Glossary

An A-Z of terminology; rather useful for novices and experts alike!

Absolute link
An absolute link refers to the full URL (including the site domain and the http://) having been coded into the link. An example absolute link would be coded as follows: <a href=”http://www.abc.co.uk/”>.

Ad
The term used to describe the actual a Paid Search advert that can be found on a search engine results page (SERP) and also on other sites carrying such adverts .

Ad Group
Used to describe a list of keywords that have been tightly grouped together because they have a common theme.

Ad Scheduling
Used to describe the ability to specify times during the day that you want your Paid Search ads to appear on a search engine results page.

Ad Text
The two lines of copy written beneath the ad title and above the display URL.

Ad Title
The term used to describe the title or headline of the paid search advert.

Aggregation
The process of gathering and remixing content from blogs and other websites that provide RSS feeds. The results may be displayed in an aggregator website like Google Reader directly on your desktop using software often also called a newsreader.

Alerts
Search engines allow you to specify words, phrases or tags that you want checked periodically, with results of those searches returned to you by email.

Alt tags
Alt Tags are the description given to an image. Search engines cannot “see” images so the Alt Tag informs search engines of the content of the image.

Anchor text
Anchor text relates to the actual words or phrases linking from one page to another. In the following example the underlined words is the anchor text; Leapfrogg is a digital marketing agency based in Brighton.  Search engine spiders use anchor text to judge the relevance of the destination page.

Article syndication
When you write an article on topics that are relevant to your website and then submit them to the content networking or to a number of relevant blogs or websites. Article syndication is an effective method of generating exposure, building authority and garnering backlinks.

Avatar
A graphical image or likeness that replaces a photo of the author of the content on a blog or forum.

Average Position
Term used to describe, on average, how high or low a paid search advert will sit within the sponsored search listings area of a search results page.

Backlink
An external link that directs Internet users or spiders to a web page.

Bad Neighbourhood
Industry slang for a cluster of websites that engage in disreputable or perhaps ‘black hat’ search engine marketing practices.

Bid
The amount chosen to bid or “pay” for a keyword position for running a paid search campaign.

Bid Management
Used to describe the amendment of bids for keywords that are ranked too high or too low in the search listings when running a paid search campaign.

Black hat
Black hat techniques are SEO practices usually in opposition to those outlined in Google’s Webmasters Guidelines and those of other engines. Such techniques are usually driven by technology and seek to trick or fool a search engine into placing a web page higher on a search engine results page (SERP) than it rightfully should be.

Blog
Websites with dated items of content in reverse chronological order, self-published by bloggers. Items – sometimes called posts - may have keyword tags associated with them, are usually available as feeds, and often allow commenting.

Blogroll
A list of sites displayed in the sidebar of blog; showing who the blogger reads regularly.

Bookmarking
Saving the address of a website or item of content, either in your browser, or on a social bookmarking site like ‘delicious’. If you add tags, others can easily use your research too and the social bookmarking site becomes an enormous public library.

Bounce rate
The percentage of users that enter and leave a web page without navigating any further through the site to view other pages.

Breadcrumb trail
Breadcrumb trails show the navigational path that a user takes in order to get to a certain webpage. They provide users with a sense of place on the site as they will be able to clearly see their location within a website structure.

Broad Match
In paid search this relates to where your ad will show for extended variations of your keyword and in no particular sequence.  Your ad will also show for similar terms that appear in the users query.

Comments
Blogs may allow readers to add comments under items and may also provide a feed for comments as well as for main items. This means you can keep up with conversations without having to revisit the site to check whether anything has been added.

Calls to action
Calls to action are elements on the page that prompt users into a desired act e.g. buy now, find out more, click here, etc.

Campaign
Relating to a paid search account this term describes the “house” which holds all ad groups and keywords within it.

Canonicalisation
Canonicalisation occurs when a webpage is able to be accessed via both http://www.leapfrogg.co.uk and http://leapfrogg.co.uk. This can cause confusion for search engines as there is effectively two copies of the same page forcing the search engine to choose one. Being penalised for duplicate content is unlikely but it is good practice to ensure that all pages have one definitive address as duplicate pages can also cause link popularity to be diluted.

Clicks
In Paid Search terms, describes the number of times your advert is clicked on.

Cloaking
Cloaking is the practice of delivering different content to the search engines than that seen by the human visitor. It’s often used as a “black hat” method to deceive search engines.

