| Link | Definition |
| 200 | An HTTP status code 200 means a successful request or a well-functioning URL. Everything’s that happened is as planned (which is usually what you’re going for). 200 requests are good news, no problems at all. |
| 301 | An HTTP status code 301 is shown when a page has been moved permanently. They should be used any time you have permanently replaced a URL with another URL. In SEO it is colloquially known as a “301 redirect”. These redirects pass the link equity from the old URL to the new URL. |
| 302 | An HTTP status code 302 redirect, is in general, not beneficial. They are similar to 301s in behavior, but do not pass the link equity. Normally, these are used for temporary situations as doing as A/B test or collecting data. |
| 404 | This is one of the most common HTTP status code that send a “Not Found” error message. A 404 is served if you simply don’t have the page or item requested, or if a user misspells a URL. |
| Above the Fold | Adapted from newspapers, this web marketing term refers to the content on a webpage which is visible without scrolling. Ads placed at this part of the screen are known as above the fold. However, people tend to skip these ads as they scroll down to read the main content. Same is the case with ads placed on a sidebar. Hence, it is better to blend ads into the web content, making it look similar to the page’s content. Moreover, excessively using above the fold ads attracts Google penalty. |
| Absolute Link | A link to a web page showing its full reference URL. Absolute links are preferred to relative links as they reduce the scope for canonicalization and hijacking issues. |
| Activity Bias | When a website makes retargeting efforts directed at an audience who are more inclined to engage in certain activity. This influences the positive or negative impact of an ad on a particular group. |
| adCenter | Old name of Microsoft Bing ads. It is the company’s pay per click advertising network. |
| AdSense | Google’s contextual ad network that you can use to publish ads which are relevant to the content of your website. When someone clicks on the ads displayed on your website, you get your share of Google’s profits from that click. |
| AdWords | Google’s advertising system and link auction network. This uses keywords to target consumers. Advertisers pay for these keywords at a cost per click pricing model. Google will display demographic targeting, video, affiliate, radio, and traditional print ads through AdWords in the near future. |
| Affiliate Marketing | A performance-based program which helps merchants to expand their reach with the services of affiliates. Affiliates or independent agents charge the merchants by cost per action basis. They get paid whenever someone clicks your ads on their website. |
| Age | Age refers to either (1) site age (2) user account age (3) page age or (4) any related historical data. Age is a crucial factor for social networks and search engines to assess whether they can trust a person, document or website. Moreover, relevancy of web pages can be boosted with age. This can be seen in blog searches, where the latest article is visible first, before older ones. |
| AJAX | Without a mandatory reload of a web page, using Asynchronous JavaScript and XML, the page can receive additional data from the server. |
| Alexa | Voice search service by Amazon, available on devices like Echo, Fire TV and Fire Tablets. It allows users to make voice activated commands like search the internet. They can use it to play certain music or measure website traffic. |
| AllTheWeb | A search engine and latest Yahoo acquisition. Closed in 2011 by Yahoo, there are plans for using it to test newer search technologies. |
| Alt Attribute | You can add text to your images and give them context. This is helpful for search engines and visually impaired people to comprehend an image. |
| AltaVista | Yahoo bought Overture, which owned AltaVista, a search engine from the 1990s. It became obsolete since an algorithmic update made many websites irrelevant in its search. |
| Amazon.com | Initially this website sold books and now, it is the largest online retailer. Amazon’s marketplace allows people to sell merchandise online. Specializing in user generated content, it allows writers to publish and sell their work on Kindle Direct Publishing and Createspace. The brand also owns famous websites like IMDB, Audible and Goodreads. Alexa voice search service is by Amazon. |
| Analytics | Software program that makes use of a JavaScript tracking code. You can embed the JavaScript tracking code in your website. This analyzes the site’s log files and tracks user paths, page views and conversion statistics. You can use this to optimize your web pages and measure the effectiveness of ads. |
| Anchor Text | Clickable text through which the users follow a link. It could be an image, text, or, an alt attribute. |
| Android | Google OS which powers tablets, smartphones and other mobile devices. |
| AOL | American Online, a popular web portal which merged with Time Warner. It has a running email service and offers news via Huffington Post. |
| API | Application Program Interface is a set of protocols used as communication among 2 or more software components. It provides all the building blocks necessary to build a program. API is commonly used in search engines or social media apps. |
| Arbitrage | Taking advantages of differences in the price of an asset by simultaneously purchasing and reselling for a profit. In SEO terms, you buy traffic to your website, in order to increase the click through rate on your ads. |
| ASP | Active Server Pages are those which have one or more script. It is Microsoft’s first server-side script engine, which is a development framework for building dynamic web pages. |
| Ask | Initially started as Ask Jeeves, Ask.com is a popular search engine. Owned by InterActive Corp, it uses hubs and authorities to decipher the search results. This platform also provides real user interaction, where users can ask questions in their community. |
| Authority | Search engine’s ability to rank websites. Page ranking depends on factors like site age, site history, traffic trends, link equity, unique and original content. |
| Authorities | Trusted sites are known as topical authorities. It means that a site has content depth. Topical community uses experts use this as a resource to find dedicated content. Topical hub is a page that references many authorities. |
| Automated Bid Management Software | Most people have a limited budget. Automated Bid Management Software helps you in controlling your ad spend on pay per click campaigns. You can run analytics on your site and create focused ads. |
