The Glossary section of Search-Industry-News.com is intended to provide a helpful resource to search engine marketing professionals and people who have interest in learning more about the search engine marketing industry.

Explore the Glossary: A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

301 Redirect
Also known as a permanent redirect, a 301 redirect takes place when a web browser is instructed by the website owner to display a different URL then the one requested. Search engine spiders follow and move all the value from the old URL to the permanently redirected new location.

302 Redirect
Also known as a temporary redirect, a 302 redirect takes place when a web browser is instructed by the website owner to temporarily display a different URL then the one requested. Search engine spiders follow and move all the value from the old URL to the temporary redirected new location.

Above the fold
The term Above the Fold typically refers to the top portion of a newspaper publication. When referring to website marketing it is considered the area of content visible to the user before scrolling. The term can also be used to describe anything that is prominently displayed.

AdCenter
Microsoft AdCenter is the Pay-Per-Click ad network that serves advertisements to MSN.com.

AdSense
Google AdSense is an advertising platform run by Google. Owners of websites can sign-up for AdSense and enable text and image advertisements from Google Adwords to run on their sites. These ads are served by Google and generate a revenue stream for the website owner on a per-click basis.

Adwords
Google Adwords is the Pay-Per-Click ad network that serves advertisements to Google.com and sites in the Google Network.

Affliate Marketing
Is a method of online marketing where one website drives traffic to another website and is compensated with a commission from purchases/leads generated.

AJAX
Is a technique used in web development when creating interactive web applications. The intend of AJAX is to make the webpage feel more responsive when a change on the page is requested this is done by exchanging data with a server so the page doesn’t have to be entirely reloaded every time a web visitor requests a change.

Alexa
Alexa.com is a website owned by Amazon; Alexa.com provides statistics on web traffic to other websites.

Algorithm
Is the formula used by each search engine to determine the relevance of a web page in relation to a search keyword or keyphrase. Search engine companies are constantly making adjustments to their algorithms to meet cultural changes and they keep patents on their algorithms as they do not want to share them with the public.

Alt Attribute
Search engines and people with trouble seeing have difficultly distinguishing what images are. Using an ALT attribute for images allows search engines to understand the purpose of the image by using equivalent descriptive text for the image.

Alt Tag
Is an HTML tag used to describe an image on a website. It becomes visible as a popup to the web visitor when hovering over the image.

AltaVista
AltaVista was one of the first search engines available on the web. It was owned and operated by Overture before Yahoo purchased Overture. Through the years AltaVista has failed to keep up with the demands put on a search engine company and consequently their market share has diminished.

Anchor Text
Anchor text is the visible text associated with a hyperlink. Search engines use anchor text to aid in determining the subject matter of the page being linked too.

Authority
Authoritativeness refers to how a search engine perceives the level of expertise of a website. Search engines place a great amount of importance on websites that have a large quantity of quality inbound links from other well-linked sites.

Backlink
Also referred to as an inbound link; a backlink is a link from one page to another. Backlinks from outside a website are highly valued by the search engines when calculating the relevance and authoritativeness of a page.

Banner ad
A banner advertisement is a graphical advertisement placed on a webpage.

Bid
Is the amount one is willing to pay per click for a paid search result in a given search engine. The bidder pays the bid price every time a visitor clicks the paid search engine link and is directed to the bidder’s site.

Bid Management
Is a technique used by online marketers to control the maximum amount they are willing to bid on a specific keyword within each search engine. Typically websites with a large Pay-per-click budget monitor their bids on a daily basis.

Blog
The term Blog is short for Web Log. A Blog is an online journal or newsletter that is updated regularly.

Blogroll
A Blogroll can be found on a majority of blogs. It is a list of links to other blogs that the author feels are worthwhile for their site’s visitors.

Body Text
Is normal text written in paragraph or list form with no added significance, opposed to section headings and page titles. Search engine spiders will review the content in the body text but search engine algorithms typically put more weight on the special occurrences; such as titles, headers, and bold tags.

