 2% keyword density, though Bing and Yahoo have indicated that they will allow up to 5%.

Keyword Research – A careful process by which keywords are analysed to determine which keywords will increase the online visibility for a website as well as attracting new traffic. Keywords that focus on accomplishing the objective of the website are valued.

Keyword Stuffing – Also known as keyword spam, this is the method of over-optimising a page to include too many keywords. This is an unethical practice designed to generate a better SERP ranking and includes keyword density over 5%.

L

Landing Page – This is the page visitors will land on when clicking on an online ad or through the link on the SERP. Pages are created to capture leads and generate sales and include calls to action.

Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) – This is the term used to describe searches that are also known as long tail searches. It is based on the fact that search engines will search through the group of pages to find associated words for better results.

Link – Term used to describe text, images or graphics used to jump to another page or to another part of the current page.

Link Bait – These are designed to attract users to follow a link to a website. The most common forms of link bait are those that are related to infographics, memes, guides, eBooks, or online hoaxes.

Link Building – This is a method of attaining a higher position with the SERP through the development of backlinks directed to your website. Search engines view websites with a large number of backlinks as popular and valuable to the user.

Link Condom – Term used to describe the action by which link equity is not passed from one site to another. This can assist pages with disassociation with bad sites that attempt to be linked through comments or other methods.

Linkerati – Group of people that are most likely to be linkbait targets for productive results. Members of this group include: content creators, bloggers, resource maintainers, social taggers and more.

Link Equity – This is also known as link weight, link juice or link value. This is the actual value of a link as determined by the relevance of the website and its authority. Incoming links from highly valuable and respected sites, like .edu, are weighted heavier than those with low credibility, like link farms.

Link Exchange – Agreement between two webmasters to create incoming links originating from each of the websites to the other.

Link Farm – Websites designed to create incoming links for other websites. This may be one or several websites that contain no actual content, just an excessive amount of links to various other websites. Many of these are created by automated programs and do not help to increase ranking because of the low link value.

Link Hoarding – Method by which a website has several incoming links, but no outbound links. Websites that do this are attempting to maintain the link equity on their own site.

Link Profile – Also known as Link popularity, this is the profile as determined by the incoming links a website has. The different types of sources for the incoming links as well as the value of the links have a lot to do with this profile. Metrics included are: types of websites linking, PageRank, linking root domains, quality of backlinks, and number of backlinks.

Link Text – See Anchor Text.

Linking Root Domain – This refers to the number of root domains that are linked to your website. Links from deep links will not constitute a linking root domain.

Link Velocity – This is the term that describes the speed at which a website attains incoming backlinks. When there is a spike in the link velocity, it generally corresponds to unnatural links or an increase in spammy links and will be taken notice of by search engines.

Long-Tail Keywords – These are key phrases rather than keywords and they include three or more words.

M

Mashup – This is a page that is made up primarily of the different gizmos that can be used on a single page and are often used for link bait. Tool collections are also popular ways to create a mashup.

Meta Descriptions – These are short paragraphs of up to 155 characters that briefly describe the contents of the page that is being linked to. This is the information that will appear on the SERP to encourage users to follow the link.

Meta Keywords – These keywords have become mostly obsolete with the advanced capabilities of the search engines. They were used to instruct the search engines what keywords the search engine should rank the page for.

Meta Tags – These are actually three different kinds of tags. They include: Meta keywords, title tag, and Meta description.

Metric – This is the standard used by analytics programs to measure information for a site.

MFA – Acronym for Made for Advertisements. This is a term used to describe the sites that are created specifically to be used as a location for advertising.

Mirror Site – Website located at a different address that is identical to the original.

Monetize – Process by which a website is created to make money from it. This includes the optimisation, maintenance and building that goes into the website. Utilising affiliate marketing, CPC ads and CPM ads can help to monetize a site.

MozRank – Ranking value that is similar to Google PageRankthat measures the importance/popularity of your page. The SEO Toolbar extension needs to be installed to see the MozRank as has been determined by SEOmoz.

N

Natural Search Results – Unpaid for and unsponsored search engine results.

Niche – This is a market that is specific to one particular topic, subject or product. An example of a niche website is one that focuses on grills.

Nofollow Links – These differ from the dofollow links in that they do not allow the passing of link equity to the site that it is linked to. The embedded parameter that creates a nofollow link is rel=”nofollow”.

Noindex – This is a command used by pages when they want to tell the search engines not to index the page with the SERPs.

O

On-Page Optimisation – This refers to the techniques and practices that are used to optimise a page in regards to the optimisation on the actual web page. Examples of these are through back-end access procedures like internal linking, content optimisation and Meta optimisation.

Off-Page Optimisation – This refers to everything that is used to optimise a site without having to access the back-end of the website. Examples of off-page optimisation include article submissions, content marketing and link building.

Organic Search Results – Listings with the SERP that results from the natural relevancy that a search result has to the search term. Search engines make money by offering to display paid search results alongside the organic results.

Organic Traffic – Traffic that results from the organic listings on the SERPs.