| Bait and Switch | Marketing concept where you lure the consumers with seemingly innocent content and attractive prices. Once you have their attention, you reveal the real intent of your content. For example, using pictures of dolphins flipping and ultimately getting people to buy hotel rooms. |
| Banner Blindness | In the early stages of web marketing, most ads used to get displayed above the fold or as banner ads. But with time, people started ignoring ads in common areas and became blind to banners. |
| Battelle, John | Popular media blogger and co-founder of Wired and The Industry Standard. |
| Behavioral Targeting | People’s recent searches are analysed and used for targeted advertising. For example, if you had searched in recent past for bed linens, related ads will be visible to you when you visit another unrelated website. |
| Bias | Prejudice of a person generally against something or inclination towards something based on their point of view or experience. |
| Bing | Search engine from Microsoft. Since 2009, Yahoo! Search has been using Bing to power organic search results. |
| Bing Ads | Pay per click advertising service by Microsoft which competes with Google Adwords. It powers paid search results on Yahoo! Search. |
| Black Hat SEO | Marketing techniques that go against search engine guidelines. These deceptive techniques do not follow current search guidelines, which change form time to time. This is why one needs to look out for the latest guidelines. |
| Block Level Analysis | A web page is divided into smaller blocks, which makes it easier to analyze. Each block has different weight and relevance. |
| Blog | Short for weblog, blog is an online journal for people or businesses. The content updates and formats itself in a reverse chronological order, making the newest entry visible first. Blogs categorize and archive the content using tags. Users can also provide their feedback in a comment section. |
| Blog Comment Spam | Comment spam is the low value or no value feedback a blog receives. Such comments are posted manually or using software. |
| Blogger | Google owned blog-publishing service that helps writers make time-stamped entries. With a single user account, you can open multiple blogs. |
| Blogroll | A list of hyperlinks to related blogs appearing on the sidebar of a blog. Usually they are the blogs of the same person or of the blog owner’s friends. You could let other bloggers rent the spots on your link list. |
| Bold | Font option which makes the set of type characters wider and darker, used to draw attention to the web content. Mostly keywords and headings appear in bold. They have more weight than regular text on search engine ranking. |
| Bookmarks | You can save and mark your favorite web pages with bookmarks. With bookmarks, popularity and quality of the content of a webpage can be determined. Search engines use them to improve search results. |
| Boolean Search | This allows you to search by combining keywords with operators or words like AND, OR, or NOT. This creates a mathematical formula that refines your search by limiting or combining the keywords. For example, “Writing AND publishing” search results will show pages that have both the keywords, whereas “Writing OR publishing” will show the pages that have either one. Usually, AND is added to any search term by default. |
| Brand | Consumers identify a company with its brand. It an emotional response which the name of the company evokes. |
| Branded Keywords | Keywords that include the name of a brand. Branded keywords or phrases dominate search engine results page. They are highest converting keywords that are unique to your domain. They occur during the latter stages of bidding process. |
| Breadcrumb Navigation | A navigational technique which communicates how the web pages relate to one another. It displays the page hierarchy and makes it easier for users to reach a higher-level page. |
| Brin, Sergey | American entrepreneur, who co-founded Google. |
| Broken Link | Dead link on a web page which no longer works or a link to a non-existent external page. |
| Browser | Web browser is an application program which gives you access to the world wide web. |
| Bush, Vannevar | American scientist and writer. He was the head of the U.S. Office of Scientific Research and Development during WWII. His seminal research paper “As We May Think” was about a hypothetical proto-hypertext device based on memory extension concept. This model laid foundation for the creation of the World Wide Web. |
| Business.com | Digital media company which is an authority on business information and related websites. It contains a directory of business websites. The site also offers display and pay per click advertising. |
| Buying Cycle | The sales cycle consumers complete when they make a large purchase. This cycle starts with researching brands and products to suit their needs. Using different keywords on different pages will get you the attention of the consumers during any stage of the buying cycle. Using branded keywords works best for your target audience as they have high conversion rates. |
| Cache | Search engine stores copies of data from the web pages in their index, for future requests. The search engine references the stored cache, but not the website, hence you can access the website faster. |
| Calacanis, Jason | American entrepreneur and angel investor. He co-founded a publishing company, Weblogs, Inc. and sold it to AOL. His obsession with Digg was the reason behind the declined traffic stats for Netscape, of which he was the CEO. This led to the launch a new search engine Mahalo with human-crafted search results. |
| Canonical URL | Canonical link is used for a page chosen by you, or your preferred URL. This prevents content duplication issues and is the most authoritative version indexed by search engines. |
| Catch All Listing | A search technique with a list of keywords not used in targeted ads. It monetizes such keywords and many search engines prevent this technique. This yields better results if you use this with common, competitive keywords. |
| CGI | Common Gateway Interface. Web servers use this standard protocol to add interactivity to a website. It facilitates executable actions among the web servers and software. |
| Chrome | Google’s web browser. Chrome is also the Operating System on which Google Chromebooks runs. |
| Client | A computer or program which is at the receiving end of information requests. It is often located on other computers or systems. It may also be simple applications like a web browser. |
