SEO Glossary

A basic overview of commonly used words and acronyms in Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

Algorithm – The major search engines, Google, Yahoo! and MSN all use their sophisticated proprietary algorithms to determine which websites and web pages rank in which position in the SERPs. These algorithms used by the major search engines are complex, hard to decipher and constantly undergo refinement and updates.

Anchor text – The text used when linking to a website. For instance, a link that points a website saying ‘flower delivery’ uses the anchor text “flower delivery”.

Articles – Short editorials which can address any topic relevant to a website.

Blog – Initially referred to as a “Web Log” it has been shortened to Blog. A blog is simply a journal or diary that is updated regularly.

Black Hat – Broad category of unethical practices, tactics and strategies that can achieve short term results in the SERPs but will likely end up causing a website to be banned from the search engines.

Canonical Homepage – The canonical homepage is the page that is considered to be the lead/preferred homepage. A common problem that many websites encounter where both the www and non-www version of a website are indexed. For instance, the following URLs are the home page of the website when in fact the search engines recognise these to be four different pages; domain.com/, www.domain.com/, www.domain.com/index.html, www.domain.com/default.html.

Click – A click is a single measurement of website traffic. Also referred to as a ‘page impression’ or ‘pageview’. Bear in mind that different analytics packages and tracking tools define these terms in different ways. Therefore, it’s important to refer to the definition referred to in your analytics package.

Cloaking – Cloaking is best understood as the concealing of information from either a search engine or the user either for a malicious reason or a design consideration. For instance, when a website shows the search engines one version of a web page but deliberately hides other information from the user in the web browser this can be considered cloaking. There are various types of cloaking, some more ethical than others.

CMS – Short for ‘Content management system’. Refers to the system that is used to manage a website and its contents.

Content – Website content that can include everything from text, image, video, flash, music etc.

Crawl – The action that a search engine spider does when collecting information from a website can be referred to as ‘crawling’. For example, search engines such as Google ‘crawl’ the Internet in order to build their searchable database called the ‘index’.

DNA –Decide DNA, a leading search marketing technology platform in the search industry.

Duplicate content – Original website content that is duplicated or shared in common across more than one website or webpage is considered duplicate.

Grey Hat - Strategies, tactics and practices in SEO that could be construed by the search engines to be shady and unethical. Grey hat is the blurry territory between White hat and Black hat.

HTML – Short for ‘hypertext markup language.’ HTML code is then interpreted by the web browser such as Microsoft IE or Firefox to format documents in a particular way.

Hyperlink – See ‘Link’.

Index (noun) – An index is the database(s) of web pages and content used on those webpages collected by search engines.

Keyword – A word or phrase that people search for on search engines. Keywords can range from short one word phrases to long multiple word phrases and may or may not contain numbers.

Keyword density - Keyword density refers to the percentage density of certain keywords on a particular page. Keyword density is a factor that the search engines use to determine a website’s relevance to a topic.

Keyword research - Keyword research is the process of identifying the terms that search engine users are typing to find a product or service within a particular industry.

Link (inbound) (outbound) – When clicked, a link will take the browser to the destination URL. A link can either point to another page on a website or take the website off the website. A link that points to a website from another website is referred to as an 'inbound' or 'external' link.

Link bait – (Linkbaiting) Linkbaiting is a link building tactic used to get links for the target website by creating compelling content.

Link building – The activity of building links to a website by engaging in various tactics in order to increase link popularity, quality, diversity and anchor text with the view of improving organic rankings.

Link popularity – Link popularity refers to the number of links that point to a website. And since the number of links pointing to a website is an indication of the health of that website, the more links from quality, relevant, authority sites the better.

Metadata – Metadata is code within the of a webpage that comprises the title, description, keywords. Metadata, also referred to as ‘Meta tags’, acts as a way of telling the search engines what the page is about. Search engines commonly use the metadata to populate the snippet in the SERPs.

Organic – Also referred to as the ‘natural’ search listings, in contrast to paid search listings, PPC (Pay Per Click).

Pageview – See ‘Click’.

Rankings – See SERPs.

Robots – See Spider.

ROI – Return on investment.

SEO – The acronym for ‘Search engine optimisation’.

SERP(s) – The shortened form of ‘search engine results pages’ is commonly referred to as the SERPs.

Sitemap – A sitemap is a page that lists links to all the pages on the site and every site should have one. Sitemaps come in two formats HTML and XML.

Social Media – Social media comprises a growing range and divergence of user driven content from social bookmarking websites (del.icio.us), social news websites (digg.com), social networking websites (Facebook).

SMO - Social media optimisation

Spam – Unwanted, irrelevant and unsolicited content or communication. Websites that have irrelevant and/or low quality content are classed as spam and are usually created by spammers to exploit a perceived weakness in search engine algorithms.

Spider - A spider is the technology employed by search engines to discover and collect websites and add them to their indexes. Search engine spiders are also referred to as robots, bots or crawlers.

URL - The acronym for Uniform Resource Locator.

White Hat – Strategies, tactics and practices in SEO that are ethical and compliant with the search engines.