Outlink – Link that leads away from a site towards another site.

P

PPA – Acronym for Pay Per Action. Term used to describe the pay received when a click through results in a sale.

PPC – Acronym for Pay Per Click. This is an advertising method in which advertisers pay every time a user clicks on the ad. Daily budgets are used to control the costs of the advertising method while the cost of each click is determined by the country of origin for the user, and how competitive the industry is.

Paid Links – These are links that are paid for to create a higher ranking with the SERP through increases in backlinks. This is an unnatural link building technique and will lead to penalisation from the search engine if discovered.

PageRank (PR) – This is numeric scale that rates the incoming links a website has. Named after one of the founders of Google, Larry Page, PageRank goes from 0-10 with 10 being the most valuable. The higher the PageRank from the sites that that a page is ranked to will result in a therefore higher PageRank for the site itself which will in turn lead to a higher ranking with the SERPs.

PFI – Acronym for Pay for Inclusion. Term used to be included in a directory or search engine. This is generally only to increase the speed by which the website is considered to avoid penalisation from Google for paid links.

Persona – This is a group of consumers online that represent the target market for a company. Among the metrics that are used to create the persona of the group include: job status, marital status, income, sex, age.

Portal – Web service used to get users to make the portal the home page on the internet.

Press Release – This is an article that is created to increase the awareness of a brand. These are intended to be found on news outlets or news websites and aim to create a high PR backlink through content that is extremely relevant.

Profile Links – These are a popular form of link building and they come from forum profile pages. They are so popular because all of the forum profile pages allow at least one dofollow link in a profile link.

Proprietary Method – Any statement made by an SEO professional guaranteeing first page status through an action that only they can do.

R

Reciprocal Links – These are links that have returning links between two different sites. This form of link building assists in mutually directing traffic between the reciprocal websites.

Redirect – This is the method by which a user is sent from one location to another.

Regional Long Tail (RLT) – Term used to describe a long keyword – three or more words – including the name of the city or region that a business resides in to gain local SEO attention.

Reputation Management – Practice by which you check in on the SERP to make sure that all of the top ten slots are occupied by your website. Also can refer to the investigation of the popular review websites to make sure nothing negative is being said in reviews about your business.

Rich Snippet – This is the process by which data is summarized and compacted so it will appear on the SERP. These can include review mark-ups, video mark-ups, authorship and other various types. This is done to provide more relevancies to the page and provide a status as an authority for meeting the expectations of the user. Marked-up pages will generally receive higher CTR as a result of rich snippets.

Robot.txt – This is a file used to provide instructions to the crawlers that will investigate the website for information about which pages to crawl and what to index. The file is kept in the root directory for the website. The purpose of the instructions is to increase the efficiency of crawling the website.

RIO – Acronym for Return on Investment. This is the amount that a company will receive as opposed to the costs that are invested into a certain benefit for the company.

Root Domain – This is the base of the website on which all of the other pages will branch off from. The example for this is ‘www.genericwebsite.com’ is the root domain while ‘www.genericwebsite.com/new-page’ would be the subdirectory. Links from the root domain are always able to carry more link equity.

RSS – Acronym for Rich Site Summary. This is the summary of the website’s published works in a web feed or feed. Included in the RSS are videos, audio, blog posts and more. Updates can be received by the user when they subscribe to the RSS feed.

S

Sandbox – This is the term used for when a new website suddenly starts ranking really well and then suddenly disappears from all rankings. This is also known as Google Sandbox and Sandbox Effect. There are no confirmed reasons as to why this happens.

Scraped Content – This is the practice by which content is automatically grabbed from one site and published on another. Software is used to accomplish this to help index new web pages faster and to facilitate the faster flow of new traffic to the website.

SE – Acronym for Search Engine. It derives from the acronym for SEO.

SEM – Acronym for Search Engine Marketing. This is the marketing technique used by websites to increase the websites visibility on the SERPs through higher ranking and better authority as a website.

SEO – Acronym for Search Engine Optimisation. This is the practice by which the ranking potential within the SERP is increased to bring in more traffic. A variety of different techniques have been used to increase the ranking for a web page. They can include: Website design, website loading speed, link building, on-page optimisation.

SEOs – This is a term used for search engine optimisers. These are the search engine marketers that work on the SEO for a website to increase the visibility online and to provide the best possible ranking potential for the website.

Search Engine Spider/Spider – This is the bot that is used by the search engine to craw, all of the different websites on the internet. Its purpose is to collect information about the different websites and use it to index the web pages on the SERPs determined by the relevancy to the user’s query and the authority of the site.

SERP – Acronym for Search Engine Result Page. This is the page a user will see after conducting a query on a search engine. The most effective SEO techniques will land a website on the first page, or within the first ten results, on a SERP. This is a highly sought after goal because the most relevant pages in the eyes of the search engine and the user are on the first page and the greatest potential to be seen and bring in more traffic is possible from the first page.

Sitemap – This is the page that is created to provide spiders and users the ability to navigate a website easier. It groups key pages together in a strategic structure. The XML sitemap assists the spider in finding all relevant website pages.

