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Search Engine Optimisation Terminology Guide, (SEO Hull) most used jargon explained.

Search Engine Optimisation terminology is some time a mine field of information, I have compiled a simplistic list of the usual terms used in the website

Read More about seo jargon...

A -

- AdSense
Google's contextual advertising network. Publishers large and small may automatically publish relevant advertisements near their content and share the profits from those ad clicks with Google.

AdSense offers a highly scalable automated ad revenue stream which will help some publishers establish a baseline for the value of their ad inventory.

In many cases AdSense will be underpriced, but that is the trade off for automating ad sales.

- Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing programs allows merchants to expand their market reach and mindshare by paying independent agents on a cost per action (CPA) basis. Affiliates only get paid if visitors complete an action.

Most affiliates make next to nothing because they are not aggressive marketers, have no real focus, fall for wasting money on instant wealth programs that lead them to buying a bunch of unneeded garbage via other's affiliate links, and do not attempt to create any real value.

Some power affiliates make hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars per year because they are heavily focused on automation and/or tap large traffic streams. Typically niche affiliate sites make more per unit effort than overtly broad ones because they are easier to focus (and thus have a higher conversion rate).

Selling a conversion is typically harder than selling a click (like AdSense does, for instance). Search engines are increasingly looking to remove the noise low quality thin affiliate sites ad to the search results through the use of - Domain Age Some social networks or search systems may take site age, page age, user account age, and related historical data into account when determining how much to trust that person, website, or document. Some specialty search engines, like blog search engines, may also boost the relevancy of new documents.

Fresh content which is also cited on many other channels (like related blogs) will temporarily rank better than you might expect because many of the other channels which cite the content will cite it off their home page or a well trusted high PageRank page. After those sites publish more content and the reference page falls into their archives those links are typically from pages which do not have as much link authority as their home pages.

Some search engines may also try to classify sites to understand what type of sites they are, as in news sites or reference sites that do not need updated that often. They may also look at individual pages and try to classify them based on how frequently they change.

- Alt Attribute on Image tags
Blind people and most major search engines are not able to easily distinguish what is in an image. Using an image alt attribute allows you to help screen readers and search engines understand the function of an image by providing a text equivalent for the object.

- Analytics
Software which allows you to track your page views, user paths, and conversion statistics based upon interpreting your log files or through including a JavaScript tracking code on your site.

Ad networks are a game of margins. Marketers who track user action will have a distinct advantage over those who do not.

- Anchor Text
The text that a user would click on to follow a link. In the case the link is an image the image alt attribute may act in the place of anchor text.

Search engines assume that your page is authoritative for the words that people include in links pointing at your site. When links occur naturally they typically have a wide array of anchor text combinations. Too much similar anchor text may be a considered a sign of manipulation, and thus discounted or filtered. Make sure when you are building links that you control that you try to mix up your anchor text.

Example of anchor text:

<a href="http://www.shuffled.co.uk/blog">Search Engine Optimization Blog</a>

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- Black Hat SEO
Search engines set up guidelines that help them extract billions of dollars of ad revenue from the work of publishers and the attention of searchers.

Within that highly profitable framework search engines consider certain marketing techniques deceptive in nature, and label them as black hat SEO.

Those which are considered within their guidelines are called white hat SEO techniques. The search guidelines are not a static set of rules, and things that may be considered legitimate one day may be considered deceptive the next.

Search engines are not without flaws in their business models, but there is nothing immoral or illegal about testing search algorithms to understand how search engines work.

People who have extensively tested search algorithms are probably more competent and more knowledgeable search marketers than those who give themselves the arbitrary label of white hat SEOs while calling others black hat SEOs.

When making large investments in processes that are not entirely clear trust is important. Rather than looking for reasons to not work with an SEO it is best to look for signs of trust in a person you would like to work with.

- Bookmarks
Most browsers come with the ability to bookmark your favorite pages. Many web based services have also been created to allow you to bookmark and share your favorite resources. The popularity of a document (as measured in terms of link equity, number of bookmarks, or usage data) is a signal for the quality of the information. Some search engines may eventually use bookmarks to help aid their search relevancy.

Social bookmarking sites are often called tagging sites. Del.icio.us is the most popular social bookmarking site. Yahoo! MyWeb also allows you to tag results. Google allows you to share feeds and / or tag pages. They also have a program called Google Notebook which allows you to write mini guides of related links and information.

