SEOContest2008

SEO Glossary, Seo Definitions, What is ?, What means ?. I think is better to start our foray with this SEO Glossary.

Algorithm – A complex formula used by search engines to display to user the most relevant websites regarding the keyword searched. This formula also establish the importance and rank of a website.

ALT Tags – Texts behind images or pictures shown to user when you put your mouse over the picture. Is useful for search engines and also when a page can’t display the picture it show the alt tags text.

Anchor Text – Link Text, the visible text in a hyperlink. Example: <a href=”http://www.yourwebsite.com/”>Anchor Text</a>

Back links – see IBL

Bot – see crawler, is a robot or spider.

Black Hat – This is the name for peoples that use deceptive tehchniques to artificially improves the position of a website in search engines. All black hat techniques violate the Search Engine Terms of Services and will get your site banned or completely removed sooner or later.

Broken Link - A link from a website which could not be followed, usually returning a 404 error “not found “.

Click Through – This is the action when you clicks on a link and visit a new page.

Cloaking – this is a “Black Hat” technique in which the content presented to the user is different from that presented to a search engine spider. All the website that use this technique are removed permanently from search engines if they are uncovered.

CPA - Cost Per Action

CPC - Cost Per Click is the amount paid for any given click on your ad.

CTR - Click Through Ratio is the ratio of clicks to views for any given advertisement or link

Crawler - Search engines programs called also robots or spiders, they can scan your website making copies of the web pages it comes across.

Description Tag — A Meta information tag included in the head tags of a website. This tag describe the content of the website and user see it after a search under the title of the website.

Doorway Page – A webpage designed only for search engines not for users. Every user that want to open that webpage is lead to another, separate website. This is a “black hat” SEO technique that usually get your website completely removed from search engines.

Duplicate Content — Some webmaster sometimes just make copies of other website or from mistake they have the same webpage in different places. This practice is usaly penalized by search engines because they look for unique content.

EPV - Earnings Per Visitor.

FFA - Free For All link pages.

Filter Words - Words like am, is, the, for, do, that search engines deem irrelevant for indexing purposes.

Googlebot – is a search robot or spider used by google to collect documents from the web to build a searchable index.

Google Bomb – We can calle it also a “link bomb” and is the attempt to influence the ranking of a web page for specific words. The most famous incident of Google bombing was when around 32 webmasters put the text “miserable failure” on their websites and placed a link under this text to George Bush’s autobiography. Causing this webpage to rank #1 in Google for the search term “miserable failure.”

Google Sandbox – It is a theory about A filter that affect Google places on new domains. This filter stop only new website from high rankings for the main keywords. But is only a theory.

Hit - A single access request made by a user to the server when he want to see a webpage.

IBL - Inbound Link is a link from another website pointing to your site, same as an “back link”.

Keyword Density — The number of times a keyword appear in the content of a webpage, expressed as the percentage of total number of words on a page.

Keywords Tag — A Meta information tag included in the head tags of a website. You can use keywords that describe your page, usualy you put here that words that a user can use it for search to find what your website offer.

Link Farms – Are websites that exists only for trading links with other websites for the purpose of artificially increase link popularity. This is considered a “Black Hat” technique.

Link Popularity – Are the same with IBL, and this popularity is given by the number of links pointing to your site.

ODP - The Open Directory Project (http://dmoz.org/) is the largest Web Directory on the web, being updated by volunteers.

Outbound Link - A link from your website pointing to another website.

Page Rank – Or Popularity Rank (PR) is a formula developed by Google to determine Link Popularity of a website. This formula use a scale from 0 to 10. There are various addons for firefox or website that show PR of websites.

PPC - Pay Per Click is a method of advertising in which a link to your website is displayed in different website where you agree and you pay price (CPC) every time a user click on your link. Google’s Adwords is an example of PPC advertising.

Query - The keyword typed into a search engine to find relevant sites.

Robots.txt – This is a file in your website root that give instructions to all spiders regarding their actions on your site.

SE – Search Engine

SEM - Search engine marketing, a broad term referring to all kind of activities for promoting a website, this include SEO and PPC campaigns.

SEO - Search engine optimization, the act of setting up a web page using certain keywords or key phrases so it does well in the organic, crawler-based listings of search engines.

SERP - Search Engine Results Page, the list with result that a surfer gets from search engines.

Spider – see crawler, is a search engine robot

Stop Word - Are words which are ignored in a query because the word is so common to be of any use when determining the results. For example: the, I, get, is, me.

TITLE Tag - A Meta information tag included in the head tags of a website. This is the most important from all header tags and this one is display SERP like title of your website.

URL - Universal Resource Locator, it’s a unique address on internet.

Web Directory - A collection of websites grouped in categories. Usualy, every website is rewied by human editors before it is accepted. The most known directory is dmoz.org, but are thousend of them on the web.

This is the list with all the terms tackled today:

Algorithm, ALT Tags, Anchor Text, Back links, Bot, Black Hat, Broken Link, Click Through, Cloaking, CPA, CPC, CTR, Crawler, Description Tag, Doorway Page, Duplicate Content, EPV, Filter Words, Googlebot, Google Bomb, Google Sandbox, Hit, IBL, Keyword Density, Keywords Tag, Link Farms, Link Popularity, ODP, Outbound Link, Page Rank, PPC, Query, Robots.txt, SE, SEM, SEO, SERP, Spider, Stop Word, TITLE Tag, URL, Web Directory.

If you want to ask for other terms feel free to comment it in this post.