Leveling the Online Playing FieldSubscribe Now
A directory-level configuration file supported by Apache and some additional servers. The primary SEO uses of .htaccess are to:
An HTTP status code returned by the server to the browser (often accomplished through an entry in the .htaccess file) to indicate that the requested resource has moved to a new location and that the move is permanent.
A 301 redirect helps search engines find pages or resources when the URL has changed, and allows link equity to pass through to the new URL. 301 redirects also automatically send visitors to the new location, ideally allowing them to find content that has moved without experiencing a 404 error.
See also: .htaccess, Redirect
An HTTP status code returned by the server to the browser (often accomplished through an entry in the .htaccess file) to indicate that the requested resource has moved to a new location and that the move is temporary.
A standard HTTP response code indicating that the requested page does not exist on the server. For SEO purposes, the server should be configured with a custom 404 page with a brief message explaining the error, branding and a search form or alternate links.
Repairing or redirecting 404 errors on your site is a worthwhile activity for many reasons, especially if the 404 errors are the result of other sites linking to an old or incorrect URL on your site.
500 level error messages are delivered by the server to indicate that a problem has occurred and the server is currently unable to deliver the requested resource. Since a 500 level error indicates a problem on the server there is little a user can do to fix the problem other than to notify the host and wait for the issue to be resolved.
Web page content that appears on the screen without scrolling. The term is adapted from the newspaper industry and originally refers to the part of the page that is visible after the newspaper has been folded and placed in the sales rack. (more…)
A link which uses the full URL (in other words the complete path) of a web page or resource to locate the requested content. The URL in an absolute begins with “http://” or “https://” as show below:
<a href=”http://www.domain.com/directory/file-name.html>link text</a>
Absolute links are required to link to resources on a different domain than the link. Absolute links can also be used to link to resources on the same domain as the link.
The address of a page is the URL used to access that page.
See also: URL
A Google product which allows website owners to place ads from the Google Adwords network on their site (as well as in feeds, mobile apps, videos and YouTube content) and receive payment for clicks on those ads.
After being accepted into the program, site owners use an online form to generate JavaScript code that is placed on their pages to deliver the ads. Adsense then serves targeted ads to the site based upon the content of the pages the ads appear on. Site owners are paid based upon either the number of clicks on an ad (pay-per-click) or the number of ad impressions depending upon the ads displayed.
Adsense revenues are over $12 billion annually and account for roughly one quarter of Google’s revenue.
Google’s advertising program which allows webmasters to bid for ad placements related to specific keywords in Google’s search results and on the pages of its advertising partners.
A website which gathers information from a variety of sources. Examples include Google News and Bing News.
The term aggregator is also be used to refer to websites and software which allow users to gather content from multiple RSS feed sources.
In SEO terms, an algorithm is the set of instructions a search engine uses to index, process and rank web pages to create its Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs).
Text contained within the alt attribute of an HTML image tag. Often called the “alt tag,” the alt text is optional text used to convey information about the image to search engines, screen readers and other non-visual devices. The format is:
<img src="image.jpg" alt="optional alternate text" />
In the above example “image.jpg” is the URL of the image. The “optional alternate text” portion is where the alt text would be inserted. Alt text should provide a brief but accurate description of what is portrayed in the image.
The use of alt text – particularly in images used as links – may improve search rankings by allowing search engines to “read” the content of the image.
Software used to track traffic to your site. Important metrics include :
Google Analytics Dashboard
The text displayed as the link in a text link:
<a href="link.html">Anchor Text</a>
The anchor text gives search engines clues as to what the content on the other end of the link is about. Search engines use the anchor text of a link as a form of outside verification, and as a result have become one of the most important elements in search engine rankings.
In recent years, however, it has been speculated that having keyword optimized anchor text on too many of the links pointing to your site can cause Google to penalize or even ban your site from their search results completely.
A Google-supported, open-source operating system for touchscreen mobile devices. It is currently the leading smartphone platform with a 75% market share as of November 2012 according to IDC.
A key factor in the growth of Android is the licensing, which allows manufactures to freely modify and distribute the software. This has also led to its use in a variety of other, non-mobile electronics including televisions, games and cameras. However the ability for manufacturers to modify the platform has also led to a fragmentation within the Android marketplace, creating compatibility problems for software developers.
The term Android is also used to refer to a device that runs the Android operating system (e.g. an Android tablet).
On the web Application Programming Interface refers to a set of rules which allow developers to access and share content and data between websites. An example is the ability to automatically share Twitter comments on Facebook.
An authority is an accepted source of information. In SEO terms, authority is generally understood to refer to how important Google and other search engines consider a page to be and therefore how competitive that page is in search rankings. (more…)
A link to a page on your site from another site.
