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Internet Glossary -
Understanding Search Engine Marketing
A set of rules that a search engine uses to rank the listings contained within its index, in response to a particular query. No search engine reveals exactly how its own algorithm works, to protect itself from competitors and those who wish to spam the search engine. (it is the mathematical program formula used to determine which web pages are displayed in search results and what order).
: see Organic Listings
An HTML "tag" that allows a browser to display text instead of a graphic. Some search engines read these tags in order to help with rankings. All images can be given an ALT tag.
An HTML "tag" Links another page or file. Can be optimized using proper search terms. Some search engines read these tags in order to help with rankings.
Active Server Pages, a server based scripting language that is used to provide dynamic content and build database driven web sites where the browser may not have any scripting.
All the links pointing at a particular web page. Also called inbound links. Source: Webmaster World Forums
When pages are removed from a search engine's index specifically because the search engine has deemed them to be spamming or violating some type of guidelines.
It started out as referring to specific content management software (blogger), and has transitioned into a description for a wide range of personal pages, journals, and diary type setups.
In terms of search engine marketing, this is the act of getting a search engine to record content for a URL that is different than what a searcher will ultimately see. (Hiding of page content). It can be done in many technical ways. Several search engines have explicit rules against unapproved cloaking. Those violating these guidelines might find their pages penalized or banned from a search engine's index. As for approved cloaking, this generally only happens with search engines offering paid inclusion program. Anyone offering cloaking services should be able to demonstrate explicit approval from a search engine about what they intend to do. If not, then they should then have explained the risks inherent of unapproved cloaking. (Using cloaking a web site will submit a page built purely to rank high for a search engine algorithm and then display completely different content for human users).
The listing of only one page from each web site in a search engine or a directory's list of search results. This avoids occupation of all the top results of a query by a small number of web sites and provides a cleaner more useful list of results to the user.
The relationship between visitors to a web site and actions consider to be a "conversion," such as a sale or request to receive more information. Often expressed as a percentage. If a web site has 50 visitors and 10 of them convert, then the site has a 20 percent conversion rate.
Copyrighting your creative work protects it from unauthorized use. With a registered copyright, you control how your work is reproduced, distributed and presented publicly.
Component of search engine that gather listings by automatically "crawling" the web. A search engine's crawler (also called a spider or robot), follows links to web pages. It makes copies of the web pages found and stores these in the search engine's index.
Descriptive text associated with a web page and displayed, usually with the page title and URL, when the page appears in a list of pages generated by a search engine or directory as a result of a query. Some search engines take this description from the DESCRIPTION Meta tag – others generate their own from the text in the page. Directories often use text that was provided at registration.
A type of search engine where listings are gathered through human efforts, rather than by automated crawling of the web. In directories, web sites are often reviewed, summarized by human editors in about 25 words and placed in a particular product / service category of that directory. Yahoo and Google both have directories where they share that information with Yahoo and Google's search engine
An Internet address. The most significant part of the address comes at the end. Typical top-level domains are .com, .net, .biz, .edu, .gov, .org. There are also various geographic top-level domains (e.g, .ar, .ca, .fr, .ro, etc.)
A web page created expressly in hopes of ranking well for a term in a search engine's non-paid listings and which itself does not deliver much information to those viewing it. Instead, visitors will often see only some enticement on the doorway page leading them to other pages (i.e., "Click Here To Enter), or they may be automatically propelled quickly past the doorway page. With cloaking, they may never see the doorway page at all. Several search engines have guidelines against doorway pages, though they are more commonly allowed in through paid inclusion programs. Also referred to as bridge pages, gateway pages and jump pages, among other names.
Information on web pages that change or is changed automatically, e.g. based on database content or user information. Sometimes it's possible to spot that this technique is being used, e.g. if the URL, ends with .asp, .cfm, .cgi or .shtml. It is possible to serve dynamic content using standard (normally static) .htm or .html type pages, though Search engines will currently index dynamic content in a similar fashion to static content, although they will not usually index URLs which contain the "?" character.
An HTML technique for combining two or more separate HTML documents within a single web browser screen. A framed web site often causes great problems for search engines, and may not be indexed correctly or not indexed.
A web page submitted to a search engine (spider) to give the relevance-algorithm of that particular spider the data it needs, in the format that it needs it, in order to place a site at the proper level of relevance for the topic(s) in question.
