Internet & Search Engine Marketing Glossary

Short explanations of industry and related terms

Learn What Internet Marketing Terms Mean

 

This page is brought to you in order to help understanding some of the main Internet Marketing and Search Engine Marketing terms and terminology. The terms are organized by their alphabetical order to make it easier to find them. You can always search for a term by pressing CTRL+F in your browser.

There are some other good glossaries available online, such as:

• SEMPO Search engine marketing glossary: http://www.sempo.org/learning_center/sem_glossary/
• Advertising Glossary: http://www.advertisingglossary.net/
• Marketing Terms: http://www.marketingterms.com/dictionary/a/
• Quirks eMarketing Glossary: http://www.quirk.biz/resources/glossary/
• MiMi.hu: http://en.mimi.hu/marketingweb/index_marketingweb.html
• Search Engine Dictionary: http://searchenginedictionary.com/
• Web Trends Glossary: http://www.webtrends.com/Resources/WebAnalyticsGlossary.aspx
• Webopidia: http://www.webopedia.com/
• WhatIs.com Computer Dictionary: http://whatis.techtarget.com

301 Redirect

A technical method of letting search engines learn that a page (or a domain) had moved to another location. Used mostly when in a need to preserve search engine rankings while re-designing a website and changing domain names and/or page names.

A/B Testing  

Refers to testing two versions of a single factor that may impact the result, in order to improve CTR or Conversion. Once employed, the results should show which element is performing better, hence it should be used instead of the other version. Also known as "Split Testing".

Above the Fold  

The part of the web page that is visible to the visitor without the need to scroll down. Can be relevant also for emails.

 

Ad  

An advertisement that is presented to a person when performing a serach query on a search engine results page. Mostly used in a context of Pay per Click campaign.

Ad Copy    

In PPC, the text that appear below the ad title - in the second and the third lines.

Ad Title  

The first header line in a PPC ad.

AdWords  

Google's solution for running Pay per Click campaigns and by that, to be able to bid for keywords that will trigger ads to appear on the SERP and drive more traffic to the advertiser website.

Age    

Can refer to multiple "age" factors but mostly used to refer to the domain age: how long a specific domain exists. A domain that exists longer is supposed to get better score on search engines compared to a new one.

Alt Tag

A text that is placed in the HTML code to describe a graphical element (mostly images). This text is presented when the mouse hovers (placed) over the image. The purpose is to make images accessible to people with accessibality difficiulities and is being used by search engines as well (could be that becuase...)

Analytics    

Computer softwares, their reports and their analysis that is collecting data on the usage of a website and helps with the analysis of the site's (and its marketing campaings) performance. The most common Anlytics software to date is Google Analytics.

Anchor Text    

The text that is wrapped with the link. When the link is on an image, the alt tag is referred to as the Anchor text. Example for textual anchor text: <a href=http://www.domain.com>ANCHOR TEXT</a>

B2B     

Business to Business. Describes a type of business that sells its goods or services to other business.

B2C    

Business to Consumer. Describes a type of business that sells directly to the end consumer (unlike with B2B).

Backlinks    

The links that are pointing to a site or a page from other places (other websites, directories and so on). The number of backlinks is considered as a factor for SEO (more backlinks means better position and ranking), however this is measured differently between the different search engines where some measure the amount of backlinks while others (mainly Google) rate those links and counts only what it considered as "quality links". Other names for backlinks are incoming links and inbound links.

Banner Ad    

Internet advertising that invites the viewer to click through to the advertiser's web site by clicking on the banner. Banner ads may contain animation and sound. In addition to accessing another web site, banner ads may also collect information from consumers, make sales, or offer activities such as games.

Behavioral Targeting    

Advertising with a goal to match a certain campaign, ad or similiar marketing effort to a group that shares similiar aspects in terms of (online) behavior.

Bid (pay-per-click) 

The amount of money an advertiser is placing for getting his/her ad to appear for a certain keyword when searchers are searching for that keyword.

Bing    

MSN's (Microsoft) new name for its search engine. 

Black Hat SEO

Search Engine Optimization teactics that are forbidden by the Search Engines. Those include steps that are not related to the actual content of the website and its visitors and do not imporove the "user expirience". As such, they are against the search engine's guidelines and might cause a site (or a page) to be penalized in the SERP or even be removed completely from the index.

