subject: SEO and Link Building Common Terminilogies [print this page] SEO and Link Building Common Terminilogies
Link Building is a general term used to describe anything you do to build links to a website. There are two reasons to build links; Direct Click-Through Traffic and Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
Here are SEO and Link Building Terminologies
AdSense
Google's contextual advertising network.
AdWords
Google's primary advertising network that generates much of its revenue and profit. Adwords are the paid ads that appear on search engine result pages.
Affiliate
An individual or company that markets a merchant's products or services and is paid only once an action occurs. That action may be a click or a sale.
Affiliate Site
A site created with the sole purpose of generating revenue from ads or links to the affiliate has a relationship with.
Alt Attribute
Alt is an attribute usually used in IMAGE HTML tags to provide additional information about the image in a text format that is easy to read for search engines.
Analytics
Analytics refers to the detailed statistics about a websites visitors that can be obtained by viewing a servers log files or by placing code on your website to allow a 3rd party solution to analyze your websites traffic and report on it. Google has the most popular Analytics solution.
Anchor Text
Anchor text refers to the text that is used in the link.
Anchor Text Optimization
Anchor Text Optimization refers to the technique of purposely placing keywords in the anchor text of your incoming links in order to rank better for those keywords.
Algorithm
As it relates to search engines, an algorithm is a set of rules that search engines use to rank the results of a search query. Google's original algorithm relied very heavily on their PageRank system, but in order to present the most relevant results to their users, search engines have turned to many other algorithms that include topical analysis.
Backlinks
The term used to refer to links which point to a website. Also called "Inbound Links"
Banner Ad
An advertising banner displayed on site to advertise another website or service.
Blog
Short for web log is an online journal or diary of an individual or groups opinions and latest news that is updated regularly. Many blogs allow visitors to make comments, or "postings" in response to the blogger, or ask questions.
Blogger
The author of a blog.
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.
Bot
It refers to software programs that scan the web. Bots vary in purpose from indexing web pages for search engines to harvesting e-mail addresses for spammers.
Cache
A cache is a temporary storage area where frequently accessed data can be stored for rapid access. (A "cached snapshot" is the search engines last view of the content of the webpage you're currently viewing in your browser.) You can view a cached version of a URL by using the following query in Google. Cache:
Class C IP's
Link builders often look to get links from servers/websites with IP addresses that belong to different Class C Networks. Traditionally, search engines do not give links that are on the same IP address the same weight as links coming from different IP addresses. In addition links coming from the same server are also potentially not as valuable. Since IP's in different class c networks tend to be on different servers, link builders aim for obtaining links on IP's from different class C IP's.
Cloaking
Cloaking, as it relates to search engine spam, describes the technique of serving a different page to a search engine spider than what a human visitor sees.
CPC
Abbreviation for Cost Per Click. It is the base unit of cost for a Pay Per Click (PPC) campaign.
CTR - Click Through Rate
It is a ratio of clicks per impressions
Deep Linking
Linking to a page other than a site's home page.
Directory
A directory is list of web sites categorized into appropriate categories.
Directory Link
A link on or within a Directory site (such as dmoz.com).
Directory submission
Refers to the act of a submitting a website to be included in a Directory.
Domain Name
Location of an entity on the Internet. Also referred to as a URL. I.E. http://www.google.com
Doorway Page/Gateway Page
A doorway page exists solely for the purpose of driving traffic to another page. They are usually designed and optimized to target one specific key phrase. Doorway pages rarely are written for human visitors. They are written for search engines to achieve high rankings and hopefully drive traffic to the main site.
Dynamic Content
Content which changes over time or uses a dynamic language such as Javacript to render the elements on a webpage.
E-mail Marketing
Referring to the act of using email to market a business
Google Toolbar
An internet browser toolbar provided by Google which provides additional data about a webpage, such as Pagerank.
Image Link
An image that is linked to a webpage.
Impressions
When referring to advertising, impressions are when a page is loaded and a ad is shown/served.
Inbound Links
The term used to refer to links which point to a website, also known as backlinks.
Indexing
As it relates to search engines, indexing is the process of cataloging websites into a database.
IP Address
A numerical label that is assigned to devices participating in a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication between its nodes.
Landing Page
Referring to the webpage that a visitor lands on when entering a website from an external link.
LPO - Landing Page Optimization
Also known as webpage optimization, is an Internet marketing process with the goal of improving a visitor's interaction with a website. LPO aims to provide page content and appearance that makes the webpage more appealing to target audiences for better conversions.