| Cloaking | SEO technique where the content visible to the user is different from the version presented to search engine spiders. Some search engines display varying content based with the intention of increasing the company’s strength. However, it is not deemed reasonable by many search engines which may ban such websites. |
| Cluetrain Manifesto, The | Business literature work, published in 2000. It is a good resource to learn about the impact of internet on marketing techniques. It’s also touches upon the ways in which web marketing differs from traditional offline marketing. |
| Clustering | Used for making search results more organized. Groups of similar objects are identified by this machine learning technique. Clustering algorithm classifies data points into specific groups. Web pages of an individual site, hubs and authorities can be clustered together. If you search for a specific term, this method groups the results as per the matter of your interest. |
| CMS | Content Management System, an application tool that allows for managing content on your website. |
| Co-citation | Topical authority sites are assumed to be connected to one another. When different authority sites mention the same topic or brand, it is co-citation. Search algorithms link them together due to their content-driven connection. It also the frequency by which two documents are linked together. |
| Comments | Users providing feedback on your content. |
| Comments Tag | A source code identifier. Programming element used to add comments. |
| Compacted Information | A product’s associated information that uses special coding. Best examples are ISBNs for books. This eliminates unnecessary redundancies. |
| Conceptual Links | Advanced search engines try to understand some links beyond the words in them. Some rather search engines use algorithms that match the words near the link rather than just using anchor text. They also look for context and co-citation to find our concept links to index the site. |
| Concept Search | Conceptual search is a method for automated information retrieval which uses the concept behind the search query to deliver accurate search results. |
| Contextual Advertising | Targeted advertising on a web page that uses its content to display relevant advertisements. |
| Conversion | Conversion is a marketing concept that happens when visitors turn into paying customers. Then the displayed ads meet the desired goals. For example, if you display an ad on your website to sell books, conversion happens when visitors click on it and buy a book. |
| Copyright | This is the legal right that the original content creator has. When someone has the copyright of a work, it means they have the right to publish or reproduce that particular intellectual property. All content, by default, is copyrighted under US Law. |
| Cookie | Data file trackers (web browsers) place small pieces of data on a user’s computer. This makes it easy to customize web content. They can also be used in affiliate marketing to track conversions. |
| CPA | Cost per action or acquisition measures how effective your online advertising strategy is. Most affiliates get use cost per acquisition offers. Payment is based on qualifying actions that include filling out lead forms, buying products or clicking on ads. |
| CPC | Cost per click is the actual price a publisher gets paid in PPC marketing, when a user click on an ad. Since ad services auctions keywords, the actual cost per click is also influenced by your rival competitor’s ad rank. |
| CPM | Cost per mile means cost per 1,000 advertisement impressions. |
| Crawl Depth | The extent to which search engine can index (crawl) the content and pages of a website. |
| Crawl Frequency | How frequently users and search engine spiders crawl a website. |
| CSS | Cascading Style Sheets let you add various formats and styles to web pages. |
| CTR | Click through rate is the percentage of user impressions that lead to a specific link. CTR measures traffic and effective use of keywords in getting users to click a link. |
| Cutts, Matt | American software engineer, the head of search quality at Google. |
| Cybersquatting | Registering a domain similar to those of other trademarks. The primary goal is to steal visitors form highly-trafficked websites or brands. Marketers and advertisers register similar names or misspelled names to tap into people’s interest in the popular names. |
| Dayparting | Scheduling your ad campaigns as per the availability of your target audience. You can make modifications like changing the ad bid price or placing budget limits to maximise visibility and improve CTR depending on the users’ active times. |
| Dead Link | Non functional link. |
| Deep Link | Hypertext which links to an internal page other than the website’s homepage. |
| Dedicated Server | Independent server dedicated for use by a single website or computer in a network. It is owned by only one person to use it for a group of websites. |
| Deep Link Ratio | The ratio of deep links to overall links of a specific website. It is the number of deep links as compared to overall links. |
| De-Listing | When a website is removed temporarily or erased permanently from a search engine index. It could happen for many reasons like spamdexing. |
| Del.icio.us | A social bookmarking website where users can save their web pages and share with others. |
| Demographics | Statistical data on characteristics like age, gender, income, interests of specific population. |
| Denton, Nick | Founder and publisher of Gawker, now defunct website. Posted articles were controversial. |
| Description | A summary of the content of your website. Search engines display the site description in the search results. |
| Digg | Publishes user-submitted stories or popular social news among users. Stories that go viral are the ones that get the most votes. |
| Directory | Catalog of various websites that lists them separately based on website topics. |
| Disavow | Discarding harmful links that direct to your website. If you are a webmaster, you can request to remove low quality inbound links pointing to your website with disavow tool |
| DMOZ | AOL owns this Open content directory, where editors can edit a directory or listing of websites. |
| DNS | Domain Name Server or Domain Name System is like the phone book for the world wide web. Any domain name issue can be resolved with this. Users can locate the websites they are looking for by mapping with their IP addresses. |
| Domain | A specific website URL. It is the address where users can find your website. |
| Doorway Pages | These affect the search engine index ranking by manipulating it. It is when you optimize low quality pages to rank well for highly targeted search queries. Users are redirected to pages with advertisements. |
