We like to call it “SEO Slang” or “Marketing Slang”; others might call it marketing terminology or SEO definitions. Whatever you call it, below is a glossary of some of the most common marketing and SEO terms you might hear or read about along with our definitions.
301 Direct – HTTP response code that’s applied to pages that you no longer want displayed on your website. A 301 redirect is a permanent redirect so this ensures users and search engines are properly directed to where the new page is located without creating an error code.
404 Error – A response that is generated when a user or search engine lands on a web page that no longer exists or never existed on the domain. Also known as 404 Not Found message.
A/B Testing – A marketing and advertising technique used to experimentally compare two elements (A and B). Often used in Pay Per Click campaigns to compare two similar landing pages to see which one drives more conversions. Example: a different headline, picture or call to action.
Ads – An abbreviation used in reference to any form of paid advertising, such as Google Ads, AdSense, Bing Ads, Facebook Ads, Native Ads, etc.
AdSense – An ad platform run by Google that allows publishers in the Google Network of content sites to serve automatic text, image, video or interactive media advertisements that are targeted to your website content and audience.
Affiliate – An individual or company that markets a merchant’s products or services and is paid only a sales commission fee. Also knows as a marketing partner who promotes your products or services for a commission.
Affiliate Site – A site created to host links to a merchant’s website so the site owner can make a commission. Generally the affiliate markets their site and their site directs users to the partner site.
Age of Domain – The number of years a particular website domain has been registered on-line. This starts with the date the domain was registered, not necessarily when the website actually went live.
Alexa Ranking – Alexa is a search engine that provides specific information to the public, such as traffic rankings. An Alexa ranking is an indicator used to gauge site performance, based on comparisons drawn against other sites.
Algorithm – A mathematical equation, created by the search engines themselves (Google has their own, Bing has their own, Facebook has their own, etc.) that uses certain information from websites in order to define their rankings.
ALT Tag – Alt Text – The optimized description for a graphic or image. Search engines can’t tell the difference between pictures, the alt text helps the spider understand and properly index photos. See Image Tags
Analytics – The discovery, interpretation and communication of meaningful patterns in data. Generally marketers use and refer to Google Analytics to track and collect important key performance indicators for better strategy development and reporting.
Anchor Text Optimization – The technique of purposely placing keywords in the anchor text of your inbound and/or internal links in order to rank better for those keywords.
Audit – In terms of marketing, an audit analyzes a company’s current website, brand and marketing strategies to determine problem areas as well as opportunities.
Authority Site – A site that is deemed by a search engine to be authoritative in its chosen field of subject matter. Because of their required qualification in order to host their website on one of these extensions, .edu and .gov sites are often seen as “authority sites” and therefore desirable places to have a link or advertising space.
Backlinks or Inbound Links – The term used to refer to links from other website that point to your site. Also called “Inbound Links” or “In Links”.
Backlink Index – See Link Profile.
Bad Neighborhood – Google sometimes refers to spammy websites, which employ tricks to misdirect users, as “bad neighborhoods”. You do not want to have a link from a site in a bad neighborhood.
Banned – When a search engine determines a website has violated their quality standards and all or some web pages are removed from the search engine’s index. This is an older term and not used as much now as “de-listed, de-indexed or penalized”. We also say a page is missing it’s cache which is how we know it’s not indexed.
Banner Ad – An advertising banner (most often a graphic with some sales text and a call to action and/or number) displayed on another site to advertise your web site. Generally the ad also includes a link so when a user clicks on the banner it will take them to that site.
Black Hat – Techniques considered unethical, or contrary to the Terms of Service of search engines are called spammy or black hat. Some examples are hiding text (white letters on a white background), purchasing links, creating doorway pages and cloaking.
Blacklist – A list of those who’ve been completely removed from Google’s index forever without any chance of being re-included. Members on this list were suspected of doing spam or other techniques against Google quality guidelines. This is another older term we don’t hear much about anymore.
Blog – A blog (short for web log) is an online journal or diary of an individual or company’s opinions and latest news that is updated regularly, in chronological order. Many blogs allow visitors to make comments or ask questions right on the individual blog posts. Blogs can be standalone websites or part of a larger site.
Blogger – The owner and/or author of a blog. You can also have a “Guest Blogger” which is someone who writes for another owners’ blog.
