Email: info@RoseOspreyMarketing . com

Glossary: Frequent confused terms and phrases in search engine optimization (SEO), internet marketing and web analytics. A simple definition is provided.

0 – 9
200
“Status OK” – The file request was successful. A page or image was found and loaded properly in a browser.
301
“Moved Permanently” – The file has been moved permanently to a new location.
A 301 redirect is the preferred method of redirecting for most pages and websites.
302
“Found” – The file has been found, but is temporarily located at another URI.
Generally, in SEO best practices it is preferable to avoid 301 redirects for 301 redirects.
404
“Not Found” – The server was unable to locate the URL.
Most content management systems send 404 status codes when documents don’t exist. Ensure files that exist give a 200 status code. Creating a custom 404 page is part of seo best practices.

A
Above the Fold
Traditionally, a term used to describe the top portion of a newspaper. In email, browsers and web marketing, the area of content viewable prior to scrolling. The area above the fold is much more valuable since it is always seen more frequently.
Absolute Link
A link which shows the full URL rather than the abbreviated or relative link. Due to canonicalization and hijacking related issues it is typically preferred to use absolute links over relative links.
Example absolute link
<a href=”http://roseospreymarketing.com///tag/ppc”>PPC Advertising</a>
Example relative link
<a href=”../ tag/ppc”>PPC Advertising</a>
AdCenter
Microsoft’s cost per click ad network.
AdSense
Google’s contextual advertising network.
Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing programs expand a market reach and mindshare by paying website owners on a cost per action (CPA) basis. Affiliates only get paid if visitors complete an action. Linkshare, Commission Junction, and Amazon associates are examples of affiliate networks.
Age
Age is a relevant factor is search engine optimization algorithms. All things equal, an older domain is more trusted than a newer domain and thus, tends to rank higher.
Aggregate– The complete or whole. Not segmented.
Alexa– Alexa ranking shows traffic estimations for websites.
AllTheWeb
Search engine which was created by Fast, then bought by Overture, which was bought by Yahoo.
Alt Attribute
Blind people and most major search engines are not able to easily distinguish what is in an image. Using an image alt attribute allows you to help screen readers and search engines understand the function of an image by providing a text equivalent for the object.
Example usage
<img src=”http://roseospreymarketing.com///images.gif” height=”140″ width=”120″ alt=”Alt attribute examples.”/>
AltaVista
Search engine bought out by Overture prior to it being bought by Yahoo.
Amazon.com
The largest internet retailing website. Amazon.com is rich in consumer generated media. Amazon also owns a number of other popular websites, including IMDB and Alexa.
Analytics
Software which allows you to track your page views, user paths, and conversion statistics based upon interpreting your log files or through including a JavaScript tracking code on your site.
Ad networks are a game of margins. Marketers who track user action will have a distinct advantage over those who do not.
Anchor Text
The text that a user would click on to follow a link. In the case the link is an image the image alt attribute may act in the place of anchor text.
Search engines assume that your page is authoritative for the words that people include in links pointing at your site. When links occur naturally they typically have a wide array of anchor text combinations. Too much similar anchor text may be a considered a sign of manipulation, and thus discounted or filtered. Make sure when you are building links that you control that you try to mix up your anchor text.
Example of anchor text:
<a href=”http://roseospreymarketing.com///”>Search Engine Optimization Blog</a>
Outside of your core brand terms if you are targeting Google you probably do not want any more than 10% to 20% of your anchor text to be the same. You can use Backlink Analyzer to compare the anchor text profile of other top ranked competing sites.
AOL
America Online. Popular webservice.
API
Application Program Interface – a series of conventions or routines used to access software functions. Most major search products have an API program.
Arbitrage
Exploiting market inefficiencies by buying and reselling a commodity for a profit. As it relates to the search market, many thin content sites laced with an Overture feed or AdSense ads buy traffic from the major search engines and hope to send some percent of that traffic clicking out on a higher priced ad. Shopping search engines generally draw most of their traffic through arbitrage.
Ask
Ask is a search engine owned by InterActive Corp. They were originally named Ask Jeeves, but they dumped Jeeves in early 2006. Their search engine is powered by the Teoma search technology.
Authority
The ability of a page or domain to rank well in search engines. Five large factors associated with site and page authority are link equity, site age, traffic trends, site history, and publishing unique original quality content.
Automated Bid Management Software
Software packages that help large advertisers cope with the increasing sophistication and complexity of PPC by automating the bidding process.

