Affiliate Program -
Software that enables a business to pay affiliates a percentage
or specific amount per sale. This is an effective way of
obtaining incoming links.
Click through -
The process of clicking on a link in a search engine output page
to visit an indexed site.
Comment - The HTML tags are used to hide text
from browsers. Some search engines ignore text between these
symbols but others index such text as if the comment tags were
not there.
Cost Per Click (CPC) - Search engines
which display results not by relevancy but by the amount
advertisers are willing to pay to be listed on each search term
Content Syndication - Either offering
your own content for use on other sites in exchange for a plug
or link or using content from other sites with permission. This
is a good strategy and effective quid pro quo for both parties.
One receives free publicity and the other receives unique and
quality articles for keyword optimization without having to
write each proprietarily. Offering your articles on other web
sites is a great way to build incoming links.
Crawlers - Also know as a "robot" or "spider",
a crawler is an automated software program that runs at many
search engines, reads sites' content, analyzes it, and inserts
them into the index (or collects information for later insertion
into the index).
Database - A collection of data in tables
stored on a server. Generally content within a database is not
able to be indexed by the search engines.
Description tag - HTML tag used to by Web page
authors to provide a description for search engine listings.
Directories - A directory is a web site, which
contains listings (usually searchable and categorized) of other
web sites. Most directories are created and managed by human
editors.
Domain Name - The top level web address
or uniform resource locator (URL) that corresponds in the DNS
records to the IP address where the site is hosted. Garden-tips.com
is a domain name.
Doorway page - A page made specifically to rank
well in search engines for particular keywords, serving as an
entry point through which visitors pass to the main content.
Dynamic Content - Content on a page from
a database which is called based on the query parameters. This
content is generally not able to be indexed by the search
engines.
File Transfer Protocol (FTP) - The means
through which web pages are uploaded to a server.
Frames - Multiple HTML sources (pages) that are displayed in
the same page-view by a browser. The visitor will see a single
page displayed that can contain top, bottom, left, right, and
middle sections (the frames). Search engine spiders generally do
not like frames.
Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML) - A
basic programming language used to create web pages. Optimizing
the HTML code on a page is essential for obtaining top search
engine rankings.
Image Maps - A single image broken up
into parts, or slices. These are often used for navigation.
Different areas of a single image can be linked to different
pages. Image maps are fine to use, as long as accompanying text
links and ample body copy is included as well on all pages.
Incoming link - A link on another web
site that is to your web site.
Indexing - The act of a search engine
spider listing your site in its database so it will show up in
search results
Keyword - A word used in a performing a search.
Keyword Density - A measure of how frequently a given keyword
appears within a given web page. Keyword marketing - Putting
your message in front of people who are searching using
particular keywords and key phrases.
Keyword Frequency - The number of times your targeted
keyword is in a specific area of your page including the meta
tags, heading tags, body tag, and alt-tag. Generally you will
want your keyword to be listed a number of times in each. As an
approximate rule of thumb, use your keyword no more than three
times per meta tag, four times in heading tags, twenty times in
the body tag, and ten times in the alt-tag.
Keyword Prominence (Density) - How close
to the start of an area that your keyword appears. The closer to
the beginning your targeted keyword appears, the higher the
prominence, the higher the prominence the better. Prominence
applies to the words within the title, body of the document, the
meta tags, the heading tags, and the alt-tags.
Keyword Spamming - Using a keyword
repeatedly out of context in an attempt to gain additional
frequency and in turn obtain a better search engine ranking.
Keyword Phrase - A phrase, which forms (part
of) a search engine query.
Keyword Purchasing - The buying of search
keywords from search engines, usually to control banner ad.
Placement. Keyword research - The search for keywords related to
your Web site, and the analysis of which ones yield the highest
return on investment (ROI).
Keywords tag - META tag used to help define the
primary keywords of a Web page. Link popularity - A measure of
the quantity and quality of sites that link to your site.
Link text - The text contained in (and
sometimes near) a hyperlink. Log file - File that records the
activity on a Web server. Manual submission - Adding a URL to
the search engines individually by hand.
Link Popularity - The number of other web
pages that link to your web site. Search engines view links as
votes of confidence so the more links you can obtain, the
better. You should avoid low quality links from places such as
Free For All (FFA) pages and link farms.
Link Reputation - The quality of the
incoming links to your site. The more closely related and
greater trafficked sites you can obtain sites from, the better
your link reputation and the higher your rankings.
Off-site optimization - Optimizing
factors such as domain name, link popularity, and link
reputation that cannot be changed through modifications in the
HTML code.
On-site optimization - Optimizing by
modifying page source code factors such as keyword frequency,
keyword prominence, title, meta tags, body copy, alt-tags,
navigation, etc.
Meta Tags - Meta Tags are HTML elements that
can optionally be included within web pages, and contain
information about the document such as the author, keywords
describing the document, a description of the document, etc.
Pay per click search engine - Search engine
where results are ranked according to the bid amount, and
advertisers are charged when a searcher clicks on the search
listing.
Positioning - The process of ordering web sites
or web pages by a search engine or a directory so that the most
relevant sites appear first in the search results for a
particular query.
Positioning Technique - A method of modifying a
web page so that search engines (or a particular search engine)
treat the page as more relevant to a particular query (or a set
of queries).
Query - A word, a phrase or a group of words,
possibly combined with other syntax used to pass instructions to
a search engine or a directory in order to locate web pages.
Rank - The position a particular site is listed
in a search engine after a person does a relevant search. The
higher the rank, the nearer the top of the results the site will
come, and usually, the more traffic it will get.
Ranking Algorithm - the proprietary mathematical
formulas, variables, and set of weights that a search engines
uses to determine a site's ranking for a keyword search. Search
engines guard these carefully.
Registrar - Company through which you can
register domain names
Registration - The process of informing a
search engine or directory that a new web page or web site
should be indexed.
Re-submission - Repeating the search engine
registration process one or more times for the same page or
site.
Robots - Also know as a "crawler" or "spider",
a robot is an automated software program that runs at many
search engines, reads sites' content, analyzes it, and inserts
them into the index (or collects information for later insertion
into the index).
Source Code - The code of a web page that must be
optimized for the search engines. You can view top ranked sites
source code to gain information on what they have done to obtain
their top ranking.
Site Map - A page on a web site that
lists and links to every other page on that web site.
Search Engine - a utility that enables a
user to quickly search the Internet to find web sites on
searched for topics.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - The art of
optimizing a site to generate traffic from search engines.
Normally this is synonymous with positioning. Search engine
submission - The act of supplying a URL to a search engine in an
attempt to make a search engine aware of a site or page.
