Search Engine Glossary of Terms
|
Cloaking:
|
Directing a search engine spider to another page different from what displays in the browser. Used to increase the chances of the page getting a higher ranking. Considered spamming. Highly recommend against this technique! |
|
Cost Per Click:
|
What you are charged whenever someone clicks on your sponsored link. |
|
Crawler:
|
Search engine software that automatically searches the web, storing URLs and indexing keywords, links and text. Also referred to as spiders,robots or bots. |
|
Directory:
|
Human compiled listing of Web sites in a logical hierarchical order. (BOTW.org and DMOZ are directories) |
|
Distribution:
|
Search engines enter deals with portals and other web suites to distribute their search engines results to those sites. Also called syndication. |
|
Duplicate Content:
|
Pages on a Website that are exact copies or are very similar in structure and content. In this scenario Google will choose what it thinks is the most relevant page and will ignore the other page. |
|
Index:
|
A searchable database catalog of documents or web pages created by a search engine. |
|
Keyword:
|
Word or phrase a Web searcher uses when performing a Web search. |
|
Keyword Density:
|
1) Amount of times that a keyword phrase is used on a page. 2) A formula to determine whether keywords are being overused on a page. The formula is the total number of words in al keyword mentions divided by the total number of words on a page. Keywords should fall between 2 and 8 % density. |
|
Landing Page:
|
The page a web user reaches after clicking on the link in the Search Engines results page. |
|
Link Popularity:
|
The number and quality of links on other sites pointed to a Web page. Search engines increasingly rely on this to determine their rankings. Also called Page Relevance or page score. |
|
Mirroring
|
Multiple copies of web sites or web pages, often on different servers using different domain names. The process of registering these multiple copies with search engines is often treated as spamdexing, because it artificially increases the relevancy of the pages. This spamming technique can be detected by the search engines and the site can be penalized for it by a lower ranking or removal from the database. |
|
PageRank
|
As defined by Google “PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page’s value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves “important” weigh more heavily and help to make other pages “important.” Note: This is a depreciated term. |
|
Paid Inclusion:
|
Paying to be included in a Web directory. |
|
Paid Placement:
|
Paying for a link to be included on a search results page, usually at the top or on the right side of the regular search results set. This section will typically be labeled “Sponsor Results” |
|
Search Engine:
|
The software that searches an index or database and returns matches. Search engine is often used synonymously with spider and index, although these are separate components that work with the engine. |
|
Search Engine Optimization:
|
Catch all term for techniques used to improve a Web pages position in a search engines results page. Generally involves modifying the Web pages code, written copy & off-site inbound links. |
|
Spam:
|
Techniques such as cloaking, mirroring, doorway pages (also called gateway or bridge) used to trick the search engines into giving the page a higher ranking or listing in the results set. Search engines will penalize or de-list a site if they are caught using these old spamming techniques. |
|
Spider:
|
See Crawler |
|
XML Feed:
|
A simplified version of HTML that allows data to be sent to search engines in the format that they can interpret. |
|
Acronyms:
|
CPC – Cost Per Click
CTR – Click Through Rate PFI – Pay for Inclusion SEM – Search Engine Marketing SEO – Search Engine Optimization SEP – Search Engine Placement SERP – Search Engine Results Page SMO – Social Media Optimization SMM – Social Media Marketing |