B
B2B
Business to Business.
B2C
Business to Consumer
Backlink (see Inbound Link)
Banner Blindness
The tendency of web users to ignore banners due to their previous ubiquity.
Behavioral Targeting
Ad targeting based on past recent experience and/or implied intent. For example, if I recently searched for mortgages then am later reading a book review the page may still show me mortgage ads.
Bid Management Software (see Automated Bid Management Software)
Black Hat SEO
Search engine optimization tactics that are counter to best practices such as the Google Webmaster Guidelines. Search engines are not without flaws in their business models, but there is nothing immoral or illegal about testing search algorithms to understand how search engines work.
Blog
A periodically updated journal, typically formatted in reverse chronological order. Many blogs not only archive and categorize information, but also provide a feed and allow simple user interaction like leaving comments on the posts.
Most blogs tend to be personal in nature. Blogs are generally quite authoritative with heavy link equity because they give people a reason to frequently come back to their site, read their content, and link to whatever they think is interesting.
The most popular blogging platforms are WordPress, Blogger and Typepad.
Blogger
Blogger is a free blog platform owned by Google.
Blogroll
Link list on a blog, usually linking to other blogs owned by the same company or friends of that blogger.
Bold
A way to make words appear in a bolder font. Words that appear in a bolder font are more likely to be read by humans that are scanning a page. A search engine may also place slightly greater weighting on these words than regular text.
Example use:
–    <b>words</b>
–    <strong>words</strong>
Either would appear as words.
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.
Bounce rate
The percentage of users who enter a site and then leave it without viewing any other pages.
Boolean Search
Many search engines allow you to perform searches that contain mathematical formulas such as AND, OR, or NOT. By default most search engines include AND with your query, requiring results to be relevant for all the words in your query.
Brand
The emotional response associated with your company and/or products. Popular brands are Pepsi, Disney, Sony etc.
Branded Keywords
Keywords or keyword phrases associated with a brand. Typically branded keywords occur late in the buying cycle, and are some of the highest value and highest converting keywords. Often branded keywords have different rules for search engines and affiliate markets.
Breadcrumb Navigation
Web navigation in a horizontal bar above the main content which helps the user to understand where they are on the site and how to get back to the root areas.
Broken Link
A hyperlink which is not functioning or a that does not lead to the desired location.
Browser
Client used to view the world wide web.
The most popular browsers are Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, Mozilla’s Firefox, Safari, and Opera.
Business.com
A well trusted directory of business websites and information. Business.com is also a PPC advertising platform.
Buying Cycle
Before making large purchases consumers typically research what brands and products fit their needs and wants. Keyword-based search marketing presumably allows you to reach consumers at any point in the buying cycle.
In many markets branded keywords tend to have high search volumes and high conversion rates.
The buying cycle may consist of the following stages
–    Problem Discovery: prospect discovers a need or want.
–    Search: after discovering a problem a customer looks for ways to solve the need or want. These searches may contain words which revolve around the core problem the prospect is trying to solve or words associated with their identity.
–    Evaluate: I may do comparison searches to compare different models, and also search for negative information like product sucks, etc.
–    Decision: I may look for information which reinforces my preferred products, services and brands.
–    Purchase: may search for shipping related information or other price related searches. Purchases may also occur offline.
–    Reevaluation: some people leave feedback on their purchases . If a person is enthusiastic about your brand they may cut your marketing costs by providing free highly trusted word of mouth marketing.