Blacklist(s)

A list that either search engines or independent users compile of search engine spammers or websites that practice fraudulent operations or insidious activities that affect users of the Internet negatively. These lists can be used to ban those spammers from search engines or to boycott them.

Blog

A website that contains postings by indivitual authors (usually) on a specific topic. Blog is a short for "web log".

Blogger

Can refer to a person that writes blog posts but more comonly known as the free blogging service of Google.

Body Copy

The actual content of a web page that is visible to the visitors (apart from the navigation and the HTML souce code).

Bot

The search engines software programs (also called robots or spiders) that crawl the internet in order to find content (web pages, images and so on) to include in their index.

Bounce Rate

The Bounce Rate for a single page is the number of visits who enter the site at a page and leave within the specified timeout period without viewing another page, divided by the total number of visits who entered the site at that page. In contrast, the Bounce Rate for a website is the number of web site visitors who visit only a single page of a website per session divided by the total number of website visits. Bounce rates can be used to help determine the effectiveness or performance of an entry page. An entry page with a low bounce rate means that the page effectively causes visitors to view more pages and continue on deeper into the website. (source: Search Engine News).

Branded Keywords

Those are keywords that are associated with a specific brand, rather than a need/product/service/etc'.

Breadcrumb Navigation

A navigation method to present to the website's visitor his/her whereabouts in the site. This method helps visitors to understand the level of the page in the site's structure as well as to navigate "up" one or more level while keeping the context of the visit.

Broad Match    

Broad Match is a form of "keyword matching"  where the selected keywords can appear in the search query in any order.

Broken Link

An incorrect  link that ends up in a wrong place (mostly in a "page not found" error).

Buying Cycle    

A term that was adopted by Search marketers from traditional marketing. The buying cycle is an effort to create a model of the process people are taking when making a purchase - from beggining till end and to reflect it on their online behavior. There are different models that presented different steps and the terms are somewhat different, but the all of them include those  stages: Need Identification: where the person identifies that he is of a need of something (usually includes an identification of a "problem"). Following which comes the stage of Search where people are conducting general search for possible ways to solve their identified need. Following which comes the Evaluation stage where diffrenet solutions are being evaluated by different parameter. At the end comes the Purchase stage where the actual engagement is being made.
The buying cycle has big importance on Search Engine Marketing as it is found that there is a connection between the stage in which a searcher is and the type of keyword phrases he will use and even to the extent of which information he will read and where.

Campaign Integration    

Referrs ot integration of a paid search campaign with other Marketing efforts - online or offline.

Cloaking   

This term is used to describe a situation where different content is being displayed to search engines and to the website's visitors. Although there are some reasons in extereme situations where this is considering proper and "allowed" it is mostly part of Black Hat SEO and should be avoided.

CMS

Short for "Content Management System". A type of software that enables site owners' to manage and maintain their website's content easily and without the need of knowing any programming code.

Competitive Analysis     

Term "borrowed" from the traditional business and marketing world. Described an analysis of the competition to a certain website according to Internet Marketing and Search Engine Marketing parameters.

Content (text, copy)     

The part of a web page that has value and is of interest to the user. Advertising, navigation and branding are not considered to be content.

Conversion    

Conversion is when a specific goal (usually of a website) is being done/accomlished/reached by a visitor.

Conversion Rate

The number of visitors who convert (take a desired action at your site) after clicking through on your ad, divided by the total number of click-throughs to your site for that ad.  For example, if an ad brings in 150 clickthroughs and 6 of the 150 clicks result in a desired conversion, then the conversion rate is 4% (6 / 150 = 0.04). Higher conversion rates generally translate into more successful PPC campaigns with a better ROI.

CPC   

Short for Cost Per Click which is the amount search engines (such as Google Adwords) charge advertisers for every click that sends a searcher to the advertiser's web site. This is the more common method to date for PPC campaigns on Google Adwords.

CPM    

Short for Cost Per Thousand Impressions. Typically applied in display ads.

CTR (Click-Through Rate)    

The number of clicks that an ad gets, divided by the total number of times that ad is displayed or served. CTR also factors into you advertiser search engine Quality Score and, therefore, your minimum keyword bids on Tier I engines.

