Definitions to the terms used to describe actions and event in the world of Search Engine Marketing.
Narrowcasting
Creating a program aimed at a small and specific niche or group of people.
Natural Listing
A listing that appears below the sponsored ads, also known as Organic Listings.
Navigational Query
A query that normally has only one satisfactory result.
NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement)
Usually required as part of a contract to protect the company engaging in services.
Necroing
The act of posting to old threads to bring them back up. Also known as “bumping”.
Niche
A specialized segment of a market that is usually geared towards one specific purpose.
Niche Aggregators
Another way of saying Spam site.
NOFOLLOW
An attribute used in a hyperlink to instruct search engines not to follow the link. (And pass PageRank)
Off-Page Factors
Factors that alter search engine positions that occur externally from other website’s. By having many links from other sites pointing to yours is an example of Off-Page Factors.
On-Page Factors
Factors that determine search engine positions that occur internally within a page of a website. This can include site copy, page titles, and navigational structure of the site.
OOP (Over Optimization Penalty)
A theory that applies if one targets only 1 keyword or phrase, and the search engines view the linking efforts to be spam.
OpenRank (Open Source PageRank)
A suggestion to make a web-wide ranking system as opposed to Google’s Pagerank.
Opt-In
When a user willing joins a subscription to a newsletter or some other service.
Organic Listing
The natural results returned by a search engine.
Orphan Page
A page that has a link to it, but has no links to any other sites.
Outbound Link
A link from your site to any other site.
Page View
Anytime a user looks at any page on a website through their browser.
PageMatch
A cost-per-click advertising program that serves your site’s ad on a page that contains related content.
PageRank Drain
When a page has no outbound links, it causes pagerank drain because it cannot pass any value to another web page.
Paid Inclusion
A submission service where you pay a fee to a search engine and the search engine guarantees that your website will be included in its index. Paid inclusion programs will also ensure that your website is indexed very fast and crawled on regular basis. It can also be used as a term to include fee based directory submission.
Pay-Per-Click Management
Strategy, Planning and Placement of targeted keywords in the paid search results.
PFI (Pay For Inclusion)
A system in which a site pays to get a guaranteed listing.
PFP (Pay For Performance)
A system in which payment for services is only made when a conversion takes place.
Podcasting
A Podcast is just an audio file that is syndicated via an RSS feed, that is downloaded and listened to with a computer or a portable device such as an iPod.
Podcatching
The process of subscribing to podcasts.
PPC (Pay Per Click)
A technique where placements are determined by how much id bid on a particular keyword or phrase. Can become very expensive.
PR (Google’s PageRank)
Google’s unique system of how it tries to predict the value of a pages rank.
Pro Blogging
A person who makes a living by blogging.
Query
An inquiry that is entered into a search engine in order to get results.
Rank – Ranking
The actual position of a website on a search engine results page for a certain search term or phrase.
Reciprocal Link
When two sites link to each other.
Redirects
Either server side or scripting language that tells the search engine to go to another URL automatically.
Referral Spam
Sending multiple requests to a website spoofing the header to make it look like real traffic is being sent to another site.
Referrer
A referrer is the URL of the page that the visitor came from when he entered a website.
Relevance Rank (RR)
A system in which the search engine tries to determine the theme of a site that a link is coming from
Relevancy
Term used to describe how close the content of a page is in relation to the keyword phrase used to search.
Results Page
When a user conducts a search, the page that is displayed, is called the results page. Sometimes it may be called SERPs, which stands for “search engine results page.”
RFP (Request for Proposal)
Used to send out to multiple companies in order to get a list of services to be delivered and at what cost.
Rich Internet Applications (RIA)
Applications such as Ajax and Flash that provide a better user experience by delivering content in an on-demand web environment.
Robot
Often used to refer to a search engine spider.
ROC (Return on Customer)
The value each customer brings.
ROI (Return on Investment)
The cost it takes to in order to see success on your marketing investment.
RSS Feed (Rich Site Summary or Rich Site Syndication)
RSS feeds use an XML document to publish information.
Scope Creep
When the contracted amount of work to be completed changes because of client changes or technology advances.
SE (Search Engine)
A web based information retrieval program.
Search Engine
Best described as a database of websites users can search using search terms. Every search engine has its own algorithm which defines how the results are displayed.
Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
The practice of getting a website found on the internet
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
The act of altering code to a website to have optimum relevance to a search engine spider.
Search Friendly Optimization (SFO)
As the term implies, this is the process of making a website search engine friendly.
Search Query
The text entered into the search box on a search engine.
SEOlebirty
Famous people in the world of search.
SERP (Search Engine Results Page)
The results that are displayed after making a query into a search box.
SFO
Search Friendly Optimization.
Sitemap (Site Map)
A page that lists all of the critical navigation points of a website.
Slurp
The name of Yahoo’s Search Engine Spider.
Smishing
Phishing via text message. Smishers bombard cell phones with SMS versions of standard phishing solicitations, directing victims to Web sites that install spyware on their computers.
Snippet
The text displayed from a search query.