There are also a couple meta news sites that allow you to tag interesting pages. If enough people vote for your story then your story gets featured on the homepage. Slashdot is a tech news site primarily driven by central editors. Digg created a site covering the same type of news, but is a bottoms up news site which allows readers to vote for what they think is interesting. Netscape cloned the Digg business model and content model.

Sites like Digg and Netscape are easy sources of links if you can create content that would appeal to those audiences.

Many forms of vertical search, like Google Video or YouTube, allow you to tag content.

See also:

- Del.icio.us - Yahoo! owned social bookmarking site
- Yahoo! MyWeb - similar to Del.icio.us, but more integrated into Yahoo!
- Google Notebook - allows you to note documents
- Slashdot - tech news site where stories are approved by central editors
- Digg - decentralized news site
- Netscape - Digg clone
- Google Video - Google's video hosting, tagging, and search site
- YouTube - popular decentralized video site

- Broken Link
A hyperlink which is not functioning. A link which does not lead to the desired location.
Links may broken for a number of reason, but four of the most common reasons are

- a website going offline
- linking to content which is temporary in nature (due to licensing structures or other reasons)
- moving a page's location
- changing a domain's content management system

Most large websites have some broken links, but if too many of a site's links are broken it may be an indication of outdated content, and it may provide website users with a poor user experience. Both of which may cause search engines to rank a page as being less relevant.

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- Canonical URL
Many content management systems are configured with errors which cause duplicate or exceptionally similar content to get indexed under multiple

URLs. Many webmasters use inconsistent link structures throughout their site that cause the exact same content to get indexed under multiple URLs.

The canonical version of any URL is the single most authoritative version indexed by major search engines. Search engines typically use PageRank or a similar measure to determine which version of a URL is the canonical URL.

Webmasters should use consistent linking structures throughout their sites to ensure that they funnel the maximum amount of PageRank at the URLs they want indexed. When linking to the root level of a site or a folder index it is best to end the link location at a / instead of placing the index.html or default.asp filename in the URL.

Examples of URLs which may contain the same information in spite of being at different web addresses:

- http://www.shuffled.co.uk/
- http://www.shuffled.co.uk/index.shtml
- http://shuffled.co.uk/
- http://shuffled.co.uk/index.shtml
- http://www.shuffled.co.uk/?tracking-code

- Cloaking
Displaying different content to search engines and searchers. Depending on the intent of the display discrepancy and the strength of the brand of the person / company cloaking it may be considered reasonable or it may get a site banned from a search engine.

Cloaking has many legitimate uses which are within search guidelines. For example, changing user experience based on location is common on many popular websites.

- Crawl Frequency
How frequently a website is crawled.
Sites which are well trusted or frequently updated may be crawled more frequently than sites with low trust scores and limited link authority. Sites with highly artificial link authority scores (ie: mostly low quality spammy links) or sites which are heavy in duplicate content or near duplicate content (such as affiliate feed sites) may be crawled less frequently than sites with unique content which are well integrated into the web.

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- Dead Link
A link which is no longer functional.
Most large high quality websites have at least a few dead links in them, but the ratio of good links to dead links can be seen as a sign of information quality.

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- Ethical SEO
Search engines like to paint SEO services which manipulate their relevancy algorithms as being unethical. Any particular technique is generally not typically associated with ethics, but is either effective or ineffective.

Some search marketers lacking in creativity tend to describe services sold by others as being unethical while their own services are ethical. Any particular technique is generally not typically associated with ethics, but is either effective or ineffective.

The only ethics issues associated with SEO are generally business ethics related issues. Two of the bigger frauds are Not disclosing risks: Some SEOs may use high risk techniques when they are not needed. Some may make that situation even worse by not disclosing potential risks to clients.

- Taking money & doing nothing: Since selling SEO services has almost no start up costs many of the people selling services may not actually know how to competently provide them. Some shady people claim to be SEOs and bilk money out of unsuspecting small businesses.

As long as the client is aware of potential risks there is nothing unethical about being aggressive.

- External Link
Link which references another domain.
Some people believe in link hoarding, but linking out to other related resources is a good way to help search engines understand what your site is about. If you link out to lots of low quality sites or primarily rely on low quality reciprocal links some search engines may not rank your site very well.

Search engines are more likely to trust high quality editorial links (both to and from your site).

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- Fresh Content
Content which is dynamic in nature and gives people a reason to keep paying attention to your website.

Many SEOs talk up fresh content, but fresh content does not generally mean re-editing old content. It more often refers to creating new content. The primary advantages to fresh content are:

- Maintain and grow mindshare: If you keep giving people a reason to pay attention to you more and more people will pay attention to you, and link to your site.