Description Tag     

One of the meta tags in the HTML code of a web page. This is typically (although not always) the information search engines will present on their SERP, below the page's title.

Directory   

A site that contains list of pages such as DMOZ..

Display URL     

The web page URL that one actually sees in a PPC text ad. The Display URL usually appears as the last line in the ad; it may be a simplified path for the longer actual URL, which is not visible.

DMOZ    

The Open Directory Project is the largest human edited directory of websites. Primarily run and maintained by volunteer editors.

dofollow

Refers to standard webpage links that search engine bots typically follow when looking for pages to add or keep in their index. The opposite of nofollow.

Domain     

Refers to a specific web site address. Unlike URL which usually refers to the address of a specific page, a Domain is the high level address (example: www.example.com, without the webpage address such as /example.htm)

Duplicate Content

Content which is duplicate or near duplicate in nature.

Dynamic URLs    

A URL that is generated either by searching a database-driven website or by a website that is running a script. The opposite would be static URLs, where the contents of the webpage do not change unless changes are made to the actual HTML source code. Since dynamic URLs are generated from specific queries to a site's database, the webpage itself is merely a template designed to display the results of the query. That means that, instead of changing information in the HTML source code, data is changed within the database itself. Dynamic URLs often contain the following characters: ?, &, %, +, =, $, cgi-bin, .cgi.

Ethical SEO    

SEO methodology that is performed according to the standard rules and regulations followed by the search engines

External Link    

A link which references another domain.

Flash     

A vector graphics-based technology that has become a popular method for adding animation and interactivity to web pages. (Source: Wikipedia)

Geo-Targeting     

Geo-targeting allows you to specify where your ads will or won't be shown based on the searcher's location, enabling more localized and personalized results.

Google AdWords

(see AdWords)    

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a free service offered by Google that generates statistical data over the visits and visitors to a website. Apart from being free and highly sophisticated, Google Analytics advantages are the integration with other Google products such as Adwords.

Google OneBox    

Portion of the SERP above the organic search results which Google sometimes uses to display vertical search results from Google News, YouTube, and other Google owned vertical search services.

Google Website Optimizer    

Free multi variable testing platform used to help AdWords advertisers improve their conversion rates. This service enables site owners and marketers to test the effect of various changes to their site on the conversion rates.

GoogleBot    

Google's search engine spider. Google has a shared crawl cache between their various spiders, including vertical search spiders and spiders associated with ad targeting.

GUI(Graphical User Interface)   

A way for the average user to interface with a database or program. A visual representation of the functional code. This is the actual screen, graphics, elements and so forth that enables a user to interact with a software.

Heading tag    

An HTML tag that is often used to denote a page or section heading on a web page. Search engines pay special attention to text that is marked with a heading tag, as such text is set off from the rest of the page content as being more important and is used to help the search engines identify what a page is about. Your desired keywords should be in heading tags if you want them to be noticed by the search engines.

Hit     

The request or retrieval of any item located within a web page. For example, if a user enters a web page with 5 pictures on it, it would be counted as 6 'hits'. One hit is counted for the web page itself, and another 5 hits count for the pictures. In the early days of the Internet - where other means were not available - hits where the main measurement unit for website traffic. Nowadays, with statistical programs such as Google Analytics, hits are considered irrelevant.

Home Page    

Although used for other defintions, the more common one is the landing page on which a user will land once typing the domain of a website (without a specific page). The home page is mainly used (or should be used) for explaining the visitor what the site is all about as well as directing him to the desired places he should go.

HTML sitemap    

An on-site Web page that links to all the other pages on your Web site. It ensures that any spider crawling your site can easily and quickly find and index all of your site's Web pages. This type of sitemap is for spiders first and foremost but it can also be useful for Web site visitors.

HTML Source    

Programming code and the basis for the code being used on the internet.

Impression     

One view or display of an ad. Ad reports list total impressions per ad, which tells you the number of times your ad was served by the search engine when searchers entered your keywords (or viewed a content page containing your keywords).

Index

The collective database of webpages (and other elements) that were crawled and anlyzed by a search engine, to be presented to the searches. The result of an index is the SERP.

