Search Engine Optimization & Marketing Glossary

Adsense - Google’s pay per click advertising scheme. Google pays you when someone clicks on the ads that have been placed on your site.

Adwords – Google’s brand of Pay Per Click advertising that shows up on the right side of its page results when searching corresponding keywords.

Adwords may also be distributed to many other web sites that relate to the keywords you have bid on.

Article Marketing – The marketing practice of posting articles on sites to generate interest and back links to your own website.

Back Link - One way links from an web page or link that take people back to your website.

Banner Advertising - Billboard-like ads on web pages, when clicked they take you to the company who paid for the ad.

Black Hat - The bad guys. Questionable marketing tactics used to gain higher page rankings with search engines that do not adhere to standard TOS. (Spamming, Link Farms, etc.) Utilizing these practices could get you punished (sent lower in the page rankings) or even barred from showing up in Google searches.

Blog – A type of online diary that is updated frequently. Sometimes others may comment on what has been previously posted.

Chat Room – Online discussions on a particular section of a site, usually in real time, of a specific nature.

Click through - The process of clicking on a link in a search engine results page to visit an indexed site.

Click through rate (CTR) - The ratio of clicks and display impressions of an ad. If an ad were displayed 100 times and 4 viewers clicked on it, you have a CTR of 4%.

Comment - The HTML tags are used to hide text from browsers. Some search engines ignore text between these symbols but others index such text as if the comment tags were not there.

CPC - Acronym for Cost Per Click. Advertising scheme that puts your ad on related keyword searched pages and websites. You bid an amount you will pay the person or company displaying your ad when someone clicks the ad and is redirected to your web site or landing page. The amount of money you will pay when someone clicks your ad or banner.

Crawlers - Also know as a "robot" or "spider", a crawler is an automated software program that runs at many search engines, reads sites' content, analyzes it, and inserts them into the index (or collects information for later insertion into the index).

Description tag - HTML tag used to by Web page authors to provide a description for search engine listings. Some engines display these descriptions, other display some text from your page containing the searched phrase.

Directories - A directory is a web site, which contains listings (usually searchable and categorized) of other web sites. Most directories are created and managed by human editors.

Doorway page - Any page through which a visitor can enter your site. Some people prepare special pages to rank well in search engines for particular keywords, serving as an entry point through which visitors pass to the main content.

Forum – Online postings of a specific subject matter in a specific section of a site.

Google – The “Big Kahuna” of search engines. The service most people use to search for things on the internet.

HTML – Acronym for HyperText Markup Language. The symbols and code used and interpreted by the web browser to format documents in a particular way.

ISP – Acronym for Internet Service Provider. The company that provide you access to the internet.

Keyword - A word used in a performing a search. Generally visitors search for phrases instead of single words to locate the required information.

Keyword Density - A measure of how frequently a given keyword appears within a given web page.

Keyword marketing - Putting your message in front of people who are searching using particular keywords and key phrases.

Keyword Phrase - A phrase, which forms (part of) a search engine query.

Keyword Purchasing - The buying of search keywords from search engines, usually to control banner ad or Pay-per-click advertising.

Keyword Research - Keyword research is the most effective technique used by SEO during search engine optimization. Keyword research helps webmasters target keywords which brings more traffic to their sites. There are so many keyword research tools available for keyword research. Which help webmasters get information about query search by visitors on search engines and popularity of the keyword. Once keyword research is done, webmasters decide which keywords are important to target for their sites.

Keywords tag - META tag used to help define the primary keywords of a Web page.

Landing Page – The web page someone is redirected to when they click on an ad or other link. This may or may not be your home page.

Link popularity - A measure of the quantity and quality of sites that link to your site.

Link text - The text contained in (and sometimes near) a hyperlink.

Log file - File that records the activity on a Web server.

Manual submission - Adding a URL to the search engines individually by hand.

Meta Tags - Meta elements provide information about a given webpage, most often to help search engines categorize them correctly. They are inserted into the HTML document, but are often not directly visible to a user visiting the site.

Organic – The “natural way” of generating links and content, as opposed to “paid for” link generation.

Pay per click search engine - Search engine where results are ranked according to the bid amount, and advertisers are charged when a searcher clicks on the search listing.

Pay per inclusion search engine - Search engine where web sites or certain pages are included in the index only when you pay them a fee. The rank is not guaranteed and is based on the engines ranking algorithm or rules.

Positioning - The process of ordering web sites or web pages by a search engine or a directory so that the most relevant sites appear first in the search results for a particular query.

Positioning Technique - A method of modifying a web page so that search engines (or a particular search engine) treat the page as more relevant to a particular query (or a set of queries).

Query - A word, a phrase or a group of words, possibly combined with other syntax used to pass instructions to a search engine or a directory in order to locate web pages.

Rank - The position a particular site is listed in a search engine after a person does a relevant search. The higher the rank, the nearer the top of the results the site will come, and usually, the more traffic it will get.

Registration - The process of informing a search engine or directory that a new web page or web site should be indexed.

Re-submission - Repeating the search engine registration process one or more times for the same page or site. Generally it is unnecessary to do this with spider based search engines.

Robots - Also know as a "crawler" or "spider", a robot is an automated software program that runs at many search engines, reads sites' content, analyzes it, and inserts them into the index (or collects information for later insertion into the index).

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) - The art and science of marketing your website to search engines. This encompasses a variety of strategies and processes, including Article Marketing, Web Video Marketing SEO, and PPC programs.

Search engine optimization (SEO) - The process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via "natural" ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results.

Search engine submission - The act of supplying a URL to a search engine in an attempt to make a search engine aware of a site or page.

Social Networking – The marketing practice of using popular networking site to promote yourself, your company, your products or website.

Submission Service - Any agent, which submits your site to many search engines and directories.

Title tag - HTML tag used to define the text in the top line of a Web browser, also used by many search engines as the title of search listings.

Top 20 - The top twenty search engine results for a particular search term.

Traffic - The visitors to a web page or web site. Also refers to the number of visitors, hits, accesses etc. over a given period.

URL - Uniform Resource Locator - Location of a resource on the Internet.

Viral Marketing – The marketing practice of people marketing you by sending your message, video site address etc, along to their friends via email, or my mentioning you in forums, chat rooms and blogs.

Video Marketing – The marketing practice of posting videos on popular sites to generate interest and back links to your website.

Volunteer directory - A Web directory staffed primarily by unpaid volunteer editors.

White Hat - The good guys, above-board marketing tactics that comply with search engines’ TOS.