200
OK - The request has succeeded. The information returned with the response is dependent on the method used in the request.
301
Moved Permanently - The requested resource has been assigned a new permanent URI and any future references to this resource SHOULD use one of the returned URIs.
302
Found - The requested resource resides temporarily under a different URI. Since the redirection might be altered on occasion, the client SHOULD continue to use the Request-URI for future requests.
304
Not Modified - If the client has performed a conditional GET request and access is allowed, but the document has not been modified, the server SHOULD respond with this status code.
307
Temporary Redirect - The requested resource resides temporarily under a different URI. Since the redirection MAY be altered on occasion, the client SHOULD continue to use the Request-URI for future requests.
400
Bad Request - The request could not be understood by the server due to malformed syntax. The client SHOULD NOT repeat the request without modifications.
401
Unauthorized - The request requires user authentication. The response MUST include a WWW-Authenticate header field containing a challenge applicable to the requested resource.
403
Forbidden - The server understood the request, but is refusing to fulfill it. Authorization will not help and the request SHOULD NOT be repeated.
404
Not Found - The server has not found anything matching the Request-URI. No indication is given of whether the condition is temporary or permanent.
410
Gone - The requested resource is no longer available at the server and no forwarding address is known. This condition is expected to be considered permanent.
500
Internal Server Error - The server encountered an unexpected condition which prevented it from fulfilling the request.
501
Not Implemented - The server does not support the functionality required to fulfill the request. This is the appropriate response when the server does not recognize the request method and is not capable of supporting it for any resource.
Adword
It is a PPC program, where webmasters can create their own ads and choose keywords.
Alt tag
The alt attribute specifies alternate text that is rendered when the image cannot be displayed. Short form for Alternative Text, it is an <img> property that is used as a placeholder when the image is loading [and for usability purposes].
Anchor Text
This is the actual text part of a link. It can be used heavily by search engines as a ranking factor.
Agent Name
This is the name of the Crawler/spider that is currently visiting a page. Spider is a robot sent out by search engines to catalogue websites on the internet. When a spider indexes a particular website, this is known as 'being spidered'.
Algorithm
Mathematical formula used to rank web sites.
Altavista
One of the most popular search engines in the earlier development of the internet. Now barely used, and owned by Yahoo!
Banned
When a search engine blocks your website or domain from appearing in its search result pages.
Blacklist
Lists that either search engines or vigilante users compile of search engine spammers. These are the lists which may be used to ban those spammers from search engines or to boycott them.
Bid management tool
Software or an ASP service used to manage bids on pay-per-click search engines such as Overture.
Bidding
Placing a bid price that you are willing to pay as an advertiser on a pay-per-click search engine. The highest bid for a given keyword achieves the top spot in the PPC search results.
Blog
Also known as a "weblog". An online diary with entries made on a regular if not daily basis. Some blogs are maintained by an anonymous author who uses a nickname or handle instead of his or her real name.
Body copy
The 'meaty' textual content of a web page. Body copy refers to text visible to users, doesn't include graphical content, navigation, or information hidden in the HTML source code.
Bridge page
See "doorway page".
Bulk submission services
An ASP that submits many URLs to the search engines on your behalf. For example: SubmitWolf. Search engines don't like these.
Bot
Short for robot. See "spider"
Back Link
A link from one website to another.
Blind Traffic
Low quality traffic that is usually generated by mis-leading advertising, spam, and traffic from any market segment.
Cache
Copies of web pages stored locally on an Internet user's hard drive or within a search engine's database. A cache is the reason why web pages load so quickly when a user hits the Back button in their web browser, since the page is not being re-downloaded off of the Internet. Google is unusual among search engines in that it allows Internet users to view the cached version of web pages in its index. Simply click on the word "Cache" next to the search result of interest and you will be taken to a copy of the page as Google Bot discovered and indexed it. This feature of Google makes it easy to spot cloaking.
Cgi-bin
A "virtual" directory contained in URLs indicates a CGI (Common Gateway Interface) script is in use. A sure tip-off to the spider that your page is dynamic.
Click Through Rate
The rate at which people click on a link such as a search engine listing or a banner ad. Studies shows that click through rates are six times higher for search engine listings than banner ads.
Cloaking
Serving different content to search engine spiders than to human visitors. Cloaking is basically a "bait and switch" tactic, where the web server feeds visiting spiders content that is keyword-rich, thus fooling the search engine into placing that page higher in the search results. Yet when the visitor clicks on the link they are given different content, which may be totally unrelated. Search engines frown upon this practice and some will penalize or ban sites that they catch doing it.