Indexability (crawlability and spiderability)

Indexability is the potential of a web site or its contents to be crawled or 'indexed' by a search engine.

Information Architecture    

Designing, categorizing, organizing, and structuring content in a useful and meaningful way. Good information architecture considers both how humans and search spiders access a website while starting from the understanding of the business and marketing goals as well as the site's specific goals. Information architecture suggestions: focus each page on a specific topic, use descriptive page titles and meta descriptions which describe the content of the page, use clean (few or no variables) descriptive file names and folder names, use headings to help break up text and semantically structure a document use breadcrumb navigation to show page relationships, use descriptive link anchor text link to related information from within the content area of your web pages, improve conversion rates by making it easy for people to take desired actions, avoid feeding search engines duplicate or near-duplicate content

Internal Link     

A hyperlink on a Web page that points to a page on the same Web site.

Internet Marketing

The process of growing and promoting organization using online media (Source: Wikipedia). Internet marketing generally focused on three goals: Generating new customers through a website, Converting more of the traffic that comes to a site, Enhancing the value of your brand.

Key Performance Indicators (KPI)    

The way goals are to be measured. KPI uses metrics to quantify objectives that reflect the strategic performance of your online marketing campaigns. They provide business and marketing intelligence to assess a measurable objective and the direction in which that objective is headed.

Keyword Phrase

A search query made up of one or more keywords.

Keyword    

A word that a search engine user uses to find relevant web page(s).

Keyword Cannibalization     

Used to described reuse of the same keyword on many web pages within the same site. This makes it very difficult for the users and the search engines to determine which page is most relevant for the keyword.

Keyword Density     

The percentage of words on a web page that match a specified set of keywords. In the context of search engine optimization, keyword density can be used as a factor in determining whether a web page is relevant to a specified keyword or keyword phrase. In general, the higher the number of times a keyword appears in a page, the higher is its density, however this is not always a good thing, as too high of a density could result in being seen as spam by the search engines.

Keyword Matching    

Keyword matching is the process of selecting and providing advertising or information that match the user's search query.

Keyword Prominence    

The placement of a given keyword in the HTML source code of a web page. The higher up in the page a particular word is, the more prominent it is and the more weight that word is assigned by the search engines. It is best to have your first paragraph include your important keywords. This concept also applies to the location of important keywords within individual HTML tags, such as heading tags, title tags, or hyperlink text.

Keyword Research   

The process of discovering relevant keywords and keyword phrases to focus your SEO and PPC marketing campaigns on.

Keyword Tag     

Refers to the meta keywords tag within a web page. This tag is meant to hold approximately eight to ten keywords or keyword phrases. These phrases should be either misspellings of the main page topic, or terms that directly reflect the content on the page on which they appear. Keyword tags are sometimes used for internal search results as well as viewed by search engines. See also Meta Keywords Tag.

Landing Page    

A Landing page is where visitors land after clicking on an email link, a search engine result, a banner ad, or manually type in a specific advertised address.

Landing Page Quality Scores    

A measure used by Google AdWords to score the destination URL of ads. This scores measures the relevancy of a keyword to the displayed ad and the target page to where the visitors are directed once clicked on the ad.

Link    

An address that points to a Web page or other file (image, video, PDF, etc.) on a Web server. Links reside on Web pages, in e-mail messages and word processing documents as well as any other document type that supports hypertext and URL addressing.

Link Building    

Designing a Web site so that search engines easily find the pages and index them. The goal is to have your page be in the top 10 results of a search. Optimization includes the choice of words used in the text paragraphs and the placement of those words on the page, both visible and hidden inside meta tags. A few general link building tips: build conceptually unique linkworthy 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.

Link Text (Anchor text)

The user-visible text of a link. Search engines use anchor text to indicate the relevancy of the referring site and link to the content on the landing page. Ideally all three will share some keywords in common.

Long Tail Keywords     

Keyword phrases with three to five words in them. These long tail keywords are usually highly specific and draw lower traffic than shorter, more competitive keyword phrases, which is why they are also cheaper. Oftentimes, long tail keywords, in aggregate, have good conversion ratios for the low number of click-throughs they generate.