Bookmark
Also known as a favorite place, a bookmark is when a URL is stored in a browser by a web user, creating a link with direct access to the webpage.

Browser
Is an application used by web visitors to view and explore a website. Some common web browsers are: Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, and Safari.

Call to action
Is a predetermined action set up for the user to take in an effort to get them to buy or come closer to making a purchase. A few examples of calls to action are a “buy now” button or a “sign up for our newsletter” link.

Campaign
In marketing, a campaign is a term typically used to describe a marketing initiative with a specific goal for success.

Cascading Style Sheet (CSS)
Is a language used by web developers to describe how an HTML document should be formatted. CSS Gives developers more control over how the website will be displayed.

Click
A click is an action taken by a web user; it is when the mouse is used to select a link to take the user to another page. Clicks are typically tracked and used in analyzing the performance of a website.

Click fraud
Is the act of clicking on a pay-per-click advertisement with no intentions of being a positive conversion - ultimately wasting someone’s pay-per-click advertising budget.

Click-through
Is a term used when analyzing web metrics; a click-through is the act when a web visitor clicks a link and is navigated to a new page. This metric has a great deal of importance in analyzing the effectiveness of a pay-per-click advertising campaign, as it can show search marketers how specific ad copy is performing.

Click-through-rate
The ratio between the number of web visitors seeing a link and the number of web visitors clicking that link and navigating to another page.

Community
An online community is a hub for people with similar interests to share thoughts, experiences, and reviews.

Content
Text and images found on a webpage. In search marketing it is crucial to have relevant content in order for the search engines to find the page for a relevant search query.

Content Management System (CMS)
Is an application that manages the process of updating, creating, and publishing content onto a website.

Conversion
Traditionally conversion means completing a sale. Web conversions can be any per-defined action such as: signing up for a newsletter, inquiring for more information, or a purchase.

Conversion Rate
Is the ratio of the number of web visitors to a site compared to the number of successful conversions.

Cookie
Is a method browsers use to store information that web pages need to remember. 

Cost-Per-Click (CPC)
Is a term used in pay-per-click advertising to describe the cost of a single click. Money is owed to the search engine only when a web visitor clicks on the sponsored listing.

Cost-Per-Thousand (CPM)
Is a method of processing fees when money is owed for every 1,000 impressions an advertisement  receives. (Impression - is each time an advertisement is displayed)

Crawler
Also known in the search marketing industry as a spider, a crawler is the function of the search engine that indexes every page on the web. Crawlers also measure the authoritativeness and relevance of each page and gather information that allow search engine algorithms to serve the most relevant results.

Dead Link
Is a link that no longer functions properly. Sometimes a website will continue to link to another web page that no longer exists or has moved locations .

Deep Link
Is a link that points to an internal page on the website rather than just the homepage.

Description Meta Tag
Is an HTML tag that contains a brief summary of the web page. A unique meta description tag can be placed on every web page. Search engines have been known to use meta descriptions as part of their algorithm when deciding what web page to show for a specific search query.

Directory
Is a website or a component of a website that provides listings and links to many other websites. The most famous web directory is Yahoo! Directory.

Domain
Is the ‘written language’ label used to call a particular web site (IP address). An example of a domain name is: search-industry-news.com.

Domain Name Server (DNS)
Is a naming convention used to aid in pointing a domain to the proper IP address.

Doorway Page
Is a spam technique used specifically to boost organic search rankings. Doorway pages, also known as gateway pages, are considered a black hat SEO technique and using them on a site can get the site banned from the search engines.

Duplicate Content
Is content found on the web that is identical to that of content on another website.  Search engines typically do not want to index multiple versions of the same content, so they have included a negative impact to duplicate content as part of the search results algorithm.

Dynamic Page
Is a web page where HTML content is generated the moment the page is displayed. Dynamic pages are useful for content that must change based on visitor.
 

Still Under Construction……….. (more to come)