SEO Glossary – D April 17, 2009
Posted by SEO Professionals in SEO Tutorials.Tags: expert seo, expert seo services, glossary, importance of keyword, internet marketing, know about seo, profesional seo services, se optimization, search engine keyword position, search engine optimization, search engine position tool, search engine ranking, seo, seo books, seo experts, seo glossary, seo notes, seo professionals, seo services, seo tips, seo traffic, seo traffic tutorials, SEO Tutorials, website traffic, what is seo
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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 an internal page within a website.
When links grow naturally typically most high quality websites have many links pointing at interior pages. When you request links from other websites it makes sense to request a link from their most targeted relevant page to your most targeted relevant page. Some webmasters even create content based on easy linking opportunities they think up.
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. Dedicated servers usually run from $100 to $500 a month. Virtual servers typically run from $5 to $50 per month.
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 does a deep spidering and re-cache of the web.
* During some updates search engines readjust crawl priorities.
o You need a significant number of high quality links to get a large website well indexed and keep it well indexed.
o Duplicate content filters, inbound and outbound link quality, or other information quality related issues may also relate to re-adjusted crawl priorities.
* 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:
o If a website tripped an automatic spam filter it may return to the search index anywhere from a few days to a few months after the problem has been fixed.
o If a website is editorially removed by a human you may need to contact the search engine 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 and search engines provide a short description near each listing which aims to add context to the title.
High quality directories typically prefer the description describes what the site is about rather than something that is overtly promotional in nature. Search engines typically
* use a description from a trusted directory (such as DMOZ or the Yahoo! Directory) for homepages of sites listed in those directories
* use the page meta description (especially if it is relevant to the search query and has the words from the search query in it)
* attempt to extract a description from the page content which is relevant for the particular search query and ranking page (this is called a snippet)
* or some combination of the above
Digg
Social news 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.
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. Smaller and less established general directories likely pull less weight. If a directory does not exercise editorial control over listings search engines will not be likely to trust their links at all.
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.
DNS
Domain Name Server or Domain Name System. A naming scheme mechanism used to help resolve a domain name / host name to a specific TCP/IP Address.
Domain
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.
Some webmasters cloak thousands of doorway pages on trusted domains, and rake in a boatload of cash until they are caught and de-listed. If the page would have a unique purpose outside of search then search engines are generally fine with it, but if the page only exists because search engines exist then search engines are more likely to frown on the behavior.
Dreamweaver
Popular web development and editing software offering a what you see is what you get interface.
Duplicate Content
Content which is duplicate or near duplicate in nature.
Search engines do not want to index multiple versions of similar content. For example, printer friendly pages may be search engine unfriendly duplicates. Also, many automated content generation techniques rely on recycling content, so some search engines are somewhat strict in filtering out content they deem to be similar or nearly duplicate in nature.
Dynamic Content
Content which changes over time or uses a dynamic language such as PHP to help render the page.
In the past search engines were less aggressive at indexing dynamic content than they currently are. While they have greatly improved their ability to index dynamic content it is still preferable to use URL rewriting to help make dynamic content look static in nature.
SEO Glossary – C April 15, 2009
Posted by SEO Professionals in SEO Tutorials.Tags: expert seo, expert seo services, glossary, importance of keyword, internet marketing, know about seo, profesional seo services, se optimization, search engine keyword position, search engine optimization, search engine ranking, search engine ranking check, seo, seo books, seo experts, seo glossary, seo notes, seo professionals, seo services, seo tips, seo traffic tutorials, SEO Tutorials, website traffic, what is seo
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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. Cloaking is a violation of the Terms Of Service of most search engines and could be grounds for banning.
Conversion
Conversion refers to site traffic that follows through on the goal of the site (such as buying a product on-line, filling out a contact form, registering for a newsletter, etc.). Webmasters measure conversion to judge the effectiveness (and ROI) of PPC and other advertising campaigns. Effective conversion tracking requires the use of some scripting/cookies to track visitors actions within a website. Log file analysis is not sufficient for this purpose.