Bot – Abbreviation for robot (also called a spider). 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.
Bounce Rate – A percentage that’s calculated by the amount of website visitors who land on your website and how long it takes them to navigate away from the page they landed on. Marketers use this metric to determine if a landing page contains appropriate optimization.
Brand or Branding – Your company logo, tagline, colors and visual collateral. This can also refer to the emotional response associated with your company and/or products. Brand reputation is built through controlling customer expectations and the social interactions between customers. Building a popular brand is what allows you to move away from commodity based pricing and move toward higher margin value based pricing.
Bread Crumbs – Hyperlinks on a web page that showcase the navigation path of where that web page exists on the website.
Broken Link – A hyperlink which is not functioning. Or, a link which does not lead to the desired location.
Buyer Persona – A fictional version of your ideal customer that is created from existing purchaser data, behavior, demographics and more. This helps you better understand who you are marketing to.
Buzz Marketing (or Buzz) – A method of viral marketing, generally centered around a product, brand or service. The marketer uses tools and apps to amplify an existing marketing message or campaign, generally using social media platforms and techniques. By initiating the conversation, “Buzz Agents” encourage discussions and keep them going, giving the marketing campaigns a much stronger chance of going viral.
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.
Canonical URL – A web page setting that tells search engines a specific URL to index and preventing them from indexing other URLs with the same content. This practice is used to prevent duplicate content.
Class C IP’s – Class C networks make up an eighth of the total available IP addresses. The IP is unique, but if the site is hosted on the same class C IP the search engines can detect they are on the same class C block and any hosted links may not be as valuable then if hosted on completely unique Class C IP`s. Also, links from the same class C block can be considered part of a network and can potentially look artificial to Google, resulting in an artificial link warning or Google penalty.
Cloaking – Cloaking describes the technique of serving a different page to a search engine spider than what a human visitor sees. This technique is abused by spammers for keyword stuffing and is considered Black Hat. Cloaking is a violation of the Terms Of Service of most search engines and could be grounds for banning.
Code/Coding – Code is how the web is viewed to the search engines and bots. Code can be written in a number of ways from HTML to Java. Many websites now use a custom content management system (CMS) instead of custom or raw code to make it easier to make changes and additions to their websites and blogs.
Comment Spam – A black hat SEO technique where comments are created on blogs or articles with the sole purpose of gaining a backlink. A lot of times comments will be filled with multiple links and have no relevancy in the comment pertaining to the article or blog.
Content – The text, video, sound and graphics that make up a web page. Content is anything a website user can read, see or do.
Content Network – A website within a network that allows advertisements on one or more of their pages. In terms of Google AdWords, the content network is Google’s website collection that allows display advertisements.
CMS – Abbreviation for Content Management System. In terms of online marketing, a CMS is a user-friendly solution to adding or editing content on your website. Common CMS’s include WordPress, Blogger, Drupal and Joomla.
Conversion – When a website visitor follows through on a goal of the site (such as buying a product from the website, filling out a contact form, registering for a newsletter, etc.) that is considered a conversion. Webmasters measure conversion to judge the effectiveness (and ROI) of PPC and other marketing campaigns. Effective conversion tracking requires the use of some scripting/cookies to track visitors’ actions within a website. Many use analytics as well, such as Google Analytics and call tracking.
CPC – Abbreviation for Cost Per Click. It is the base unit of cost for a PPC campaign, per click. In other words, the average cost for each paid ad clicked on.
Content Marketing – A marketing technique where you create and distribute valuable content to a specific audience with the goal of turning them into a customer. This can be done on your website, through email or other marketing channels.
CTA – Abbreviation for Content Targeted Advertising/Ad. It refers to the placement of relevant PPC ads on content pages for non-search engine websites (see below – CTA can also “Call to Action”)
CTA – Abbreviation for Call To Action. A call to action is a predominantly placed image or snippet of text with clear instruction for the user to take an action, such as “Call Now”, “Fill Out This Form”, etc.
CTR – Abbreviation for Click Through Rate. It is a ratio of clicks per impression/ad display in a PPC campaign. A high about of click throughs is good, a low amount may mean your ads aren’t written well or the target keyword used in the ad isn’t relevant enough to the placement of the ad.
CSS – Abbreviation for Cascading Style Sheets. It is used to define HTML styles on websites and blogs.