Launched by Microsoft in 2009, Bing is the second largest web search engine with 17.9 percent share of the U.S. market*. In addition, Bing also powers Yahoo!’s search function (11.3% of U.S. market).
Prior to being relaunched as Bing, the service was known variously as Live Search, Windows Live Search and MSN Search.
*comScore U.S. analysis, April 2013
U.S. Search Market Share
The use of aggressive SEO strategies such as cloaking, that focus on manipulating search engines results rather than creating page content that is appealing to users. Generally these practices are considered unethical or questionable within the industry and can result in a website’s search engine listings being penalized or dropped entirely.
1) The use of the Robots Exclusion Protocol (REP) in a site’s robots.txt fie to block web robots (bots) and search engine indexing for specific pages, directories or the entire site. Honoring the REP is voluntary. While major search engines will honor the request, other bots may still crawl the pages.
2) The decision by a user to block pages from certain websites in their search results. If a site is blocked by a large number of users its search engine rankings can be negatively affected.
A software application that runs automated tasks over the Internet. Web spidering is an example, in which an automated script grabs, analyzes and files information from web servers.
Well known bots include Googlebot, BingBot and Facebook External Hit.
“Bad” bots (spambots) include bots that harvest email addresses and other information and ignore or misuse the robots.txt file.
Usually used in connection with Adwords and other search-based advertising, branded keywords are words or phrases that include a brand (company) name or a variation of a brand name, Examples are “Nike information” or “Deschutes Brewery reviews”. (more…)
Links using the website or business name as the anchor text. For example, links pointing to this site with the anchor text of “SEO Coaches” or “SEOcoaches.com” would be considered branded links.
Branded links naturally occur more often than links with keyword optimized anchor text. As a result, there has been a lot of speculation recently that sites need a healthy percentage of branded links for their backlink profile to appear natural or organic.
A navigational aid providing links back to previously viewed pages or to parent pages of the current page.
A link which points to a deleted, moved or non-existent web resource.
Repairing or removing broken links on your site is a good practice so search engines can accurately and efficiently index your site, and users have a positive experience while browsing.
An abundance of broken links on your site can give users the impression the site is no longer maintained and can damage your site’s “reputation” with Google.
> see also 404 Error
The term browser generally refers to a web browser, a program used to access and view websites. Modern browsers can interpret and display HTML pages, JavaScript, CSS, multimedia and a host of other content. (more…)
Temporarily storing items (for example HTML, CSS JavaScript and multimedia files) retrieved from a server on a local hard drive so they can then be accessed locally rather than having be to requested and downloaded again from the server.
Since retrieval from a local drive is much faster than access via a network, this greatly improves the responsiveness of web pages. (more…)
On a web page, the Call to Action is generally a prominent graphic, text or button designed to encourage the visitor to take a specific action (click a link, complete a form, scan a QR Code, etc.).
The preferred URL for indexing in cases of duplicate (or highly similar) content or where more than one URL can be used to access the same content (for instance www.mydomain.com and mydomain.com).
Since duplicate content or the appearance of duplicate content can negatively affect search engine rankings or lead to the “wrong” page being indexed, specifying a canonical URL is a good practice.
The canonical URL for a page can be specified by including a <link> element in the <head> of the page as follows:
<link rel="canonical" href=http://www.mydomain.com/canonical.html />
A protocol for allowing the generation of web content by executable files on the server.
The files are commonly referred to as CGI scripts, CGIs or scripts and are written in a scripting language such as PHP.
Note: CGI is also frequently used to refer to Computer Generated Imagery.
A technique used to present different content to site visitors and search engines crawling the site. The tactic is designed to influence site rank by misleading search engines about the content of the page or to lure visitors to a page based upon a misleading search result.
While there were formerly legitimate uses for the practice, it is now considered “black hat” and the tactic can result in a site being removed from search engine listings.
A web content management system allows for the centralized creation, publishing, management and editing of online content. A CMS eliminates the need for time consuming, page-by-page creation of content. Typically, a CMS will allow for different user levels such as admin, editor, author, etc. that restrict users to certain functions within the system.
The most popular CMS is currently WordPress, which accounts for nearly 19% of the top 10 million website as of August 2013 according to W3Techs.
A network of servers which cache resources such as multi-media or dynamically generated pages so that the content can be delivered most efficiently based upon the user’s location, server load, etc.
A conversion occurs when a visitor to your site completes an activity you have designated as a goal for your website. A conversion can take many forms:
See also: Conversion Rate
For digital marketers, the conversion rate is the portion of visitors to a website who have taken a desired action such as completing a form or making a purchase.