Clustering
In search engine results page, clustering is limiting a website to appear once or twice in the results.
Cold Fusion
A web scripting language with limited capabilities mostly centered on database access. Cold Fusion program files are saved on the web server with a .CFM file extension.
Comment Tag
An HTML tag that is invisible to end-users, but can be picked up by search engines.
Conversion
The act of converting a web site visitor into a customer or at least taking that visitor a step closer to customer acquisition (such as convincing them to sign up for your e-mail newsletter).
Conversion Rate
The rate at which visitors get converted to customers or are moved a step closer to customer acquisition.
Cost Per Click
The cost incurred or price paid for a click through to your landing page.
Crawler
See "spider".
Cross Linking
Multiple sites all linking to each other.
Custom Error Page
You can customize the content and the look-and-feel of the default page that is displayed on your web server when a 404 File Not Found error occurs. A good 404 error page has a friendly message explaining that the page they requested doesn't exist at the location, a site map to encourage the user to continue exploring the site, a search box so the user can conduct a search, and a look-and-feel that matches the rest of the site, including navigation of course. Creating a custom 404 error page not only helps keep visitors in your site, it is also an important part of the search engine optimization process. Inevitably pages on your site will get moved and removed over time. When a search engine spider returns to your site to reindex those now non-existent pages, they will have a set of links to explore in the form of the site map on the custom 404 page. You can test for whether a site has a custom 404 error page by trying to access a web page with a nonsense filename after the domain name in the web site address. For example: www.yourcompany.com/blah
CSS
Cascading Style Sheet - used to control the design of website.
Description
Pretty self-explanatory, it is descriptive text which concisely explains the purpose of a page. A Meta tag exists for this, and is used by some search engines when displaying the page as a result in SERPs.
Directory
A website that categorizes other websites! Such sites are usually manually compiled, depending on user submissions. Yahoo! And ODP are commercial directories, whereas Zeal is a non-commercial directory.
Doorway Pages
An optimized page submitted to search engines in order to rank high for very specific keywords. With the rise of link popularity as an integral part in ranking algorithms, this technique has become redundant. Such practice is considered spam by some search engines. These are also known as a "bridge page". This is the page created for the sole purpose of driving website traffic from the search engines and not a functional part of the website.
Dynamic Content
This is a webpage that changes its content depending on database information or user settings. A scripting language such as PHP or ASP is usually used to bring about such a result. Search engines are now advanced enough to index such pages, but dynamic variables such as '?id' may cause problems.
Entry Page
Same as Doorway Pages
Error Page
Sometimes referred to as a 404 page
FFA
Free For All. Usually denotes a page where a link can be added by anyone. Commonly used to harvest your email for spam.
Filter Word
Please refer to stop word.
Flash
A technology developed by MacroMedia Corp. that allows a web designer to embed interactive multimedia into web pages. If you visit a web page and see letters and numbers flying around with a funky beat in the background, this is done in Flash. Flash requires a plug-in installed in the Internet user's web browser. Search engines can't 'read' content embedded in Flash. As such, this content will be invisible to the search engines and will not get indexed.
Frames
This is an HTML technique which allows a webmaster to display two or more separate web pages within a single browser screen. Sites using frames are quite problematic for search engines to crawl and may not be indexed properly. Search engines often will only index pages linked within the <NOFRAMES> tag. If your site utilizes frames, it is highly recommended that you build a site map for your website, and link to it from within your <NOFRAMES> tag. (( Search engines don't like frames. A framed web site is at a severe disadvantage compared to non-framed sites in terms of search engine marketing. Most search engines support frames, but only, as Google says in its FAQ section, "to the extent that [we] can." Searchers clicking through to a framed page from search results sometimes end up on an orphaned page.))
FrameSet
A web page that is made up of frames. A useful analogy: if the individual frames that make up the frameset are the 'children,' then the frameset is the 'parent.'
Gateway Page
Please refer to Doorway Page.
Google
The largest & most popular search engine.
Google bombing
When a group of sites such as blogs join forces to link to an unflattering page about a company such that this page rises to the top of the search results in Google. Google bombing takes advantage of the power of hyperlink text and of PageRank. For example, if a group of sites with high PageRank all link to a page about XYZ Company's inappropriate behavior with hyperlink text of "XYZ Company sucks" then the linked page can shoot to the top of Google's search results for the term "XYZ Company."
Google Cache
See Cache.
Googleware
The assortment of tools produced by Google that can be used to search, report, play, research.
Google Everflux
An anomoly by which pages can quickly appear and then disappear in google page rankings. Usually occurs to newly added webpages.
GoogleBot
Spider used by Google to index webpages.