Commitment
The “social” aspect of social media means that tools are most useful when other people commit to using them too. Commitment will depend on people’s degree of interest in a subject, capability online, ability to share, degree of comfort in a new place and the usability of the site or tool.

Community building
The process of recruiting a potential community or network participants and helping them to find shared interests and goals.

Content
used to describe text, pictures, video and any other meaningful material that is on the Internet.

Contextual Link
A link that directs Internet users or spiders to related content on a new web page or a different location within the same web page.

Content Management System (CMS)
These are computer applications that are used to create, edit, manage and upload content in a consistently organised fashion. An example of a CMS system is Word Press. CMS’s allow you to easily update and change information on your website.

Content Network
A collection of websites of which your Paid Ad can be displayed within.  These are made up of news sites / blogs / content specific pages, etc.

Content Targeted
Where your Paid Ads will display on relevant pages within the content network.

Conversion
Used to describe a pre-defined goal that set up to track website visitor actions.  These actions may be to complete a sale, download of a whitepaper or to fill out an enquiry form etc.

Conversion Rate
Measured as a %. The number of conversions / the number of clicks X100

Conversion Tracking
The term used to describe the actual tracking of conversions that take place on a website.

Cost per Conversion
The amount i.e. in £ that each conversion has cost you.  It is the overall cost / the number of conversions.

CPC (Cost Per Click)
In Paid Search, the term used to describe the amount you pay each time a person clicks on your advert.

CPM (Cost Per Thousand Impressions)
The term used to describe the amount you pay per 1000 times your ad is shown.

CTR (Click through Rate)
The number of clicks / the number of impressions x 100 = CTR %

Daily Budget
The figure set as a daily budget to be spent on clicks each day in a Paid Search campaign.

Destination URL
The page a user will be directed to when they click on a Paid Advert.  This can be different from your display URL.

Display URL
The URL which is displayed on the bottom of a Paid Search advert.

Duplicate content
Duplicate content refers to content that is significantly similar or identical to that found on another page or website. Content that is duplicated incurs little trust from the search engines in comparison to the content that the search engine considers to be original. This therefore often leads to search engines indexing the original and ignoring all other versions.

Dynamic page / URL
This is a page that results from the search of a database driven website. The URL is dependant on variable parameters and usually contains a question mark (?) e.g. http://www.abc.co.uk/index.php?

Exact Match
Where your Paid Advert will only show when the keyword matches exactly to the search query entered.

Feeds
The means by which you can read, view or listen to items from blogs and other RSS-enabled sites without visiting the site and by using an aggregator or newsreader.

Feed Reader
An aggregator of content; subscribed to by the user, so that specific content and search results arrive in their “reader”.

Folksonomy
Collective indexing by use of tags, labels or keywords by the consumers of the content.

Forums
Discussion areas on websites where people can post messages or comment on existing messages asynchronously and independently of time or place.

Framed site
A framed site basically places “pages inside pages”. All pages appear exist on one url. Framed sites have significant disadvantages as search engines cannot see inside the frame to spider and index the content.

Friends
On social networking sites, are contacts you link to from your profile.

Geo Targeting
Gives you the ability to target a specified area of the country in relation to the target audience you want to reach in a Paid Search campaign.

Htaccess file
.htaccess is a file that you can create using Notepad (or any text editor) to add some additional functionality to a site or server. It is usually supported by aol Unix/Linux web hosts which use the Apache server. They allow you to specify which page the user goes to if there is an error.

Hyperlinks
Hyperlinks basically refer to any link coded into a website or webpage. This includes links from one page to another as well as links that also point to another location on the same page.

Impressions
Used to describe the number of times your Paid Advert is shown.

Indexed pages
Indexed pages are web pages that the search engines have placed in their database of stored web pages. Having been spidered and then indexed such pages have the chance of being served within search engine results pages.

Indexing
Indexing is the process of a search engine adding a webpage to its index.

Joining up
Is a big opportunity - and challenge - in the world of social media and networking. On the one hand links, tags and feeds - together with the spirit of openness - means content in different places can be brought together.

Keyword (also known as Search Query)
The term used to describe the word or phrase that a searcher will enter into the search query box to find what they are looking for.

Keyword Insertion
In Paid Search, a technique which enables a search query (keyword within your ad group) to automatically be inserted into the title / advert copy of the advert when it is served.