Manual Submitting  

Submitting by hand to an individual search engine or a directory, rather than using an automated submission tool or service. Manual submitting is a more polite way to submit, and is less likely to cause trouble with the search engines. Better yet, do not submit at all -- let the search engine spiders find you through links from other sites.

Meta Description   

A description of the data in a source, distinct from the actual data. 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.

Meta Keywords Tag

Allows page authors to add text to a page to help with the search engine ranking process. Not all search engines use the tag.

Meta Tags     

Information placed in a web page not intended for users to see but instead which typically passes information to search engine crawlers, browser software and some other applications.

Micro-Blogging    

A form of blogging that allows users to send brief text messages (usually 140 characters or less), pictures, audio files and even videos to a group of people who have subscribed to be sent these updates. These messages can be sent from a phone's text messaging option, instant messaging, email, digital audio or straight from the Micro-blogging service. An example of a popular micro-blogging service is http://www.twitter.com

Natural Search Results     

The search engine results which are not sponsored, or paid for in any way.   

Negative Keyword

Negative Keyword is a term referenced by Google AdWords and is a form of keyword matching. This means that an advertiser can specify search terms that they do not want their ad to be associated with.

Negative SEO

The act of demoting a page or site from the SERPS. Most often used against a competitor that is above your site in the SERPS.

Nofollow   

An HTML attribute that technically instructs a search engine bot not to follow the link and that the link should not influence the link target's ranking in the search engine's index. It is intended to improve the quality of search engine results. Commonly used on sites with user generated content, like in blog comments. The code to use nofollow on a link appears like <a href="http://www.example.com" rel="nofollow">example</a>. Nofollow can also be used in a robots meta tag to prevent a search engine from counting any outbound links on a page. This code would look like this <META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="INDEX, NOFOLLOW">

Noindex     

A command found in either the HEAD section of a web page or within individual link code, which instructs robots to not index the page or the specific link.

Organic Results     

Listings on search engine result pages (SERPs) that are not paid for and are not for sale. Sites appear in organic (also called 'natural') results because a search engine has applied formulas (algorithms) to its search crawler index, combined with editorial decisions and content weighting, that it deems important enough to include without payment.

Organic Search Rankings 

Search engine ranking of web pages found in SERPs.

Outbound Links    

Links on a particular web page leading to other web pages either within the same site, or other web sites.

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 other algorithms.  Today it is one of hundreds of factors in the algorithm that determines a page's rankings.

Paid Inclusion     

Is the process of paying a fee to a search engine in order to be included in that search engine's result pages or directory. Also known as 'guaranteed inclusion'. Paid inclusion does not impact rankings of a web page; it merely guarantees that the web page itself will be included in the index. These programs were typically used by web sites that were not being fully crawled or were incapable of being crawled, due to dynamic URL structures, frames, etc.

Paid Listings     

Listings that search engines sell to advertisers, usually through paid placement or paid inclusion programs. In contrast, organic listings are not sold.

Paid Placement     

Advertising program where listings are guaranteed to appear in response to particular search terms, with higher ranking typically obtained by paying more than other advertisers. Paid placement listings can be purchased from a portal or a search network.

Penalty    

Search engines prevent some websites suspected of spamming from ranking highly in the results by banning or penalizing them. These penalties may be automated algorithmically or manually applied. If a site is penalized algorithmically the site may start ranking again after a certain period of time after the reason for being penalized is fixed. If a site is penalized manually the penalty may last an exceptionally long time or require contacting the search engine with a reinclusion request to remedy.

PPC (Pay Per Click) 

Pay per click is a pricing model which most search ads and many contextual ad programs are sold through -- Google's AdWords is a prime example. PPC ads only charge advertisers when a potential customer actually clicks an ad.

PPC Advertising     

A model of online advertising in which advertisers pay only for each click on their ads that directs searchers to a specified landing page on the advertiser's web site. PPC ads may get thousands of impressions (views or serves of the ad); but, unlike more traditional ad models billed on a CPM (Cost-Per-Thousand-Impressions) basis, PPC advertisers only pay when their ad is clicked on. Charges per ad click-through are based on advertiser bids in hybrid ad space auctions and are influenced by competitor bids, competition for keywords and search engines' proprietary quality measures of advertiser ad and landing page content.