CPC
Abbreviation for Cost Per Click. It is the base unit of cost for a PPC campaign.
CTA
Abbreviation for Content Targeted Ad(vertising). It refers to the placement of relevant PPC ads on content pages for non-search engine websites.
CTR
Abbreviation for Click Through Rate. It is a ratio of clicks per impressions in a PPC campaign.
Cache
Copy of a web page stored by a search engine. When you search the web you are not actively searching the whole web, but are searching files in the search engine index.
Some search engines provide links to cached versions of pages in their search results, and allow you to strip some of the formatting from cached copies of pages.
Canonical URL
Many content management systems are configured with errors which cause duplicate or exceptionally similar content to get indexed under multiple URLs. Many webmasters use inconsistent link structures throughout their site that cause the exact same content to get indexed under multiple URLs. The 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://www.seobook.com/
* http://www.seobook.com/index.shtml
* http://seobook.com/
* http://seobook.com/index.shtml
* http://www.seobook.com/?tracking-code
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.
CGI
Common Gateway Interface – interface software between a web server and other machines or software running on that server. Many cgi programs are used to add interactivity to a web site.
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. Depending on the intent of the display discrepancy and the strength of the brand of the person / company cloaking it may be considered reasonable or it may get a site banned from a search engine.
Cloaking has many legitimate uses which are within search guidelines. For example, changing user experience based on location is common on many popular websites.
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.
Blog software programs are some of the most popular content management systems currently used on the web. Many content management systems have errors associated with them which make it hard for search engines to index content due to issues such as duplicate content.
Co-citation
In topical authority based search algorithms links which appear near one another on a page may be deemed to be related to one another. In algorithms like latent semantic indexing words which appear near one another often are frequently deemed to be related.
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.
Comments Tag
Some web developers also place comments in the source code of their work to help make it easy for people to understand the code.
HTML comments in the source code of a document appear as <!– your comment here –>. They can be viewed if someone types views the source code of a document, but do not appear in the regular formatted HTML rendered version of a document.
In the past some SEOs would stuff keywords in comment tags to help increase the page keyword density, but search has evolved beyond that stage, and at this point using comments to stuff keywords into a page adds to your risk profile and presents little ranking upside potential.
Compacted Information
Information which is generally and widely associated with a product. For example, most published books have an ISBN.
As the number of product databases online increases and duplicate content filters are forced to get more aggressive the keys to getting your information indexed are to have a site with enough authority to be considered the most important document on that topic, or to have enough non compacted information (for example, user reviews) on your product level pages to make them be seen as unique documents.
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 product sale
* completing a lead form
* a phone call
* capturing an email
* filling out a survey
* getting a person to pay attention to you
* getting feedback
* having a site visitor share your website with a friend
* having a site visitor link at your site
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.
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.
Since searches which are longer in nature tend to be more targeted in nature it is important to try to get most or all of a site indexed such that the deeper pages have the ability to rank for relevant long tail keywords. A large site needs adequate link equity to get deeply indexed. Another thing which may prevent a site from being fully indexed is duplicate content issues.
Crawl Frequency
How frequently a website is crawled.
Sites which are well trusted or frequently updated may be crawled more frequently than sites with low trust scores and limited link authority. Sites with highly artificial link authority scores (ie: mostly low quality spammy links) or sites which are heavy in duplicate content or near duplicate content (such as affiliate feed sites) may be crawled less frequently than sites with unique content which are well integrated into the web.
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://www.seobook.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.
SEO Glossary – B April 14, 2009
Posted by SEO Professionals in SEO Tutorials.Tags: expert seo, expert seo services, glossary, importance of keyword, internet marketing, know about seo, profesional seo services, search engine keyword position, search engine optimization, search engine position tool, search engine ranking, search engine ranking check, seo, seo books, seo experts, seo glossary, seo notes, seo professionals, seo services, seo tips, seo traffic, seo traffic tutorials, SEO Tutorials, website traffic, what is seo
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Back Link
Any link on another page that points to the subject page. Also called inbound links or IBLs.
