Glossary of search engine optimization (SEO) terms
algorithm: A step-by-step computational procedure used by search engines to complete a search query.
cloaking: Server-side technology that delivers different Web pages depending on whether the IP address is from a known search engine spider or someone else. If from a search spider, the server feeds an optimized page. Otherwise a regular page is served. Search engines object to this technique and routinely purge cloaked pages, and in some cases ban the site entirely. This technique is also called IP spoofing, IP cloaking and IP delivery.
directory: A human edited index of Web sites categorized for easy searching. Yahoo and Open Directory are the most popular and influential.
dynamic content: Web pages with content generated by a database. They are not static html pages. They change when the database details are changed. Most e-commerce sites use dynamic content. When these pages include a Session ID, search engines typically have a difficult time indexing them properly.
frames: A Web browser feature that divides the Web page into sections. Each frame's contents come from a different Web page. Some search engines cannot read content frames. These search engines require special SEO strategies to gain search positions.
hidden text: Putting text in the same color as a Web page's background color. This technique was once effective at gaining high search positions, but now results in search engines penalizing pages using it.
Information Pages: Web pages designed around targeted key phrases to score high positions on search engines.
IP spoofing: See "cloaking."
key phrase density: The number of keywords in proportion to the total number of words on a Web page.
keyword: A word that is relevant to a company's products or services.
link popularity: The number of other related Web sites that link to your site. In terms of search engine positioning, quality links are more important than the number of links. Search engines are now nullifying or penalizing sites using some link farms and link exchanges such as FFA (Free For All) sites popular with mass search engine submission programs.
listserv: E-mail management software that allows you and/or the subscribers to send email to the list. Includes the means to subscribe and unsubscribe.
meta tags: HTML code hidden from the browser that provides a variety of identifying information. There are over 30 different meta tags. The meta tags that concern search engine optimization are the title, description and keywords. The title is shown at the top of the browser. Search engines often pick up the description when showing search results. Keywords should list the most important words relevant to the site and that Web page. However, today most search engines do not consider meta keywords for positioning.
organic linking: Developing in-bound links from relevant Web sites and portals to generate traffic and improve search positions, as search engines reward sites with more in-bound links.
query: A word, set of words or other command that requests information from a database such as a search engine.
search engine positioning: The practice of gaining high search position results for a specific search term.
search engines: Software programs that retrieve requested information from a database of indexed Web pages.
search engine spiders: Software robots that "crawl" Web pages, reading text and following links to gather information for search engine databases.
search index: The database of Web page contents that a search engine has collected.
search relevancy: How each search engine determines how important a Web page or site is for a particular search query. Content, click-thru popularity and links are among the criteria.
social networking: Web sites created to allow networks of people to share content or web pages that they find interesting. Examples include Digg, Simpy and Technorati.
spamming: Over submission of Web pages, hidden text, creating many pages or sites with the same content, and repeating keywords. Search engines penalize or ban pages and sites using these techniques.
URL submission: A request to a search engine using online forms that a URL be indexed.
Web traffic: The number of visitors to a Web site.
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