Sniffer Script – Program in the script that is used to determine the kind of software being used by an internet user. It allows the website to present the version of the website that is best suited to the software being run by the user.

Social Bookmark – Generating public access through the use of a bookmark on the user level in social media.

Social Media – This is a term used to refer to all of the websites that were originally intended to promote social activity between users. Content can be shared between users and businesses can promote through the sharing and promotion of content on the different sites. Among the many different social media outlets are the ever-popular: Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and Facebook.

Social Media Marketing (SMM) – This is when social network sites are used to promote the brand of a company.

Social Media Positioning (SMP) – Methods used to create the persona whereby a competitor appears to be spamming.

Sock Puppet – Term used to describe the method of hiding someone’s identity, usually to create multiple accounts or profiles.

Spam– This is the process by which unsolicited content is sent or publishes. It normally contains no useful information and is irrelevant to the website.

Spam Add Page – Pages not generated to offer anything useful to the user, rather intended to create pages for AdSense advertising. Pages are generally created through the use of scraped or computer generated content.

Spamdexing – This is a scheme by which the search engine indexes are directly manipulated with the intention of increasing the ranking within the SERPs. This is an unethical means of promoting a website that would normally be considered irrelevant to the search engine. This is also known as search engine spam, web spam, or search spam.

Spamglish – Meaningless sentences and repetitive keyword usage meant to attract the attention of the search engine spider with little regard to the needs of the user.

Spammer – Person utilising spam in the pursuit of some goal.

Spider Trap – A program created to trap a spider through the use of generated links that go in an endless loop. While these are normally created to prevent scraping or email address harvesting, they can inadvertently catch a spider.

Splash Page – Attractive pages using lots of graphics and lacking any content that is useful. When poorly executed, these pages are bad for SEO because they are recognised as dead pages by the spiders and cannot look past the page to the links.

Splog – Also known as a spam blog, this is a blog that is not created for the use of humans and often is populated with content that is scraped.

Static Page – Pages that are lacking in dynamic content and provide spider friendly materials that are created with an SEO slant.

Stickiness – Term used to describe the effect of a bounce rate on a site. Sites with a high bounce rate are considered to be very sticky.

Subdirectory – This is the deeper level page that is branched off from the root domain. An example of a subdirectory is ‘www.genericwebsite.com/new-page’.

Subdomain– This is a domain that is associated with the root domain. If the root domain is ‘www.genericwebsite.com’, the subdomain would be ‘www.generic.websites.com.au’.

Submission – Content that is submitted to directories or sites for consideration.

Supplemental Index – Term used to describe the pages that have a very low PageRank, and will show up in the SERPs as a supplemental result.

T

Taxonomy – This is the method of grouping together certain topics or subjects.

Text Link – This is a link that is derived strictly from text and does not utilise flash or java.

Time on Page – This is the amount of time that a user spends on a page as reported in analytics.

Title Tag – Tag used to identify the website to the SERP. It should contain no more than 70 characters and should be highly relevant to the website and the keywords that you use within the website. This will ultimately be displayed on the SERP during a search engine query.

Traffic – The number of visitors a website will receive at any given time.

Trust Rank – Differentiation between valuable/trusted pages and pages that are identified as spam as determined by the link relationships.

U

Unnatural Link Warning – This is warning that is issued as a part of the Google Webmaster Tools. It is designed to let webmasters know that they are in violation and will be penalised until the unnatural links have been removed or corrected. IN order to remove the penalisation, the webmaster will have to resubmit the pages to show they no longer contain spammy, paid or unnatural incoming links.

URL – Acronym for Uniform Resource Locator. More commonly known to users as a web address, this is the information that can be entered directly into the browser to bring the user directly to the web page.

User Generated Content (UGC) – Content that is created solely by the users. Social media is a prime example of this kind of content.

V

Viral Marketing – This is the process by which content is created in such a way as to increase the likelihood that it will achieve a viral status online. Social media is one of the biggest contributors to viral content as a result of users being able to share content instantly.

W

Walled Garden – Very low PageRank creation whereby a group of pages are linked to one another, but lack links anywhere else on the internet.

Webinar – This is a live event hosted online that is similar in nature to a regular seminar.

Web 2.0 – This is the term used to refer to when users are engages with the online communities that they are a part of. Social networking, forums and social booking sites are all examples of the websites where this activity occurs. Examples include: StumbleUpon, Reddit, Tumblr, Twitter, and Facebook.

Web Standards – These are standards that have been set up in the form of XHTML, CSS and more. The end result is to provide more accessibility to web sites even for those who are disabled through an increased level of platforms being catered to.

White Hat SEO – This is the process by which webmasters use SEO techniques that are within the search engine guidelines to promote the rank of the website with the SERP. By using natural and ethical means of promotion, the long term success of the website is possible.

Widgets – These are the navigational links and content that are found on the sidebar blocks that provide easier navigation through the site and to links. Included are: popular items, search bar, recent posts, advertisements, or a subscription form.

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