C
Cache
Copy of a web page stored by a search engine. When a page is cached by an engine that means that the engine has picked it up.
Canonical URL
A canonical version of any URL is the single most authoritative version indexed by major search engines. Search engines typically use PageRank or a similar measure to determine which version of a URL is the canonical URL.
Webmasters should use consistent linking structures throughout their sites to ensure that they funnel the maximum amount of PageRank at the URLs they want indexed. When linking to the root level of a site or a folder index it is best to end the link location at a / instead of placing the index.html or default.asp filename in the URL.
Examples of URLs which may contain the same information in spite of being at different web addresses:
http://roseospreymarketing.com///
http://roseospreymarketing.com///index.shtml
http://roseospreymarketing.com//
http://roseospreymarketing.com//index.shtml
http://roseospreymarketing.com///?tracking-code
Catalog (see Index)
Catch All Listing
A listing used by pay per click search engines to monetize long tail terms that are not yet targeted by marketers. This technique may be valuable if you have very competitive key words, but is not ideal since most major search engines have editorial guidelines that prevent bulk untargeted advertising, and most of the places that allow catch all listings have low traffic quality. Catch all listings may be an attractive idea on theme specific search engines and directories though, as they are already pre qualified clicks.
Click Fraud
Clicks on a PPC advertisement engine usually by a user for the purpose of charging advertisers money.
Client
A program, computer, or process which makes information requests to another computer, process, or program.
Cloaking
Displaying different content to search engines and searchers. This is against Google’s TOS.
Clustering
In search results the listings from any individual site are typically limited to a certain number and grouped together to make the search results appear neat and organized and to ensure diversity amongst the top ranked results. Clustering can also refer to a technique which allows search engines to group hubs and authorities on a specific topic together to further enhance their value by showing their relationships.
CMS
Content Management System. Tool used to help make it easy to update and add information to a website. WordPress and YahooStore are examples.
Comments
Many blogs and other content management systems allow readers to leave user feedback.
Leaving enlightening and thoughtful comments on someone else’s related website is one way to help get them to notice you.
Conceptual Links
Links which search engines attempt to understand beyond just the words in them. Some rather advanced search engines are attempting to find out the concept links versus just matching the words of the text to that specific word set. Some search algorithms may even look at co-citation and words near the link instead of just focusing on anchor text.
Concept Search
A search which attempts to conceptually match results with the query, not necessarily with those words, rather their concept.
For example, if a search engine understands a phrase to be related to another word or phrase it may return results relevant to that other word or phrase even if the words you searched for are not directly associated with a result. In addition, some search engines will place various types of vertical search results at the top of the search results based on implied query related intent or prior search patterns by you or other searchers.
Contextual Advertising
Advertising programs which generate relevant advertisements based on the content of a webpage.
Conversion
Many forms of online advertising are easy to track. A conversion is reached when a desired goal is completed.
Most offline ads have generally been much harder to track than online ads. Some marketers use custom phone numbers or coupon codes to tie offline activity to online marketing.
Here are a few common example desired goals
a sale
completing a lead form
dialing a phone call
capturing an email
filling out a survey
getting feedback
viewing a specific page
Bid management, affiliate tracking, and analytics programs make it easy to track conversion sources.
Copyright
The legal rights to publish and reproduce a particular piece of work.
Cookie
Small data file written to a user’s local machine to track them. Cookies are used to help websites customize your user experience and help affiliate program managers track conversions.
CPA
Cost per action. The effectiveness of many other forms of online advertising have their effectiveness measured on a cost per action basis. Many affiliate marketing programs and contextual ads are structured on a cost per action basis. An action may be anything from an ad click, to filling out a lead form, to buying a product.
CPC
Cost per click. Many search ads and contextually targeted ads are sold in auctions where the advertiser is charged a certain price per click.
See also:
Google AdWords – Google’s pay per click ad program which allows you to buy search and contextual ads.
Google AdSense – Google’s contextual ad program.
Microsoft AdCenter – Microsoft’s pay per click ad platform.
Yahoo! Search Marketing – Yahoo!’s pay per click ad platform
CPM
Cost per thousand ad impressions.
Many people use CPM as a measure of how profitable a website is or has the potential of becoming.
Crawl Depth
How deeply a website is crawled and indexed.
Depth is measured in kbs.
Crawl Frequency
How frequently a website is crawled.
Adding unique content on a frequent basis can increase your crawl frequency.
CSS
Cascading Style Sheets is a method for adding styles to web documents.
Note: Using external CSS files makes it easy to change the design of many pages by editing a single file. You can link to an external CSS file using code similar to the following in the head of your HTML documents
<link rel=”stylesheet” href=”http://roseospreymarketing.com///style.css” type=”text/css” />
CTR
Clickthrough rate – the percentage of people who view click on an advertisement they viewed, which is a way to measure how relevant a traffic source or keyword is. Search ads typically have a higher clickthrough rate than traditional banner ads due to being highly relevant to implied searcher demand.
Cybersquatting
Registering domains related to other trademarks or brands in an attempt to cash in on the value created by said trademark or brand.