Social Media Poisoning
A technique where unscrupulous marketers will try to sabotage a competitor’s web site by engaging in social media communications and link seeding/spamming tactics that they hope will spark a rash of bad publicity, and maybe even trigger some sort of rankings and/or reputational search penalty against their competitor.
SPAM
Unwanted email or irrelevant content delivered. (or as some say, Site Placed Above Mine)
Spam Cannon
A term used in conjunction with sites that use email sign-ups for spamming purposes – the latimes.com is an example.
Spamming
The act of delivering unwanted messages to the masses.
Spamouflage
The method or result of concealing or disguising search engine spam to make it appear to be legitimate.
Spider
The software that crawls your site to try and determine the content it finds.
Spiderbaiting
A technique that makes a search engine spider find your site.
Splash Page
A page displayed for viewing before reaching the main page.
Stemming
The main part of a word to which affixes are added.
Stickiness
How influential your site is in keeping a visitor on your page.
Stop Word
A stop word is a “common word” which is ignored in a query because the word makes no contribution to the relevancy of the query.
Stop Word
Stop words are very common words such as ‘a, the, and & that’ and are filtered out of your search query. Search engines do this in order to try to serve the best results for a user query.
Strategic Linking
A thought out approach to getting websites to link to your site.
Submission
The process of submitting URL(s) to search engines or directories.
SWOT
A methodic way of identifying your Strengths and Weaknesses, and of examining the Opportunities and Threats you face.
Syntax
The proper use of language when coding a website.
Tag Soup
Tag soup is HTML code written without regard for the rules of HTML structure and semantics.
The Deep Web
The content in databases that rarely shows up in Web searches. It is estimated that there are 500 billion Web pages that could potentially be hidden.
Theme
What the site’s main topic is about.
Thin Affiliates
Doorways that send visitors to affiliate programs, earning a commission for doing so, while providing little or no value-added content or service to the user.
Title Tag
It should be used to describe the web page using targeted keywords using no more that 60 characters, including spaces.
TLD (Top Level Domain)
Most commonly thought of as a “.com”, also includes “.org” and “.edu”
TOM (Tactical Online Marketing)
The process of informing the customer of your services from various sources.
TOS (Terms of Service)
Usually found in a contract, also known as the contracts “deliverables”.
Tracking URL
Usually used in PPC campaigns, it is a URL that has special code added to it so that results can be monitored.
Traffic
The number of visitors a website receives over a given period. Usually reported on a monthly basis.
Transactional Query
A query where the user expects to conduct a transaction.
Trusted Feed
A form of paid inclusion which uses bulk a XML feed to directly send website content to search engines for indexing. The feed can be optimized so that your website can take advantage better rankings and therefore more traffic
TrustRank
A method of using a combination of limited human site review in conjunction with a search engines algorithm.
Typosquatting
Relies on typographical errors by users to serve up websites that look like Google to launch viruses and trojans to unsuspecting users.
Unique Visitor
When a user visits a website, his/her IP address is logged so if he/she returns later on that day, the visit won’t be counted as a unique visit but as a page impression.
Universal Search
Launched on May 16, 2007, this is Google’s attempt to deliver the best result from the web. This can include video, images, news, podcasts or any other form of digital content.
URL (Uniform Resource Locator)
Commonly referred to as the domain name, this is how humans navigate through the Internet, whereas computers use IP addresses.
User Agent
A User agent name is the name of the software accessing a web page. (Another term for Agent Name)
USP (Unique Selling Proposition)
Sometimes mistakenly defined as Unique Selling Point. The Unique Selling Proposition concept was first developed by Rosser Reeves of the Ted Bates Agency. Basically, it’s what sets you apart from your competition.
VEO
Visitor Enhanced Optimization
VoIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol)
VoIP converts the voice signal from your telephone into a digital signal that travels over the internet then converts it back at the other end so you can speak to anyone with a regular phone number.
Web Saturation
How many pages of your site are indexed by the search engines collectively.
Webneck
Slang term for a person who spends most of their time on the internet, most of their friends are netpals, and they are uncomfortable if they can’t get online.
White Hat SEO
A term that refers to ethical practice of SEO methodologies that adhere to search engine Terms of Service.
White Paper
A White Paper is your statement about how a problem should be solved.
Whois Data
Registration data such as the company name, address and telephone number when registering a domain name.
Whore Trains
A list of people on MySpace that you add yourself to and keep reposting the list so that you can get a lot of people requesting to be your friends.
Wi-Fi (certification mark)
Used to certify the interoperability of wireless computer networking devices.
WikiSoldiers
Users who enjoy the process of building and defending wikipedia.
Wilf
What was I looking for?
WWW (World Wide Web)
Another term to describe the Internet.
XML (Extensible Markup Language (filename.xml))
A scripting language that allows the programmer to define the properties of the document.
Yahoo!
The #2 Search Engine in the world.
Zeitgeist (Google Zeitgesit)
A service provided that shows snippets of the emerging and declining trends of what people are searching for through the Google search engine.