| Dreamweaver | Web development tool and editing software by Adobe. Lets you code, design and publish web apps that mock your interface. |
| Duplicate Content | Content that is exact copy or looks similar to other content across domains. |
| Dwell Time | The time user spends on the website he visits via the search results page. Dwell time starts after a user clicks back to the search results. |
| Dynamic Content | Content that is deemed dynamic by PHP or other dynamic language. Content that keeps changing over time as per user preferences or other factors. |
| Dynamic Languages | High-level programming languages for building web pages in which you can make changes while the program is running. |
| Earnings Per Click | Estimation of your total earnings or salary over a period of time. It is based on how much you earn on one click. |
| Editorial Link | Link from a website with quality content and good marketing technique. This affects the quality of your website. Search engines prefer editorial links (earned links) to paid or bartered links. |
| Emphasis | Text is used as focal point on your website. It can be emphasized using an HTML tag. |
| Engagement Metrics | An engagement measurement used to analyse whether the content on your website is engaging to the users. This measures user activity. |
| Entities | Nouns or specific character strings that users type in their search queries. Search engines use entities to deliver search results. |
| Entry Page | A page on your website which the user first visits through a link. It might not automatically be the home page, but the user can be directed to internal pages. If a user enters your website via a link to the home page, them the home page is their entry page. |
| Ethical SEO | White hat SEO technique which is effective and follows search engine guidelines. |
| Everflux | Google ranking algorithm, which has its search indexes updating and refreshing continuously. |
| Expert Document | Website with quality pages that links to many non-affiliated, topically relevant resources. |
| External Link | Hyperlink on your website that directs users to another domain. |
| Fair Use | This gives you the legal right to limit use of copyrighted content without permission from the copyright holder. Although, there are some exceptions for fair use, which you can find under the Copyright code under section 107. |
| Favicon | Shortcut icon that marks or identifies a particular website. It is usually a square image found in a web browser, to the left side on the URL tab. |
| Feed | When users subscribe to a channel, the feed notifies them about frequently updated content. Content distributors can also use syndicated feeds on pay per click basis. |
| Feed Reader | This is a software that sends users notifications about the content to which they had subscribed. |
| FFA | Free For All is a web page on which anyone can add a link. But there will be little or no popularity for these links in search engine rankings. |
| Filter | This is when search engines remove some web pages out of the search results because certain activities of the page make it appear unnatural. |
| Firefox | It is an open source and free web browser from Mozilla Corp. |
| Flash | Flash is authoring software and vector graphics-based animation tool. It is used by websites to create rich graphics, designs, and interactions. |
| Frames | Frames divide your browser window into smaller sections to display content for easier site navigation. But a single display is used for multiple smaller pages. However, creating deep links gets complicated by this. |
| Fresh Content | Unique and consistently updated content on a website. This is important to have user engagement and hold their attention. |
| FTP | File Transfer Protocol is the common protocol used to exchange data between computers. |
| Fuzzy Search | Searches that have improved ability to find results for the correct spelling of queries. |
| GAP | Google Advertising Professional is a Google AdWords certification that qualifies marketers as proficient marketers. |
| Gladwell, Malcolm | Canadian writer and journalist. He works for The New Yorker and author of The Tipping Point, which explains how even small things can spread and become unstoppable. |
| Godin, Seth | Best selling author, professional blogger, and public speaker who specializes in viral marketing and leadership. |
| Google | Technology company. The most popular and largest search engine created by Sergey Brin and Larry Page. |
| GoogleBot | Google’s search engine spider or web crawler. |
| Google Base | Google’s free database where users can add their own content. It has semantically structured information. |
| Google Bombing | When a specific website ranks high on search engines even for an unrelated phrase. This practice uses many keywords in the anchor text to create ranking bias |
| Google Bowling | Manipulation of external ranking factors to lower the rank of your competitor. This involves pointing thousands of low quality links of no value to the website. |
| Google Dance | Google’s past major index updates where it rebuilt its rankings. |
| Google Keyword Tool | Google displays search results from Google search services above organic search results. Marketers and advertisers can use valuable keyword data and suggestions. |
| Google OneBox | Webmasters use this program to get more visibility and index their website’s content. The search results get displayed in a separate box. |
| Google Sitemaps | By posting a sitemap file of their websites, webmasters ensure that search engines can get to their data faster and more efficiently. |
| Google Sitelinks | Google regards some results more relevant than others by analyzing their link structure.Some links such as deep links to the site, appear prominently in the search results to help users to quickly find the relevant information. |
| Google Supplemental Index | Google has 2 indexed pages for websites- main and supplemental. Those with lower trust scores are stored in the supplemental index. Websites with duplicate content, complex URL names or untrustworthy site host get featured in this index. |
| Google Traffic Estimator | Google AdWords traffic estimator monitors keyword traffic to determine the bid prices. It estimates the number of people clicking on an ad with a specific keyword. It also estimates new high-traffic keyword ideas. |
| Google Trends | Tool that allows you to view keyword trends. You can see how popular keywords perform with time. |
| Google Webmaster Guidelines | These are forever changing guidelines that help webmasters to make their websites to get indexed better. Google can penalize a website if it doesn’t adhere to the guidelines’ specifications. |
