Latest SEO Glossary Updated – To help you better understand the specific activities of SEO services , I have created this complete and constantly updated SEO and SEA Glossary which contains the meaning of the most popular terms in Online Marketing .
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Also Read : Why Do You Need SEMrush? 6 Magic Ways You Can Use It To Increase Traffic And Sales
Table of Contents
1000+ SEO Glossary Terms and Phrases
404
(also “Error 404”): Standard response code indicating the correct achievement of the server by the user agent, but the inability to access the resource called.
A / B Test
The practice of creating two almost identical documents or sites in order to determine which design or copy variation produces the best result. Often used in PPC marketing, occasionally used in organic SEO.
Above the fold
The term “above the fold” derives from the jargon of the printed paper (literally, in a newspaper, “above the fold” or in the upper and most visible part of the first page) and indicates a better positioning condition of an element than others.
AdSense
It is the most popular advertising program on the web and allows you to monetize traffic on your site by hosting text ads and / or graphic banners, based on the PPC (pay per click) model and on the principle of contextualizing the adverts with respect to the contents of the host pages.
AdWords – Google Ads
It is the Google advertising network, as well as one of the main resources for web marketing. Allows you to show ads in Google’s “sponsored” sections and within the network of partner sites (the sites that host the AdSense program). Specularly to Adsense, it is based on the PPC (pay per click) model and on the principle of contextualization of adverts with respect to the contents of the host pages.
Affiliation
(Affiliate program) Pay-for-performance program that allows you to sell products or services originally sold on another on your site. Each purchase completed is paid as a percentage thus obtaining a remuneration for affiliation to the parent site.
Agent
A browser, or any other type of application that can connect to a web server and search / view its contents. For example: Microsoft Internet Explorer, Netscape, and search engine robots
aggregator
site or tool that aggregates information from different sources together.
Algorithm
Series of combinations and calculations with which the spider of a search engine is programmed for the evaluation of the web pages to be analyzed on the Internet. An algorithm is constantly changing to improve its evaluation parameters of web documents and to combat the phenomena of Spam against search results (attempt to manipulate the SERP).
Allintitle: “keyword”
Command used on Google to find the number of HTML pages in the Google index that use the phrase / keyword indicated in quotation marks as Title Tag
Alt Tag
Alt Text or Alt Attribute represents a command which, inserted in the IMG tag of the images, allows you to show a comment or a brief explanation of the graphic element. The Alt Tag can be viewed by placing the mouse over the image in question. This tag was implemented to help less able users in interpreting images that are difficult to read or difficult to read.
Anchor text
The text that makes up a text link, that is, the one between the opening <a> HTML tag (still) and the respective closing tag (</a>). The words contained in a text link can help thematize the page towards which the link points.
Applet
Small Java program that can be inserted into HTML pages.
Article marketing
promotion and visibility strategy that uses the publication of articles online, in specific article collection sites.
ASP
Active Server Pages, programming language for web pages created by Microsoft.
Author Rank
A probability distribution modeled on PageRank used to determine the quality of an article based on the reputation of the associate author. AuthorRank was introduced to Google’s search for algorithms in 2011.
Authority – online authority
The quality of a document (page) indicated by different hubs. An authority page is supposed to have a lot of content relevant to a main topic. Adapted in common use by Jon Kleinberg’s HITS algorithm.
Authorship
A method developed and implemented by Google whereby writers use a Google+ account to identify content that they have legitimately written and published. This content is distinguished from the appearance of an authorized image of the content producer in the search results alongside appropriate lists. Google discontinued Authorship in 2014.
Backlink
A hyperlink to a page, coming from a page residing on a different domain. Inbound links are examined in order to evaluate the popularity of the links. From a website perspective, a backlink is a link received from another website. From the point of view of a single web page, a backlink is a link received from other pages, from the same site or from external sites.
Bad Neighborhood
Term used by some search engines to indicate those websites that adopt positioning techniques that are frowned upon by engines. In some engines, the position of a site may deteriorate if the latter offers links to websites considered “bad neighbors“.
Ban
Operation, carried out by the search engine, which consists in the total removal of the documents of a given domain from its archive.
Banned
A website is “banned”, or deleted, from the archives of a search engine when the engine identifies the use of incorrect techniques (spam) on the site to artificially increase its position on search results. This is the most serious type of penalty that an engine can inflict.
Below the fold
Page content that is not seen unless the side navigation bar is lowered.
Bid
(From English “to bid“, offer) Term used to call the offer that is given for each single click for a pay per click campaign (PPC). Also used “biddare” in jargon. It is about offering because the use of PPC ads is entrusted to a sort of online auction; depending on the amount paid, a more or less high position is reached depending on the bid per click.
Black Hat
Term used to indicate an SEO that uses positioning techniques considered spam by search engines. It’s a softer way to say spammer and it’s the opposite of White Hat.
Blog
Personal or corporate online diary that is frequently updated. It can contain links, images, sounds and videos. Users can leave comments with their own link, name or nickname and email address.
Blog Farm
A group of blogs run by one person or populated by software, usually RSS feed scraping scripts. Used for link building, farms are created by special software that installs popular blogging across multiple domains and hosting software. Sometimes the term is confused with link farms.
Blog Network
Any group of blogs (hosted on large websites or hosted on their own dedicated sites) that are used together for a common purpose. Some blog networks are business activities (e.g. the AOL blog network, including TechCrunch, Huffington Post, etc.). Some blog networks can be used to manipulate search engine results by Web spammers.
