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GLOSSARY

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 A

Above the Fold

A term traditionally used to describe the top portion of a newspaper. In email or web marketing it means the area of content viewable prior to scrolling. Some people also define above the fold as an ad location at the very top of the screen, but due to banner blindness typical ad locations do not perform as well as ads that are well integrated into content. If ads look like content they typically perform much better.

See also:

Absolute Link

A link which shows the full URL of the page being linked at. Some links only show relative link paths instead of having the entire reference URL within the a href tag. Due to canonicalization and hijacking related issues it is typically preferred to use absolute links over relative links.

Example absolute link

<a href="http://seobook.com/folder/filename.html">Cool Stuff</a>

Example relative link

<a href="../folder/filename.html">Cool Stuff</a> 

AdCenter

Microsoft's cost per click ad network.

While it has a few cool features (including dayparting and demographic based bidding) it is still quite nascent in nature compared to Google AdWords. Due to Microsoft's limited marketshare and program newness many terms are vastly underpriced and present a great arbitrage opportunity.

See also:

AdSense

Google's contextual advertising network. Publishers large and small may automatically publish relevant advertisements near their content and share the profits from those ad clicks with Google.

AdSense offers a highly scalable automated ad revenue stream which will help some publishers establish a baseline for the value of their ad inventory. In many cases AdSense will be underpriced, but that is the trade off for automating ad sales.

AdSense ad auction formats include

  • cost per click - advertisers are only charged when ads are clicked on
  • CPM - advertisers are charged a certain amount per ad impression. Advertisers can target sites based on keyword, category, or demographic information.

AdSense ad formats include

  • text
  • graphic
  • animated graphics
  • videos

In some cases I have seen ads which got a 2 or 3% click through rate (CTR), while sites that are optimized for maximum CTR (through aggressive ad integration) can obtain as high as a 50 or 60% CTR depending on

  • how niche their site is
  • how commercially oriented their site is
  • the relevancy and depth of advertisers in their vertical

It is also worth pointing out that if you are too aggressive in monetizing your site before it has built up adequate authority your site may never gain enough authority to become highly profitable.

Depending on your vertical your most efficient monetization model may be any of the following

  • AdSense
  • affiliate marketing
  • direct ad sales
  • selling your own products and services
  • a mixture of the above

See also:

AdWords

Google's advertisement and link auction network. Most of Google's ads are keyword targeted and sold on a cost per click basis in an auction which factors in ad clickthrough rate as well as max bid. Google is looking into expanding their ad network to include video ads, demographic targeting, affiliate ads, radio ads, and traditional print ads.

AdWords is an increasingly complex marketplace. One could write a 300 page book just covering AdWords. Rather than doing that here I thought it would be useful to link to many relevant resources.

See also:

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing programs allows merchants to expand their market reach and mindshare by paying independent agents on a cost per action (CPA) basis. Affiliates only get paid if visitors complete an action.

Most affiliates make next to nothing because they are not aggressive marketers, have no real focus, fall for wasting money on instant wealth programs that lead them to buying a bunch of unneeded garbage via other's affiliate links, and do not attempt to create any real value.

Some power affiliates make hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars per year because they are heavily focused on automation and/or tap large traffic streams. Typically niche affiliate sites make more per unit effort than overtly broad ones because they are easier to focus (and thus have a higher conversion rate).

Selling a conversion is typically harder than selling a click (like AdSense does, for instance). Search engines are increasingly looking to remove the noise low quality thin affiliate sites ad to the search results through the use of

See also:

Age

Some social networks or search systems may take site age, page age, user account age, and related historical data into account when determining how much to trust that person, website, or document. Some specialty search engines, like blog search engines, may also boost the relevancy of new documents.

Fresh content which is also cited on many other channels (like related blogs) will temporarily rank better than you might expect because many of the other channels which cite the content will cite it off their home page or a well trusted high PageRank page. After those sites publish more content and the reference page falls into their archives those links are typically from pages which do not have as much link authority as their home pages.

Some search engines may also try to classify sites to understand what type of sites they are, as in news sites or reference sites that do not need updated that often. They may also look at individual pages and try to classify them based on how frequently they change.

See also:

AJAX

Asynchronous JavaScript and XML is a technique which allows a web page to request additional data from a server without requiring a new page to load.

Alexa

Amazon.com owned search service which measures website traffic.

Alexa is heavily biased toward sites that focus on marketing and webmaster communities. While not being highly accurate it is free.