| Google Wallet | Google’s payment service is a mobile payment system. It helps merchants to get higher conversion rates. They can use Google Wallet to get a better understanding of markets and keywords. |
| Google Webmaster Tools | Tool to improve traffic to your website by analyzing the keyword trends. Webmasters can disavow links and make efforts to get an improved ranking. |
| Google Website Optimizer | Free multi-variable testing platform for website optimization. It helps webmasters and adwords improve visitor conversion rates. |
| Guestbook Spam | Low quality, untrustworthy automated links which are ranked very low by search engines. They are mostly advertising messages that users post, along with a URL. |
| Headings | The title or a brief summary of the content of a section. |
| Headline | SEO technique where the headline is visible to search engine spiders, but not to a human visitor. |
| Hidden Text | Unaffiliated expert citations used to manipulate search rankings. This deception is a violation of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. |
| Hilltop | Algorithm to find topical authorities and expert documents to rank relevance scores. |
| HITS | Algorithm that uses link structure of the web to rank pages for relevant keywords. |
| Hijacking | Redirects a web page to another website. It tricks a search engine into believing that your URL leads to a different website. This can be a 302 redirect or via a meta refresh. |
| Home Page | The first page on your website’s navigation schemes for the users and search engines alike. The main page responsible for being your brand’s description. |
| .htaccess | Directory-level configuration file by Apache Web Server. You can protect files with password or redirect using this. |
| HTML | HyperText Markup Language. This language is used to create websites and code web apps. |
| HTTP | HyperText Transfer Protocol is used for data communication on the web. It transfers data between active user browsers and web servers. |
| Hubs | A common connection point for several devices in a network. It is used for communication among the devices. The most commonly used hub connects LAN segments. |
| Hummingbird | Google Hummingbird is a search algorithm update that is used to improve conversational search. |
| IDF | Inverse Document Frequency is used to index web pages. It figures out a term’s position in frequency of a document. In a vector space model, IDF calculates the uniqueness and rareness of the term. |
| Inbound Link | When you use high quality backlinks to link another website from your website. |
| Index | A search engine query that collects and stores relevant data from websites. The data is indexed to use as search results. |
| Internal Link | Hyperlink that takes users from one page to another page on the same website or domain. |
| Information Architecture | Organizing and designing content on your website in a structured and categorical manner. |
| Information Retrieval | The scientific process of finding relevant data by sorting through large data sets. These can be through full-text or content-based search index. |
| Inktomi | A search engine based on paid inclusion business model. Yahoo acquired it in 2000. |
| Internet | Interconnected computer networks that use TCP/IP across the world. |
| Internet Explorer | Web browser by Microsoft, which consistently get updated. The latest in the series is Microsoft Edge, a result of Firefox pushing them to get more competitive features and improve performance. |
| Invisible Web | Also known as deep web or hidden web, it is a portion of world wide web. It has plenty of data which is invisible to you due to search limitations, data architecture and copyright issues. |
| IP Address | Internet Protocol Address is your device’s address for internet connections. For every computer connection, the ISPs provide an IP address. Websites and servers have unique IP addresses. However, most servers use the same IP address to host multiple websites. |
| ISP | Internet Service Providers are those companies which provides users and companies with access to the internet. |
| JavaScript | Client-side programming language that is used to embed dynamic features into a website. It is also seen in non-browser environments. |
| Keyword | A word, phrase or search query typed into the search engine by the users who are looking to find specific information or a product. |
| Keyword Density | Measure of relevancy of a specific keyword in the content. It is the percentage of usage of keywords as compared to the whole content of the web page. |
| Keyword Funnel | Some keywords have a relationship among them, known as keyword funnel. They could be naturally linked due to spelling errors or poor search relevancy. |
| Keyword Not Provided | This status makes it difficult to use SEO techniques when Google analytics does not show the keywords. This is because Google doesn’t wish to share the keyword data with you. |
| Keyword Research | A high return activity in which you research for effective keywords for your SEO strategy. |
| Keyword Research Tools | These tools help you to determine search trends and search volumes. You use keywords, bid prices and look at other websites’ content that is similar to yours. |
| Keyword Stuffing | Content is stuffed with keywords in order to manipulate rankings. |
| Kleinberg, Jon | American scientist famous for his work on search relevancy algorithms of hubs and authorities. |
| Knowledge Graph | Google gathers third party information and displays in extended format to enhance search results. |
| Landing Page | Designed for advertising campaign, this is the page on your website where the the users land when they click on a link displaying ads. |
| Landing Page Quality Scores | Estimates your ad position by Google’s measurement in which noisy ads get filtered out in the Adwords Program. |
| Link | A citation or selectable connection from one web document to another. |
| Link Baiting | To increase number of inbound links to your website and targeting your audience. |
| Link Building | Getting high quality pages to link to your site. This process involves evaluating your website as relevant, and trustworthy using sophisticated analysis. |
| Link Bursts | When your website gets a sudden increase in the number links with high quality content directing to it. |
| Link Churn | The rate at which the site loses its links. |
| Link Equity | Popularity of inbound links and the authority of those sites influence the strength of a website. |
| Link Farm | Group of websites that increase incoming links in one another’s pages. Examples are FFA pages. |
| Log Files | Your log files give you an idea of how people use your website. These are server files that have the list of actions performed and information on your traffic |