D
Dayparting
Turning ad campaigns on or off, changing ad bid price, or budget constraints based on bidding more when your target audience is available and less when they are less likely to be available.
Dead Link
A link which is no longer functional.
Most large high quality websites have at least a few dead links in them, but the ratio of good links to dead links can be seen as a sign of information quality.
Deep Link
A link which points to a page other than the homepage.
When links grow naturally typically most high quality websites have many links pointing at interior pages.
Dedicated Server
Server which is limited to serving one website or a small collection of websites owned by a single person.
Dedicated servers tend to be more reliable than shared (or virtual) servers.
Deep Link Ratio
The ratio of links pointing to internal pages to overall links pointing at a website.
A high deep link ratio is typically a sign of a legitimate natural link profile.
De-Listing
Temporarily or permanently becoming de-indexed from a directory or search engine.
De-indexing may be due to any of the following:
–    Pages on new websites (or sites with limited link authority relative to their size) may be temporarily de-indexed until the search engine spider your site.
–    During some updates search engines readjust crawl priorities.
–    You need a significant number of high quality links to get a large website well indexed and keep it well indexed.
–    Duplicate content filters
–    Pages which have changed location and are not properly redirected, or pages which are down when a search engine tries to crawl them may be temporarily de-indexed.
–    Search Spam:
–    A website tripped an automatic spam filter.
–    If a website is editorially removed by a human you may need to contact the SE directly to request reinclusion.
Del.icio.us
Popular social bookmarking website.
Demographics
Statistical data or characteristics which define segments of a population.
Some internet marketing platforms, such as AdCenter and AdWords, allow you to target ads at websites or searchers who fit amongst a specific demographic. Some common demographic data points are gender, age, income, education, location, etc.
Description
Directories, search engines and web pages provide a short description near each listing which aims to add context to the title.
Digg
Social media site where users vote on which stories get the most exposure and become the most popular.
Directory
A categorized catalog of websites, typically manually organized by topical editorial experts. They may be paid or free.
Some directories cater to specific niche topics, while others are more comprehensive in nature. Major search engines likely place significant weight on links from DMOZ and the Yahoo! Directory.
DMOZ
The Open Directory Project is the largest human edited directory of websites. DMOZ is owned by AOL, and is primarily run by volunteers.
DNS
Domain Name Server or Domain Name System.
Domain
Or Domain Name. Scheme used for logical or location organization of the web. Many people also use the word domain to refer to a specific website.
Doorway Pages
Pages designed to rank for highly targeted search queries, typically designed to redirect searchers to a page with other advertisements.
Dreamweaver
Popular web development and editing software offering a WYSIWYG interface.
Duplicate Content
Content which is not unique. Duplicate content may be “penalized” by being indexed lower in the SERPS or not picked up at all.
Dynamic Content
Content which changes over time or uses a dynamic language such as PHP to help render the page.
Dynamic Languages
Programming languages such as PHP or ASP which build web pages on the fly or per request.

E
Editorial Link
As contrasted with links that were bought or bartered. Search engines count links as votes of quality.
Emphasis
An HTML tag used to emphasize text. Also see italics.
<em>emphasis</em> would appear as emphasis
Entry Page
The page which a user enters your site.
If you are buying pay per click ads it is important to send visitors to the most appropriate and targeted page associated with the keyword they searched for. with
Ethical SEO
Search engines like to paint SEO services which manipulate their relevancy algorithms as being unethical. Also unethical are practices that violate a search engine’s terms of service. Also see black hat and white hat seo.
External Link
Links which reference other domains.
Linking to other related resources is usually a good way to help search engines understand what your site is about.

F
Fair Use
Pertaining to the copyright code.
Favorites (see bookmarks)
Feed
A way to provide content quickly to another source. Content management, systems such as blogs, allow readers to subscribe to RSS or XML feeds. Feeds can also refer to pay per click syndicated feeds, or merchant product feeds.
Feed Reader
Software or website used to subscribe to read feeds.
Filter
Certain activities or signatures which make a page or site appear unnatural might make search engines inclined to remove them from the SERPS.
Firefox
Popular extensible open source web browser.
Flash
Graphics-based animation software which makes websites appear interactive.
Search engines tend to struggle indexing and ranking flash websites because flash typically contains so little relevant content.
Frames
Netscape’s technique to display multiple smaller pages on a single display. This web design technique allows for consistent site navigation, but makes it hard to deep link at relevant content. SEO best practices is too avoid frames.
Fresh Content
Content which is dynamic or new and likely to get the search engine spiders to return often.
FTP
File Transfer Protocol is a protocol for transferring (usually large amounts of) data between computers.