- Faster idea spreading: If many people pay attention to your site, when you come out with good ideas they will spread quickly.

- Growing archives: If you are a content producer then owning more content means you have more chances to rank. If you keep building additional fresh content eventually that gives you a large catalog of relevant content.

- Frequent crawling: Frequently updated websites are more likely to be crawled frequently.

- Fuzzy Search
Search which will find matching terms when terms are misspelled (or fuzzy).
Fuzzy search technology is similar to stemming technology, with the exception that fuzzy search corrects the misspellings at the users end and stemming searches for other versions of the same core word within the index.

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- Google Dance
In the past Google updated their index roughly once a month. Those updates were named Google Dances, but since Google shifted to a constantly updating index, Google no longer does what was traditionally called a Google Dance.

Major search indexes are constantly updating. Google refers to this continuous refresh as everflux.

The second meaning of Google Dance is a yearly party at Google's corporate headquarters which Google holds for search engine marketers. This party coincides with the San Jose Search Engine Strategies conference.

See also:

- Matt Cutts Google Terminology Video - Matt talks about the history of Google Updates and the shift from Google Dances to everflux.

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H -

- Headings
The heading element briefly describes the subject of the section it introduces.
Heading elements go from H1 to H6 with the lower numbered headings being most important. You should only use a single H1 element on each page,

and may want to use multiple other heading elements to structure a document. An H1 element source would look like:

<h1>Your Topic</h1>

Heading elements may be styled using CSS. Many content management systems place the same content in the main page heading and the page title,

although in many cases it may be preferential to mix them up if possible.

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I -

- Inbound Link
Link pointing to one website from another website.
Most search engines allow you to see a sample of links pointing to a document by searching using the link: function. For example, using link:www.shuffled.co.uk would show pages linking to the homepage of this site (both internal links and inbound links). Due to canonical URL issues www.site.com and site.com may show different linkage data. Google typically shows a much smaller sample of linkage data than competing engines do, but Google still knows of and counts many of the links that do not show up when you use their link: function.

- Internal Link
Link from one page on a site to another page on the same site.
It is preferential to use descriptive internal linking to make it easy for search engines to understand what your website is about. Use consistent navigational anchor text for each section of your site, emphasizing other pages within that section. Place links to relevant related pages within the content area of your site to help further show the relationship between pages and improve the usability of your website.

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- JavaScript
A client-side scripting language that can be embedded into HTML documents to add dynamic features.

Search engines do not index most content in JavaScript. In AJAX, JavaScript has been combined with other technologies to make web pages even

more interactive.

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K -

- Keyword Density
An old measure of search engine relevancy based on how prominent keywords appeared within the content of a page. Keyword density is no longer a valid measure of relevancy over a broad open search index though.

When people use keyword stuffed copy it tends to read mechanically (and thus does not convert well and is not link worthy), plus some pages that are crafted with just the core keyword in mind often lack semantically related words and modifiers from the related vocabulary (and that causes the pages to rank poorly as well).

- Keyword
A word or phrase which implies a certain mindset or demand that targeted prospects are likely to search for.

Long tail and brand related keywords are typically worth more than shorter and vague keywords because they typically occur later in the buying cycle and are associated with a greater level of implied intent.

- Keyword Stuffing
Writing copy that uses excessive amounts of the core keyword.
When people use keyword stuffed copy it tends to read mechanically (and thus does not convert well and is not link worthy), plus some pages that are crafted with just the core keyword in mind often lack semantically related words and modifiers from the related vocabulary (and that causes the pages to rank poorly as well).

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L -

- Link Building
The process of building high quality linkage data that search engines will evaluate to trust your website is authoritative, relevant, and trustworthy.
A few general link building tips:

- build conceptually unique link worthy high quality content
- create viral marketing ideas that want to spread and make people talk about you
- mix your anchor text
- get deep links
- try to build at least a few quality links before actively obtaining any low quality links
- register your site in relevant high quality directories such as DMOZ, the Yahoo! Directory, and Business.com
- when possible try to focus your efforts mainly on getting high quality editorial links
- create link bait
- try to get bloggers to mention you on their blogs
- It takes a while to catch up with the competition, but if you work at it long enough and hard enough eventually you can enjoy a self-reinforcing market position

- Link Baiting
The art of targeting, creating, and formatting information that provokes the target audience to point high quality links at your site. Many link baiting techniques are targeted at social media and bloggers.

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M -

- Meta Description
The meta description tag is typically a sentence or two of content which describes the content of the page.