See also

AllTheWeb

Search engine which was created by Fast, then bought by Overture, which was bought by Yahoo. Yahoo may use AllTheWeb as a test bed for new search technologies and features.

See also:

Alt Attribute

Blind people and most major search engines are not able to easily distinguish what is in an image. Using an image alt attribute allows you to help screen readers and search engines understand the function of an image by providing a text equivalent for the object.

Example usage

<img src="http://www.seobook.com/images/whammy.gif" height="140" width="120" alt="Press Your Luck Whammy." />

See also

AltaVista

Search engine bought out by Overture prior to Overture being bought by Yahoo. AltaVista was an early powerhouse in search, but on October 25, 1999 they did a major algorithmic update which caused them to dump many websites. Ultimately that update and brand mismanagement drove themselves toward irrelevancy and a loss of mindshare and marketshare.

See also:

Amazon.com

The largest internet retailing website. Amazon.com is rich in consumer generated media. Amazon also owns a number of other popular websites, including IMDB and Alexa.

See also:

Analytics

Software which allows you to track your page views, user paths, and conversion statistics based upon interpreting your log files or through including a JavaScript tracking code on your site.

Ad networks are a game of margins. Marketers who track user action will have a distinct advantage over those who do not.

See also:

Anchor Text

The text that a user would click on to follow a link. In the case the link is an image the image alt attribute may act in the place of anchor text.

Search engines assume that your page is authoritative for the words that people include in links pointing at your site. When links occur naturally they typically have a wide array of anchor text combinations. Too much similar anchor text may be a considered a sign of manipulation, and thus discounted or filtered. Make sure when you are building links that you control that you try to mix up your anchor text.

Example of anchor text:

<a href="http://www.seobook.com/">Search Engine Optimization Blog</a>

Outside of your core brand terms if you are targeting Google you probably do not want any more than 10% to 20% of your anchor text to be the same. You can use Backlink Analyzer to compare the anchor text profile of other top ranked competing sites.

See also:

AOL

Popular web portal which merged with Time Warner.

API

Application Program Interface - a series of conventions or routines used to access software functions. Most major search products have an API program.

Arbitrage

Exploiting market inefficiencies by buying and reselling a commodity for a profit. As it relates to the search market, many thin content sites laced with an Overture feed or AdSense ads buy traffic from the major search engines and hope to send some percent of that traffic clicking out on a higher priced ad. Shopping search engines generally draw most of their traffic through arbitrage.

See also:

ASP

Active Server Pages - a dynamic Microsoft programming language.

See also:

Ask

Ask is a search engine owned by InterActive Corp. They were originally named Ask Jeeves, but they dumped Jeeves in early 2006. Their search engine is powered by the Teoma search technology, which is largely reliant upon Kleinberg's concept of hubs and authorities.

See also:

Authority

The ability of a page or domain to rank well in search engines. Five large factors associated with site and page authority are link equity, site age, traffic trends, site history, and publishing unique original quality content.

Search engines constantly tweak their algorithms to try to balance relevancy algorithms based on topical authority and overall authority across the entire web. Sites may be considered topical authorities or general authorities. For example, Wikipedia and DMOZ are considered broad general authority sites. This site is a topical authority on SEO, but not a broad general authority.

Authorities

Topical authorities are sites which are well trusted and well cited by experts within their topical community. A topical authority is a page which is referenced from many topical experts and hub sites. A topical hub is page which references many authorities.

Example potential topical authorities:

  • the largest brands in your field
  • the top blogger talking about your subject
  • the Wikipedia or DMOZ page about your topic

See also:

Automated Bid Management Software

Pay per click search engines are growing increasingly complex in their offerings. To help large advertisers cope with the increasing sophistication and complexity of these offerings some search engines and third party software developers have created software which makes it easier to control your ad spend. Some of the more advanced tools can integrate with your analytics programs and help you focus on conversion, ROI, and earnings elasticity instead of just looking at cost per click.

See also:

If you want to program internal bid management software you can get a developer token to use the Google AdWords API.

A few popular bid management tools are

 B

Backlink (see Inbound Link)

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.

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.

See also:

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.

See also:

Bid Management Software (see Automated Bid Management Software)

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.

See also:

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.

See also

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
Discreat Overnight Viagra Online Canadian Pharmacy Free Shipping

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.

See also:

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.

See also:

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:

See also:

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.

See also:

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.

Brin, Sergey

Co-founder of Google.

See also:

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.