Deep Linking – A hyperlink that directs to an internal web page other than the home page of a website, generally “deeper” in the site, meaning, on a web page that is 2, 3 or more levels deep from the home page. The purpose is to help the search engines still find and index the page even though it may not be part of the primary navigation of the site.
Digital Marketing – Defined as marketing a product or service by using internet resources. As digital marketing becomes a more popular term in the internet marketing space more and more SEO’s are using this term as a title that refers to what they do as it can sound more encompassing. (“I am a digital marketer” verses “I am an SEO”).
Direct Clicks – When a user of a website directly clicks on the link(s) to get to the site the link points to. Example: A banner ad with a link to the site. If a user clicks the banner, the linked to site has received a direct click lead verses that user coming to them from a search engine result or PPC ad.
Directory Link – A link within a Directory site, generally placed in a relevant category making it easy for a site user to find a specific listing or a search engine spider to find the link.
Directory Submissions – A process where a website is added to the proper category in a searchable online directory which enhances a site’s visibility and creates relevant inbound links to the website. A lot of SEOs utilize business listings for geo-targeted clients in order to increase their local presence.
DMOZ – The Open Directory Project is the largest human edited directory of websites. DMOZ is owned by AOL, and is primarily ran by volunteer editors. Historically having a DMOZ listing made a huge difference in terms of your overall website authority and was a very desired link. Although it is still very desired, it isn’t as heavy of a ranking factor as it once was.
Domain – The identity of a website, address if a website or the name of the website. Your domain name is your website URL, for example: www.your-domain.com.
Doorway Page or Gateway Page – Considered a black hat technique, 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 to manipulate search engines with the goal of achieving high rankings and hopefully drive traffic to the main site. Using doorway pages is a violation of the Terms Of Service of most search engines and could be grounds for banning.
Duplicate Content – Content copied from other web pages, verbatim, is called “duplicate content”. When it’s done for the sole purpose of increasing a website’s content volume for the search engines it’s considered spammy and can hurt the site. Google has a filter that looks for duplicate text which may give a penalty to that page or even the entire site.
Dynamic Content – Content which changes over time or uses a dynamic language such as PHP to help render the page. Dynamic content is generally done to present the user with the most up to date information. An example might be a blog landing page, a Twitter feed, etc.
eCcommerce Website – An online website store where you can purchase products or services electronically. An example of a popular ecommerce website is Amazon.com.
Email Marketing – An online marketing technique where you utilize email to target your ideal audience and get your marketing message across. This might be a sales letter, a series helpful articles or a monthly newsletter. You must have a list of acuminated emails or buy an email list in order to distribute any kind of marketing material.
FFA – Abbreviation for Free For All. FFA sites post large lists of unrelated links to anyone and everyone. FFA sites and the links they provide are basically useless. Humans do not use them and search engines minimize their importance in ranking formulas.
Filter – Certain activities or signatures which make a page or site appear unnatural might make search engines inclined to filter or remove them from the search results. For example, if a site publishes significant duplicate content it may get a reduced crawl priority and get filtered out of the search results. Some search engines also have filters based on link quality, link growth rate, and anchor text. Some pages are also penalized for spamming and will be filtered from the SERP’s completely.
Footer – The bottom of a website page that ends the page. A footer generally contains a final CTA, internal navigation links to important pages, links to social sites, the website copyright and/or links to internal legal terms and the website sitemap.
Forum – An online discussion group, where participants with common interests can exchange open messages. Generally, in order to participate, you have to become a member of the forum.
Fresh Content – Content which is dynamic in nature and gives people a reason to keep paying attention to your website. A website blog would be a good example of dynamic content.
FUD – An abbreviation for fear, uncertainty and doubt. A FUD Campaign is used to frighten people into thinking something is bad by providing misleading information. This happens a lot in the online marketing space. Often FUD is used to deter individuals from believing in and buying in to certain marketing techniques.
Geo-Targeting – If you are located in a specific geographical location (geo), your marketing efforts should be geared towards that specific geo target. For example, if you have a hair salon in Mesa, Arizona, you don’t want to market to the entire nation, you want to geo target Arizona and Mesa specifically where possible for the best results.
G – An abbreviation for Google. We talk about Google so much sometimes we just call them “G”.