| Link Hoarding | Keeping your website’s link popularity by allowing more number of inbound links, but not linking out to other sites. It is also when you link to other sites using JavaScript or redirects. |
| Link Popularity | Your website link popularity increases when there are many links directing people to it. |
| Link Reputation | The measurement of search engine algorithms that combines your anchor text and link equity. |
| Link Rot | A measurement of the number of links on your website that point to non functioning pages or servers. |
| Link Velocity | The rate at which a website accumulates new inbound links. |
| Live.com | Microsoft portal until 2009. This web suite was replaced by Bing. |
| Long Tail | Marketing strategy that targets a large number of smaller niche areas. This has long term effects that occur beyond the initial campaign. |
| Looksmart | Earlier, it was s directory service. Paid search provider that offers vertical content play and contextual advertising. |
| LSI | Latent Semantic Indexing is a mathematical search system to find out relevant language for a search query. In search results, some high quality pages do not contain the exact keyword, but have similar content. LSI puts those pages into the search results. |
| Malda, Rob | Founder and chief editor of Slashdot.org. It is a popular news forum that has stories submitted and assessed by site users and editors. |
| Manual Penalty | When a website doesn’t follow Google Webmaster Guidelines, Google Webmaster Tools penalizes it. These can last for years or until the issues are fixed by requesting a review on Google Webmaster Tools. |
| Manual Review | Process to help catch spam and improve automated relevance algorithms manually. When a website is flagged due to abnormal usage data or shows up in any spam report, someone will review it manually. |
| Mechanical Turk | In this Amazon owned crowdsourcing operation, humans are hired to do easy tasks which computers cannot perform. |
| Meme | A viral story, image or video that reflects a cultural concept and brings awareness through imitation. |
| Meta Description | HTML tag in a couple of sentences that describes the content of the webpage. |
| Meta Keywords | Meta keywords tag helps search engines identify the pages using targeted keywords. |
| Meta Refresh | Automatic web browser that lets it redirect to another page after a set time period. |
| Meta Search | A tool that delivers a new search result set which it gets from search data of top ranking results of other search engines. |
| Meta Tags | Same as meta descriptions and meta elements that have keywords and topic of the page. |
| Microsoft | Popular computer software company. It owns Windows operating system. |
| Mindshare | Measure of consumer popularity of your brand. It measures people’s opinion on your products when that category comes to their mind. |
| Mirror Site | Content from a website is copied onto another website. |
| Movable Type | Content management system and publishing software, with which a blog is hosted on your website. |
| MSN Search | Default search engine for Microsoft’s web browser. |
| Multi Dimensional Scaling | Data analysis technique that uses latent semantic indexing and creates content clusters to improve ranking. |
| MySpace | Social networking website and blogging platform that was popular from 2005 to 2009. It focused on discovering new music and connecting musicians to their fans. |
| Natural Language Processing | Search engines attempt to understand users queries beyond the keywords. They use algorithms to learn a user’s true intent with the language used. |
| Navigation | It helps website users to find what they are looking for, within its web pages. It is a map of your website. |
| Navigation Search | It lets users get to a specific website or business using their search query. |
| Negative SEO | Adversely influencing a third-party site or competitor’s site ranking. |
| Netscape | Social news site owned by Verizon Media. Earlier, a web browser existed with the same name. |
| Niche | Particular theme or subject in which a website specializes. |
| Nofollow | A link which search engines are stopped from ranking or passing link authority. |
| Ontology | An exhaustive conceptual schema which focuses on relationships in a specific domain. |
| Open Source | Software that anyone can modify. |
| Opera | Popular web browser for various operating systems. |
| Organic Search Results | The unpaid and natural search results. |
| Outbound Link | A link from your website that directs users to another external website. |
| Overture | Earlier named as Goto, Overture started to sell targeted searches on a pay per click model. Yahoo acquired it in 2003, yet it doesn’t identify as Yahoo search marketing. |
| Overture Keyword Selector Tool | This tool uses Yahoo! search statistics in research on commercial searches. This tool also searches and suggests singular and plural keywords. |
| Page, Larry | Internet entrepreneur and co-founder of Google. |
| PageRank | Named after larry page, it is a Google search algorithm that estimates the importance of websites using link equity. |
| Paid Inclusion | Search engine marketing model where websites pay search engines to get relevant exposure after passing editorial quality guidelines. |
| Panda Algorithm | A Google algorithm that sort the websites according to relevance, based on their content quality. |
| Pay for Performance | Affiliated sales workers work on Commission based affiliate marketing model. The sales agents get paid on the basis of performance, that is only when a consumer performs an action. |
| Penalty | Google imposed automated or manual punishment for websites that spam or neglect guidelines for a higher ranking. |
| Penguin Algorithm | Google algorithm that catches websites that are likely to spam. Google penalizes these sites if it finds unnatural link profiles. |
| Personalization | Search results will be altered by the search engines to accommodate the user’s location and search history. They display tailored results based on the user’s recently viewed pages. If you have searched for restaurants in the past, your search results show you restaurants near your location. |
| PHP | This server side scripting language helps in adding interactivity to web pages. It is an open source software. |
| Pigeon Update | Google algorithm that increases the ranking of local listings in its search results. This tied in more signals associated with regular search. |
| Piracy Update | Google search algorithm to lower the rankings of websites against which there are DMCA takedown requests in excessive numbers. |
| Poison Word | The rankings of websites with low quality content are demoted by poison words. |