See also:

Buying Cycle

Before making large purchases consumers typically research what brands and products fit their needs and wants. Keyword based search marketing allows you to reach consumers at any point in the buying cycle. In many markets branded keywords tend to have high search volumes and high conversion rates.

The buying cycle may consist of the following stages

  • Problem Discovery: prospect discovers a need or want.
  • Search: after discovering a problem look for ways to solve the need or want. These searches may contain words which revolve around the core problem the prospect is trying to solve or words associated with their identity.
  • Evaluate: may do comparison searches to compare different models, and also search for negative information like product sucks, etc.
  • Decide: look for information which reinforces your view of product or service you decided upon
  • Purchase: may search for shipping related information or other price related searches. purchases may also occur offline
  • Reevaluate: some people leave feedback on their purchases . If a person is enthusiastic about your brand they may cut your marketing costs by providing free highly trusted word of mouth marketing.

See also:

Waiting for Your Cat to Bark? - book by Brian & Jeffrey Eisenberg about the buying cycle and Persuading Customers When They Ignore Marketing.

 C

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.

Calacanis, Jason

Founder of Weblogs, Inc. Also pushed AOL to turn Netscape into a Digg clone.

See also:

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

Catalog (see Index)

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.

See also:

Cluetrain Manifesto, The

Book about how the web is a marketplace, and how it is different from traditional offline business.

See also:

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.

See also

  • Google Touchgraph - interesting web application that shows the relationship between sites Google returns as being related to a site you enter.

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.

See also:

  • blog comment spam - the addition of low value or no value comments to other's websites

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.

See also:

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.

See also:

Copyright

The legal rights to publish and reproduce a particular piece of work.

See also:

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.

See also:

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.

See also:

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" />

See also

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.

Cutts, Matt

Google's head of search quality.

See also:

Cybersquatting

Registering domains related to other trademarks or brands in an attempt to cash in on the value created by said trademark or brand.

 D

Dayparting

Turning ad campaigns on or off, changing ad bid price, or budget constraints based on bidding more when your target audience is available and less when they are less likely to be available.

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.
    • You need a significant number of high quality links to get a large website well indexed and keep it well indexed.
    • 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:
    • 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.
    • 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.

See also:

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.

Denton, Nick

Publisher of Gawker, a popular ring of topical weblogs, which are typically focused on controversy.

See also:

  • Nick Denton.org - official blog, where Nick often talks about business and his various blogs.

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.

See also:

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.

See also:

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.

See also:

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.

See also:

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.

Dynamic Languages

Programming languages such as PHP or ASP which build web pages on the fly upon request.

 E

Earnings Per Click

Many contextual advertising publishers estimate their potential earnings based on how much they make from each click.

Editorial Link

Search engines count links as votes of quality. They primarily want to count editorial links that were earned over links that were bought or bartered.

Many paid links, such as those from quality directories, still count as signs of votes as long as they are also associated with editorial quality standards. If they are from sites without editorial control, like link farms, they are not likely to help you rank well. Using an algorithm similar to TrustRank, some search engines may place more trust on well known sites with strong editorial guidelines.

Emphasis

An HTML tag used to emphasize text.

Please note that it is more important that copy reads well to humans than any boost you may think you will get by tweaking it for bots. If every occurrence of a keyword on a page is in emphasis that will make the page hard to read, convert poorly, and may look weird to search engines and users alike.

<em>emphasis</em> would appear as emphasis

Entry Page

The page which a user enters your site.

If you are buying pay per click ads it is important to send visitors to the most appropriate and targeted page associated with the keyword they searched for. If you are doing link building it is important to point links at your most appropriate page when possible such that

  • if anyone clicks the link they are sent to the most appropriate and relevant page
  • you help search engines understand what the pages on your site are associated with

Ethical SEO

Search engines like to paint SEO services which manipulate their relevancy algorithms as being unethical. Any particular technique is generally not typically associated with ethics, but is either effective or ineffective.

Some search marketers lacking in creativity tend to describe services sold by others as being unethical while their own services are ethical. Any particular technique is generally not typically associated with ethics, but is either effective or ineffective.

The only ethics issues associated with SEO are generally business ethics related issues. Two of the bigger frauds are

  • Not disclosing risks: Some SEOs may use high risk techniques when they are not needed. Some may make that situation even worse by not disclosing potential risks to clients.
  • Taking money & doing nothing: Since selling SEO services has almost no start up costs many of the people selling services may not actually know how to competently provide them. Some shady people claim to be SEOs and bilk money out of unsuspecting small businesses.

As long as the client is aware of potential risks there is nothing unethical about being aggressive.