Bookmarking
English word for “bookmark“, it is the system through which it is possible to save a page based on personal criteria (tags, title, category, etc). Social Bookmarks are systems that allow you to share saved pages with other users and search for new ones from those saved by other people within the same channel, using tags and keywords.
BOT
Series of software that analyzes the web in search of new internet pages to be included in the search engine databases, new content to be indexed in the pages already present in the engines indexes. However, these programs are also used for some practices carried out by spammers looking for e-mail addresses or other.
Bounce Rate
Literally ‘bounce rate‘, in the world of web marketing it is used to indicate the rate of users who leave a web page after a few seconds of viewing. A high value of Bounce Rate therefore represents a negative value for the site taken into analysis, as it shows a low interest of the users towards the contents presented for a poor quality of the same or an unclear way of presenting them.
Cache
Web page or part of it held by the operating system of a computer or by the spider of a search engine
Caffeine Update
name of a Google search engine update.
ccTLD
A country code top level domain (ccTLD) is a top level domain on the Internet generally used or reserved for a country, sovereign state or dependent territory identified with a country code. All ASCII ccTLD identifiers are two letter long and all two letter top level domains are ccTLD. In 2010, the IAA (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority) began implementing internationalized top-level domains with country code, consisting of native characters of the language when displayed in an application for the end user. The creation and delegation of ccTLD is described in RFC 1591, corresponding to ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 codes.
Cloaking
A method of presenting different content depending on the agent requesting it. Technique that in itself would not be considered spam, given that minor forms of cloaking are implemented for example to display different versions of the same site depending on the user’s browser, or the resolution of the monitor. Over time, it has become a technique used to present search engines with an optimized version of a site which, when viewed by the user, appears completely different. In practice it is a technique that allows you to change the contents of a web page “on the fly”, depending on who visits it. For example, it is possible to show certain texts to users and other texts to the spider of a search engine. Search engines usually dislike sites that use cloaking to show spiders content other than that shown to users; this technique is in fact considered spam and the sites that use it can be banned from the engines.
Clustering
(trad. Group) Submit only one page of a site within the search results. This means that the top positions of a results page are not occupied by the pages of a single website and the results are therefore more varied and useful for the user. Google clustered, grouping no more than two pages of a site within the results.
Content marketing
The practice of publishing content without any immediate return on investment in order to stimulate new consumer interests in a business or brand. Since the end of 2012 the term “content marketing – content marketing” has been taken advantage of by bloggers in the SEO sector as a euphemism for the generation of large volumes of useless Web articles.
CMS
The meaning of CMS is Content Management System, Server-Side software that allows the management and updating of a website through a graphical interface. A CMS is a website or portal management system that allows you to add news, images and other types of files without any knowledge of programming codes such as HTML, ASP, PHP, etc. It allows the management via a panel especially for non-web professionals. Used by websites, portals and blogs.
Comment Spamming
Widespread form of spam aimed at increasing the link popularity of your site by commenting on blogs that do not use the no follow property to easily obtain links from trusted or themed sites.
Common Words
commonly used words that do not affect the meaning of a page. Words such as “Welcome”, “Home page” or “Next” are filtered in the indexing process, as is the case for Stop Words (see below)
Dynamic content
They are the contents of a web page that vary with the changing of various parameters. Search engines have no problems analyzing this content, if they are produced from a “server side” language (PHP, ASP, etc.) but encounter problems when the page uses “customer side” languages (Javascript in the head), as the spiders who fetch the pages are unable to interpret these languages.
Duplicate content
Text that is published on multiple pages on the same site or on pages belonging to different sites. The search engines avoid proposing to the users who carry out the searches a list of identical or too similar results. Therefore, publishing on one’s own site texts existing elsewhere on the web does not improve the uniqueness of the site itself and risks creating a low quality index for engines.
Contextual Ads
Type of banner or Pay-per-click ad that varies its advertising according to the topic discussed on the page. These types of ads allow you to reach target users who are very interested in the type of advertising because they are very relevant to the topics covered on the pages.
Conversion Rate
Conversion rate. Term used in web analysis to indicate the percentage of traffic to a site that is converted into subscribers. Getting a good conversion rate is imperative for a website.
Conversion
Conversion means the “Action” that the owner of a web document wants the user to perform once he arrives on his pages: it can be a request for information, registration for a service or purchase of an asset.
Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)
The practice of analyzing conversion data to determine best practices for increasing or improving conversions on a website.
Cookie
They are text files sent by a sever to a client, and then sent back from the client to the sever whenever the user accesses the sever in the future.
CPC
Cost per Click. Term used when using Pay per Click (PPC) services. Indicates the unit cost of a click.
CPM
Cost Per Thousand (CPT Click-per-thousand in English) Cost to be incurred to reach a thousand visitors.
Budget crawl
A general expression for which there is no universally accepted explanation. Google has published an article about the crawling process which attempts to provide clarity to website owners on how Google analyzes websites.
Crawler
Also called Spider. A crawler visits a site and examines its pages. He then takes the pages and stores them in a database that the search engine will use for searches. Program used by search engines to scan the web and identify the pages to be downloaded. It is almost synonymous with “spider”, as its purpose is slightly different.
Cross linking
Link exchange that can take place between one or more websites or on the same site. It can be used in a link matrix for best positioning in engines.
CSS
An acronym for Cascading Style Sheet , or style sheet containing the rules for formatting html documents
CTR
Click-Thru Rate. The relationship between views and clicks of a banner or link.
Dead link
(“Dead link” from English) link that leads to nothing or that doesn’t work. For a search engine, this type of broken link is excluded from the search results or not taken into consideration.