G
Godin, Seth
Popular blogger, author, viral marketer and businessman.
Google
The world’s leading search engine in terms of reach.
GoogleBot
Google’s search engine spider.
Google AdSense (see AdSense)
Google AdWords (see AdWords)
Google Base
Free database of semantically structured information created by Google. Usually used as a feed for e-commerce sites.
Google Bombing
Making a pank rank well for a specific search query by pointing links at the page containing bizarre anchor text.
Google Bowling
Knocking a competitor out of the SERPS by pointing hundreds of low quality links at their website.
Google Checkout
Payment service provided by Google which helps Google better understand merchant conversion rates and the value of different keywords and markets. Also see Paypal.
Google Dance
Refers to the constant flux or movement of the search engines.
Google Keyword Tool
A free keyword research tool provided by Google which estimates the competition for a keyword, recommends keywords, and makes other recommendations for PPC and SEO.
Google Image Labeler-A device and fun game where two random people are paired up and try to match descriptions of pictures and images. These pictures will then be shown when people search for that term or phrase.
Google OneBox
Portion of the search results page above the organic search results which Google sometimes uses to display vertical search results from Google News, Google Base, and other Google products.
Google Sitemaps
Program webmasters can use to help Google index their content.
Google Sitelinks
On some search results where Google thinks one result is far more relevant than other results (like navigational or brand related searches) they may list severak deep links below the primary search result.
Google Supplemental Index
Index where pages with lower trust scores are stored. Supposedly does not exist anymore.
Google Traffic Estimator
A tool which estimates keyword bid prices.
Google Trends
Tool which allows you to see how Google search volumes for a particular keyword change over time.
Google Website Optimizer
Free multi variable and A/B testing platform used to help AdWords advertisers improve their conversion rates.

H
Headings
Headings are H1-H6 tags that place emphasis on text on a page. H1 is the most important, H6 the least.
Hidden Text
Text that does not show up on the screen but appears in the code. Sometimes white or small text. This is not recommended.
Hijacking
Making a search engine believe that another website exists at your URL. Typically done using techniques such as a 302 redirect or meta refresh.
Home Page
Your primary page on your website. It is usually the highest ranking page and the page people associate with your brand.
Host (see Server)
.htaccess
Apache directory-level configuration file which can be used to password protect or redirect files.
HTML
HyperText Markup Language is the language in which pages on the World Wide Web are created.
HTTP
HyperText Transfer Protocol is the protocol used to communicate between servers and browsers.
Hubs
Topical hubs are sites which link to many well-trusted sites within their niche or vertical.

I
Inbound Link
A link pointing to one website from another website.
Most search engines allow you to see a sample of links pointing to a document by searching using the link: function. For example, using link:www.roseospreymarketing.com would show pages linking to this site (both internal links and inbound links).
Internal Link
Link from one page on a site to another page on the same site.
Information Architecture
The structuring, designing, categorizing, organizing, and ordering of content in a way that is useful to humans and spiders.
Internet
Vast worldwide network of computers connected via TCP/IP.
Internet Explorer (IE)
Microsoft’s web browser.
Invisible Web
The web is large; the invisible web refers to the corners which are not easily accessible to crawlers due to search technology limitations and information architecture issues.
IP Address– The  physical location associated with your internet connection.
Internet Protocol Address. See IP address
IP delivery (see cloaking)
ISP
Internet Service Providers sell end users access to the web. Some of these companies also sell usage data to web analytics companies.
Italics (see emphasis)

J
JavaScript
A client-side scripting language that can be embedded into HTML documents to add dynamic features. Search engines do not index most content in JavaScript. Not to be confused with Java.