Everflux

Major search indexes are constantly updating. Google refers to this continuous refresh as everflux.

In the past Google updated their index roughly once a month. Those updates were named Google Dances, but since Google shifted to a constantly updating index Google no longer does what was traditionally called a Google Dance.

See also:

Expert Document

Quality page which links to many non-affiliated topical resources.

See also:

External Link

Link which references another domain.

Some people believe in link hoarding, but linking out to other related resources is a good way to help search engines understand what your site is about. If you link out to lots of low quality sites or primarily rely on low quality reciprocal links some search engines may not rank your site very well. Search engines are more likely to trust high quality editorial links (both to and from your site).

 F

Fair Use

The stated exceptions of allowed usage of work under copyright without requiring permission of the original copyright holder. Fair use is covered in section 107 of the Copyright code.

See also:

Favicon

Favorites Icon is a small icon which appears next to URLs in a web browser.

Upload an image named favicon.ico in the root of your site to have your site associated with a favicon.

See also:

  • HTML Kit - generate a favicon from a picture
  • Favicon.co.uk - create a favicon online painting one pixel at a time.

Favorites (see bookmarks)

Feed

Many content management, systems such as blogs, allow readers to subscribe to content update notifications via RSS or XML feeds. Feeds can also refer to pay per click syndicated feeds, or merchant product feeds. Merchant product feeds have become less effective as a means of content generation due to improving duplicate content filters.

Feed Reader

Software or website used to subscribe to feed update notifications.

See also:

FFA

Free for all pages are pages which allow anyone to add a link to them. Generally these links do not pull much weight in search relevancy algorithms because many automated programs fill these pages with links pointing at low quality websites.

Filter

Certain activities or signatures which make a page or site appear unnatural might make search engines inclined to filter / remove them out of the search results.

For example, if a site publishes significant duplicate content it may get a reduced crawl priority and get filtered out of the search results. Some search engines also have filters based on link quality, link growth rate, and anchor text. Some pages are also penalized for spamming.

Firefox

Popular extensible open source web browser.

See also:

Flash

Vector graphics-based animation software which makes it easier to make websites look rich and interactive in nature.

Search engines tend to struggle indexing and ranking flash websites because flash typically contains so little relevant content. If you use flash ensure:

  • you embed flash files within HTML pages
  • you use a noembed element to describe what is in the flash
  • you publish your flash content in multiple separate files such that you can embed appropriate flash files in relevant pages

Forward Links (see Outbound Links)

Frames

A technique created by Netscape used to display multiple smaller pages on a single display. This web design technique allows for consistent site navigation, but makes it hard to deep link at relevant content.

Given the popularity of server side includes, content management systems, and dynamic languages there really is no legitimate reason to use frames to build a content site today.

Fresh Content

Content which is dynamic in nature and gives people a reason to keep paying attention to your website.

Many SEOs talk up fresh content, but fresh content does not generally mean re-editing old content. It more often refers to creating new content. The primary advantages to fresh content are:

  • Maintain and grow mindshare: If you keep giving people a reason to pay attention to you more and more people will pay attention to you, and link to your site.
  • Faster idea spreading: If many people pay attention to your site, when you come out with good ideas they will spread quickly.
  • Growing archives: If you are a content producer then owning more content means you have more chances to rank. If you keep building additional fresh content eventually that gives you a large catalog of relevant content.
  • Frequent crawling: Frequently updated websites are more likely to be crawled frequently.

FTP

File Transfer Protocol is a protocol for transferring data between computers.

Many content management systems (such as blogging platforms) include FTP capabilities. Web development software such as Dreamweaver also comes with FTP capabilities. There are also a number of free or cheap FTP programs such as Cute FTP, Core FTP, and Leech FTP.

Fuzzy Search

Search which will find matching terms when terms are misspelled (or fuzzy).

Fuzzy search technology is similar to stemming technology, with the exception that fuzzy search corrects the misspellings at the users end and stemming searches for other versions of the same core word within the index.

 G

GAP

Google Advertising Professional is a program which qualifies marketers as being proficient AdWords marketers.

See also:

Gladwell, Malcolm

Popular author who wrote the book titled The Tipping Point.

See also:

Godin, Seth

Popular blogger, author, viral marketer and business consultant.