Hallway page
A page that serves as an index to a group of pages that you would like the search engine spiders to find. Once a search engine spider indexes the hallway page, it should also follow all the links on that hallway page and in turn index those pages as well. A site map acts as a hallway page.
Heading Tags
These are standard HTML tags such as <h1> and <h2>. Most search engines give extra weight and importance to text found within these tags. It is also considered good practice to use headings within your website.
Header Tag
Denoted by <head> and </head>. The content inside is usually used to identify page title, external file loads, and also META tags.
Hidden Text
Text on a website that is hidden to humans but is visible to search engines. Simple tricks such as using the same background color for the text color, or more elaborate ones using CSS-P can be used to obtain this effect. All search engines see hidden text as spam, and if caught, your website will be banned from search engines.
Hit
A hit occurs every time a file on a website is accessed. With a single webpage having links to multiple images and embedded files, a single page load can cause multiple hits. For example, a page with 10 images will count as 11 hits (10 images and the page itself). In the context of a search engine, a hit is the number of clicks sent from a search engine to a particular webpage.
HTML
This is an acronym of HyperText Markup Language - it is the primary markup language used to create websites.
HTML Source
The raw, un-rendered programming code. It can be accessed in Internet Explorer by going to the "View" menu then selecting "Source".
Hyperlink text
Text that points to another web page. Google pays particular attention to the text used in a hyperlink and associates the keywords contained in
Inbound Links
This is a hypertext link to a page from another site, bringing traffic to that page. Inbound links are used to calculate link popularity.
Index
A search engine's database in which it stores textual content from every web page that its spider visits.
IP Address
Used to uniquely identify a computer and/or system on the internet.
IP Spoofing
The process of hiding your real IP Address and making it appear to be of a different IP address.
Javascript
Popular scripting language embedded into webpages that runs client-side. Search engines can not run JavaScripts. Consequently, if navigation or content is embedded in a JavaScript, it will be invisible to the search engines and will not get indexed.
Keyphrase
A search phrase made up of keywords. This is simply a multi-word keyword.
Keywords
This is a word found within a search query. For example, searching for "blue widgets" includes the keywords blue and widgets.
Keyword Density
This is the ratio of the keyword frequency as compared to the total words found on a page. Online tools can be used to compare keyword densities for multiple pages. With this knowledge, one can build up a page with a similar density as other high ranking pages.
Keyword Domain Name
A technique that is seen as spam to some, such a domain usually has all target keywords embedded in the domain name, and usually separated by hyphens. An example would be www.buy-blue-red-green-cheap-widgets.com.
Keyword Popularity
The number of occurrences of searches done by Internet users of a given keyword during a period of time. Both WordTracker.com and Overture's Search Term Popularity Tool (http://inventory.overture.com) provide keyword popularity numbers.
Keyword Prominence
The location (i.e placement) of a given keyword in the HTML source code of a web page. The higher up in the page a particular word is, the more prominent it is and thus the more weight that word is assigned by the search engine when that word matches a keyword search done by a search engine user.
Keyword Rich
When a given page or bit of text is chock full of good keywords rather than a bunch of meaningless words (e.g. "welcome", "click here") or irrelevant words (e.g. "solution").
Keyword Stuffing / Spamming
The process of repeating keywords or key phrases in Meta tags and body text. This can result in keyword densities over 50%, and is seen as spam by most search engines.
Keyword Research
Determining the words and phrases that people use to find something, and then compiling them into a list for use on web pages, etc.
Landing Page
The web page that a visitor clicks through to from a banner ad or search results listing.
Link Building
Requesting links from webmasters of other sites for the purpose of increasing your "link popularity" and/or "PageRank."
Link Popularity
A measure of both the number and the quality of inbound links. Most search engines take this factor into considering when ranking websites in SERPs. Marketleap is an excellent website to use to check your website's link popularity.
Links
Text or graphics that, when clicked on, take the Internet user to another web page location. Links are expressed as URLs.
Log Files
Log files are generated and maintained by the server and contain all details of any file accesses. This includes data such as file accessed, date and time accessed, referring page, user agent, and more. Analyzing log files can be a powerful way to obtain information about visitors and their behavior on your website. Log files are also used to track search engine referrals, and are a good way to find keywords to target for search engine optimization.
Mod_rewrite
It's a module in apache servers that can be used to rewrite requested URLs on the fly
It supports an unlimited number of rules and an unlimited number of attached rule conditions for each rule to provide a really flexible and powerful URL manipulation mechanism. Which can be used to offer both user and search engine friendly URLs, thus increasing indexing chances for a dynamic database driven website like this.