Return to Top of SEO Glossary
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.
Bait and Switch
Marketing technique where you make something look overtly pure or as though it has another purpose to get people to believe in it or vote for it (by linking at it or sharing it with friends), then switch the intent or purpose of the website after you gain authority.
It is generally easier to get links to informational websites than commercial sites. Some new sites might gain authority much quicker if they tried looking noncommercial and gaining influence before trying to monetize their market position.
Banner Blindness
During the first web boom many businesses were based on eyeballs more than actually building real value. Many ads were typically quite irrelevant and web users learned to ignore the most common ad types.
In many ways text ads are successful because they are more relevant and look more like content, but with the recent surge in the popularity of text ads some have speculated that in time people may eventually become text ad blind as well.
Nick Denton stated:
Imagine a web in which Google and Overture text ads are everywhere . Not only beside search results, but next to every article and weblog post. Ubiquity breeds contempt. Text ads, coupled with content targeting, are more effective than graphic ads for many advertisers; but they too, like banners, will suffer reader burnout.
Battelle, John
Popular search and media blogger who co-founded The Industry Standard and Wired, and authored a popular book on search called The Search.
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.
Bias
A prejudice based on experiences or a particular worldview.
Any media channel, publishing format, organization, or person is biased by
* how and why they were created and their own experiences
* the current set of social standards in which they exist
* other markets they operate in
* the need for self preservation
* how they interface with the world around them
* their capital, knowledge, status, or technological advantages and limitations
Search engines aim to be relevant to users, but they also need to be profitable. Since search engines sell commercial ads some of the largest search engines may bias their organic search results toward informational (ie: non-commercial) websites. Some search engines are also biased toward information which has been published online for a great deal of time and is heavily cited.
Search personalization biases our search results based on our own media consumption and searching habits.
Large news organizations tend to aim for widely acceptable neutrality rather than objectivity. Some of the most popular individual web authors / publishers tend to be quite biased in nature. Rather than bias hurting one’s exposure
* The known / learned bias of a specific author may make their news more appealing than news from an organization that aimed to seem arbitrarily neutral.
* I believe biased channels most likely typically have a larger readership than unbiased channels.
* Most people prefer to subscribe to media which matches their own biases worldview.
* If more people read what you write and passionately agree with it then they are more likely to link at it.
* Things which are biased in nature are typically easier to be cited than things which are unbiased.
Black Hat SEO
Search engines set up guidelines that help them extract billions of dollars of ad revenue from the work of publishers and the attention of searchers. Within that highly profitable framework search engines consider certain marketing techniques deceptive in nature, and label them as black hat SEO. Those which are considered within their guidelines are called white hat SEO techniques. The search guidelines are not a static set of rules, and things that may be considered legitimate one day may be considered deceptive the next.
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.
People who have extensively tested search algorithms are probably more competent and more knowledgeable search marketers than those who give themselves the arbitrary label of white hat SEOs while calling others black hat SEOs.
When making large investments in processes that are not entirely clear trust is important. Rather than looking for reasons to not work with an SEO it is best to look for signs of trust in a person you would like to work with.
Block Level Analysis
A method used to break a page down into multiple points on the web graph by breaking its pages down into smaller blocks.
Block level link analysis can be used to help determine if content is page specific or part of a navigational system. It also can help determine if a link is a natural editorial link, what other links that link should be associated with, and/or if it is an advertisement. Search engines generally do not want to count advertisements as votes.
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, Movable Type, and Typepad.
Blog Comment Spam
Either manually or automatically (via a software program) adding low value or no value comments to other sites.
Automated blog spam:
Nice post!
by
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Manual blog spam:
I just wrote about this on my site. I don’t know you, but I thought I would add no value to your site other than linking through to mine. Check it out!!!!!
by
cluebag manual spammer (usually with keywords as my name)
As time passes both manual and automated blog comment spam systems are evolving to look more like legitimate comments. I have seen some automated blog comment spam systems that have multiple fake personas that converse with one another.