K
Keyword
A word or phrase which implies a certain mindset or demand that targeted prospects are likely to search for. A unique search.
Keyword Density
A measure of search engine relevancy based on how prominent keywords appeared within the content of a page.
Keyword density is often a confused metric as not all text is created equal, and thus, density might not be the most relevant measure of effective on-page SEO. Obviosly keywords that appear bolded, above the fold, in the title, etc, will carry more weight with the search engines. However, this will not affect the keyword density.
Keyword Funnel
The relationship between various related keywords that searchers search for. Some searches are particularly well aligned with others due to spelling errors, poor search relevancy, and automated or manual query refinement.
Keyword Research
The process of discovering relevant keywords phrases to focus your SEO and PPC marketing campaigns.
Keyword Research Tools
Tools which help you discover potential keywords based on past search volumes, search trends, bid prices, and page content from related websites. There are paid and free tools.
Keyword Stuffing
Writing copy that tends to use excessive amounts of the core keyword.
Keyword Suggestion Tools (see Keyword Research Tools)

L
Landing Page
The page on which a visitor arrives after clicking on a link or advertisement.
Landing Page Quality Scores
A measure used by Google to help filter poor ads out of their AdWords program. Also a way to reward good content.
Link
A citation from one web document/page to another web document or another position in the same document.
Most major search engines consider links as a vote of trust.
Link Baiting
The art of targeting, creating, and formatting information that provokes the target audience to point high quality links at your site. Many link baiting techniques are targeted at social media and bloggers.
Link Building
The process of building high quality links so as to increase page rank and trust.
Link Bursts
A rapid increase in the quantity of links pointing at a website. This is usually a sign of spam though it could also be the result of a media promotion or news story.
Link Churn
The rate at which a site loses incoming links.
Link Equity
A measure of how strong a site is based on its inbound link popularity and the authority of the sites providing those links.
Link Farm
A website or group of websites which exercises little to no editorial control when linking to other sites. Sites created for the purpose of generating links.
Log Files
Server files which show you what your leading sources of traffic are and what people are search for to find your website.
Link Hoarding
A method of trying to keep all your link popularity by not linking out to other sites.
Link Popularity
The number of links pointing at a website.
Link Reputation
The combination of your link equity and anchor text.
Live.com
New search platform provided by Microsoft.
Long Tail
Phrase describes the phenomena that for any category, specific searches will get more hits and ROI than generic searches.

M
Manual Review
Most search engines combine a manual review process with their automated relevancy algorithms to help catch search spam. Abnormal usage data or link growth patterns may also flag sites for manual review.
Meta Description
The meta description tag is typically a sentence or two of content which describes the content of the page. Meta descriptions are an important factor in SEO. Good meta descriptions should be unique.
Meta Keywords
The meta keywords tag is a tag which can be used to highlight keywords and keyword phrases which the page is targeting.
Meta Refresh
A meta tag used to make a browser refresh to another URL location.
Meta Tags
People generally refer to meta descriptions and meta keywords as meta tags. Some people also group the page title in with these.
Microsoft
Maker of the popular Windows OS and Internet Explorer browser.
Mirror Site
A site which purposefully duplicates the contents of another site for the purposes of load balancing.
MSN Search
Search engine built by Microsoft. MSN uses the same algorithm as Live.
MySpace
A popular social networking sites.

N
Natural Language Processing
Algorithms which attempt to understand the true intent of a search query rather than just matching results to keywords.
Natural Link (see Editorial Link)
Natural Search (see Organic Search Results)
Navigation
Scheme to help website users understand where they are, where they have been, and how that relates to the rest of your website.
Netscape
Originally a company that created a popular web browser by the same name, Netscape is now a social news site similar to Digg.com.
Niche
A topic, genre or subject a website is focuses on.
Nofollow
Attribute used to prevent a link from passing link authority. 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://roseospreymarketing.com//.com” rel=”nofollow”>anchor text </a>
Nofollow can also be used in a robots meta tag to prevent a search engine from counting any outbound links on a page.

O
Open Directory Project, The (see DMOZ)
Open Source
Software which is distributed with its source code such that developers can freely modify.
Opera
A fast standards based web browser.
Organic Search Results
Most major search engines have results that consist of paid ads and unpaid listings. The unpaid / algorithmic listings are called the organic search results. Also referred to as SEO and natural search (as opposed to PPC).
Outbound Link
A link from one website pointing at another website.
Overture
The company which pioneered search marketing by selling targeted searches on a pay per click basis. It is now Yahoo Search Marketing.