Machine Generated Pages
Don't use software tools that purport to auto-generate doorway pages. These pages are usually devoid of meaningful content. Google, in particular, is working on ways to identify and exclude machine-generated doorway pages.
Manual Submitting
Submitting by hand to an individual search engine, rather than using an automated submission tool or service. Manual submitting is the more polite way to submit, and as such is less likely to land you in trouble with the search engines. But the best approach is not to submit at all and let the search engine spiders find your site through links from other sites to your site.
Meta Description
A Meta tag hidden in the HTML that describes the page's content. Should be relatively short; around 12 to 20 words is suggested. Make sure they reflect the page content or you may be accused of spamming.
Meta Keywords
A Meta tag hidden in the HTML that lists keywords relevant to the page's content. Because search engine spammers have abused this tag so much, nearly all of the major search engines ignore this tag completely. Of the major search engines, only Inktomi still pays any attention to the Meta keywords tag.
Meta Search
This is a way of searching in which results are taken from various sources and then consolidated into a single SERP.
Meta Tags
Meta tags are HTML entities which are placed within the <head> section of a webpage. The most common, and most relevant to search engines, are the KEYWORDS and DESCRIPTION tags. The KEYWORDS tag is used to place emphasis on specific keywords that the author believes is relevant to the webpage. The DESCRIPTION tag is used to provide a brief and concise description of the webpage. While no longer as important as they once were, these tags are still used by some search engines.
Mirror Sites
Multiple copies of a site, usually for redundancy and on different servers, are called mirror sites. Registering such sites can be seen as spam by some search engines, and it wise to let only the primary site be crawled.
Misspellings
People will often misspell words when searching for them. Often, intelligent marketers will also optimize sites for misspellings in order to capture this sort of traffic.
Mouseover
Where severing the mouse over a text or graphic link without clicking displays something new on the page. For example, a horizontal navigation bar may display further sub-section choices underneath the section hovered over.
Miserable Failure
A well known example of "Google bombing", it clearly illustrates how inbound text links can affect SERPs. In this instance, hyperlinks containing the keyword phrase miserable failure denote an opinion of George W. Bush's performance, while positioning his bio in the #1 position for that search term.
MSN
Can refer to Microsoft Network and their search engine.
Navigation Bar
a web site's navigation icons, usually arranged in a row down the left hand side or along the top that plays a crucial role in getting site visitors to view more than just the home page
Negative SEO
The act of demoting a page or site from the SERPS. Most often used against a competitor that is above your site in the SERPS but can be used purely for fun.
Open Directory Project
Also known as DMOZ. This is a very large directory run by volunteers. This database is used by many websites on the internet.
Optimization
Please refer to search engine optimization.
Overture
The original leader in PPC Engines, now owned by Yahoo! Delivers PPC results to many search engines.
Page Title
See Title Tag.
Pagejacking
Stealing high-ranking web page content from another site and placing it on your site in the hopes of increasing your own site's search engine rankings. Pagejacking is yet another shady way of gaming the search engines and, as such, its use should be strongly discouraged.
Page View
Also known as 'impressions', this is a measure of the number of pages viewed by end users. It is a more accurate reflection of how popular a website is.
PageRank
A technical asset of Google, it is an exponential-based value that signifies importance of a webpage. Google allows one to view a site's PR [on an exponential 10-base] using their toolbar.
PFI
Short of Pay for Inclusion. Used by various search engines that guarantees that your site will be listed in a search engine database. Google is a noteable exception that does not 'offer' such a service.
Paid Inclusion
Paying a search engine to have your web pages included in that search engine's index.
Paid Placements
Paying a search engine to have your listing show up prominently. These listings are usually denoted as "sponsored listings."
Placement
Please refer to Rankings.
Popup
Un-requested window that opens on top of the currently viewed window.
Portal
This is a generic term which refers to an entry website for a large population of users. This includes directories such as Yahoo! and search engines such as Google. In a more specific context, a portal is a website that is the leading authority on a specific subject.
Positioning
Please refer to Rankings.
PPC Engine
'Search Engine' whose results are driven by PPC [paid per click] listings. Essentially all the search results are of CPC type.
Pull Down List
On a web form, where the user chooses from a list of items.
Query
A keyword, or phrase inquiry entered into a search engine.
Ranking
This refers to the process by which search engines display websites so that the most relevant websites appear on the top. Search engine optimization is a technique by which high rankings may be obtained.
Reciprocal Link
When two sites link to each other.
Redirect
Where the Internet user is automatically taken to another web page address without him/her clicking on anything. Redirects are generally not good for search engine rankings, as they dilute PageRank. There is also the risk that the search engine spider will not follow your redirect.