The conversion rate is determined as follows:
Conversion rate = # of desired actions/visitors to site
A piece of data sent from a server and stored by a visitor’s browser. The small text file captures information about browsing habits, web pages visited and other data.
Cookies can be used to improve a returning user’s on-site experience by providing targeted content, customized data etc.
Cookies can also be used to target advertising based upon data collected by the cookies.
The expense of each conversion based upon the total cost of acquiring the web traffic resulting in the conversions.
Sum of Acquisition Marketing Costs / Conversions = Cost per Conversion
Cost Per Action is the effective cost of a particular user action (filling out a form, purchasing an item, etc.) generated by an ad campaign..
The method of determining the cost per action for a campaign is:
Sum of Campaign Costs / Number of Actions Taken = Cost per Action
Cost Per Acquisition is the effective cost of acquiring a new customer or subscriber.
The method of determining the cost per acquisition for a campaign is:
Sum of Campaign Costs / Number of Customers Acquired = Cost per Acquisition
The effective cost of each click an ad campaign generates.
The method of determining the cost per click for a campaign is:
Sum of Campaign Costs / Number of Clicks = Cost per Click
For a pay per click (PPC) campaign the CPC is simply the rate you pay for each click.
A method of purchasing online advertising where advertisers are charged a set amount for each 1,000 times an ad is displayed (impressions of the ad). The method is based upon the print model where advertisers pay based upon the circulation of a magazine or newspaper.
How often search engine spiders crawl a site. Crawl frequency is influenced by several factors including PageRank, frequency of updates and the number of links to a page. As a rule of thumb, the more often a site is updated, the more frequently crawling will occur.
The process of a search engine spider (or bot) working its way through a website (or the entire web) to discover new or updated content for indexing.
A style sheet language used to define the layout and appearance of web pages. The purpose of CSS is to allow for the separation of document content (HTML) from it’s appearance (CSS) allowing for the easy repurposing of the content for different devices and media. It also allows for multiple documents to share a style sheet improving efficiency for both the developer and the end user.
CSS3 is an update to the CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) standard which adds many new capabilities and features. Rather than being presented as a single new standard, CSS3 has been implemented as a series of over fifty “modules”, each with its own track to acceptance. Therefore adoption of CSS3 features varies depending upon the module and the browser.
The ratio of the number of times an ad is clicked on to the number of times it has been displayed (impressions).
CTR = number of clicks / number of impressions
So, an ad which has been displayed 1,000 times and received twenty clicks would have a CTR of 2%.
A link which points to a deleted, moved or non-existent web resource. Repairing or removing broken links is a good practice so search engines can accurately and efficiently index your site.
In addition, a prevalence of broken links indicates to search engines that your site is out-of-date and has been neglected and results in lower page rank.
A link to a content page within a website rather than to the home page of the website.
An HTML meta tag located in the <head> of a document used to convey a description of the page’s content in the format:
<meta name="description" content="Your concise and incisive description of the page goes here." >
Meta descriptions are not used by search engines in determining a page’s search rankings but may be displayed in search results. This offers webmasters an opportunity to craft a description which may be more inviting to searchers than the generic description a search engine generates. So it is a good practice to include a concise and inviting description for each page.
Traffic that comes directly to your page rather than from a link on a Search Engine Results Page (SERP) or another website. Direct traffic can result from a user typing the URL of a page into the browser address bar or when a page is visited by way of a bookmark. In Google Analytics traffic from non-browser email programs will also be identified as direct traffic.
A website which gathers and categorizes links to websites. Two of the oldest directories are the Yahoo! directory and DMOZ (also known as the Open Directory Project). At one time Google recommended acquiring links in those directories but ended the practice in late 2008.
Directories are distinct from websites (although they may include search functionality). Higher quality directories are generally human edited and categorize sites based upon all their content – not on a page-by-page basis.
An identifier for Internet Protocol (IP) resources such as websites. Domain names, which can be registered through a number of Domain Registrars, include a unique identifier separated by a period from a Top Level Domain such as com or org.
The domain name for this site is SEOcoaches.com (domain names are not case-sensitive). Through the Domain Name System (DNS), domains are connected to an IP address which points to a specific server.
A company or organization that manages the licensing Internet domain names. Domain registrars are accredited by ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) or by a country code top-level domain (ccTLD) authority.
Until 1999 Network solutions was the sole registrar for .com .net and .org domain names.
Identical or nearly identical content appearing on multiple web pages. Generally search engines will index the first instance of the content found and ignore other instances.
A link from a .edu domain (such as harvard.edu).
.edu is the top-level domain reserved for use by institutions of higher education within the U.S. Due to the affiliation with educational institutions links from .edu domains may be given more weight by search engines in their ranking algorithms.