GA – An abbreviation for Google Analytics. A free Google service or tool where data is generated on behalf of a website. Data includes traffic, visitors and visitor behavior for marketers to analyze and track to make their marketing efforts more effective.
Google – An American technology company that is known primary for it’s search engine. Google offers dozens of products, including on-line advertising technologies, cloud computing, software and hardware. In August 2015, Google announced it’s plan to reorganize its various products and services as a parent company called Alphabet Inc. Google, Alphabet’s leading subsidiary, will continue to be the umbrella company for Alphabet’s Internet interests.
Google My Business – A local listing of a business that shows up when customers search for a business on Search or Maps. The business page allows owners to publish updates, showcase what’s new, respond to reviews, share photos and more. Some still refer to Google My Business as “Google Maps”.
GWT – An abbreviation for Google Webmaster Tools (now known as Google Search Console). A free Google service or tool where webmasters can view and track a website indexing and overall search engine visibility. This is also where you will receive important messages and warnings from Google.
Google Dance – Up until June of 2003, Google updated the index for their search engine on a roughly monthly basis. While the updates were in progress, search results for each of Google’s various datacenters were different. The positions of a site appeared to “dance” as it fluctuated minute to minute. “Google dance” is an unofficial term coined to refer to the period when Google is performing the update to its index. Google has since changed their index calculation method to allow for a more continuous update (which effectively ended the roughly monthly dances).
Grey Hat – Optimization and marketing strategies that are in an unknown area of reputability or validity are often referred to as grey since they are somewhere in-between Black and White Hat practices.
Header – The information at the beginning of a web page, an email, bulletin board message, article, etc.
Header Tags – The <h1> to <h6> tags on a webpage that are used to define HTML headings. When page headers are properly optimized for SEO they help increase the value of the page. <h1> defines the most important heading and should contain the most important keyword for the page. <h6> defines the least important heading.
Hit – One hit is one request for a file on a web server. A visitor opening a page with 5 images will in the process generate 6 hits (1 each for the images and one for the HTML page itself). The term is sometimes also used with reference to the number of results (hits) a search engine returns for a specific query.
HITS – Abbreviation for Hyperlink Induced Topic Search. Referring to a search where the search algorithm relies (partly) on hyperlinks to identify topic areas. Not to be confused with “hits” referring to file requests.
HP – Abbreviation for Home Page. The main page of a website hosted on the root domain – such as: www.example-site.com.
HTML – Abbreviation for Hyper Text Markup Language. A programming (coding) language used to create documents for display on the internet.
HTTP – Abbreviation for Hypertext Transfer Protocol – HTTP is the most common transfer protocol used to facilitate communication between servers and browsers.
Hummingbird – A Google algorithm update which targets how search results are shown by specific search queries as a whole, instead of only relying on keywords. Queries that turn into questions or sentences are considered as a whole whereas before only specific keywords in the question or sentence was taken into consideration.
Hyperlink – A hyperlink, more commonly called a link, is an electronic connection between one web page to either (1) other web pages on the same web site, or (2) web pages located on another web site. More specifically, a hyperlink is a connection between one page of a hypertext document to another.
Infographic – A visual image that includes data and graphics to represent a specific topic or grouping of information. For example, one might make an infographic to show a timeline of events or a list of facts and stats. Infographics have been used as a marketing technique as well.
Image Link – A hyperlink which appears on an image. When you click the image you are lead to another page.
Image Tags – Text in the form of a tag which appears on an image that defines the image for the search engine spider.
Impressions – A measurement used to understand the amount of times a website or advertisement has been shown or displayed after a search query.
Inbound Links – The term used to refer to links which point to your site. Also called “Backlinks” or “In links” or “Incoming links”.
Inbound Marketing – A marketing method used to attract visitors, convert visitors into leads, turn leads into customers and turn customers into promoters of your brand. Inbound means you attract customers to your website to market your services/products, rather than outbound which is where you would reach out and try to sell your customers outside of your website.
Index – Often used in reference to the search engines. You’ll hear questions like, is the site (or link) indexed? When the search engines pick up a website or link the website/ link is “indexed”, which means it’s receiving search engine visibility. If a website, web page or link has not been indexed that means the search engines have not seen it and/or chosen to give it visibility yet.