| PDF | Portable Document Format by Adobe Systems. This universal file format lets you store and view printable versions of files. |
| POGO Rate | It represents the percentage of users who click on a link displayed on the search results, but quickly click back to results page. |
| Portal | Any website offering diverse consumer services like email client, search, news and other content. |
| PPC | Pay Per Click is an advertising model. Here the advertiser pays fees only if someone clicks their ad. |
| Precision | A measurement that is the percentage of accuracy of the search results, in relation to the query. |
| Profit Elasticity | Using price adjustments, supply and several other parameters to measure the profit potential of various economic conditions. This measurement creates different profit potentials where supply and demand curves remain interact. |
| Proximity | How close words are to each other. Search engines use this measure to determine whether websites are keyword stuffing. This measure uses how close or similar these words are. |
| QDF | Query Deserves Freshness search algorithmic signal is the reason websites with fresher and newer content rank higher than those with older content. |
| Quality Content | Websites with content that reads natural and search engines consider it link worthy. |
| Quality Link | Search engines consider your website as a site worthy of citation if it is a quality link. It also has more number of link votes of trust. |
| Query | The phrases or string of words users enters in the search box. |
| Query Refinement | Search engines indulge in refining a query to deliver more relevant and accurate results. One way of doing this is providing suggestions to similar queries. |
| Rankbrain | Google relevancy algorithm signal that leverages user click path information to improve rare search terms relevancy. |
| Recall | Retrieving some of the relevant documents. |
| Reciprocal Links | Exchange of links between websites to create false authority. They feature each other’s links in their web pages. |
| Redirect | Browsers send search engines and users to a different URL than the one requested. This happens because the URL has moved its location. Meta Refresh, 301 and 302 are the common redirects. |
| Registrar | A company where you register the domain names. |
| Reinclusion | When a site gets penalized for spamming, they are excluded in the search index. The site can request for a reinclusion, and its inclusion will be based on the severity of the infraction. |
| Referrer | Data from a website or persons who refer the users to a particular link. |
| Relative Link | A link which acts as a reference for the relation between the current URL and the URL page where the link takes the user. These are short links that contain no numbers, and easy to remember. Relative links become less desirable with hijacking and canonicalization. |
| Relevancy | This measures to what extent the search results are useful to people who enter the search query. |
| Repeat Visits | Visitors who come back to the same website. |
| Reputation Management | Managing the reputation of your brand by making sure that search results display related keywords. This reinforces the brand when the ranking of your branded keywords improve and are higher compared to the negative attention from hate sites. |
| Resubmission | Website owners resubmit pages when they don’t improve ranking. It is not worth the consumers time. |
| Retargeting | Your internet history will be used by advertising programs to create ads based on what you viewed recently or added to your shopping cart on a website. Retargeting creates personalize ads. |
| Reverse Index | Files with matching documents containing specific keywords are stored in this index. |
| Robots.txt | A file that stops search engine spiders from crawling your website. It is placed at the root of your site. But some search engines may display your website as URL only listing. |
| ROI | Return on Investment measures if you get a profit in addition to the money you invest in marketing back. |
| RSS | Rich Site Summary or Real Simple Syndication in which users subscribe to a channel and get notifications immediately when there is new content. Syndicated information is fed to a software or a feed reader. |
| Safari | Apple’s web browser. |
| Salton, Gerard | Scientist and pioneer in the field of information retrieval. |
| Scumware | Intrusive software and programming code which enters your computer without your consent and knowledge. |
| Search History | List of your past searches, stored by most search engines. |
| Search Engine | A tool or device which helps you find results for your query. It uses spiders, relevancy algorithms, search index to get you the search results. |
| SEM | Search Engine Marketing lets you buy website traffic through paid search listings. |
| SEO | Search Engine Optimization is the art of increasing traffic through free, unpaid listings. It involves posting searchable content so that the search engines can understand the language. |
| SEO Copywriting | Making search query relevant copy. Content is made to appear relevant by formatting and writing, using a wide array of keywords. |
| SERP | Search Engine Results Page is the page that displays search results containing your query. |
| Search Marketing | Also known as SEM. This is used to market your website in search engines. |
| Server | A computer that hosts or serves websites or files to end users. |
| Server Logs | Traffic trends of your source files and website maintained automatically by the servers. |
| Singular Value Decomposition | Breaking down a large database and comparing document vectors. |
| Siphoning | Use of spyware or cybersquatting to steal the traffic originally directed to another website. |
| Site Map | Site navigation made for users’ convenience or to help guide search engines. |
| Slashdot | Founded by Rob Malda, this nerdy, news aggregator site publishes technology related topics. |
| Social Media | Websites that allow users to network, create and share their own content. Examples are Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Instagram. |
| Spam | Unsolicited messages, especially emails. |
| Spamming | Creation and distribution of unsolicited messages and information. |
| Spider | Search engine programs that help create a search index by crawling through websites. |
| Splash Page | Aesthetically pleasing web pages which do not have quality content of real value in the view of search engines. |
| Splog | Spam blog. Low quality blogs that generate content by reading the content of other websites or stealing directly from them. |
