SEO Glossary
The following are terms and definitions of varying elements used within or related to search engine optimization. The is a brief list, but will be added to and spruced up in the upcoming weeks.
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.
Absolute Link
A link which shows the full URL of the page being linked to. 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.
AdWords
Google’s advertisement and link auction network. Most of Google’s ads are keyword targeted and sold on a cost-per-click (CPC) basis in an auction which factors in ad clickthrough rate (CTR) as well as max bid.
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.
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.
Anchor Text
The text that a visitor clicks 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.
Authority
The ability of a page or domain to rank well within the various 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.
Backlink (A.K.A. Inbound Link)
Link pointing to one website from another website.
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.
Breadcrumb Navigation
Navigational technique used to help search engines and website users understand the relationship between pages.
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.
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.
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