IP Address – All computers across the Internet are assigned a unique identifier called an IP address. They are used like street addresses so other computers can find them. An IP address could look something like this: 87.242.211.23.
ISR – An abbreviation for an “Independent Sales Representative. An ISR serves as an outside sales partner that operates as it’s own entity with the goal to generate sales for the partner company. Independent sales reps are compensated primarily on a commission basis for products and services sold for the company.
Javascript – Programming language where you can create interaction effects on websites and web pages.
Keyword Density – Used when optimizing a web page for a specific keyword to help the search engines (and web page users) determine how relevant the keyword is to the page. Determined by the amount of times a keyword is shown on the web page versus how many words are on the page total.
Keyword Stuffing – Keyword stuffing refers to the practice of adding superfluous keywords to a web page. The words are added for the benefit of search engines and not human visitors. The words may or may not be visible to human visitors. While not necessarily a violation of search engine Terms of Service, at least when the words are visible to humans, it detracts from the impact of a page (it looks like spam). It is also possible that search engines may discount the importance of large blocks of text that do not conform to grammatical structures (ie. lists of disconnected keywords). The practice of keyword stuffing is considered spammy and can hurt your website.
Keyword/Keyphrase (Anchor Text, Link Text) – Keywords are words which are used in search engine queries. Keyphrases are multi-word phrases used in search engine queries. SEO is the process of optimizing web pages for keywords and keyphrases so that they rank highly in the results returned for search queries. Anchor text refers to the text that is used in on-site links and in-bound linking.
Keyword Research – The act of researching keyword search trends. This helps SEOs understand how users are searching in search engines for specific industries. Keyword research helps online marketers select target keywords/keyphrases to use in on-page SEO, content, organic and paid marketing campaigns.
KPIs – Abbreviation for Key Performance Indicators. These key indicators or key metrics are specific measures pulled from tracked data to help justify the performance of a marketing campaign. For example, when a site is buying paid marketing they are looking at KPI’s such as increased website traffic and form fills or phone calls.
Landing Page – A landing page can be any page on a website that is accessible to the search engines or that can be linked to directly. Most times a landing page is referred to as a specific page in a website that us used to attract new website visitors for both organic marketing efforts as well as paid marketing.
Lead Generation – The marketing technique used to target and generate marketing qualified leads.
Lead Nurturing – Nurturing current leads through a specific sales process with the intent of closing them and turning them into a customer.
Link – See Hyperlink.
Link Bait – Content that attracts attention with the intent of viewers/users sharing that content to create backlinks. Link bait content can come in many forms, such as a video, a compelling article or blog post, a funny meme, an infographic, etc.
Link Building – An SEO technique used to increase the amount of inbound links pointing to a website with the intent of ranking higher in the search engine organic results.
Link Farm (or Link Network) – A link farm (or network) is a group of separate, highly interlinked websites for the purposes of inflating link popularity artificially. Owning a site in a link farm or buying links from a link farm is a violation of the Terms of Service of most search engines and could be grounds for a penalization.
Link Juice – The power a link passes from one web page to another web page, either internally or externally.
Link Popularity – A broad term used to loosely associate how popular your site is by how many inbound links it has. Link popularity has changed over time, however, to now consider not only volume of incoming links but their “worth” to the site. Inbound links from relevant, high quality sites are worth more to overall link popularity than non-related or non-relevant links.
Link Profile (Backlink index) – Specific details about the sites and types of links that point to a site is what the link profile or backlink index is made up of. For example, your link profile could predominantly contain a specific type of link (links from directories or blogs), links from sites with a high or low domain authority, links using a certain anchor text, etc. –
Loading time – the amount of time is takes for a web page to fully load. This is most commonly associated with the end user experience, but slow load times can affect a sites ranking ability. You want to have web pages that load quickly for improved user experience and to increase the search engine authority a web page can gain.
Local Search – Utilizing the search engine to provide geographically targeted results for a product or service. Websites that have a specific geo target try to focus on improving their local search engine visibility for increased local organic search engine traffic.
Long Tail Keywords (Long Tail Keyword Phrases) – Keywords grouped in 3 or more words that are more specified and generally less competitive. Used in the SEO industry with the intent of getting higher conversions since the terms are generally more targeted than the higher search volume terms that are overly broad. (Example: “Find an Internet Marketing Company in Arizona” is a long tail keyword verses “Internet Marketing” which is general and likely overly competitive.)