Deep crawl
It is a great process of crawling the web by search engine spiders: it consists of visiting most (or all) of the sites in your archive and taking as many pages as possible.
Deep link
Link made not to the home page of a site or the main page (index page) but to another page belonging to the structure. See link, hyperlink
DeepBot
Spider that analyzes web pages in depth unlike the FreshBot that scans them in search of new content or through short-term passages
Keyword density
Density is an index of how frequently a keyword appears in a text. This frequency index is usually indicated as a percentage of the keyword over the whole text. In a slightly different interpretation, the percentage can be referred to the words of the text that are repeated at least once. Many webmasters and SEOs mistakenly believe that keyword density is an important factor taken into consideration by search engines. In reality, although it is true that excessively high percentages of a word produce poorly readable texts and put the page at risk of penalties, search engines do not use density as one of the factors to decide the position of the page in the search results, preferring other more precise and complex indices to it.
Directory
Website catalog sorted by category. Each website is hosted in a category related to the contents of the site. In general, directories, unlike the “proper” search engines, select the websites offered by users manually, including them in the catalog only if they are considered interesting and quality.
Disavow Link
Google Webmastertools tool that allows you to reject unwanted links to the pages of your site
DMOZ
Another name by which the ODP is known.
DNS
Domain Name System. A system that allows the identification of a resource on the Web through an alphanumeric string (the domain) rather than with the IP address.
Domain authority
Domain Authority (DA) is a search engine ranking score developed by Moz that predicts how much a site will rank on the search engine results pages (SERP). The score of a domain authority ranges from one to 100, with higher scores corresponding to a greater ability to position itself. Domain Authority is calculated by evaluating multiple factors, including backlinks, in a single DA score. This score can then be used when comparing websites or monitoring a website’s “ranking strength” over time. You can view a website’s DA using MozBar (a free Chrome extension), Link Explorer (a backlink analysis tool), the SERP Analysis section of Keyword Explorer and dozens of other SEO tools across the web.
Web domain
The name of a website. They have a variety of extensions such as .com, .net, .org, .biz or by state: .co.uk for the United Kingdom, .it for Italy, .ru for the Russian Federation, etc.
Doorway page
By now considered definitively spam, it is a web page focused on a keyword whose aim is to obtain a high positioning in the search engine results pages and bring traffic to the main site through automatic browser redirection. A page whose textual content is strictly focused on a keyword or a short key phrase. In common use, the term has taken on a negative connotation, as generally the doorways are not used to host textual content attractive to visitors, but only keywords and links designed to artificially increase the relevance of the page in the eyes of search engines.
Drupal
One of the best known CMS in circulation: based on PHP, free and open source, it has numerous fields of application and a good versatility. Its lower diffusion compared to WordPress and Joomla is to be attributed to a slightly steeper learning curve (especially as regards configuration and setting) of the aforementioned platforms.
Dynamic Content
(dynamic content) Information available through a web page, which is contained in a remote archive. Sometimes dynamic content can be found immediately, for example if the page url has the extension .asp, .cfm, .cgi or .shtml. Currently the search engines (also Goolgle) index the dynamic pages in an almost analogous way to the static pages, with some limitations.
E-commerce
The term is used both to indicate the sector of the so-called “electronic commerce” and to designate web based applications that allow you to implement these activities within websites.
Entry Page
These are the pages on which a user logs in to the site. It may also not be the home page but a landing page that the user reached after clicking on an adwords ad, for example.
Everflux
Phenomenon that sees a site change suddenly and repeatedly position in Google search results. Even a day later, a page can appear in very different positions or even disappear temporarily from the search engine archive. This effect is caused by the fact that Google can attach particular importance to new pages or to those that have recently been modified, rewarding them with a slightly better position. Such new pages or with new content, therefore, may appear in a prominent position for a day, and then drop in position in the following days, when the contents are no longer considered “fresh“.
Exit page
They are the pages from which a user leaves our site, therefore the last page seen before abandoning him.
Eye tracking
studies and science that analyzing the movement of the mouse on the web page studies how the visitor consumes the web page.
Feed Burner
Created in 2004 and then sold to Google in 2007, it is an RSS feed management system.
RSS feed
In general, RSS (an acronym for Really Simple Syndication) can be defined as one of the most popular formats for the distribution of Web content. From a more technical point of view, however, an RSS Feed is not an .XML file that contains structured form information on the page to which it is linked and its contents. Here’s how it works: many sites, especially blogs, forums, newspapers, portals, present an RSS feed on their pages through which they offer constantly updated news. The interested user indicates to his news aggregator program the feeds of his interest: the news aggregator checks them with specific frequency, reporting the desired updates.
FFA (Free For All) link
Web pages where any visitor can add a link to their site. They were born to artificially increase the Link Popularity of a site and usually consist of huge pages filled exclusively with links and without any content attractive to visitors. They are extremely frowned upon by search engines who often adopt solutions to ignore them and in some cases to penalize the websites that use them.
Filter
Procedure applied by an engine to the results of a search to improve its quality, consisting in eliminating from the results some pages that have certain characteristics. One of the most common filters is the one used to eliminate pages that are too similar to each other from the results of a specific search, so as to present the user with a list of results that are truly different from each other. A filter is not a penalty, as it does not attribute a negative value to the pages but only ignores some of them in the context of a specific search.
Frames
A technique for combining several HTML documents within the same screen. A website based on a frame structure may have problems with search engines, and may not be correctly indexed, although many search engines now support the frame technique.