P
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 algorithms such as TrustRank.
The PageRank formula is:
PR(A) = (1-d) + d (PR(T1)/C(T1) + … + PR(Tn)/C(Tn))
PR= PageRank
d= dampening factor (~0.85)
c = number of links on the page
PR(T1)/C(T1) = PageRank of page 1 divided by the total number of links on page 1, (transferred PageRank)

In English: for any given page A, the PageRank PR(A) is equal to the sum of the partial PageRank of each page pointing at it multiplied by the dampening factor plus one minus the dampening factor.
Page Title (see Title)
Paid Inclusion
A method of allowing websites which pass editorial quality guidelines to buy relevant exposure.
Directories are good examples of paid inclusion. Paid inclusion is different than links that are paid and bartered for (at least according to Google and what else matters?). The difference, I suppose, is that paid inclusion identifies that the links have been paid for.
Paid Link (see Text Link Ads)
Panama–
Yahoo’s advanced PPC interface
Pay for Performance
Payment structure where affiliated sales workers are paid commission for getting consumers to perform certain actions.
Personalization
Altering the search results based on a person’s location, search history, content they recently viewed, or other factors relevant to her.
PHP
PHP Hypertext Preprocessor is an open source server side scripting language used to render web pages or add interactivity to them.
Poison Word
Words which were traditionally associated with low quality content that caused search engines to want to demote the rankings of a page. “Bad and unsavory” words.
Portal
Web site offering common consumer services such as news, email, other content, and search.
PPA
Pay Per Action
Very similar to Pay Per Click except publishers only get paid when click throughs result in conversions, which can be defined as whatever you agree upon.
PPC
Pay Per Click is a pricing model which most search ads and many contextual ad programs are sold through. PPC ads only charge advertisers if a potential customer clicks on an ad.
See also:
–    AdWords – Google’s PPC ad platform
–    AdCenter – Microsoft’s PPC ad platform
–    Yahoo! Search Marketing – Yahoo!’s PPC ad platform
Proximity
A measure of closeness; usually-how close words are to one another.

Q
Quality Link
Links that are trusted due to the fact that they are old, from related sources, or from pages with high page rank.
Query
The phrase you type into a search engine when performing a search.
Query Refinement
Specific searches performed after an initial, general search.

R
Reciprocal Links
Two websites that link to one another are said to be exchanging reciprocal links. Reciprocal links are less valuable than one-way links, but they still have value.
Redirect
A way to alert browsers and search engines that a page has changed locations.
Registrar
A company which allows you to register domain names. E.g. www.roseospreymarketing.com was registered via www.GoDaddy.com .
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Reinclusion
A penalized site may be “reincluded” in the SERPS after being removed if it cleans up it’s act.
Referrer
The source from which a website visitor came from. A referrer usually a link from another website.
Relative Link
A link which shows the relation of the current URL to the URL of the page being linked at. Some links only show relative link paths instead of having the entire reference URL within the a href tag. Due to canonicalization and hijacking related issues it is typically preferred to use absolute links over relative links.
Example relative link
<a href=”../folder/filename.html”>Cool Stuff</a>
Example absolute link
<a href=”http://roseospreymarketing.com//folder/filename.html”>Cool Stuff</a>
Relevancy
A measure of how useful searchers find search results.
Reputation Management
Ensuring your brand related keywords (your name or company name) display results which reinforce your brand. Many hate sites tend to rank highly for brand related queries.
Rewrite (see URL Rewrite)
RFP
Request for Proposal
RFQ
Request for Quote A business that is looking to hire an SEO or PPC may wish to hear prices from several competing companies first. Those are called RFQs.
Robots.txt
A file in the root of a site and tells search engines which files not to crawl.
ROI
Return on Investment is a measure of how much return you receive from each marketing dollar.
ROAS
Return on Ad Spend
A way to measure pay per click success. Revenue/ Spend.
RSS
Rich Site Summary or Real Simple Syndication– A method of syndicating information to a feed reader or other software. This allows people to subscribe to a channel or blog they are interested in.