Text on a web page which is visible to search engine spiders but not visible to human visitors. This is sometimes because the text has been set the same color as the background. Hidden text is often used for spamdexing. Many search engines can now detect the use of hidden text, and often remove offending pages from their database or lower such pages' positioning.
In the context of visitors to web pages, a hit (or site hit) is a single access request made to the server for either a text file or a graphic. If, for example, a web page contains ten buttons constructed from separate images, a single page will involve eleven hits on the server. In the context of a search engine query, a hit is a measure of the number of web pages matching a query returned by a search engine or directory.
Total Tracking for your website. Track your search terms/keywords and visitor. Easy to us and set up automatic emailing of your reports and statistics.
HyperText Markup Language – the (main) language used to write web pages.
JPEG.-File is optimized to be used for the Internet, e-mail and PowerPoint presentations. It uses a high degree of compression to create a smaller file size. It is not well-suited for printing, however. If you need to use your logo for print applications, use
TIF.- File, it may not look great on screen, but the print quality will be excellent. The file is perfect for use in office applications like Microsoft Word to print pages on InkJets or Laser printers because you can save it as a 300 DPI (Dots Per Inch) file. This file is not designed to use in web pages.
EPS.-File type that your printer will need to print business cards, signs, brochures, etc. It is the most accurate file and can be scaled to any size without degradation. Give this file to anyone that will be printing or creating signage. Unless you have more serious graphic editing programs such as Adobe Illustrator, this type of file may not be useful to you.
A hypertext link to a particular page from elsewhere, bringing traffic to that page. Inbound links are counted to produce a measure of the page popularity.
The information that appears on a search engine's results page in response to a keyword search. Similar to a phone book listing. FYI: The number of web site pages will reflect the number of pages indexed on the Search Engines.
Whenever you connect to the Internet, you are giving a unique 4 number Internet Protocol Address (IP Address). Your IP address is how data finds its way back and forth from your computer to a particular web site. Your IP address may change each time you attach to your ISP. If your IP address stays the same from connection to connection, you are said to have a static IP address. If it changes each time you connect, you are said to have a dynamic IP address. IP addresses can be important in the context of search engine submission because some search engines have been known to ignore submissions from any one IP over a certain limit.
A simple interpreted computer language used for small programming tasks within HTML web pages. The scripts are normally interpreted (or run) on the client's computer by the web browser. Some search engines have been known to index these scripts, presumably erroneously.
A property of the text in a web page which indicates what percentage the keywords are appearing on an individual page. Some search engines use this for positioning.
The use of keywords as part of the URL to a web site. Positioning is improved on some search engines when keywords are reinforced in the URL.
A phrase which forms (part of) a search engine query.
A raw count of how "popular" a page is based on the number of back links it has. It does not factor in link context or link quality, which are also important elements in how search engines make use of links to impact rankings.
Allows page authors to say how they would like their pages described when listed by search engines. Not all search engines use the tag.
Allows page authors to add text to a page to help with the search engine ranking process. Not all search engines use the tag.
Multiple copies of web sites or web pages, often on different servers. The process of registering these multiple copies with search engines is often treated as spamdexing because it artificially increases the relevancy of the pages. Filters now automatically remove many of these mirrors from the indexes.
People quite often spell words incorrectly when using search engines. Pages which use common misspellings will often receive extra hits, so it is a useful technique to include common misspellings of words in ALT tags, keywords, page names and titles. A similar effect occurs when spaces are missed out and words are accidentally joined together.
The use of several extra domains to help or/and direct results to website pages
Listings that search engines do not sell (unlike paid listings). Instead, sites appear solely because a search engine has deemed it editorially important for them to be included, regardless of payment. Paid inclusion content is also often considered "organic" even though it is paid for. This is because that content usually appears intermixed with unpaid organic results.
Links on a particular web page leading to other web pages, whether they are within the same web site or other web sites.
Listings that search engines sell to advertisers, usually through paid placement or paid inclusion programs. In contrast, organic listings are not sold.
Term popularized by some search engines as a synonym for pay-per-click, stressing to advertisers that they are only paying for ads that "perform" in terms of delivering traffic, as opposed to CPM-based ads, where ads cost money, even if they don't generate a click.