PPC Management    

The monitoring and maintenance of a Pay-Per-Click campaign. This includes changing bid prices, expanding and refining keyword lists, editing ad copy, testing campaign components for cost effectiveness and successful conversions, and reviewing performance reports for reports to management and clients, as well as results to feed into future PPC campaign operations.

Proximity    

A measure of how close words are to one another.

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. 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. 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.

Quality Score    

A number assigned by Google to paid ads in a hybrid auction that, together with maximum CPC, determines each ad's rank and SERP position. Quality Scores reflect an ad's historical CTR, keyword relevance, landing page relevance, and other factors proprietary to Google.

Query    

A word or phrase entered into a search engine or database.

Rank     

The particular order or position a web page or web site appears in search engine results. Rank and position affect your click-through rates and, therefore, conversion rates for your landing pages.

Reciprocal Links     

A reciprocal link is a mutual link between two web sites in order to ensure mutual traffic. Search engines usually don't count these as valuable links.

Referrer   

The source from which web site visitors come from.

Relevance     

As related to PPC advertising, relevance measures how closely the searcher's expectations and the search query are tied to the description, keywords and ad title.

Relevancy    

To measure of how useful searchers find search results.

Reputation Management   

Ensuring your brand related keywords display search results which reinforce your brand.

robots.txt    

A text file placed in the root directory of a web site that prohibits crawlers/spiders from indexing all or specific pages of the site.

ROI (Return On Investment)   

A measure of how much return you receive from each marketing dollar (or Euro or any other currency).

RSS

Stands for "Really Simply Syndication" or "Rich Site Summary". It is a syndication format designed for aggregating updates to blogs and the news sites, although used now with other types of websites as well. It is a way for end users to be aware when updates are being done to a blog or a website without (or before) visiting this site.

Search Directory    

A listing of websites and URLs that depends on user submission to create the listing, which is organized in a logical system, instead of using spiders or crawlers to obtain information for its database.

Search Engine    

A tool or device designed to search and retrieve information, comprising of a spider, index, relevancy algorithms and search results.

Search Query    

The word or phrase a searcher types into a search field, which initiates search engine results page listings and PPC ad serves. In PPC advertising, the goal is to bid on keywords that closely match the search queries of the advertiser's targets. See also Query.

Search Terms    

The words (or word) a searcher enters into a search engine's search box. Also used to refer to the terms a search engine marketer hopes a particular page will be found for. Also called keywords or query.

Secondary Links    

Links that are indirectly acquired links, such as a story in a major newspaper about a new product your company released.

SEM (Search Engine Marketing)    

The marketing of websites for search engines, usually through methods such as SEO, buying pay per click adds or trusted feeds.

Semantic Clustering    

A technique for developing relevant keywords for PPC Ad Groups, by focusing tightly on keywords and keyword phrases that are associative and closely related, referred to as "semantic clustering." Focused and closely-related keyword groups, which would appear in the advertiser's ad text and in the content of the click-through landing page, are more likely to meet searchers' expectations and, therefore, support more effective advertising and conversion rates.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) 

The act of publishing and marketing information in a way to improve search engine understanding of website content. The goal of SEO is to have a site appear as high as possible on the organic SERP and receive targeted traffic.

SEO Copywriting   

A style of writing and formatting information to increase the exposure to search queries by enhancing the relevance of the document to the search engine criteria and algorithm.

SERP (Search Engine Results Page)

The page where the results for a search query returned by a search engine is presented. Sometimes referred to as SERPs for multiple pages.

Site Map    

A specific page on a website that provides search engines an alternative access to contents and information, and also helps webmasters and visitors to make sense of the information contained in the website.

Social Bookmark 

A form of Social Media where users bookmarks are aggregated for public access. With the development of social networks and the use of the internet, users are keeping thier bookmarks on bookmarking sites and services online (which gives them access to their favorite sites from anywhere with Internet access). Some of those websites have become an authorative source for qulity incoming links to websites.

Social Media    

Various online technologies used by people to share information and perspectives. Blogs, wikis, forums, social bookmarking, user reviews and rating sites (e.g. digg, reddit) are all examples of Social Media.