Frameset / Frame / Iframe
The Frameset is a technique that allows you to divide the space of the browser display window into rectangular areas, called “frames”, each of which shows a different HTML file. The method is used to make users load only those areas of the window destined to remain fixed and not to change content (a header at the top, a navigation menu on the side, etc.). It is recommended to use frames only when strictly indispensable, as problems of usability and indexing of the site with search engines can arise.
Freshbot
Name of some spiders of the Google search engine looking for new pages or in any case new content to be indexed.
FTP
(File Transfer Protocol) Translated into Italian: file transfer protocol. As the term itself says it is a file transfer protocol between hosts. It is used through special programs and is usually used to move information relating to a website on a server in order to allow its online display.
GIF
(Graphics Interchange Format) Type of .gif graphic file extension. Usually used for graphics that don’t have very detailed shades.
Google Dance
Period of time that Google devotes to updating its main database. During the update, Google recalculates the PageRank ™ values of all the pages in the archive. Google Dance usually takes place once a month and lasts a few days; it is called “dance” because during this period the positions of the sites on Google can change repeatedly, often appearing inaccurate and misleading. Everything settles down when the update is complete. In more than one Italian website we have read statements that during the Google Dance it would be possible to know in advance the results of the Google update, but this is completely wrong; on the contrary, during the “dance” one should not rely on the results of any Google datacenter, which appear unstable and incorrect.
Google Keyword Suggestion Tool
It is a Google tool that suggests keywords in relation to the term entered, also in relation to competing sites.
googlebombing
Technique used to position a web page for a specific word or phrase in Google results, creating a large number of links around the web that point to the page using the word or phrase in the anchor text.
Googlebot
It is the Google spider. See under “Crawler”
gTLDs
Generic top-level domains (gTLD) are one of the categories of top-level domains (TLD) managed by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) for use in the Internet Domain Name System. A top level domain is the bottom level of each fully qualified domain name. They are called generics for historical reasons; initially, they contrasted with country-specific TLDs in RFC 920.
Hallway page
Page containing links to a doorway page.
Heading Tag
The type of tag used in a header. These commands vary from number 1 to 6. Search engines give these particular importance. Very useful commands for SEO in the optimization of the web page and for the creation of captivating eyelets to capture the visitor’s attention on some text titles in the composition of online texts.
Hidden Text
Text of a web page visible to search engine spiders but invisible to flesh and blood users. This is often due to the selection of the text color identical to that of the page background, to the multiple use of the title (title tag), or because the text is inserted as a comment to the HTML code. Hidden text is often used as a spamdexing technique. Many search engines are able to locate hidden text, and to remove the pages that use it from their database, or to make it worse ranking.
Home page
It is the first page of the site, usually considered as the presentation of the site itself, as it proposes its style and a brief introduction. Corresponds to the domain of the site.
.htaccess
The .htaccess file is a simple text file containing apache directives for configuration. This file can be edited with a normal text editor such as notepad
HTTP
network protocol
Impression
It is the number of times a banner or web page is displayed to users. This term is found in advertising campaigns in which a cost per impression is charged, that is every time the banner or page is displayed regardless of whether the user clicks.
Inbound link
From a site’s point of view, it is a link received from other sites. Inbound links are extremely useful as they increase the Link Popularity of a site and contribute to increasing the PageRank ™ value calculated by Google.
Indexing
Not to be confused with positioning, indexing is the simple presence of a site among the indexes (list of sites) of a search engine or directory. Indexing is the process following a successful Add URL. Act performed by the search engine and which consists in adding a web page to the site archive (database) of the engine. It is synonymous with “registration”.
IP
Internet Protocol. The numerical address of a resource on the web. (See also DNS)
Javascript
Scripting language used for minor purposes within html pages. Scripts are generally interpreted directly by the browser
Joomla
A widely used CMS, together with Drupal and WordPress
JPG
Abbreviation for Joint Photographic Experts Group, type of format (.jpg) generally for images with the possibility of easy resizing of one’s own weight in Kb. of Kb at the expense of the quality of the photo.
Keyphrase
Set of few keywords (usually two or three) that form a short phrase or expression particularly relevant to a given topic.
Keyword
Term particularly relevant to a given topic. Users who search on engines often enter one or more keywords that they believe are related to the content they intend to find. The search engines then report to the user a list of web pages where the keywords entered appear.
Keyword advertising
(also known as Search Engine Advertising or PPC, Pay-Per-Click) Various ad tool and online advertising on the main search engines, portals and various circuits on the web. These advertisements are usually presented as text ads or not among the non-paid results of the engines. This type of promotion can be activated in a short time thanks to a sort of “online auction” (See BID) for the keywords our pages intended to advertise. Among its strengths, in addition to the fact of simple activation, there is certainly immediate visibility on the web and the ability to manage the campaign or campaigns by deciding a priori the daily, monthly budget and how much to spend for each single word or key phrase thus having full statistical control of the promotion activity and the reduced expenses.
Keyword Cannibalization
Practice of publishing multiple articles that have the same keyword on a single website. To cannibalize something is to reuse it, usually as a replacement for a necessary part. A more appropriate and accurate descriptive phrase would be an over-targeting of a single keyword.
Keyword density
(keyword density) The number of times that one or more keywords are repeated in the body of a page. Density is measurable through the use of special tools and software. An adequate density for a web page can vary from 4% to 10% but it is not an absolute rule. It is however advisable in SEO search engine optimization to stay close to or below these densities in order not to incur the so-called keyword-stuffing considered spam by the engines.