Link Age
Refers to the amount of time that a link has been placed on a page. Link Builders prefer links that have been aged as the search engines often give more SEO value to aged links.
Link Baiting
The term used when one creates content specifically for goal of getting others to link to that content.
Link Building
The process of increasing the number of links pointing to a website.
Link Profile
The types of backlinks that link to a website.
Link Relevancy
Relevant links are those which are in the same or similar category as your site. For example, if you sell health food you should build links from other health related sites including fitness companies, health food vendors and dietitians.
Metadata
Structured information that describes, explains, locates, and otherwise makes it easier to retrieve and use an information resource.
Meta Tag
This is an element of HTML that often describes the contents of a Web page, and is placed near the beginning of the page's source code. Search engines use information provided in a meta tags to index pages by subject.
No Follow
rel="nofollow" is an attribute that can be added to the "A" html tag in order to indicate to Google that their spider should not follow a link. It was first created by Google as a way to let bloggers deter comment spam.
One-way links
These are links where one site points to another without a link on the other site pointing back.
Online Reputation Management
Online Reputation Management is the process of tracking, deterring, and repairing derogatory search results.
Organic Listings
Organic search engine listings appear after all of the paid advertising (PPC ads). The results are formulated from the search engine's index. Also known as Natural Search listings.
PPC - Pay Per Click
An advertising model where advertisers pay only for the traffic/clicks generated by their ads.
PR - Pagerank
Google's trademark for their proprietary measure of site link popularity. The PR ranges from 1 - 10, 10 being the highest.
Reciprocal links
A reciprocal link is where website [A] links to website [B], Website [B] in turn links to website [A]. In short, it`s an exchange of links.
Robots.txt
Robots.txt is a file which well behaved search engine indexing spiders read to determine which parts of a website they may or may not index.
ROI - Return On Investment
In the context of SEO, the term refers to sales generated as the direct result of a search engine marketing campaign.
RSS Feed
Really Simple Syndication - is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated digital content, such as blogs, news feeds
SEM - Search Engine Marketing
SEM encompasses both organic and paid search engine management (SEO,PPC, etc.)
SEO - Search Engine Optimization
SEO is the process of optimizing webpages so that they rank better in the search engine results.
SEO Friendly
As it relates to link building, SEO Friendly refers to a link being coded in a way as to allow/permit search engine spiders to follow it. Unfriendly links would be those that use the rel="nofollow" attribute or that are not coded using standard server side compiled html (i.e. javascript etc).
Search Engine
As it relates to the internet, a search engine is computer program (usually in the form of a website) that retrieves documents (i.e. webpages), or files, or data from a database.
SERP
Acronym for "Search Engine Results Page". This refers to the page that appears after you do a keyword search in a search engine.
Sitemap
A list of pages of a web site accessible to crawlers or users. It can be either a document in any form used as a planning tool for web design, or a web page that lists the pages on a web site, typically organized in hierarchical fashion. This helps visitors and search engine bots to find pages on the site.
Social Bookmark
A bookmark of a website that is made available to others socially. Often used for link building.
Social Media
Social media is media designed to be disseminated through social interaction, created using highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques. Some types of social media are forums, message boards, blogs, wikis and podcasts.
Source Code
Source code is the un-compiled programming code containing all the tags and instructions used to generate a webpage or an application. Most internet browsers have a function for the user to view the source code of the HTML page they are viewing. Meta Tags are located in the source code of a webpage.
Spider
As it relates to search engines, a spider is a computer program used to crawl from webpage to webpage in order to index the web. Another term for these programs is "web crawler".
Stop Word
Stop words are words that are ignored by search engines when indexing web pages and processing search queries. Common words such as "the," "a", "an," "of," and "with".
Text link
A link that is linked to a webpage using text. Also refered to as anchor links.
Title Tag
HTML tag used to define the title of a webpage/document. Search engines use the title tag to name webpages listed in search engine result pages. The title tag is often referred to as the most important meta tag for SEO due to the value that search engines place on a webpages title.
TLD - Top Level Domain
These domains are reserved for the big 3, dot COM, Net and ORG. If you own any of these, you own a TLD website.
URL
Uniform Resource Locator / Universal Resource Locator. A unique internet domain/address that every internet resource must have in order to be located.
Viral Marketing
Viral marketing is the process of promoting and selling products or services through the use of messages or ads that are self regenerative. Viral messages or ads include a pass-along tag line that encourages recipients of the message to send or forward the message to other people.