Social Media Optimization (SMO)    

Set of methods for generating publicity through social media, online communities and community websites. Methods of SMO include adding RSS feeds, social news buttons, blogging, and incorporating third-party community functionalities like images and videos. Social media optimization is related to search engine marketing, but differs in several ways, primarily the focus on driving traffic from sources other than search engines, though improved search ranking is also a benefit of successful SMO. (Source: Wikipedia).

Social Media Marketing (SMM)    

A term that describes the act of using social networks, online communities, blogs, wikis or any other collaborative Internet form of media for marketing, sales, public relations and customer service. Common social media marketing tools include Twitter, blogs, LinkedIn, Facebook, Flickr and YouTube. In the context of Internet marketing, social media marketing refers to a collective group of web properties whose content is primarily published by users (Source: Wikipedia).

Spider    

Search engine robots that processes content on the Internet to create an index of pages used to provide Internet users results for their search query.

Stickiness    

The amount of time user spends on a website, or the ability of a website to engage visitors and make them navigate to other pages on the same website.

Submission    

The process of creating or enhancing awareness of your website, either by submitting the web page to the search engine, or establishing links with websites that are in the search engine index.

Target Audience    

The group of people that are the primary consumers of the products or services provided by a particular business, that the advertisers want to attract.

Targeting    

The act of narrowing or focusing the use of keywords in advertising to attract a specific target group. This can be based on gender, age, behavior or specific interests.

Taxonomy    

A system, which incorporates a specific set of terms, used to organize contents in a systematic or hierarchical manner.

Text Link Ads

Advertisements formatted to resemble text links.

Themes   

The overall topic or content of a website. This is usually determined by the search engine based on a word usage and density analysis of the contents on the page.

Tier I Search Engines    

Refers to the big three "GYM", for Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft's Bing search engines, which handles the majority of the search queries on the Internet.

Tier II Search Engines

Incorporates a range of smaller, vertical and specialized engines, including general search engines or meta search engines. Even though Tier II Search Engines lack the market share or features of the Tier I engines, they can still be effective in targeting specific or niche markets at a more affordable price

Tier III Search Engines

These operate mainly on contextual distribution networks, and are triggered by the result of user searches, where the keywords used in the query are linked to advertisers that are listed on the search engine to bring up the advertisement relevant to the search results.

Title Tag    

The <head> tag of a web page that normally contains the page title. This is also the information used by the search engine to show the bold blue underlined hyperlink of search query results. Historically the title tag has been the most important section of a web page in regards to search engine ranking.

Trackbacks    

A function that enables the linking of posts to other blogs with similar content or topic so that links and references to their page or content can be easily accessed. The 'Trackback URL' of a post shows all other blogs that have links to it.

Traffic    

The number of visits or visitors to a website.

Unique visitors    

A count of (human) individual users who have visited your web site (over a specified period of time), as opposed to user sessions, which can involve an individual user visiting the website multiple times.

URL (Uniform Resource Locater)

The unique address of a document or resource on the Internet. The term is often used interchangeably with web address.

Usability    

The ease with which a user can perform an action.

Viral Marketing    

An online 'word-of-mouth' tactic of marketing that relies on self-propagating or self-replicating methods to circulate within multiple networks aimed at trying to reach a large number of audience in a short amount of time. Viral marketing is usually spread using email, blogs, and other social media or marketing channels.

Visibility    

A general term for the describing the amount of exposure a website receives in search engine keyword searches.

Visit    

A term used to indicate the direct or indirect navigation of a user to a website.

White Hat SEO    

Techniques and practices that fall within the accepted practices and guidelines based on how search engines operate. Normally used to refer to SEO practices that are not deceptive or misleading in nature, as opposed to Black Hat SEO.

XML Feeds    

An alternate method for websites to update content to search engines, by sending XML information about website content and changes, rather than simply having search engine bots crawl through the website. XML Sitemaps which list all the urls on a site that you want listed are accepted by most major engines.

XML Sitemap    

An XML Sitemap is a special file that provides search engines with specific directives about what pages to crawl and how often. Search engines are not required to strictly obey these directives but they do tend to use them as guidelines. This type of Sitemap is especially useful for very large sites that want to get all their pages listed. A great example of a large site that NEEDS to have a good XML Sitemap is an ecommerce site that wants to get its entire list of product pages indexed and listed in the search results.