See also:

  • Seth's blog - Seth talks about marketing
  • Purple Cow - Probably Seth's most popular book. It is about how to be remarkable. Links are citations or remarks. This book is a highly recommended for any SEO.
  • All Marketers Are Liars - Book about creating and marketing authentic brand related stories in a low trust world.
  • The Big Red Fez - Small quick book about usability errors common to many websites.
  • Google speech - see Seth's speech at Google.
  • Squidoo - community driven topical lens site created by Seth Godin

Google

The world's leading search engine in terms of reach. Google pioneered search by analyzing linkage data via PageRank. Google was created by Stanford students Larry Page and Sergey Brin.

See also

GoogleBot

Google's search engine spider.

Google has a shared crawl cache between their various spiders, including vertical search spiders and spiders associated with ad targeting.

See also:

Google AdSense (see AdSense)

Google AdWords (see AdWords)

Google Base

Free database of semantically structured information created by Google.

Google Base may also help Google better understand what types of information are commercial in nature, and how they should structure different vertical search products.

See also:

Google Bombing

Making a pank rank well for a specific search query by pointing hundreds or thousands of links at it with the keywords in the anchor text.

See also:

Google Bowling

Knocking a competitor out of the search results by pointing hundreds or thousands of low trust low quality links at their website.

Typically it is easier to bowl new sites out of the results. Older established sites are much harder to knock out of the search results.

Google Checkout

Payment service provided by Google which helps Google better understand merchant conversion rates and the value of different keywords and markets.

See also:

Google Dance

In the past Google updated their index roughly once a month. Those updates were named Google Dances, but since Google shifted to a constantly updating index, Google no longer does what was traditionally called a Google Dance.

Major search indexes are constantly updating. Google refers to this continuous refresh as everflux.

The second meaning of Google Dance is a yearly party at Google's corporate headquarters which Google holds for search engine marketers. This party coincides with the San Jose Search Engine Strategies conference.

See also:

Google Keyword Tool

Keyword research tool provided by Google which estimates the competition for a keyword, recommends related keywords, and will tell you what keywords Google thinks are relevant to your site or a page on your site.

See also:

Google OneBox

Portion of the search results page above the organic search results which Google sometimes uses to display vertical search results from Google News, Google Base, and other Google owned vertical search services.

Google Sitemaps

Program which webmasters can use to help Google index their contents.

Please note that the best way to submit your site to search engines and to keep it in their search indexes is to build high quality editorial links.

See also:

Google Sitelinks

On some search results where Google thinks one result is far more relevant than other results (like navigational or brand related searches) they may list numerous deep links to that site at the top of the search results.

Google Supplemental Index

Index where pages with lower trust scores are stored. Pages may be placed in Google's Supplemental Index if they consist largely of duplicate content, if the URLs are excessively complex in nature, or the site which hosts them lacks significant trust.

Google Traffic Estimator

Tool which estimates bid prices and how many Google searchers will click on an ad for a particular keyword.

If you do not submit a bid price the tool will return an estimated bid price necessary to rank #1 for 85% of Google's queries for a particular keyword.

See also:

Google Trends

Tool which allows you to see how Google search volumes for a particular keyword change over time.

See also:

Google Website Optimizer

Free multi variable testing platform used to help AdWords advertisers improve their conversion rates.

See also:

Guestbook Spam

A type of low quality automated link which search engines do not want to place much trust on.

 H

Headings

The heading element briefly describes the subject of the section it introduces.

Heading elements go from H1 to H6 with the lower numbered headings being most important. You should only use a single H1 element on each page, and may want to use multiple other heading elements to structure a document. An H1 element source would look like:

<h1>Your Topic</h1>

Heading elements may be styled using CSS. Many content management systems place the same content in the main page heading and the page title, although in many cases it may be preferential to mix them up if possible.

See also:

Headline

The title of an article or story.

Hidden Text

SEO technique used to show search engine spiders text that human visitors do not see.

While some sites may get away with it for a while, generally the risk to reward ratio is inadequate for most legitimate sites to consider using hidden text.

Hilltop

Algorithm which ranks results largely based on unaffiliated expert citations.

See also:

HITS

Link based algorithm which ranks relevancy scores based on citations from topical authorities.

See also:

Hijacking

Making a search engine believe that another website exists at your URL. Typically done using techniques such as a 302 redirect or meta refresh.

Home Page

The main page on your website, which is largely responsible for helping develop your brand and setting up the navigational schemes that will be used to help users and search engines navigate your website.

As far as SEO goes, a home page is typically going to be one of the easier pages to rank for some of your more competitive terms, largely because it is easy to build links at a home page. You should ensure your homepage stays focused and reinforces your brand though, and do not assume that most of your visitors will come to your site via the home page. If your site is well structured many pages on your site will likely be far more popular and rank better than your home page for relevant queries.

