Definitions

Algorithm – A regularly updated program used to understand and monitor search engine rankings. Algorithms are closely guarded secrets and are used to improve search engine placement.

Anchor Text – The text people see in the link to your web page.

Blog - An online diary that allows people to post musings, messages or other information.  This information can be viewed by other users who can even respond to these posts.

Broken Links – Links on your website that do not lead anywhere or lead to deleted web pages.  Broken links can impede a spider’s progress.

Browser - A program, such as Internet Explorer, Netscape or Firefox that allows a user to navigate and use the internet.

Caching – The process where a search engine saves certain information from web pages for future use.

COA - Cost Of Acquisition or the expense that comes with bringing a visitor to a specific website.

Delisting – Process whereby a website is removed from possible listing or ranking by a search engine. This action can be the result of a variety of conduct such as spamming, link farming or other unethical behavior.

Directory - A list of websites that is sorted by different topics. Every directory will contain information describing each site.  When a site is listed, the popularity of that site increases.  Sites can be listed in one of two ways, organically or via spider.  If a site is listed organically, the site has been listed as a result of a request being made to the specific directory.  Spider listed results from automated spiders or crawlers searching the site and including the site in their directory.

Domain name – The name for an IP address.  This name may end in a variety of suffixes such as .com, .edu, .net, or .org. which may have various suffixes, such as .com, .net, .edu, .org, or others.

Google Page Rank- An approach to ranking websites and web pages based upon their relevance in Google searches.  The system is based upon a ranking scale of 1 to 10.

Duplicate Content – Content that is not unique to your site.  If you have content that is copied from another site, many search engines will not list you and as a result you will have lower search engine results.

Headline – As with a newspaper story, this is a short title situated at the top of a web page that tells the user the page’s topic and what is contained on the page.

Hyperlink – A highlighted word or phrase embedded in web content.  By clicking this blue link, the user will be taken to another web page.

IP Address - A set of numbers usually arranged in the form of xxx.xxx.xx.xx that is used by computers or other electronic devices to verify a website address.

Keyword - A word or phrase that people surfing the web will use when conducting internet searches.  The goal of these words or phrases is to find what they are looking for on the internet.   For example a person may search for “attorney” and end up with results which point to web sites related to lawyers and other legal professionals.

Keyword phrase – Much like a keyword, a keyword phrase is more than one keyword phrased together.  The word “legal” would be a keyword whereas “legal search engine optimization” would be a keyword phrase.

Keyword Saturation – This is the percentage of keywords or keywords phrases in relation to the remainder of content on the page.  There are a variety of web sites that allow you to cut and paste copy to determine the saturation for your site.

Keyword stuffing – This occurs when one or more keywords or phrases are used excessively in meta tags or web site content.  Most search engines consider this as spam and the result is exclusion from search engine results as opposed to higher search engine placement.

Linking – A process of attaching your web site to other related sites to increase not only traffic to your site, but also your web presence.

Link farm – Web pages that consist mainly, or only, of links redirecting traffic to other sites.  Sites such as these are viewed as spam and generally will not be listed in search engine results and may even result in the web site being banned by a search engine.

Meta tag – Once abused by spammers and, as a result, largely ignored by search engine spiders, meta tags are being used again.  Meta tags are made up of information that is inserted into the source code for the web site that, while generally hidden from viewers, is searched, seen and indexed by spiders and crawlers that allow your site to be cataloged by the various search engines.  Meta tags generally are made up of title, description, and keywords, though other information may also be included.

Paid inclusion – Allows web sites who pay a fee to automatically be included in search engine results though such placement by payment generally does not improve a websites ranking.  Often the more the website owner pays, the higher their site will appear.

Rank – Known also as “position,” a web site’s rank provides information as to how a website or even a specific page is being listed among a variety of search engines.

Reciprocal link – This occurs when two websites exchange links between each other.

Search engine – A web site that allows users enter a search term or phrase and then, based upon a variety of factors, returns relevant pages for the user to view and browse.

Search engine marketing (SEM) - Online web site marketing via search engines that uses a variety of strategies and techniques to improve a website’s ranking on the various search engines.

Search engine optimization (SEO) – Organizing and structuring a website through the use of keyword and keyword phrase placement designed to result in the website achieving a higher website ranking and search engine placement.  Search engine optimization allows users to find a website.

Sitemap – One page of a web site that contains and index or outline of the website’s organization that also provides links to all pages of the site.  The better structure a site map has, the easier it will be for the spiders to search the page.

Spider – A program, also known as a crawler, utilized by search engines to automatically search and index sites for inclusion in search engine results.  Spiders read and analyze text and not flash material or images.

Traffic – The total number of visitors that have traveled to your site.  This can be improved by the optimization of your site.

Spam – Term used to describe junk email, usually from commercial providers that are unsolicited by the recipient.

URL - Uniform Resource Locator or the web address of a specific site or page.