S
Safari
A popular Apple browser.
sandbox There has been debate and speculation that Google puts all new sites into a “sandbox,” preventing them from ranking well for anything until a set period of time has passed. The existence or exact behavior of the sandbox is not universally accepted among SEOs.
Search History
Many search engines store information regarding your past searches. This data can be used for better ad targeting or to improve future search relevance.
Search Engine
A tool or device used to find relevant information. A search engine consist of a spider, index, relevancy algorithms and search results.
SEM
Search engine marketing
SEO
Search engine optimization
Search engine optimization is the process of increasing the number of visitors to a Web site by achieving high rank in the search results of a search engine.
SEO consists largely of keyword research and link building.
SEO Copywriting
Writing and formatting copy in a way that helps documents appear relevant to a wide array of relevant searches.
SERP
Search Engine Results Page is the page on which the search engines show the results for a search query.
Search Marketing
Marketing a website in search engines. Typically via SEO, buying pay per click ads, and paid inclusion.
Server Logs
Files hosted on servers which display website traffic trends and sources.
Server logs typically do not show as much data and are not as user friendly as analytics software. Not all hosts provide server logs. Yahoo store doesn’t, for example.
Site Map
A page that lists every page on your website.
Social Media
Websites which allow users to create the valuable content. Facebook and Myspace are examples.
Spam
Unsolicited email messages.
Spamming
The act of creating and sending spam.
Spider– A specialized bot used by search engines to find and add web pages to their indexes.
Splash Page
An animated, graphics-based page without significant textual content. Splash pages are intended to look flashy to humans, but without attention to SEO.
Spyware
Software programs that spy on web users, often used to collect consumer research and to behaviorally targeted ads.
Static Content
Content that does not change frequently.
Stop Words
Common words (ex: a, to, and, is …) which add little relevancy to a search query, and are thus are removed from the search query prior to finding relevant search results.
Submission
The act of making search engines and related websites more easily aware of your website. The best way to submit your site is to get others to link to it.
Supplemental Results
Documents which generally are trusted less and rank lower than documents in the main search index.

T
Tagging, tags
Keywords added to the bottom of blogs to categorize them and add keywords for search engine content.
Taxonomy
To classify. For internet marketing this usually refers to a sites’ navigation.
Technorati
Blog search engine which tracks popular stories and link relationships.
Term Frequency
A measure of how frequently a keyword appears amongst a collection of documents.
Text Link Ads
A plain HTML link that does not involve graphics or any special code.
Title
The title element is used to describe the contents of a document. Also “title” is sometimes uses as short for “metatitle”.
Trackback
Automated notification system that tells you your blog has been linked to.

U
Unethical SEO
Often referred to as Black-hat SEO. Usually SEO that violates a search engines terms of service.
Update
Search engines frequently update their algorithms and data sets to help keep their search results fresh and make their relevancy algorithms hard to update and keep content fresh.
URL
Uniform Resource Locator is the unique address of any web document.
URL Rewrite
A technique used to help make URLs more unique and descriptive to help facilitate better sitewide indexing by major search engines.
Usability
The measure of how easy it is for customers to interact with your site.
User Generated Content– Content create by non-publishers. Valuable because it adds unique content.

V
Vertical Search
A search service which is focused on a particular field, type of information, or an information format.
Viral Marketing
Self propagating marketing techniques. Common modes of transmission are email, blogging, YouTube and word of mouth marketing channels.
Virtual Domain
Website hosted on a virtual server.
Virtual Server
A server which allows multiple top level domains to be hosted from a single computer.

W
Web 2.0 websites that encourage user interaction.
Weblog (see Blog)
Whois
Each domain has an owner of record. Ownership data is stored in the Whois record for that domain.
White Hat SEO
Search engine optimization that follows the terms of service established by the search engines.
Widget– small applications used on web pages
Wiki
Software which allows information to be published using collaborative editing.
Wikipedia
Free online collaborative encyclopedia using wiki software.
WordPress
Open source blogging platform, offering a blogging program and a hosted solution.
Wordtracker
Paid keyword research tool which collects data from a couple popular meta search engines.

X
XHTML
Extensible HyperText Markup Language is a class of specifications designed to move HTML to conform to XML formatting.
XML
Extensible Markup Language is a simple, flexible text format derived from SGML, used to make it easy to syndicate or format information using RSS.

Y
Yahoo!
Internet company which was started with the popular Yahoo! Directory now provides content, email services and a search engine.
Yahoo! Answers
Free question asking and answering service in which Yahoo users provide the content.
Yahoo! Directory
One of the original, most popular, and most authoritative web directories, started by David Filo and Jerry Yang in 1994.
Yahoo! Search Marketing
Yahoo!’s paid search platform, formerly known as Overture.
Yahoo! Store– Popular web hosting solution, especially among e-commerce websites and small businesses.

YouTube
Amateur video upload and syndication website owned by Google.

Z