Advertising program where listings are guaranteed to appear in response to particular search terms, with higher ranking typically obtained by paying more than other advertisers. Paid placement listings can be purchased from a portal or a search network. Search networks are often set up in an auction environment where keywords and phrases are associated with a cost-per-click (CPC) fee. Overture and Google are the largest networks, but MSN and other portals sometimes sell paid placement listings directly as well. Portal sponsorships are also a type of paid placement.
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).
Stands for pay-per-click or pay for performance and means the same as cost-per-click. See Cost Per Click.
How well a particular web page or web site is listed in a search engine results. For example, a web page about apples may be listed in response to a query for "apples." However, "rank" indicates where exactly it was listed -- be it on the first page of results, the second page or perhaps the 200th page. Alternatively, it might also be said to be ranked first among all results, or 12th, or 111th. Overall, saying a page is "listed" only means that it can be found within a search engine in response to a query, not that it necessarily ranks well for that query. Also called position or positioning. (in the context of search engines, it is the position that a sites entry is displayed in a search engine query results).
A link exchange between two sites.
The URL of the web page from which a visitor came. The server's referrer log file will indicate this. If a visitor came directly from a search engine listing, the query used to find the page will usually be encoded in the referrer URL, making it easy to see which keywords are bringing visitors. The referrer information can also be accessed as document referrer within Java Script or via the HTTP_REFERER environment variable (accessible from scripting languages).
The method a search engine or directory uses to match the keywords in a query with the content of each web page, so that the web pages found can be ordered suitably in the query results. Each search engine or directory is likely to use a different algorithm, and to change or improve its algorithm from time to time.
After a user enters a search query, the page that is displayed, is call the results page. Sometimes it may be called SERPs, for "search engine results page." Source: Webmaster World Forums
Stands for "Return On Investment" and refers to the percentage of profit or revenue generated from a specific activity. For example, one might measure the ROI of a paid listing campaign by adding up the total amount spent on the campaign (say $200) versus the amount generated from it in revenue (say $1,000). The ROI would then be 500 percent. Or often referred to sales per lead.
The software that searches an index and returns matches. Search engine is often used synonymously with spider and index, although these are separate components that work with the engine. Some of the major search engines are Google, Yahoo, MSN.
The act of marketing a web site via search engines, whether this be improving rank in organic listings, purchasing paid listings or a combination of these and other search engine-related activities.
The act of altering a website for website optimization so that it does well in the organic, crawler-based listings of search engines. In the past, has also been used as a term for any type of search engine marketing activity, though now the term search engine marketing itself has taken over for this. Also called SEO.
- See>> Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
- See Search Engine Optimization>>Search Engine Optimization for your website
Short for "Search Engine Results Page". This is the page that is generated by a search engine in response to a search query.
A computer, program or process which responds to requests for information from a client. On the Internet, all web pages are held on servers. This includes those parts of the search engines and directories which are accessible from the Internet.
A program that automatically fetches Web pages. Spiders are used to feed pages to search engines. It's called a spider because it crawls over the Web. Another term for these programs is webcrawler. Because most Web pages contain links to other pages, a spider can start almost anywhere. As soon as it sees a link to another page, it goes off and fetches it. Large search engines, have many spiders working in parallel.
The process of surfing the web, storing URLs and indexing keywords, links and text.
Technology of encrypting information between a server and a client computer. Used for e-commerce sites, bank, etd. All SSL transactions occur on domains that are using a secure protocol.
To get SSL for your site, you will need to purchase a security certificate.
The ability for a search to include the "stem" of words. For example, stemming allows a user to enter "swimming" and get back results also for the stem word "swim".
The act to submitting a URL for inclusion into a search engine's index. Manual submissions will more than likely get your website picked up; but not guaranteed or you can pay. In addition, submission does not help with rank improvement on crawler-based search engines unless search engine optimization efforts have been taken. Submission can be done manually (i.e., you fill out an online form and submit) or automated, where a software program or online service may process the forms behind the scenes. Useful to get listed with many of the minor search engines, but don't reply on such services to get listed with the major search engines. Many of these services are automatic and run from web sites. Others run offline. Some are free. Beware of supplying your email address to the so called FFA (free for all) services – you may receive lots of spam.
Universal Resource Locator. An address which can specify any Internet resource uniquely. The beginning of the address indicates the type of resource – e.g. http: for web pages, ftp: for file transfers, telnet: for computer login sessions or mailto: for e-mail addresses.
The process of submitting a webpage to search engines.
Who Owns the Domain Name You Want? Who is Lookup
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