Keyword promincency
The closeness that can exist between one and more terms (keywords) in a web document. When evaluating web pages, search engines look at this prominent feature of the terms. If some keywords share their closeness they should express a concept together and are potentially signifiers of something.
Keyword Stuffing
The repetition and redundancy of certain keywords within the text, code, and tags of a web page. This technique is considered spam.
Landing page
The “landing” page for users coming from sponsored links and advertising: the Landing Page is a fundamental tool for web marketing. Its purpose is to maximize the conversions linked to the advertising investments of the website.
Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI)
latent semantic indexing. Technology initially introduced in AdSense to better thematise ads on publisher pages, allows you to understand which are the most appropriate terms of the page from a semantic point of view.
Lead Generation
The practice of attracting consumers interested in a product or service on a website, collecting information and selling it to merchants and service providers.
Link Authority
The number of incoming direct links to your website.
Link Building
It consists in defining some backlinks, with the primary purpose of producing traffic to the destination site. Typical sources of traffic are social networks (Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin), comments on similar blogs (if you have something interested to tell, of course) the various link bags spread on the web (such as bagtheweb.com), the various “Groupers” of links (deliciuous, reddit), social news sites (ziczac, oknotizie, upnews), (some) the sites of free classifieds (…). We usually operate using anchor text oriented on the keyphrases to be optimized, however the priority is to define textual anchors useful for making us understand what you are posting (it is not obvious or easy to do it, sometimes). Let it be said in passing: knowing how to “abstract” a backlink and predicting how it will appear on the site where you are inserting it is one of the skills that I have unconsciously more developed in recent years: trivial example, when you insert a comment in a blog it will be natural to associate the name field with the anchor text and URL (when available) with landing page. There are people who really get excited about finding things like that, and go around signing “free programs” or “free ebooks”.
Link Exchange
Term indicating the exchange of links, that is the reciprocal affixing of hypertext links on two different documents on the web. However, the term “link trading“, of equivalent meaning, is also used.
Link farm
Set of links created for the purpose of increasing link popularity. This type of activity is not well seen by the engines. System or service through which it is possible to increase the number of links received from a site. Being generally a technique aimed exclusively at increasing the Link Popularity of a site, it is poorly viewed by all search engines.
Link Juice
Indicates the sum of the three values passed through links from one document to another: theming, pagerank, authority.
Link Popularity
The sum of hypertext links pointing to a given domain or web document. The number of links around the web that point to a particular page or site. Link Popularity is one of the factors that search engines take into account to attribute the position of a page in search results. Engines assume that a page is more important or known if its Link Popularity is high.
Reciprocal link
It occurs when site A has a link to site B on its pages and site B returns with a link to site A. Reciprocal links are used heavily by webmasters to increase the Link Popularity of their websites. Logica would like that over time the search engines will give preference to spontaneous links rather than links born as a result of exchange agreements.
Link Wheel
Particular matrix of circular link, where A has a backlink towards B, B towards C and so on until it closes the circle again on A or, alternatively, leaving the ring created “open”. First-time SEO nerd exercise, however, since building one can be a health risk and cause truck tire treads on the skin (they say).
Meta Description
The Meta Description determines the extract that appears in the search engine serps accompanying the site title. Its direct utility for the purpose of organic positioning is debated among the SEOs. Text of a web page that describes its contents and topics. Some search engines extrapolate the description of a page from the contents of the DESCRIPTION meta tag, created for this purpose. Other engines create a description (on the fly) (snippet) by extrapolating the text from the areas of the page that contain the keywords searched by the user. If a page is present in ODP, some engines may show the description that directory editors have assigned to the page.
Meta Keywords
Meta widely used (and abused) for organic positioning on the first generation engines (ie Altavista) contains a selection of the most significant keywords of the web page.
Meta Search Engine (metasearch engine)
Metamotors are search engines that do not have their own archive of sites or their own crawler to scan the web. They provide answers to user searches by simultaneously querying different search engines and returning a list of those web pages that appear most frequently in the results of the engines. Some metasearch engines are Ixquick, Mamma.com and Vivisimo.
Meta tag
An HTML tag that hosts information of various kinds. Some of these tags (like DESCRIPTION and KEYWORDS) host content dedicated to search engines.
Meta tag robots
Unlike the other meta tags, it is not intended to provide information regarding the contents of the web page. On the contrary, it is a way to communicate with the search engine spider and invite him to follow some directives regarding the use of the web page taken.
Meta Title
Meta that determines the header of the site in the organic results of the search engines. Its weight in search engine positioning is undisputed.
Metadata
Data describing data. Usually referred to the META TAG of a web page, actually present also in the JPEG and SWF animations.
Mirror
(Mirror sites) Site copy of another but residing on a different internet domain. This technique is penalized by search engines and directories because it is considered spam.
Mirror Domain
(trad. Mirror domain) Exact copy of a site, which differs from the latter by the different domain name. It is a positioning technique – easily detectable by Google, therefore not recommended – which takes advantage of the relevance that is generally assigned to the descriptiveness of a domain (eg: www.scarpe-economiche-sportive.net). The webmaster creates a site, and in order to push its contents into the search engines, it duplicates it and publishes the contents under another domain, called ‘descriptive’. This technique is considered by the major spam search engines.
Search engine
Tool through which specific information can be found within a large amount of documents. The user carries out a search by inserting some terms which, presumably, are used in texts dealing with the topic sought and the engine returns a list of web pages and other types of documents containing the inserted terms.
Natural listing
(Natural results) It is said of results from free or non-paid SERP from search engines. This positioning takes place through the optimization techniques of the website called SEO.