LP – Abbreviation for Landing Page. – See Landing Page.
LPO – Abbreviation for Landing Page Optimization. The practice of optimizing a series of on-page elements with the specific intent of increasing conversions. LPO is part of a broader Internet marketing process called Conversion Optimization, or Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO), with the goal of improving the percentage of visitors to the website that become sales leads and customers.
Manual Action – A Google penalty where Google alerts you that your website has been penalized for what their quality guidelines consider as spam. You will receive a notification in your Google Webmaster Tools.
Meta Description – A description of a web page primarily used for search engines to better understand your page. This can also be the description that shows up in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). SEO’s use important target keywords in the page meta descriptions to get better keyword rankings for specific keyword phrases.
Meta Tag – A meta tag 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.
Meta Title – The title of a web page primarily used for search engines to better understand your page. This can also be the title that shows up in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). SEO’s use important target keywords in the page meta title to get better keyword rankings for specific keyword phrases.
Metadata – Data about data. Structured information that describes, explains, locates, and otherwise makes it easier to retrieve and use an information resource. Can include meta title, meta description, meta keywords, etc.
Mirror Page – In SEO, a mirror is a near identical duplicate website (or page). Mirrors are commonly used in an effort to target different keywords/key phrases. Using mirrors is a violation of the Terms Of Service of most search engines and could be grounds for a penalization.
MozRank – A measurement for importance of a web page developed by Moz, similar to Page Rank, using link authority as a primary measurement when creating the rank number.
Natural (Natural Search Listings) – See Organic Listings
NDA – An abbreviation for Non Discloser Agreement. An NDA or Mutual NDA is a commonly used legal document between two or more parties that specifically focuses on confidentially.
Newsgroup – A discussion forum where users can post messages and reply to other users.
“No Follow” or “No Robot” (Blocked Pages) – Website code that allows webmasters and site owners to restrict which links a search engine crawler follows. By adding a “no follow” tag to a hyperlink the site tells the search engine that the link isn’t worth anything to the site or internal page being linked to. This is a common tag used to discourage spam link builders from bulk link building as well as tell engines if links are paid advertising links.
Non-relevant – Also determined by the search engines algorithm, if a site is hosting links that would not seem relevant to the users of the site, we would call them “non-relevant”.
OB Links – Abbreviation for Out Bound Links. A link pointing from a website to an external website.
One Way Links – A link from site A to site B without site B linking back to site A (which would be a reciprocal link).
Organic (Organic Rankings) – Organic search engine rankings are the listings that show in the natural search results. When there are paid ads they appear above them. The results are formulated from the search engine’s index and specific algorithms. Also known as Natural Search Listings.
Page Rank Flow – This number (expressed in percentage) shows how much of the incoming page rank is kept on your site. Example: When you have a page where all of the links are internal (staying on the same domain) will have page rank flow of 100% while a page where all of the links go to external sites will have page rank flow of 0%.
Panda (Google Panda) – A Google algorithm update that launched in February 2011 and has had several refreshes and version updates since. The change aims to penalize websites that are low quality and that contain duplicate content which is against Google’s quality guidelines. This is intended to help push higher quality websites to the top of the search results.
Penalization (Search Engine Penalization) – When a search engine penalizes a site the site generally loses PR and/or organic listings.
Penalized (Penalized by a Search Engine) – Search engines prevent some websites suspected of spamming from ranking highly in the results by penalizing or even banning 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 if 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.
Penguin (Google Penguin) – A Google algorithm update that launched April 24, 2012 with the intent of penalizing websites that they believe do not abide by their linking guidelines. These techniques are also known as link schemes or unnatural link building.
PPC – Abbreviation for Pay Per Click. An advertising model where advertisers pay only for the traffic generated by their ads. Most PPC marketing campaigns are run through the major search engines, such as Google and Bing, however, there are other forms of PPC advertising, such as Facebook and Twitter.
PR – Abbreviation for Page Rank. Google’s grade, 0-10, of a page based off of a number of variables, such as authority of inbound links, age of domain, etc. A new site is generally “gray-barred” meaning it hasn’t even achieved a PageRank of zero yet. Zero is the lowest PageRank and ten is the highest.
Presell Page – An article or page about you, your company, products and/or services placed on another website that pre-sells your offer. It often comes with a a link back to the service or product the page is promoting.