A good meta description tag should:

- be relevant and unique to the page;
- reinforce the page title; and
- focus on including offers and secondary keywords and phrases to help add context to the page title.
Relevant meta description tags may appear in search results as part of the page description below the page title.

The code for a meta description tag looks like this

- Meta Keywords
The meta keywords tag is a tag which can be used to highlight keywords and keyword phrases which the page is targeting.
The code for a meta keyword tag looks like this

Many people spammed meta keyword tags and searchers typically never see the tag, so most search engines do not place much (if any) weight on it.

Many SEO professionals no longer use meta keywords tags.

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- Niche
A topic or subject which a website is focused on.
Search is a broad field, but as you drill down each niche consists of many smaller niches. An example of drilling down to a niche market

- search
- search marketing, privacy considerations, legal issues, history of, future of, different types of vertical search, etc.
- search engine optimization, search engine advertising
- link building, keyword research, reputation monitoring and management, viral marketing, SEO copywriting, Google AdWords, information architecture,

etc.
Generally it is easier to compete in small, new, or underdeveloped niches than trying to dominate large verticals. As your brand and authority grow you

can go after bigger markets.

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- Organic Search Results
Most major search engines have results that consist of paid ads and unpaid listings. The unpaid / algorithmic listings are called the organic search

results. Organic search results are organized by relevancy, which is largely determined based on linkage data, page content, usage data, and historical domain and trust related data.

Most clicks on search results are on the organic search results. Some studies have shown that 60 to 80% + of clicks are on the organic search results.

- Outbound Link
A link from one website pointing at another external website.
Some webmasters believe in link hoarding, but linking out to useful relevant related documents is an easy way to help search engines understand what your website is about. If you reference other resources it also helps you build credibility and leverage the work of others without having to do everything yourself. Some webmasters track where their traffic comes from, so if you link to related websites they may be more likely to link back to your site.

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PageRank
A logarithmic scale based on link equity which estimates the importance of web documents.

Since PageRank is widely bartered Google's relevancy algorithms had to move away from relying on PageRank and place more emphasis on trusted links via algorithms such as TrustRank.

The PageRank formula is:

PR(A) = (1-d) + d (PR(T1)/C(T1) + ... + PR(Tn)/C(Tn))

PR= PageRank
d= dampening factor (~0.85)
c = number of links on the page
PR(T1)/C(T1) = PageRank of page 1 divided by the total number of links on page 1, (transferred PageRank)

In text: for any given page A the PageRank PR(A) is equal to the sum of the parsed partial PageRank given from each page pointing at it multiplied by the dampening factor plus one minus the dampening factor.

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- Quality Link
Search engines count links votes of trust. Quality links count more than low quality links.

There are a variety of ways to define what a quality link is, but the following are characteristics of a high quality link:

- Trusted Source: If a link is from a page or website which seems like it is trustworthy then it is more likely to count more than a link from an obscure, rarely used, and rarely cited website. See TrustRank for one example of a way to find highly trusted websites.

- Hard to Get: The harder a link is to acquire the more likely a search engine will be to want to trust it and the more work a competitor will need to do to try to gain that link.

- Aged: Some search engines may trust links from older resources or links that have existed for a length of time more than they trust brand new links or links from newer resources.

- Co-citation: Pages that link at competing sites which also link to your site make it easy for search engines to understand what community your website belongs to. See Hilltop for an example of an algorithm which looks for co-citation from expert sources.

- Related: Links from related pages or related websites may count more than links from unrelated sites.

- In Content: Links which are in the content area of a page are typically going to be more likely to be editorial links than links that are not included within the editorial portion of a page.

While appropriate anchor text may also help you rank even better than a link which lacks appropriate anchor text, it is worth noting that for competitive queries Google is more likely to place weight on a high quality link where the anchor text does not match than trusting low quality links where the anchor text matches.

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- Reciprocal Links
Nepotistic link exchanges where websites try to build false authority by trading links, using three way link trades, or other low quality link schemes.
When sites link naturally there is going to be some amount of cross linking within a community, but if most or all of your links are reciprocal in nature it may be a sign of ranking manipulation. Also sites that trade links off topic or on links pages that are stashed away deep within their sites probably do not pass much link authority, and may add more risk than reward.

Quality reciprocal link exchanges in and of themselves are not a bad thing, but most reciprocal link offers are of low quality. If too many of your links are of low quality it may make it harder for your site to rank for relevant queries, and some search engines may look at inlink and outlink ratios as well as link quality when determining how natural a site's link profile is.