Negative SEO
The practice of targeting links to a website with the intent to damage its reputation, its owner’s reputation, or to rig a search engine to penalize the website. Link bombardment and Google bowling are two forms of negative SEO that have been widely documented.
noFrames
Element usually used for framed pages. The content of the page between <noframes> and </noframes> is the only one that can be optimized in this type of website architecture.
ODP: Open Directory Project
Directory born and raised through the cooperation of thousands of volunteers, who continuously review websites with the aim of building a directory with many quality contents. The database of sites hosted by the directory is available to anyone and is used, among others, also by Google.
OOP
Over Optimization Penalty. Introduced during the Florida Update (2003), it is a form of penalty for all those pages which, although not spamming, present OVERTOPTIMIZATION of content and code. It is no coincidence that the sites most affected by the Florida Update were the sites of many SEOs.
Optimization
Activities carried out on the web pages of a website aimed at making content more attractive to search engines to improve visibility in the serp, and at the same time persuasive and explanatory to users of the site itself. Process by which the contents and technical characteristics of a page or an entire website are corrected and improved with the aim of providing more attractive content to visitors and achieving better positions on search engines.
Outbound link
External link, i.e. pointing to the page of another website.
Page swapping
“(Page exchange) a bizarre as well as obsolete technique considered spamming. It is the act of indexing an optimized page and obtaining a good ranking for it. Knowing that Google Dance happens once a month (see GOOGLE UPDATE), when those pages have been indexed the webmasters replace that page with another. So users find that page by doing searches, but when they click on the url they find themselves on a completely different page from the one contained in the Google cache. When Google Dance is about to start again, the webmaster puts the old page back online, to put it back at the end of the update.
NB: since the update of the Google index is now done continuously, this technique has become obsolete and risky ”
PageRank ™ / PR
Value that Google attaches to every web page contained in its archive, developed by Larry Page and Sergey Brin at Stanford University. Page Rank is based on the number and value of incoming links to the pages (and the site) itself. In turn, the value of these links is calculated on the page rank of the linking pages. This value is attributed based on the quantity and “quality” of the links received from the page; the quality of a link increases, other elements being equal, with an increase in the PageRank ™ value of the page in which it resides.
Orphan page
Web page that does not receive links from any other page. Generally this type of page cannot enter the search engine archives, as it does not fall within the model required by the engines: each page must receive at least one link from another page.
Pay Per Click
(Search Engine Marketing / Advertising or PPC) Advertising system with search engines, portals and various circuits that allows text ads to appear in specific spaces or not every time you search for certain keywords or phrases. The payment of the service takes place with a click, that is, every time an internet user visits a paid advertisement, a certain amount is deducted from the advertiser’s account. The payment system for Pay-Per-Click can be compared to a self-top-up. It establishes a budget to invest and how much you want to pay per click. The cost per click is established in a sort of online auction compared to the position of the other advertisers.
Penalty
In the context of positioning on search engines, there is talk of penalization when the use by the webmaster or seo of techniques that do not comply with the guidelines or some defects of the website cause a lowering of the ranking of the web document, up to the form of more serious penalty, namely the ban. A “punishment” inflicted by a search engine on a web page or an entire site, following the identification of features considered spam by the engine. The milder penalties prevent the affected page from obtaining good positions in the search results, while the heavier penalties provide for the cancellation of the page or the entire site from the engine archive and the inability to return to it (ban).
Permalink
It is a contraction of the term “permanent link“. It is a URL created in such a way as not to change or at least to remain the same for long periods of time.
PFI: Pay For Inclusion
Commercial service offered by some engines that guarantees the insertion of one or more web pages in its archive of sites only against the payment of a sum in money. Larger engines, such as Google or Fast, do not offer this type of service as they prefer to include as many pages as possible in their archives, regardless of the financial availability of the website owners.
Poison words
words that search engines filter and, when found in certain parts of the page (title, description, url …) prevent their positioning. As if the presence of these terms was a signal that the whole page is of little value. The real -negative- impact on a page’s ranking is still debated.
Placement
Set of techniques and strategies aimed at improving a website’s position in search engine results. The techniques can be more or less ethical depending on the “temperament” of SEO.
Organic positioning
Positioning in the organic results of the search engines, thus defined as opposed to PayPerClick or other forms of visibility that involve the purchase of the advertisement and the presence among the sponsored results.
Rank
The position of a page is the place occupied by the same among the results of a specific search carried out on a specific engine.
Prominence
Literally “proximity”, it is used to refer to the mutual proximity between two or more keywords, or to the proximity of a keyword to a particular point of a web page (a header, the beginning of the first paragraph of text, etc. .). The prominence of keywords at the “key points” of a page is one of the factors that many search engines take into consideration to assign a relevance value between the page and the terms searched by the user.
Proximity Search
(search by proximity) A search in which the user specifies that the words of his query MUST be close to each other – Google supports this function, with the syntax “keyword” (in quotation marks).
Query
A generic query made to a search engine by a user or by a software automation. The most common type of query is the normal search for one or more terms from the web pages stored by the engine.
rankings
The list of web pages returned by an engine as a result of a specific search and sorted according to the relevance criteria applied by the engine itself.
Redemption
Relationship that exists between the stimuli offered in an advertisement, positioning or Pay-Per-Click campaign and the responses obtained from the market.
Redirect
Technical trick used on some web pages that automatically hijacks the visitor to another page. Search engines dislike pages that use redirects, as they are often used to hide “unclean” solutions, such as doorway pages.