Host (see Server)

.htaccess

Apache directory-level configuration file which can be used to password protect or redirect files.

As a note of caution, make sure you copy your current .htaccess file before editing it, and do not edit it on a site that you can't afford to have go down unless you know what you are doing.

See also:

HTML

HyperText Markup Language is the language in which pages on the World Wide Web are created.

Some newer web pages are also formatted in XHTML.

See also:

HTTP

HyperText Transfer Protocol is the foremost used protocol to communicate between servers and web browsers. Hypertext transfer protocol is the means by which data is transferred from its residing location on a server to an active browser.

Hubs

Topical hubs are sites which link to well trusted within their topical community. A topical authority is a page which is referenced from many topical hub sites. A topical hub is a page which references many authorities.

See also:

 I

IDF

Inverse Document Frequency is a term used to help determine the position of a term in a vector space model.

IDF = log ( total documents in database / documents containing the term )

Inbound Link

Link pointing to one website from another website.

Most search engines allow you to see a sample of links pointing to a document by searching using the link: function. For example, using link:www.seobook.com would show pages linking to the homepage of this site (both internal links and inbound links). Due to canonical URL issues www.site.com and site.com may show different linkage data. Google typically shows a much smaller sample of linkage data than competing engines do, but Google still knows of and counts many of the links that do not show up when you use their link: function.

Index

Collection of data used as bank to search through to find a match to a user fed query. The larger search engines have billions of documents in their catalogs.

When search engines search they search via reverse indexes by words and return results based on matching relevancy vectors. Stemming and semantic analysis allow search engines to return near matches. Index may also refer to the root of a folder on a web server.

Internal Link

Link from one page on a site to another page on the same site.

It is preferential to use descriptive internal linking to make it easy for search engines to understand what your website is about. Use consistent navigational anchor text for each section of your site, emphasizing other pages within that section. Place links to relevant related pages within the content area of your site to help further show the relationship between pages and improve the usability of your website.

Information Architecture

Designing, categorizing, organizing, and structuring content in a useful and meaningful way.

Good information architecture considers both how humans and search spiders access a website. Information architecture suggestions:

  • focus each page on a specific topic
  • use descriptive page titles and meta descriptions which describe the content of the page
  • use clean (few or no variables) descriptive file names and folder names
  • use headings to help break up text and semantically structure a document
  • use breadcrumb navigation to show page relationships
  • use descriptive link anchor text
  • link to related information from within the content area of your web pages
  • improve conversion rates by making it easy for people to take desired actions
  • avoid feeding search engines duplicate or near-duplicate content

Information Retrieval

The field of science based on sorting or searching through large data sets to find relevant information.

Inktomi

Search engine which pioneered the paid inclusion business model. Inktomi was bought by Yahoo! at the end of 2002.

Internal Navigation (see Navigation)

Internet

Vast worldwide network of computers connected via TCP/IP.

Internet Explorer

Microsoft's web browser. After they beat out Netscape's browser on the marketshare front they failed to innovate on any level for about 5 years, until Firefox forced them to.

See also:

Inverted File (see Reverse Index)

Invisible Web

Portions of the web which are not easily accessible to crawlers due to search technology limitations, copyright issues, or information architecture issues.

IP Address

Internet Protocol Address. Every computer connected to the internet has an IP address. Some websites and servers have unique IP addresses, but most web hosts host multiple websites on a single host.

IP delivery (see cloaking)

ISP

Internet Service Providers sell end users access to the web. Some of these companies also sell usage data to web analytics companies.

Italics (see emphasis)

 J

JavaScript

A client-side scripting language that can be embedded into HTML documents to add dynamic features.

Search engines do not index most content in JavaScript. In AJAX, JavaScript has been combined with other technologies to make web pages even more interactive.

 K

Keyword

A word or phrase which implies a certain mindset or demand that targeted prospects are likely to search for.

Long tail and brand related keywords are typically worth more than shorter and vague keywords because they typically occur later in the buying cycle and are associated with a greater level of implied intent.

Keyword Density

An old measure of search engine relevancy based on how prominent keywords appeared within the content of a page. Keyword density is no longer a valid measure of relevancy over a broad open search index though.

When people use keyword stuffed copy it tends to read mechanically (and thus does not convert well and is not link worthy), plus some pages that are crafted with just the core keyword in mind often lack semantically related words and modifiers from the related vocabulary (and that causes the pages to rank poorly as well).