| Spyware | Intrusive, unwanted software programs that enter your computer and start spying for the sake of consumer research and creating personalized ads. |
| Squidoo | Seth Godin founded website where users wrote and shared articles called topical lenses. |
| SSI | Server Side Includes makes it easier to update websites by calling web files from one page to another. |
| Static Content | Content of a website which rarely change. Page that does not have dynamic programming language. For example, about page of websites. |
| Stemming | Process in which stem words are used to make search results relevant. Search results will include word that are similar to the original query. |
| Stop Words | Common words like a, an, the. These are removed from the query as they do not influence the results. |
| Sullivan, Danny | Journalist, entrepreneur. He is the founder and lead editor of SearchEngineLand and SearchEngineWatch. |
| Submission | It is a tool of web promotion. It is the process of presenting the content or articles on your website for indexing by the search engines. |
| Supplemental Results | Search results you get from supplemental index, where lower rank are stored. |
| Taxonomy | A classification system that uses controlled vocabulary to improve rankings on topical subjects. |
| Technorati | A blog search engine where you can track link relationships and popular stories. |
| Teoma | Ask.com’s interface and Kleinberg hubs and authorities concept. A search engine based on topical community. |
| Telnet | Internet network or LAN protocol where a remote computer gains access and logs in to another computer. |
| Term Frequency | The frequency at which a term appears in a collection of documents. |
| Term Vector Database | An index of documents categorised as per their weight. This aims to understand the document topic in comparison to that of other documents. It then matches the most relevant documents and gives access to web pages results for a search query. This depends on term vector length and angle. |
| Text Link Ads | Text links are individual words on the website that work as formatted ads. |
| Thesaurus | When you enter a query, search engines make use of a synonym directory to deliver you the most accurate search results. |
| Title | Contents of the web page or a document are summarized in a title. |
| Toolbar | A feature of web browsers which helps the search engines in tracking usage data. They help to block pop-up ads, fill in forms and perform a spell check. |
| Top Heavy | Too many ads displayed above the fold of a web page. Google algorithm penalizes such websites. |
| Topic-Sensitive PageRank | Topic related PageRank scores are produced by computing PageRank based on topics. |
| Trackback | Popular blogging software programs use this feature. This automatically notifies you whenever other websites mention your site. |
| The Tragedy of the Commons | Google distributes ads to different websites so as to make it less annoying for users. It is the principle of giving up a few rights for security. |
| TrustRank | Search relevancy algorithm that performs link analysis. This ranks additional weighting on websites of major corporations, educational institutions, or governmental institutions. |
| Typepad | Hosted blogging service by Six Apart, who also developed Movable Type. |
| Unethical SEO | Unethical and questionable practices in SEO. Also known as blackhat SEO, they manipulate content to get a higher rank for websites. |
| Update | Improving an algorithm and keeping it fresh with new content. This makes sure the search engines deliver results that are relevant and accurate. |
| URL | Uniform Resource Locator is the address of your website. You find your web documents here. |
| URL Rewrite | A technique to make site indexing easier by creating unique and descriptive URLs. |
| Usability | Measure of a website. It tests whether the users can navigate easily or find the content they are looking for. |
| Usage Data | Data used by your website and how much traffic it gets. It also includes the percentage of repeat visitors and how long they stay on your site. |
| Usenet | A search service that uses various newsgroups to deliver information about a particular topic. |
| Vertical Search | A search process focusing on niche segments and online content or looking for specific information. |
| Viral Marketing | Marketing technique where users share information about the product. Self propagating technique like emails, word of mouth publicity and blogging. |
| Virtual Domain | Website hosted by a virtual server. |
| Virtual Server | A server which shares hardware and software with other OS. Multiple top level domains are hosted from a single computer. |
| Wales, Jimmy | Entrepreneur and co-founder of Wikipedia. |
| Whois | Identity of the registered owner of a domain. |
| White Hat SEO | Ethical SEO campaign that sticks to the search engine guidelines. |
| Wiki | A collaborative software for publishing and editing information by its users. |
| Wikipedia | A free encyclopedia web portal comprising of information collected using wiki software. |
| Wordnet | Lexical database of English words, based on which the search engines find relationships between various words. |
| WordPress | Open source blogging platform which users can download. They can also use it as a host. |
| Wordtracker | Paid keyword research tool to find high performing keywords. This can help marketers increase their website relevancy. Data is collected from meta search engines such as Dogpile. |
| Xenu Link Sleuth | Webmasters audit their website with this free software tool. It helps find broken links and create a sitemap. |
| XHTML | Extensible HyperText Markup Language has strict specifications than HTML that allows it to conform to XML. |
| XML | Extensible Markup Language is both human and machine readable language. It makes things on the internet easier, simpler and more usable. |
| Yahoo! | Web service provider and popular website whose foundation is Yahoo! Directory. |
| Yahoo! Answers | A knowledge sharing web platform where users ask questions and receive answers. |
| Yahoo! Directory | Yahoo! Directory became one of the biggest directories since it was found in 1994 by David Filo and Jerry Yang. |
| Yahoo! Search Marketing | Yahoo!’s PPC platform, similar to Bing Ads or Google AdWords. |
| Yahoo! Site Explorer | Yahoo service that lets you explore Yahoo index and check the inbound links to your site. You can get information on other websites. |
| YouTube | A popular video sharing and user generated content sharing platform owned by Google. Youtube also uploads syndication content. |
| Zeal | Non-commercial web directory bought by Looksmart a year after it first appeared. It was abruptly shut down in 2006 with no prior warning. |