Press Release – An article or statement that’s released to a newspaper website, such as PR Web and distributed to the major news channels. Different than a regular blog post or article, Press Releases should contain newsworthy content that is in the form of a news piece.
Quality Score – A Google rating in used in Pay Per Click campaigns that determines the overall relevance between your ads, keywords, and landing pages.
Ranking Factors – Search engine criteria or variables for how they rank web pages for specified keywords, such as: domain authority, inbound links, on-page SEO scores, etc.
Reciprocal Links – A reciprocal link is where website [A] links to website [B], Website [B] in turn links to website [A]. This is an outdated linking method and should always be avoided. If you are recipricting links for click value (not SEO value) you should place no-follow tags on them.
Reinclusion – If a site has been penalized by a search enginefor spamming they may fix the infraction and ask for reinclusion. Depending on the severity of the infraction and the brand strength of the site they may or may not be added to the search index. Sometimes several fixes and reinclusion requests are required before the site penalty is lifted.
Relevance or Relevancy (Search Engine Relevancy) – The measure of the accuracy of the search results – in other words it’s a measure of how close the web pages listed in the search results are to what the user was looking for.
Relevant (Site Relevancy) – Ultimately determined by the search engines algorithm, relevancy says how closely related a particular page is to the site it is hosting a link for. When a non-relevant link appears on a web page it can hurt both the hosting site and the site it’s linking to. The search engiens are looking for relevancy as a way to help determine the validity of a link.
Reputation Management – A marketing technique used to manage and influence a person or company’s reputation online.
Reseller – A customer who is authorized to resell another company’s products and/or services. They are responsible for properly relaying any TOS or contract, managing the client and ensuring the payment is made to the fulfillment company.
Responsive Design – A type of website design where the website is scalable to fit all types of computers, tablets and mobile devices. It’s responsive as it “responds” to all platforms and browsers unique protocols in order to display the best visual experience for the user.
Robots.txt – Robots.txt is a file that search engine spiders read to determine which parts of a website they may or may not visit.
ROI – Abbreviation for Return on Investment. In the context of SEO and online marketing, the term refers to sales generated as the direct result of a search engine marketing campaign or another specific marketing initiative.
RSS – Abbreviation for Really Simple Syndication (RSS feed). An RSS feed is an up to date feed of information and news that is sent to you or viewable because you have subscribed to it, such as subscribing to a specific blog RSS feed. This is an easy way to stay up to date on industry news and information and it reduces the amount of browsing or searching needed for information on websites.
Sandboxed – Also known as the “Google Sandbox”, this is an old theory that says all new websites are placed into a “holding area” where they must earn their way out through reputation building and management. The quickest way out of the sandbox is to build links from relevant related sources which are considered authoritative in the industry. Many disagree with this theory though and the term is becoming outdated.
Search Query – An inquiry using a key phrase that’s searched for in the specific search engine. You query the engine every time you type anything into the search bar.
Search Engine Index – The search engines all house websites and web pages in their index. When you use the search engine the engine has to determine how to serve you the best results for your searched term, in order. #1 is the desired indexed number for any site. In other words, you’d like to be ranking #1 in the search engine indexing in order to get traffic to your site.
SEM – Abbreviation for Search Engine Marketing. SEM encompasses SEO and organic search engine marketing efforts but can also be search engine paid advertising options (PPC, etc.), social media paid ads and other forms of integrated digital marketing.
SMM – Abbreviation for Social Media Marketing. SMM encompasses marketing efforts used through social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LikedIn, Pinterest, Google+, etc. This can be organic or paid as well.
SEO – Abbreviation for Search Engine Optimization. SEO covers the process of making websites search engine spider friendly and optimizing specific web pages for desirable key phrases. It also includes off-site organic marketing to promote the optimized website with the intent of gaining better search engine rankings and traffic.
SERP/Serps – Abbreviation for Search Engine Results Page, Pages or Positioning. This refers to the organic (excluding paid listings) search results for a given query, in order. Example: If you are ranking number one in the SERPs for a specific keyword, you are in the top organic position.
Silo Architecture (SEO Siloing or Silo Navigation) – The linking structure, or navigation, theme of a website. When a website has proper SEO silo architecture in place the search engines (and users) can better understand which pages are more valuable than others. This impacts the way the search engines pass and distribute a sites’ page rank.