See also:

Keyword Funnel

The relationship between various related keywords that searchers search for. Some searches are particularly well aligned with others due to spelling errors, poor search relevancy, and automated or manual query refinement.

See also:

  • MSN Search Funnels - shows keywords people search for before or after they search for another keyword

Keyword Research

The process of discovering relevant keywords and keyword phrases to focus your SEO and PPC marketing campaigns on.

Example keyword discovery methods:

  • using keyword research tools
  • looking at analytics data or your server logs
  • looking at page copy on competing sites
  • reading customer feedback
  • placing a search box on your site and seeing what people are looking for
  • talking to customers to ask how and why they found and chose your business

Keyword Research Tools

Tools which help you discover potential keywords based on past search volumes, search trends, bid prices, and page content from related websites.

Short list of the most popular keyword research tools:

  • SEO Book Keyword Research Tool - free, driven by Overture, this tool cross references all of my favorite keyword research tools. In addition to linking to traditional keyword research tools, it also links to tools such as Google Suggest, Buzz related tools, vertical databases, social bookmarking and tagging sites, and latent semantic indexing related tools.
  • Overture - free, powered from Yahoo! search data. Heavily biased toward over representing commercial queries, combines singular and plural versions of a keyword into a single data point.
  • Google - free, powered from Google search data.
  • Wordtracker - paid, powered from Dogpile and MetaCrawler. Due to small sample size their keyword database may be easy to spam.

Please note that most keyword research tools used alone are going to be highly inaccurate at giving exact quantitative search volumes. The tools are better for qualitative measurements. To test the exact volume for a keyword it may make sense to set up a test Google AdWords campaign.

Keyword Stuffing

Writing copy that uses excessive amounts of the core keyword.

When people use keyword stuffed copy it tends to read mechanically (and thus does not convert well and is not link worthy), plus some pages that are crafted with just the core keyword in mind often lack semantically related words and modifiers from the related vocabulary (and that causes the pages to rank poorly as well).

See also:

Keyword Suggestion Tools (see Keyword Research Tools)

Kleinberg, Jon

Scientist largely responsible for much of the research that went into hubs and authorities based search relevancy algorithms.

See also:

 L

 M  

Malda, Rob

Founder of Slashdot.org, a popular editorially driven technology news forum.

Manual Review

All major search engines combine a manual review process with their automated relevancy algorithms to help catch search spam and train their relevancy algorithms. Abnormal usage data or link growth patterns may also flag sites for manual review.

See also:

Mechanical Turk

Amazon.com program which allows you to hire humans to perform easy tasks that computers are bad at.

See also:

Meme

In The Selfish Gene Richard Dawkins defines a meme as "a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation." Many people use the word meme to refer to self spreading or viral ideas.

See also:

  • Techmeme - meme tracker which shows technology ideas that are currently spreading on popular technology blogs

Meta Description

The meta description tag is typically a sentence or two of content which describes the content of the page.

A good meta description tag should:

  • be relevant and unique to the page;
  • reinforce the page title; and
  • focus on including offers and secondary keywords and phrases to help add context to the page title.

Relevant meta description tags may appear in search results as part of the page description below the page title.

The code for a meta description tag looks like this

<meta name="Description" content="Your meta description here. " / >

See also:

Meta Keywords

The meta keywords tag is a tag which can be used to highlight keywords and keyword phrases which the page is targeting.

The code for a meta keyword tag looks like this

<meta name="Keywords" content="keyword phrase, another keyword, yep another, maybe one more ">

Many people spammed meta keyword tags and searchers typically never see the tag, so most search engines do not place much (if any) weight on it. Many SEO professionals no longer use meta keywords tags.

See also:

Meta Refresh

A meta tag used to make a browser refresh to another URL location.

A meta refresh looks like this

<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="10;url=http://www.site.com/folder/page.htm">

Generally in most cases it is preferred to use a 301 or 302 redirect over a meta refresh.

Meta Search

A search engine which pulls top ranked results from multiple other search engines and rearranges them into a new result set.

See also:

Meta Tags

People generally refer to meta descriptions and meta keywords as meta tags. Some people also group the page title in with these.

Microsoft

Maker of the popular Windows operating system and Internet Explorer browser.

Mindshare

A measure of the amount of people who think of you or your product when thinking of products in your category.

Sites with strong mindshare, top rankings, or a strong memorable brand are far more likely to be linked at than sites which are less memorable and have less search exposure. The link quality of mindshare related links most likely exceeds the quality of the average link on the web. If you sell non-commodities, personal recommendations also typically carry far greater weight than search rankings alone.

