Flexiss Digital Design

May 2, 2011

Online Glossary

Glossary

Alt tag

A tag included in the source code of an image to define alternative text for site visitors who cannot or do not wish to view graphics. The ALT tag may also be displayed while an image is loading or when a user’s mouse is placed over the image. Also called ALT text or IMG ALT tag.

Anchor text

HTML text that links to another location on the Web. Also called linked text or linking text.

Authority page

A web page that search engines recognize as having an outstanding level of trust, as represented by inbound links, among other websites in a topical community.

Back link

Links pointing to a website from other sites.  Also called incoming link.

Benchmark

A measure of any aspect of your site’s performance that can be tracked over time.  (See also “Key Performance Indicator”)

Black hat

An SEO methodology that includes techniques not in compliance with the search engines’ guidelines for webmasters. Also used to describe a person who engages in black hat techniques.

Blog

Shorthand for weblog, a regularly updated, journal-style web page that is generally presented in reverse chronological order most recent entries at the top) and allows readers to post comments. Also used as a verb: to blog, meaning to write in a blog.

Cloaking

A deceptive technique of showing different content to search engine robots than would be seen by visitors accessing a web page via a standard browser.

Contextual advertising

Pay-per-click listings that appear on websites other than search engines. Such listings are generally matched to the content of individual web pages through an automated matching algorithm. Also called contextual placement.

Conversion (offline)

An offline action taken by a website visitor that accomplishes the site owner’s intended goal. Examples include telephone-based purchases and visits to brick-and-mortar locations.

Conversion (online)

An online action taken by a website visitor that accomplishes the site owner’s intended goal. Examples include online purchases, downloads, and specific page views within a website.

Cookie

A piece of text placed on a user’s hard drive by a website. The information it contains can be accessed by the site that originally placed the cookie but generally not by other sites.

Crawl

See robot.

Directory

A categorized, descriptive list of links to web pages, usually created and maintained by human editors.

Doorway page

A web page, usually outside the parent website’s navigational structure, designed to serve primarily as a destination for search engine traffic and immediately redirect that traffic to pages within the parent website. This term is generally applied to spammy pages that are used strictly for search engine traffic. See also landing page.

Entry page

See landing page.

Hit

A communication made from a web browser to a website server requesting an element of a web page. When a web page is viewed, each separate item (such as a graphics or media file) on the page will log one hit to the server.

HTML page title

Code contained in an HTML document that that briefly describes its contents. This text is usually displayed in a web browser’s title window. In search engine results, the HTML page title is displayed as the first line of a listing. Also called HTML title tag.

Impression

In online advertising, a single act of viewing a web page or advertisement.

Inbound links

Links pointing to a website from other sites. Also called backlinks.

Index

A search engine’s database of web page content.

Indexing

The act by a search engine robot of following website links and gathering content. When a web page is included in a search engine’s database, it is said to be indexed. Used as a synonym for spider and crawl.

Invisible text

Text on a website that is not visible to a site visitor using a standard browser.

Key Performance Indicator (KPI)

A benchmark that represents a critical measure of whether your site is succeeding in its mission or not.  (See also “Benchmark”)

Keyword

A word or phrase describing an organization’s product or service or other key content on its website. A word or phrase entered as a query in a search engine. Also called keyterm, keyphrase, and keyword phrase.

Keyword density

The number of times a keyword or phrase appears on a web page divided by the total number of words on the page. Usually expressed as a %.

Meta description tag

Metadata contained in an HTML document that describes the content of a web page. Search engines may display this tag in their search results.

Meta keywords tag

Metadata contained in an HTML document that lists keywords related to the content of a web page. Most modern search engines ignore this tag.

Meta tag

Code contained in an HTML document that holds metadata. See also meta description tag and meta keywords tag.

Metadata

Hidden comments that describe characteristics of a document, such as its author, file structure, or keywords. Metadata can be used by search engines to help determine relevance and rank.

Off-page factors

Optimization factors that are not contained in an organization’s own web pages. Off-page factors, such as the number and quality of inbound links, cannot be directly edited by website owners and must be influenced indirectly.

On-page factors

Optimization factors that are contained on an organization’s own web pages. On-page factors, such as HTML page title and text content, can be directly edited by website owners.

Organic SEO

Optimization efforts for areas of search other than pay-per-click.

Page view

The group of hits that together make up a single viewing of a web page.

PageRank

Google’s proprietary measurement of the importance of a web page. PageRank values vary from 0 to 10, with 10 being the highest level of importance. Also called PR.

Paid listing

An advertisement displayed on a search engine or directory in response to a search query entered by a user. Fees for advertisers are typically charged on a pay-per-click basis. Also called sponsored listing, PPC listing, and PPC ad.

Pay-per-click (PPC)

A form of advertisement in which an advertiser designates the specific keywords for which its listings will appear in the search results. The advertiser pays a fee to the search engine each time the listing is clicked. The subset of SEO tasks that encompasses setup and management of such listings. Also called paid placement and pay for performance.

Relevance

The relationship of a website to a search by someone looking for something on the Internet.  If a searcher, for example, types in a query such as “Colorado Real Estate” and is shown websites about real estate in Florida, we would say that the search has “low relevance.”

Robot

Software used by search engines to travel the Web and send content from web pages back to the search engine for indexing. Also called spider and crawler.

Robots.txt

A text file containing code that can exclude certain pages or folders from being indexed in the search engines. Can also be used to block access for a particular robot. The robots.txt file must be located in the root directory of the website.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

See Search Marketing.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

See Search Marketing. The term SEQ may also refer only to organic SEO.

Search Marketing

A wide variety of tasks intended to improve a website’s ranking and listing quality among both paid and unpaid results on search engines, with the ultimate goal of increasing targeted traffic to the web-site and achieving more conversions. Also called Search Engine Marketing and Search Engine Optimization.

Search popularity

The frequency with which a keyword is used as a query on search engines.

Search query

The keywords entered into a search engine.

SERP

Abbreviation for Search Engine Results Page.

Spam

Any of a wide variety of deceptive or abusive online practices, including sending unsolicited advertisements, misrepresenting a website to search engines, and posting non-sensical comments to blogs in an attempt to increase the visibility of a website. Can be a noun or verb (to spam).

Spider

See robot. May also be used as a verb, “to spider,” in which case it is synonymous with “to index.”

Sponsored listing

See paid listing.

Unique visitors

The number of different individuals who visited a website one or more times during a given period. This measure is based on available—but often incomplete information. For example, two visits by the same person using two different computers would generally be logged as two unique visitors, while two different people using the same computer would generally be logged as a single unique visitor.

Usability

The elements of a website’s design and copywriting that affect a site visitor’s ease of use and navigation.

Web analytics

The measurement and analysis of online activity, especially page visits, conversions, and search queries used to find individual pages. See also metrics.

White hat

An SEO methodology that includes only techniques that stay within the search engines’ guidelines. Also used to describe a person who engages in white hat techniques.

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