Blogger
Blogger is a free blog platform owned by Google.
It allows you to publish sites on a subdomain off of Blogspot.com, or to FTP content to your own domain. If you are serious about building a brand or making money online you should publish your content to your own domain because it can be hard to reclaim a website’s link equity and age related trust if you have built years of link equity into a subdomain on someone else’s website.
Blogger is probably the easiest blogging software tool to use, but it lacks many some features present in other blog platforms.
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, but if you write natural page copy and a word or phrase appears on a page many times it probably does not make sense or look natural if you bold ever occurrence.
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. The popularity of a document (as measured in terms of link equity, number of bookmarks, or usage data) is a signal for the quality of the information. Some search engines may eventually use bookmarks to help aid their search relevancy.
Social bookmarking sites are often called tagging sites. Del.icio.us is the most popular social bookmarking site. Yahoo! MyWeb also allows you to tag results. Google allows you to share feeds and / or tag pages. They also have a program called Google Notebook which allows you to write mini guides of related links and information.
There are also a couple meta news sites that allow you to tag interesting pages. If enough people vote for your story then your story gets featured on the homepage. Slashdot is a tech news site primarily driven by central editors. Digg created a site covering the same type of news, but is a bottoms up news site which allows readers to vote for what they think is interesting. Netscape cloned the Digg business model and content model. Sites like Digg and Netscape are easy sources of links if you can create content that would appeal to those audiences.
Many forms of vertical search, like Google Video or YouTube, allow you to tag content.
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.
Examples:
* A Google search for SEO Book will return results for SEO AND Book.
* A Google search for “SEO Book” will return results for the phrase SEO Book.
* A Google search for SEO Book -Jorge will return results containing SEO AND Book but NOT Jorge.
* A Google search for ~SEO -SEO will find results with words related to SEO that do not contain SEO.
Some search engines also allow you to search for other unique patterns or filtering ideas. Examples:
* A numerical range: 12…18 would search for numbers between 12 and 18.
* Recently updated: seo {frsh=100} would find recently updated documents. MSN search also lets you place more weight on local documents
* Related documents: related:www.threadwatch.org would find documents related to Threadwatch.
* Filetype: AdWords filetype:PDF would search for PDFs that mentioned AdWords.
* Domain Extension: SEO inurl:.edu
* IP Address: IP:64.111.97.133
Brand
The emotional response associated with your company and/or products.
A brand is built through controlling customer expectations and the social interactions between customers. Building a brand is what allows you to move away from commodity based pricing and move toward higher margin value based pricing.
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.
Some affiliate marketing programs prevent affiliates from bidding on the core brand related keywords, while others actively encourage it. Either way can work depending on your business model and marketing savvy, but it is important to ensure there is synergy between internal marketing and affiliate marketing programs.
Breadcrumb Navigation
Navigational technique used to help search engines and website users understand the relationship between pages.
Example breadcrumb navigation:
Home > SEO Tools > SEO for Firefox
Whatever page the user is on is unlinked, but the pages above it within the site structure are linked to, and organized starting with the home page, right on down through the site structure.
Broken Link
A hyperlink which is not functioning. A link which does not lead to the desired location.
Links may broken for a number of reason, but four of the most common reasons are
* a website going offline
* linking to content which is temporary in nature (due to licensing structures or other reasons)
* moving a page’s location
* changing a domain’s content management system
Most large websites have some broken links, but if too many of a site’s links are broken it may be an indication of outdated content, and it may provide website users with a poor user experience. Both of which may cause search engines to rank a page as being less relevant.
Xenu Link Sleuth is a free software program which crawls websites to find broken links.
Browser
Client used to view the world wide web.
The most popular browsers are Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, Mozilla’s Firefox, Safari, and Opera.
Bush, Vannevar
WWII scientist who wrote a seminal research paper on the concepts of hypertext and a memory extension device titled As We May Think.
Business.com
A well trusted directory of business websites and information. Business.com is also a large pay per click arbitrage player.