Redirect 301
301 indicates permanent removal
Redirect 302
302 indicates temporary transfer
Javascript Redirect
Automatic redirection from one web resource to another implemented through the use of the client side Javascript scripting language.
referrer
The address (URL) of a site from which a visitor comes. This type of information can be found from Log Files or from any type of statistics for the control of visitor access.
registration
Act performed by the search engine and which consists in adding a web page to the site archive (database) of the engine. It is synonymous with “indexing”.
Registration Search engines
It is the request for permanent insertion of a new site in the archives of search engines or directories
rel = “canonical”
The “canonical” HTML TAG is a tag used to indicate the unique URL of each page to search engines. Useful when on the site (for example e-commerce) there are multiple addresses for the same page and generate duplicate content.
rel = “nofollow”
The “nofollow” HTML TAG allows webmasters to send “Do not follow the links on this page” or “Do not follow this link” instructions to search engines.
rel = “noindex”
The “noindex” HTML TAG allows webmasters to send “Do not index this page” instructions to search engines.
Remarketing
Remarketing is a feature that allows you to customize the display ad campaign for users who have previously visited your website and to adapt offers and ads (with dynamic remarketing) to these visitors when they search the web or use the app.
Relevance
Importance of a document in the evaluation by a search engine or a navigator
Organic results
That part of the results of a search that is the result of the algorithms of relevance applied by the engine and that is not influenced by paid or advertising advertisements.
Robot
Software that automatically performs the operation of visiting a site and picking up its web pages. It is a term similar to “spider”, but more generic, as it is not strictly related to search engines.
robots.txt (file)
Text file, to be inserted in the main directory of a domain, which contains within it some directives that many search engine spiders have undertaken to follow. It is used to ask search engines not to fathom and not to take files or directories that you do not want archived by the engines.
RSS
acronym for Rich Site Summary. XML file that, using standard tags, allows the display of news and content on special devices called ‘aggregators’.
Sandbox
Several webmasters have christened “Sandbox” that period immediately following the birth of a new site / domain during which Google apparently prevents it from obtaining good positions in its search results. However, the main experts agree that this phenomenon is not caused by an arbitrary choice by Google aimed at preventing young sites from achieving good results, but rather by the effect of particular selection and evaluation criteria of the sites (unknown to webmaster and SEO) applied by the search engine.
Search Engine Friendly
Literally not a friend, friendly with I search engines. Some types of graphic solutions, Splash pages, particular programming languages are not SEF as the engine Bots cannot read these pages and consequently cannot be searched in the search engine indexes.
Search Query
(query, search key) A string, containing one or more words, which is sent by the user to a search engine.
Reporting (submission)
Operation aimed at providing the search engine with the address (URL) of a web page to be visited. Most engines start from the reported page to automatically locate and archive all the pages of a website. Other engines (as Altavista did) may request that the pages of a site be reported one by one.
SEM
Search Engine Marketing (search engine marketing). The activity that includes both the positioning in the organic results of the search engines and the management of paid or advertising advertisements offered by many engines.
SEM Agency
SEM specialized agency, Search Engine Marketing
SEMPO
Acronym of Search Engine Marketing Profesional Organization, a group operating in the industry.
SEO
Search Engine Optimization. Synonymous with positioning on search engines.
SEP
(Search engine placement) Positioning in search engines to achieve a better ranking and therefore better placements in search engines. Usually for a good positioning, for competitive key-phrases we mean the achievement of the TOP 10, 20 or 30 of the SERP. The navigator usually relies on the first 3 pages of the results of the engine pages.
SERP
Search Engine Results Page. The page of results that the engines return and which contains the list of web pages relating to the search carried out.
Server
Machine suitable for providing various services to users.
Shared Server
It is a server whose resources are shared by several differently owned websites. Compared to a dedicated server it requires a lower cost for its use, but is generally less efficient.
Dedicated server
It is a server for exclusive use and therefore it is not shared with other customers.
Shadow Domain
(trad. Shadow Domain) internet domain registered in order to take advantage of the high relevance that Google assigns to the text included in the domain names. The shadow domain is intended to automatically redirect traffic from search engines – in particular Google – to another site. Sometimes a shadow domain can be the exact copy of another site (see also Mirror Domain).
sitemap.html
Hierarchical and concise list of the pages that make up the website.
sitemap.xml
Sitemaps allow webmasters to indicate the pages of their sites available for crawling to search engines. In its simplest form, a Sitemap is an XML file containing the URLs of a site together with the respective additional metadata (date of the last update, typical frequency of the changes, importance compared to the other URLs of the site) that allows search engines to crawl the site more efficiently.
Snippet (extract)
The snippet is the text extract that some engines take from the web pages to build “on the fly” descriptions of the sites reported by a search. Usually the extract varies so that it contains the terms searched by the user.
SPAM / Web SPAM / Spamming / Spamdexing
Any technique aimed at misleading the search engines about the content of a site, its relevance to certain specific themes or its popularity on the web. SPAMMER is the one who adopts these techniques, in Italian the (ugly) neologism “SPAMMARE” is also used, which indicates the action of the spammer. SPAM is also the term that is generally used to indicate junk mail that crowds mailboxes, therefore care must be taken not to confuse the two different meanings.
Spamming
Any action taken to distort, damage, modify the primary purposes of a search engine (provide quality results to the user). This includes – but is not limited to – keyword stuffing, ip / agent cloaking, hidden text, redirections to another page, Page swapping etc …
Spider
Software that automatically performs the operation of visiting a site and picking up its web pages. It is a term similar to the more generic “robot”, but mostly used when the software is used expressly by a search engine.