Referrer
The referrer is the URL of the web page that a user was at before reaching yours. The server's logs capture referral URLs and store them in their log files. Furthermore, if a user used a search engine to find your website, the key phrases they used to find your site will be embedded in the referring URL. Intelligent log analyzers can then take this data to track how many visitors originate from each key phrase.
Registration
Please refer to submission service.
Relevance
The likelihood that a given web page will be of interest or useful to a search engine user for a keyword search.
Replica
A copy of a dynamic web site or a group of web pages from a dynamic site, saved as static HTML files.
Resubmitting
Submitting your web page address (es) to search engines after you've already submitted those addresses previously or after the search engine has already included your site in its index. Search engines don't like it when you resubmit as it simply clutters their queue with duplicate requests.
Robot
This is an automated program that automatically traverses the Web's hypertext structure by retrieving a document, and recursively retrieving all documents that are referenced. Please refer to spider for more information.
Robots.txt
This is a text file that is used to control spiders that visit your website. Only spiders that conform to the Robots exclusion standard will obey the contents of the robots.txt file. This file allows you to grant and exclusive access to certain folders, file types, and specific files depending on the robot accessing the site. This file is not necessary for your site.
Reciprocal Linking
The practice of trading links between websites.
SE
Short term for Search Engine
Search Engine
A website that indexes web pages, stores these results, and then returns the results based on user queries. Websites are automatically indexed - sites such as Yahoo! and DMOZ which have a manual approval process are directories.
Search engine algorithm
Operational programming rules that determine how a search engine indexes content and displays the results to its users
Search engine marketing (SEM)
Strategies and tactics undertaken to increase the amount and quality of leads generated by the search engine
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
This term refers to the process of modifying and marketing a website for higher rankings in search engine results.
Search engine positioning (SEP)
Strategies and tactics undertaken to increase a site's rankings in the search engines for particular keywords
Search Query
A word of collection of words (phrase) that are passed on to a search engine in order to find relative sites
Search Term
Please refer to search query.
SEM
Short for search engine marketing! This refers to a more encompassing search engine strategy which includes search engine optimization and use of PPC Engines to maximize ROI from search engines.
SEO
Acronym for search engine optimization!
SERP
Short form search engine results page, SERPs are the actual results returned to the user based on their search query.
Site Map
This is a web page that links to all pages found on your website in an intelligent and coherent manner. Such a page is excellent resource in getting a search engine to spider all pages found within a website.
Site Submission
This is the actual process by which a site is directly submitted to a search engine for inclusion into their database. Some search engines charge a certain amount for 'guaranteed inclusion' into their search index.
Slurp
Search engine spider used by Inktomi.
Spamdexing
Please refer to spamming.
Spamming
While spamming is generally used to refer to unsolicited bulk mail, spamming in regards to search engines refers to the process of manipulating search engines in order to obtain higher rankings. Such techniques are not tolerated by search engines and if caught, will result in being banned from them.
Spider
A robot sent out by search engines to catalogue websites on the internet. When a spider indexes a particular website, this is known as 'being spidered'.
Spidered
Please refer to spider.
Splash Page
While being similar to a doorway page, the purpose of a splash page is more artistic - a grand entry way to a website! The use of a splash page is poor design and not good for proper search engine optimization.
Spoofing
Spoofing is deliberately tricking a search engine spider. Please refer to spamming and cloaking for more information.
Stemming
Variations of a root word! For example, using the query 'write', stemming might also result in returns for 'writing' and 'writes.'
Stop Word
A stop word is a common word that is ignored by search engines because it does not add to relevancy. Words such as 'the', 'it', 'a', and 'for' are considered stop words are ignored by many search engines.
Submission Service
Services that submit your website to search engines for inclusion are referred to as submission services. These can be either automated programs or manual hand submission. This is un-needed if your site is properly optimized.
Title
The title of a page is the string of text found between the <title></title> tags in the header of an HTML document. This text is not displayed directly on the website, but is often seen in the title of the browser being used. While the title is often duplicated in the actual web page, it is important to remember that the two are separate elements.
Traffic
This refers to the visitors that visit a website.
Unique Visitor
This is a real visitor to a website. It is the best measurement of how many people actually come to a website.
URL
Short form for Universal Resource Locator! This is a unique address that identifies a website.
XML
Short for eXtensible Markup Language, XML promises more efficient and organized delivery of data over the internet. XHTML is the XML version of HTML.
Yahoo
One of the largest and most popular websites on the internet! Second most popular search engine after Google!
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