Algorithm
A mathematical formula used by search engines to assess the relevance and importance of websites and rank them accordingly in their search results. These algorithms are highly confidential and each Search Engine has their own algorithm.
Anchor Text
Anchor text is highlighted words on a page that link to another web page or resource. Clicking on the text, called hypertext, loads the linked resource in the user’s browser.
Backlink
A text link to your website from another website.
Crawl
Search engines find web pages on the World Wide Web and record index information sending out “spiders” These spiders make their way from page to page and site to site by following text links.
Domain name
The virtual address of your website (normally in the form www.yourbusinessname.com).
Google AdWords
A paid service that lets you create and run ads for your business on Google and their advertising network , you can set a budget and you only pay when people click your ads.
Google PageRank / PR
PageRank is a numeric value that represents how important a page is on the web according to Google. It isn’t the only factor that Google uses to rank pages, but it is an important one.
HTML
HTML (HyperText Markup Language) is the coding language used to create much of the information on the World Wide Web. Web browsers read the HTML code and display the page that code describes.
Keyword / keyword phrase
A word or phrase which your potential customers search for and which should be used frequently on a site in order to be relevant to those searches.
Keyword density
A measure of the frequency of your keyword in relation to the total wordcount of the page.
Link
A word or image on a web page which the reader can click to visit another page.
Meta tag
Code within the header of your web page which describes some aspect of that page. These meta tags like Title ( most important), Description, Keywords etc are read by the search engines and used to help assess the relevance of a site to a particular search.
Organic search results
Organic search results are those results that are obtained by indexing pages based purely on content and keyword relevancy. This is in contrast to listings ranked based on paid or sponsored searches where listings can be bought based on bids.
Reciprocal link
A mutual agreement between two webmasters to add a link to the other’s website in return for a link to their own website). This is not looked upon favorably by the Search engines.
Robot / Spider
Robots or spiders are terms for programs and automated scripts that “crawl” through the web (the Internet) and collect data from websites and anything else on the Internet that they can find.
robots.txt file
A file which is used to inform the search engine spider which pages on a site should not be indexed.
Sandbox
It is believed that for most new sites, Google withholds rightful ranking for a period while it determines whether the website is a genuine, credible, long term site. It does this to discourage the creation of SPAM websites.
SE / Search Engine
A search engine is a site which allows you to search for websites which contain a particular word or phrase. The most well known search engines are Google, Yahoo, and MSN.
SEO / SEM
SEO stands for “Search Engine Optimization.” It’s a set of techniques used by an optimizer to improve your website’s rankings in the search engines for a particular set of keywords, or keyword phrases.
SEM stands for “Search Engine Marketing” and covers SEO, Pay-Per-Click and other online marketing techniques that help your website improve visibility on the search engines.
SERP
SERP or “Search Engine Results Page” is the position of your website in the search results that display when someone searches for a particular word at a search engine.
SiteMap
A page on your site which contains a list of text links to every page on the website , It is a good SEO practice to have a sitemap on your website.
SPAM
Unwanted and unrequested email sent en-masse to private email addresses. Also used to refer to websites which appear high in search results without having any useful content.
URL
Uniform Resource Locator. The address of a particular page published on the Internet. Normally in the form http://www.yourbusinessname.com/AWebPage.htm.
Webmaster
A person responsible for the management of a particular website.
World Wide Web (WWW)
The vast array of documents published on the Internet. It is estimated that the World Wide Web now consists of approximately 11.5 billion pages.