Sitemap – A page on your site designed to show an index of all the pages in your site. HTML versions are stylized and designed to help your users find the pages they need.XML versions appear as code and are designed to help search engines crawl and index100% of the pages in your site.
Sitewide – An item, such as a navigation bar or a link that appears on each page (including the Home Page) of a site.
SM – An abbreviation for Social Media. Any website or web service that utilizes a “social” func tion or philosophy. This includes blogs, micro blogs (Tumblr), social networks, social news, wikis, etc.
SP – An abbreviation for Sub Page – This refers to an interior page of a website with multiple pages.
Social Bookmark – A link on a site built for Internet users to store, organize, search, and manage bookmarks of web pages on the Internet with the help of meta data.
Social Media Influencer – An individual who creates content and influences others to take an action by performing tasks such as: researching the right people to engage with, stimulating conversation through social activities, generating buzz around a brand or product and spreading the reach through their personal social reach and influence.
Social Network – A website that is dedicated for users to create relationships both personal and business for networking purposes. Common social networks include Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, etc.
Source Code – Also known as source, source code is the website or application code that makes up the content and function of the site or app. It contains all the tags and instructions in a text file that a browser and device can then use to display the viewable web page or application.
Spam or Spammy – Manipulation techniques that violate search engines Terms of Service. Generally search engine spam techniques are designed to achieve higher rankings for a web page and could be grounds for a penalization, de-indexing or banning. Spam also refers to other marketing techniques, such as unwarranted sales email or irrelevant comments on a blog that contain a link or even gibberish.
Spider – The search engine “spiders” crawl the web, which is the code of each website. Spiders are used to collect data and feed the information to the search engines. Another term for these programs is “web crawler” or “bots”.
Splash Page – Splash pages are introduction pages to a website that are heavy on graphics (or flash video) with no textual content. They are designed to either impress a visitor or complement some corporate branding. Generally they are not search engine friendly and therefore they do not provide any SEO value to the site.
Static Web Page – A web page that hosts the same content for all users (and search engines) for each visit, in contradiction to a dynamic web page where content is different for different users.
Stop Word – Stop words are words that are ignored by search engines when indexing web pages and processing search queries. Common stop words include: the, and, or.
Supplemental Index – Generally known as the Google index where certain pages of a website are stored, which have been given little to no trust or value from Google. This could be due to spammy elements, but primarily is due to the fact that these pages have no indexed backlinks.
Supplemental Results – Pages deemed to be of less importance by Google’s algorithm or are less trusted.
Title Tag – See Meta Title.
TLD – Abbreviation for Top Level Domain. TLD refers to the extension of a web address or URL. The most popular include .com, .org and sometimes .net, although there are dozens of others as well.
Toolbar – A row of icons at the top of your browser that link to specific tools and when clicked activate functions. A toolbar can be made by a company for a specific collection of relevant tools. For example, an SEO toolbar would contain tools that are important to someone who works in SEO.
TOS – Abbreviation for Terms of Service or Terms of Sale. Alegal document signed by the end user outlining the specific terms of the service and/or products they are purchasing.
Traffic – Web traffic or website traffic specifically is calculated data that consists of visitors to your website. Website tools, such as Google Analytics, will give you specific data regarding your website traffic, such as volume, originating source, the time on site, etc.
URL – Abbreviation for Uniform Resource Locater / Universal Resource Locater. A URL is a unique Internet address that every website must have in order to be located. For example, the URL for this site is: eminentseo.com. (See also domain).
Unique Visitor – A website visitor that’s viewing your website for the first time. Google analytics will track unique visitors verses repeat visitors which helps determine the effectiveness of certain marketing campaigns.
Video Production – Creating and editing visually moving elements that result in a video. This can be live video footage or digital graphics.
Webmaster Guidelines – The search engines guidelines for webmasters intended to help the search engine find, index, and rank your site. Google and Bing have their own separate webmaster guidelines.
White Hat – SEO and marketing techniques that fall within the Terms of Service of the search engines are considered “white hat” (as opposed to “Gray or Black hat” techniques). Building useful online content, labeling pages correctly, gaining high quality in-bound links from relevant sites, etc. are all considered “White Hat” in the SEO community.