Landing Page
Used to describe the page the visitor lands on when they get to your site.

Link Bait
A technique used to create links by creating content that appeals to social networks and/or bloggers.

Link Building
The act of seeking to increase the number and quality of inbound links to your website. It has been acknowledged for some time that links have a significant bearing on search engine rankings.

Link Popularity
A measure of the number and quality of a website’s inbound links.

Long tail
Long tail are search queries that are often made up of 3, 4 or 5 words. The use of a longtail term usually suggests a searcher is looking for something specific and is therefore further down the buying cycle. For example, ‘blue nike football boots’ v’s ‘boots’.

Mashup
A web application that combines data from more than one source into a single tool.

Match Type
Allows you to control how defined a users search query has to be in order for your Paid Advert to be displayed.

Meta Tags
Meta Tags are small pieces of code (statements) that sit within the <head> section of a HTML webpage. Each page on a website should have a unique set of Meta tags relevant to the content of that page. The Title tag acts as a sign post to search engines to immediately inform of the pages’ content. The description will often accompany a search engine listing so needs to be relevant and engaging.

MicroBlogging
A form of blogging allowing users to compose brief text updates and publish them. These messages can be submitted and received by a variety of means and devices, including text messaging, instant messaging, email, mobile device, MP3 and the web. Twitter is an example of microblogging.

Natural search engine listings
The search engine results which are not sponsored or paid for in any way.

Negative Keywords
In simple terms, these are keywords that you do not want your Paid Adverts to be displayed against.

News Aggregator
A web-based tool or desktop application that collects syndicated content.

Nofollow
A command found in either the <head> section of a web page or within individual link code. This instructs search engines not to follow either any links on the page or a specific link.

Noindex
The noindex meta tag advises search engines spiders to avoid indexing the webpage.

One Way Link
A non-reciprocal link that directs Internet users or spiders from one website to another.

On-the-page factors
Factors considered by the search engines when ranking a page that are part of the website itself, e.g. text Meta tags, etc. These are factors that are controlled within the code of a page.

Off-the-page factors
These are factors considered by the search engines when ranking a page that are not part of the web page e.g. back links, server or hosting factors. These are things that are not able to be controlled on the page.

Overall Cost
The term used to describe the overall cost of your Paid Search campaign(s) for any given period.

Outbound Link
An internal link that directs Internet users or spiders to an external web page.

Page Rank
PageRank is Google’s numerical quantification of a website’s content and the quantity and value of its incoming and outgoing links.

Phrase Match
Where your Paid advert will show up for extended variations of your keyword.  Your keyword will show in its exact order with variations appearing at the beginning or at the end of your chosen keyword, not in the middle.

Podcast
An audio or video content that can be downloaded automatically through a subscription to a website so you can view or listen offline.

Profiles
The information that you provide about yourself when signing up for a social networking site.

PPC (Pay Per Click)
Also known as Paid Search. The process of an advertiser paying on a cost per click basis to display their ad in the sponsored search listings within various search engines and content networks.

Quality Score
In simple terms, a rating given by Google as to the quality and relevancy of a keyword in a Paid Search campaign. This is determined by the relevance of your advert text and landing page, which in turn impact on click through rate.

Rank
The order, or position, of a website’s location within search engine results under specific keywords or keyphrases.

Rankings
Rankings correspond to the position of a website in the SERP’s. Search engines rank web pages according to their relevance to the search query. This makes it possible for the user to quickly select the pages that they are likely to want to see.

Reciprocal Link
An even exchange of links between two websites.

Registration
The process of providing a username, password and other details when seeking to access a website that has restricted access.

Remixing
Social media offers the possibility of taking different items of content, identified by tags and published through feeds, and combining them in different ways. You can do this with other people’s content if they add an appropriate copyright license.

Relative links
A relative link takes advantage of the fact that the server knows where the current document is. Relative linking is useful in the sense that you do not need to write out the full URL when coding a link - all that is necessary is to use the name of the file.

However, relative links are not always the best to use. If your site content is syndicated for any reason and appears elsewhere on the web, any links that are present will not reach your site. Therefore the best case scenario is to code links as absolute links as these will direct visitors back to your site, making you the authority for that information.

Return on Investment (ROI)
ROI is the cost / benefit of different schemes. This can be worked out by using analytics software to analyse and quantify the return given from a particular cost.