Splash page
Opening page, usually complete with an intro in Flash technology. In addition to diverting the visitor’s attention for its loading, this page is not often Search Engine Friendly.
Split Test
test that divides traffic to two or more resources such as creatives, advertisements or landing pages to measure which resource brings the most conversions.
Squeeze Page
It is a web page that has the sole objective of obtaining the personal information of the user who arrives there. For this reason there are no elements that could lead the visitor to another page such as ‘navigation bar’ or outgoing links.
stemming
The ability of a search engine to include the “stem” of words. For example, the stemming allows the user to search for the word “swimming” and also obtain results for the “swim” stem. Linguistically speaking, it is the act of extracting its root from a word. Some (few) search engines do not just search for pages that contain exactly the keywords entered by the user, but go even further to consider those terms that divide the same root with those entered. For example, the search for the word “eaten” could also be extended to the words “eaten”, “eat”, “eat”, “eating”, etc.
Stop word
Word that is ignored by the search engine when indexing the text of a page and accepting a query. The most used linguistic particles (“a”, “i”, “the”, etc.) are almost always stop words. Conjunctions, prepositions and articles that often appear in sentences, but which do not affect the meaning of a search. They are in fact ignored by Google.
Target
This is the target market to be “hit” by satisfying their needs. In the SEM field, for example, we would hit the target market in search of textile machinery with the phrase “production of textile machinery”.
Hidden text
Text of a page that, through some technical devices, does not appear to users but is instead clearly visible to the search engine. It is one of the most popular (and most penalized) tricks to insert many keywords on a page without compromising its aesthetics in the eyes of visitors.
Text ad
Type of online advertising usually of the banner type that presents its ad in text and hyperlink format.
Title Tag
The title is undoubtedly the most important meta date ever. There are two reasons: first of all, the title represents the part of the web page that reveals to the reader who you are and what you offer. It appears at the top of the browser when users are visiting your website. It is also the text that will automatically appear to users if they have saved your website as a favorite. Second reason, no less important than the first, is that the title is the first component of the text that the search engine spiders analyze to identify what you are talking about. It is what the search engines give the most weight.
TLD
acronym for Top Level Domain. The domain extension of a site (.com, .net, org….) See chapter URL
TrustRank
algorithm developed by Yahoo! in 2005 to measure the degree of reliability and trust of an online resource. It is based on the logical principle that good quality resources will never link spam resources.
URI
acronym for Uniform Resource Indicator
URL
An acronym for Uniform Resource Locator . It is the alphanumeric address of a page or website.
Usability / Usability
ease of use of any material object (e.g. household appliance) or immaterial (website) by a user.
User agent
In HTTP, the User-Agent string is often used for content negotiation, where the origin server selects the content suitable for the operational parameters for the response. For example, the User-Agent string could be used by a Web server to choose variants based on the known functionality of a particular version of the client software. The concept of content tailoring is incorporated in the HTTP standard in RFC 1945 “in order to customize the responses to avoid particular limitations of the user agents”. The User-Agent string is one of the criteria by which Web crawlers can be excluded from accessing certain parts of a website using Robots Exclusion Standard (robots.txt file). As with many other HTTP request headers,
User experience
user experience in learning and using any device.
Viral marketing
unconventional marketing that uses modern word of mouth (the “virality”) to convey its message to a large mass of users.
W3C
World Wide Web Consortium, the globally recognized body that protects, updates, implements HTML and related languages.
Web Analytics
Study and analysis of the performance of a site that starts from the statistics of the site through programs for tracking and processing the movements on the site by visitors who allow to verify the origin of the accesses, the number of pages viewed by users, the number of visitors unique day by day, the paths followed and conversions, the keys that generate access to the site through search engines. They are a fundamental tool for monitoring and improving website performance.
Webmastertools
Google Webmaster Tools provides detailed reports on the visibility of pages on Google. To get started, simply add and verify the site.
Welcome page
Like the doorway pages, it is a web page whose textual contents are focused on a very specific topic and which makes extensive, but not excessive, use of the keywords related to the subject matter. Unlike the doorway pages, the welcome pages are also dedicated to users and present textual content that is truly compatible with visitors. Search engines particularly appreciate this kind of themed pages.
White Hat
Term used to indicate an SEO that does not use positioning techniques considered spam by search engines. It is the opposite of Black Hat.
Word Tracker
It is a paid tool that allows you to get a very thorough analysis for a specific keyword. You can purchase an annual subscription or even use it for just one day.
WWW
World Wide Web (WWW): acronym for the Internet.
WYSIWYG
which stands for What You See Is What you Get. Usually referred to HTML editors that allow the creation of web pages in a purely graphic context and not bound by the knowledge of the code. Wysiwyg editors are for example Macromedia ™ Dreamweaver® and Adobe ™ GoLive®.
XML
Abbreviation for Extensible Markup Language, W3C consortium standard. Created for the purpose of displaying data. For more information: http://www.w3.org/XML/. In the integrated use of SEO techniques, this language is used to add news updated automatically through the use of special RSS aggregators that transform news sources disseminated through XML into files called XML feeds into HTML, asp, php. Being able to insert automatically updated news on a website makes the page more popular with search engine spiders.
XML aggregator
Allows viewing of XML feeds through the use of an interface program or a website.
XML feed
Interchange files for web content between sites, portals, blogs, news aggregators in a transversal way. To reach the feed distributor file, you usually search for an orange button on the web pages or the English word “syndacate”.
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