See also:

Mirror Site

Site which mirrors (or duplicates) the contents of another website.

Generally search engines prefer not to index duplicate content. The one exception to this is that if you are a hosting company it might make sense to offer free hosting or a free mirror site to a popular open source software site to build significant link equity.

Movable Type

For sale blogging software which allows you to host a blog on your website.

Movable Type is typically much harder to install that Wordpress is.

See also:

MSN Search

Search engine built by Microsoft. MSN is the default search provider in Internet Explorer.

See also:

Multi Dimensional Scaling

The process of taking shapshots of documents in a database to discover topical clusters through the use of latent semantic indexing. Multi dimensional scaling is more efficient than singular vector decomposition since only a rough approximation of relevance is necessary when combined with other ranking criteria.

MySpace

One of the most popular social networking sites, largely revolving around connecting musicians to fans and having an easy to use blogging platform.

See also:

 N

Natural Language Processing

Algorithms which attempt to understand the true intent of a search query rather than just matching results to keywords.

Natural Link (see Editorial Link)

Natrual Search (see Organic Search Results)

Navigation

Scheme to help website users understand where they are, where they have been, and how that relates to the rest of your website.

It is best to use regular HTML navigation rather than coding your navigation in JavaScript, Flash, or some other type of navigation which search engines may not be able to easily index.

Netscape

Originally a company that created a popular web browser by the same name, Netscape is now a social news site similar to Digg.com.

See also:

Niche

A topic or subject which a website is focused on.

Search is a broad field, but as you drill down each niche consists of many smaller niches. An example of drilling down to a niche market

  • search
  • search marketing, privacy considerations, legal issues, history of, future of, different types of vertical search, etc.
  • search engine optimization, search engine advertising
  • link building, keyword research, reputation monitoring and management, viral marketing, SEO copywriting, Google AdWords, information architecture, etc.

Generally it is easier to compete in small, new, or underdeveloped niches than trying to dominate large verticals. As your brand and authority grow you can go after bigger markets.

Nofollow

Attribute used to prevent a link from passing link authority. Commonly used on sites with user generated content, like in blog comments.

The code to use nofollow on a link appears like

<a href="http://wwwseobook.com.com" rel="nofollow">anchor text </a>

Nofollow can also be used in a robots meta tag to prevent a search engine from counting any outbound links on a page. This code would look like this

<META NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="INDEX, NOFOLLOW">

Google's Matt Cutts also pushes webmasters to use nofollow on any paid links, but since Google is the world's largest link broker, their advice on how other people should buy or sell links should be taken with a grain of salt. Please note that it is generally not advised to practice link hoarding as that may look quite unnatural. Outbound links may also boost your relevancy scores in some search engines.

 O

Ontology

In philosophy it is the study of being. As it relates to search, it is the attempt to create an exhaustive and rigorous conceptual schema about a domain. An ontology is typically a hierarchical data structure containing all the relevant entities and their relationships and rules within that domain.

See also:

Open Directory Project, The (see DMOZ)

Open Source

Software which is distributed with its source code such that developers can modify it as they see fit.

On the web open source is a great strategy for quickly building immense exposure and mindshare.

Opera

A fast standards based web browser.

See also:

Organic Search Results

Most major search engines have results that consist of paid ads and unpaid listings. The unpaid / algorithmic listings are called the organic search results. Organic search results are organized by relevancy, which is largely determined based on linkage data, page content, usage data, and historical domain and trust related data.

Most clicks on search results are on the organic search results. Some studies have shown that 60 to 80% + of clicks are on the organic search results.

Outbound Link

A link from one website pointing at another external website.

Some webmasters believe in link hoarding, but linking out to useful relevant related documents is an easy way to help search engines understand what your website is about. If you reference other resources it also helps you build credibility and leverage the work of others without having to do everything yourself. Some webmasters track where their traffic comes from, so if you link to related websites they may be more likely to link back to your site.

See also:

Overture

The company which pioneered search marketing by selling targeted searches on a pay per click basis. Originally named GoTo, they were eventually bought out by Yahoo! and branded as Yahoo! Search Marketing.

See also:

Overture Keyword Selector Tool

Popular keyword research tool, based largely on Yahoo! search statistics. Heavily skewed toward commercially oriented searches, also combines singular and plural versions of a keyword into a single version.

See also:

Overture Keyword Selector Tool

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