- Robots.txt
A file which sits in the root of a site and tells search engines which files not to crawl. Some search engines will still list your URLs as URL only listings even if you block them using a robots.txt file.

Do not put files on a public server if you do not want search engines to index them!

- ROI
Return on Investment is a measure of how much return you receive from each marketing pound.

While ROI is a somewhat sophisticated measurement, some search marketers prefer to account for their marketing using more sophisticate profit elasticity calculations.

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- SEO
Search engine optimization is the art and science of publishing information and marketing it in a manner that helps search engines understand your information is relevant to relevant search queries.

SEO Copywriting
Writing and formatting copy in a way that will help make the documents appear relevant to a wide array of relevant search queries.

There are two main ways to write titles and be SEO friendly

- Write literal titles that are well aligned with things people search for. This works well if you need backfill content for your site or already have an amazingly authoritative site.
- Write page titles that are exceptionally compelling to link at. If enough people link at them then your pages and site will rank for many relevant queries even if the keywords are not in the page titles.

- SERP
Search Engine Results Page is the page on which the search engines show the results for a search query.

- Site Map
Page which can be used to help give search engines a secondary route to navigate through your site.

Tips:

- On large websites the on page navigation should help search engines find all applicable web pages.

- On large websites it does not make sense to list every page on the site map, just the most important pages.

- Site maps can be used to help redistribute internal link authority toward important pages or sections, or sections of your site that are seasonally important.

- Site maps can use slightly different or more descriptive anchor text than other portions of your site to help search engines understand what your pages are about.
- Site maps should be created such that they are useful to humans, not just search engines.

- Social Media
Websites which allow users to create the valuable content. A few examples of social media sites are social bookmarking sites and social news sites.

- Spam
Unsolicited email messages.
Search engines also like to outsource their relevancy issues by calling low quality search results spam. They have vague ever changing guidelines which determine what marketing techniques are acceptable at any given time. Typically search engines try hard not to flag false positives as spam, so most algorithms are quite lenient, as long as you do not build lots of low quality links, host large quantities of duplicate content, or perform other actions that are considered widely outside of relevancy guidelines. If your site is banned from a search engine you may request reinclusion after fixing the problem.

- Stop Words
Common words (ex: a, to, and, is ...) which add little relevancy to a search query, and are thus are removed from the search query prior to finding relevant search results.
It is both fine and natural to use stop words in your page content. The reason stop words are ignored when people search is that the words are so common that they offer little to no discrimination value.

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- Text Link Ads
Advertisements which are formatted as text links.
Since the web was originally based on text and links people are typically more inclined to pay attention to text links than some other ad formats which are typically less relevant and more annoying. However, search engines primarily want to count editorial links as votes, so links that are grouped together with other paid links (especially if those links are to off topic commercial sites) may be less likely to carry weight in search engines.

- Page Title
The title element is used to describe the contents of a document.
The title is one of the most important aspects to doing SEO on a web page. Each page title should be:

- Unique to that page: Not the same for every page of a site!
- Descriptive: What important ideas does that page cover?
- Not excessively long: Typically page titles should be kept to 8 to 10 words or less, with some of the most important words occurring near the beginning of the page title.
Page titles appear in search results as the links searchers click on. In addition many people link to documents using the official document title as the link anchor text. Thus, by using a descriptive page title you are likely to gain descriptive anchor text and are more likely to have your listing clicked on.

On some occasions it also makes sense to use a title which is not literally descriptive, but is easily associated with human emotions or a controversy such that your idea will spread further and many more people will point quality editorial links at your document.

There are two main ways to write titles and be SEO friendly

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- Unethical SEO

Some search engine marketers lacking in creativity try to market their services as being ethical, whereas services rendered by other providers are somehow unethical. SEO services are generally neither ethical or unethical. They are either effective or ineffective.

SEO is an inherently risky business, but any quality SEO service provider should make clients aware of potential risks and rewards of different recommended techniques.

- URL
Uniform Resource Locator is the unique address of any web document.

- Usability
How easy it is for customers to perform the desired actions.
The structure and formatting of text and hyperlink based calls to action can drastically increase your website usability, and thus conversion rates.

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- Viral Marketing
Self propagating marketing techniques. Common modes of transmission are email, blogging, and word of mouth marketing channels.

Many social news sites and social bookmarking sites also lead to secondary citations.

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- White Hat SEO
Search engines set up guidelines that help them extract billions of pounds of ad revenue from the work of publishers and the attention of searchers.

Within that highly profitable framework search engines consider certain marketing techniques deceptive in nature, and label them as black hat SEO.