SEO Glossary

Find out more about SMEketing and our SEO services.

Absolute Link: A whole link that contains the domain name and extension of your website normally used when linking to other websites.

Accessibility: The process of enabling your website to be easily accessed by disabled people and search engines.

AdWords: A form of sponsored advertising on Google using pay per click ads to generate targeted traffic to your website.

Algorithm: Google’s secret equation or criteria that it uses to analyze your website and define its search engine ranking position.

Alt tags: Alt tags are used to describe the images on your websites to the search engines and screen readers.

Anchor text: Text on a webpage that contains a hyperlink redirecting you to another page.

Article: A document used to relay information to its readers and normally distributed and displayed on other relative websites in exchange for a link to your website.

Blog: An online journal used to post thoughts, commentary and news on a particular subject.

Browser: The program used to access and view websites. Examples include, Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, and Opera.

Cached page: Google’s stored copy of your website pages.

Campaign: A group of AdWords ad groups in your Google AdWords PPC account.

Cascading style sheet (CSS): An external style sheet used to store the structure and formatting of your web pages.

Content: The information and data provided on your website in the main body of text area.

Conversion rate: The percentage of traffic viewing your website that then leads to a sale or purchase.

CPC: The maximum cost per click you will pay to have your ad clicked on.

CTR: The percentage of time your ad is clicked on compared to how often it is shown.

Directory: A website displaying a list of other websites that are related into specific categories.

Domain name: The name of your website.

Dreamweaver: A program used to design and edit web pages.

Dynamic website: The content is created dynamically from a database instead of being stored in a static webpage.

External links: Links used to link to other websites from your own website.

Flash: Technology that uses a free plug-in to allow your browser to display animations and flash movies as you navigate the web.

Form: Used to collect information from your visitors and send it to a specified predetermined location.

Forum: A facility on the internet used to hold discussions and post information regarding a specific topic.

Frames: Outdated technology used to create websites.

Froogle: A product search engine that displays photographs of products for sale related to your specific search query.

Guestbook: A logging system that allows people visiting your website to leave a public comment.

Header tags: This is contained in the Meta and enables you to title specific pages including keywords to help boost your websites relevance. These are broken up into H1- main header, H2- ssecondary header and H3 – tertiary header.

Home Page: The main page on your website also known as the index or default page.

Hosting provider: A company that provides space on their server to enable you to make your website accessible to all on the World Wide Web.

HTML Hyperlink: A link that when clicked on will display the website or webpage specified in the link.

Inbound link: Links from other relevant websites linking to your website with no return link having to be provided.

Internal links: Links that are placed on a website and used to navigate around it.

KEI: Keyword Effectiveness Index – This number is calculated using the number of times a search phrase is queried compared to the competition for that search phrase. The higher the number the more effective that search phrase will be.

Keywords: The keywords and search phrases targeted when optimizing your website.

Keyword Competition: The amount of companies targeting a specific keyword phrase.

Landing page: The page you have designed and will deliver your visitors to. Latent semantic indexing Technology used to determine words that are related to better help build relevance.

Link farm: A large quantity of websites that all link to each other to gain links back for the process of spamming the search engines.

Meta description: The description shown in the search engines to describe your website.

Meta tags: The tags used to describe your website to your search engines.

Meta titles: The tag shown in the search engines advert to describe your website and shown at the top of the page.

Natural listings: The results in Google where the free organic search results are displayed.

Off the page optimisation: The optimization of links and what other websites are saying about your website.

Online competition: The top listed websites for your chosen keywords.

On the page optimisation: The optimization of your website content and structure.

Page names (titles): The name given to a webpage to identify it.

Page Rank: The Page Rank Google gives your webpage depending on the quantity and quality of your inward links.

PPC (sponsored listing): The results in Google used to display the paid listings.

RankStat: An independent ranking software that enables the unbiased verification of search engine rankings.

Reciprocal link: When you link to another website and they link back to your website.

Redirect: When one webpage or website is set up to direct its visitors straight to another website.

Relative link: A link that does not contain the website domain in the address as it is relative to where it is located.

Resource page: A page where you will place related links to other relevant websites.

Results Page: The page displaying results of the websites with the most relevance to the search phrase queried.

ROI: Return on investment.

Root folder: The main folder on your web server. This will be where your homepage is located.

Sandbox: Term used to describe the effects seen with new websites in Google’s search results.

SEO: Search engine optimization, the process of optimizing your website to appear higher for the natural search engine listings.

Search Engine: Internet Search Engines help users find web pages related to their specified search term.

Search engine spider: The robot that Google sends to crawl the web by going from website to website via links.

Server: The place where your website is stored online and where you will upload your changes.

Sitemap: A page on your website that includes a list to all of the pages on your website to enable good navigation.

Site submission: The submission of your website to the search engines.

Source code: The code used to create your website and the code analyzed by the search engines.

Spamming: Any technique used to falsely try to increase a websites position in the search engines.

Split testing: The testing of ads or landing pages against each other to increase efficiency.

Static website: A website is updated manually via the use of software or HTML.

Traffic: The amount of visitors and search engine spiders to your website over a given amount of time.

Typo spam: The use of miss-spelt keywords and/or domain names to canvas lost traffic.

URL: Uniform resource locator. The address of a page on a website that identifies it on the World Wide Web.

Validation: The process of ensuring that a website conforms to the rules and guidelines that ensure its accessibility to the disabled.

W3C: The World Wide Web Consortium where the rules and guidelines for accessibility are agreed.

Web Page: A page contained in a website.

Website structure: The layout and structure of your websites pages, files and folders.

Website theme: The main focus of your website and your websites content.