SEO Terminology
Adsense
Googles contextual based ad programme.
Adwords
Googles Pay Per Click (PPC) Programme.
Affiliate Programme / Link
Affiliate programmes are set up by companies that want marketers to sell their products on a commission basis. Anyone can be an affiliate and if your website has a product to sell you can set up an affiliate programme for it.
Alt Tag
This is the tag where text can be placed in images. As search engines do not see images, this tag helps them identify what it is. It is also very helpful for visually impaired people.
Anchor Text
This is the text that appears in the text link.
Back Link
Is a link from another webpage linking to your website.
Blog
Blogs are mini websites that are less structured than ordinary websites, they usually have a much broader range of content on them and are more aimed towards the social side of marketing as they usually contain more personal preferences, reviews etc. People will tend to put more trust into a blog than a website for this reason.
Click Through Rate (CTR)
This is a term used to describe the percentage of users who click on a link or advertisement. It is very handy in determining the effectiveness of an advertising campaign.
Conversion Rate (CR)
This is the percentage of users that take your call to action, (buy your product or sign up) It is an important measure of the online marketing campaign.
Cost Per Click (CPC, can also be known as PPC)
This is the cost an advertiser will incur after someone has clicked on their add.
Crawl
This refers to what the search engine spider Programmes do, crawl the web through navigating the links from site to site in order to index them, once indexed it is easier and quicker for the spider programmes to find the results of a search query.
Dead Link or Broken Link
This is a link to a page that no longer exists.
Description Tag
This is a meta tag that describes the content of a web page.
Domain Name
This is the name of your website / URL i.e www.yourdomainname.com/.
Header Tag
This is a meta tag with less relevance than the title and description tags.
HTML
Hypertext Markup Language. This is the primary language used to create websites.
HTTP
Hypertext Transfer Protocol. This is the most common transfer protocol used to facilitate communication between browsers and servers.
Index
This refers to the database of documents stored by the search engines.
Java
An Independent programming language that is used for creating advanced programmes that are able to be run on different operating systems.
Keyword / Keyword Phrase
This is a term for the word or words that are used in a search query, a website should specifically target certain relevant keywords for there particular industry.
Keyword Density
This is the amount of times a particular keyword is used in the content of a webpage.
Keyword Tag
This is the meta tag that shows what keywords are associated within the webpage.
Link
This is clickable content on a webpage that will lead you to another page or to another website.
No Follow
Some webpages will not need to be indexed by search engines, this is where you use a nofollow.
Off Page SEO
Those factors that are not located on your webpages such as inbound links but still have a very high importance to seo.
Optimise
This is the term used to explain all the little tweaks a webmaster can do to help a webpage rank higher.
Page Rank
This is a measure given to a page by google (0 - 10) different factors are taken into account including domain age and inbound links.
Pop Up
This is an advertisement that opens up a new window after the user has performed a special action, this includes opening or closing pages, clicking a link etc.
Rank / Ranking
This refers to the position your website is currently in or wants to be in on the search engines.
Reciprocal Link
This is a link that has been given to another website with the condition that the other website links back. Also known as a link swap.
Robots Text File (robots.txt)
This is a text file that will tell the search engines spiders not to index a particular part of a website.
ROI (Return on Investment)
This is the term that refers to the profit generated as a direct result of a marketing campaign.
SE (Search Engine)
This is the programme used to find information on the internet.
SEO
SEM
Search Engine Marketing.
SERP
Search Engine Results Page.
Site Map
This is a map of your website. It contains links to every page of your site. One of the benefits of having a sitemap on every page is that spiders can crawl your website easier for faster indexing.
Spider
This is the name of the programme that search engines use to surf the web, collecting information to be indexed in their databases. The term spider has come about from the term “The Web” as a spider crawls the web.
Submission
This is when you are adding a URL to the search engines list of URL’s to crawl.
Title
The title is displayed right at the top of the browser. This is the most important of all the tags.
URL (Uniform Resource Locator / Universal Resource Locator)
This is a websites unique internet address, every website must have one in order to be on the internet.