ROI (Return of Investment) also know as ROAS (Return on Advertising Spend) Is an indication on how successful a campaign is to the client, it is net profit the client makes once all costs have been taken into account.  It is calculated by minusing the revenue from sales from the cost of advertising / cost of advertising x 100 = ROI%.

Robot
A specialised program that browses the web in a methodical, automated manner. It is used by search engines to find and add web pages to their indexes.

Robots.txt file
This is a text file that instructs the search engines about pages or directories to exclude from its database. You can also place a link in your Robots.txt file to an XML site map in order to aid spidering of all site pages by the search engines.

RSS (Really Simple Syndication)
This allows you to subscribe to content on blogs and other social media and have it delivered to you through a feed.

Search Terms
Popular and relevant terms selected for promotion on particular web pages.

Search Term Analysis
The process of selecting search terms to promote on a website.

SERP’s (search engine results page)
The list of web pages returned by a search engine in response to a search query.

Site Architecture
Is an approach to the design and planning of websites which, like architecture itself, involves technical, aesthetic and functional criteria.

The focus is on the user and the aim of site architecture is to ensure the site is set up in a logical hierarchy that will facilitate movement through the site and achieve high visibility across the search engines.

Site map
A site map is a page or structured group of pages which link to every page available on a website. Site maps improve the usability of a website by clarifying the data structure of the site for the users and they also help search engines spider the site.

An XML sitemap is often kept in the root directory of a site just to help search engine spiders to find all of the site pages.

Site Targeted
Where you can specify which sites in particular you would like your Paid Adverts to appear.

Sharing
Offering other people the use of your text, images, video, bookmarks or other content by adding tags, and applying copyright licenses that encourage use of content.

SMO
Acronym for Social Media Optimisation

Social Bookmarks
A method for Internet users to store, search, organise, and most importantly - share web pages.

Social media
A term for the tools and platforms people use to publish, converse and share content online. The tools include blogs, wikis, podcasts, and sites to share photos and bookmarks.

Social networking sites
Online places where users can create a profile for themselves, and then socialise with others using a range of social media tools including; blogs, video, images, tagging, friend lists, forums and messaging.

Splog
The nickname for Spam Blogs, or blogs not providing their own or real content. Sploggers use automated tools to create fake blogs full of links or scraped content from other sites in order to boost search engine results

Sponsored Search Listing
The term used to highlight to users all Paid Search Adverts. These are typically displayed down the left hand side of the search page and sometimes above the natural listings.

Static page / URL
A web page without dynamic content or variables in the URL.

Syndication
Content often copied and shared online that is very similar or the same as the original source material.

Tags
Keywords attached to a blog post, bookmark, photo or other item of content so you and others can find them easily through searches and aggregation.

Text Link
The text that directs Internet users or spiders to a new web page or a different location within the same web page when clicked.

Trackback
Some blogs provide a facility for other bloggers to leave a calling card automatically, instead of commenting. The collection of comments and trackbacks on a site facilitates conversations.

Traffic
Used to describe visitors to your site.

Universal Search
Changes to Google’s search results where news, video, images, local search and shopping results are integrated into the traditional text based search engine listings. In theory this will lead to a richer experience for search engine users where access to different types of media is made easier.  A more general term for this is blended search.

Usability
Usability measures the quality of a user’s experience when interacting with a website. A user friendly website is intuitive, consistent and easy to navigate.

User generated content
Text, photos, video and other material produced by people and uploaded through social media sites.

Video
Many digital cameras and mobile phones take videos good enough to view on the Net. Sites like YouTube and now make it easy to open an account, upload and share your videos.

Web 2.0
A term to describe blogs, wikis, social networking sites and other Internet-based services that emphasise collaboration and sharing, rather than less interactive publishing (Web 1.0).

Web-based tools
Include email, calendars, word processing, and spreadsheets that can be used on the web rather than your desktop.

Web copy
Web copy is the text visible to users and does not include graphical content, navigation, or information hidden in the HTML source code.

Website Optimisation
The process of optimising your website usually covering technical, content and usability changes.

White hat
Optimisation techniques that conform to best practice guidelines, and do not attempt to manipulate the search engines.

Widgets
Stand-alone applications you can embed in other applications, like a website or a desktop and view on its own on a PDA.

Wiki
A web page (or set of pages) that can be edited collaboratively. The best known example is Wikipedia; an encyclopaedia created by thousands of contributors across the world.