Note: Prior to 2001 the requirements for registering a .edu domain were less restrictive and not strictly enforced. A small number of .edu domains not registered to institutions of higher education are still active, for example http://www.exploratorium.edu.
A link from a page on one website to a page on another website.
Facebook is the largest online social network with a 51% market penetration among all social media users worldwide in the first quarter of 2013 as reported by the Global Web Index. That amounts to over one billion active users, a milestone reached in September 2012. (more…)
A shortening of favorite icon. It generally refers to a 16 by 16 pixel image (although additional sizes are supported) associated with an website which appears in the browser address bar when the site is visited. It may also appear next to the page listing in the browser’s bookmark and history listings.
Definition to be added…
An acronym for File Transfer Protocol, is a standard for the transfer of files from one computer to another over a TCP/IP network such as the Internet. FTP can also refer to the act of transferring a file using the FTP protocol as in “I just FTPed that file to the server.”
One of the most popular FTP clients is FileZilla, a free, open-source software available for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.
The web’s dominant search engine with a total U.S. search market share of 67.0% as of August 2013 according to comScore. Google was begun by Sanford grad students Larry Page and Sergey Brin in 1996 and incorporated in 1998.
The key concept behind Google is PageRank which determines a page’s relevance for a search term by the number of links to the page and the importance of the pages the links appear on. (more…)
GA is a free, online, web analytics program offered by Google. It offers detailed information on website visitors, sources of traffic and on-site user activity. Analytics also reports search terms used to access a site but, since October 2011, terms used by users who are logged into a Google property are reported as “not provided” (see not provided) severely limiting the search data provided. (more…)
Google offers this keyword research tool as a part of AdWords. When a broad search term is entered, the tool returns a long list of related search terms as well as the local (targeted language and country) and global number of searches for the terms. The Keyword Tool can also generate keyword suggestions based upon a scan of an existing site, which is useful for optimizing an existing site or analyzing a competitor’s site.
A free, online Google tool which offers webmasters access to information on a variety of factors affecting search engine rankings in Google such as:
Webmasters can also submit and validate a sitemap to aid Google in crawling and indexing a site.
Google’s bot (or spider) that crawls the web to find new or updated pages for indexing.
A link from a .gov domain (such as whitehouse.gov).
.gov is the top-level domain reserved for use by government entities of the U.S. Due to the affiliation with government institutions links from .gov domains may be given more weight by search engines in their ranking algorithms.
An HTML tag used to define the most important headline (or “he’d” in journalistic jargon) of a document.
HTML allows for 6 levels of headlines within a page (H1, H2… H6).
H1 is the most important and carries the most weight with search engines when the page is indexed.
Additional headlines (known as subheads) are labeled in order of importance from H2 down to the least important, H6. While web design best practices dictate that there be only one H1 element per page, there may be multiples of the other elements, generally nested according to importance. For example, one or more H2 tags may appear beneath the H1 tag with additional H3 tags appearing beneath the H2 tags, etc.
Web page text which is not visible to a site visitor but indexable by search engines. Text can be “hidden” in a variety of ways such as using the CSS display property, making the text and background the same color or reducing the font-size until it is unreadable. The use of hidden text in order to improve search results by introducing content invisible to human visitors is considered a black hat practice and may result in lower rankings or de-indexing by search engines.
The page a visitor lands on when they visit a website using only the domain name in the URL. For example: https://www.seocoaches.com. The home page can be thought of as the “front page” of the web site and is also frequently referred to as the index page due to Apache’s default setting of index.html (or other index pages – index.htm, index.php, etc.) as the default page for directories. However index page can also be used to refer to the default page for any directory within a web site.
HTML is a markup language designed to format document elements semantically (based upon their function) as opposed to specifying their appearance and layout. Therefore the same HTML document can be displayed in a variety of ways depending upon how it is interpreted.
A major upgrade to the HTML standard that adds many new HTML objects and functionalities.
HTML was not originally created to support heavily formatted, graphic-intensive pages or animations. HTML5 improves the built-in layout capabilities of HTML by adding a variety of new layout objects such as:
In addition HTML5 introduces additional objects that make it easier to import and manipulate content such as audio and video.
Used in conjunction with CSS3 and Javascript, HTML5 allows in-browser animation and content manipulation that previously required the use of server-side scripting or browser plugins like Flash.
A networking protocol used to transfer information between servers and browsers, which is the foundation for the World Wide Web. The text string “http://” appears at the beginning of most web URLs. For example: http://www.seocoarches.com
A combination of the HTTP and SSL (Secure Socket Layers) protocols to provide secure communications over the Internet by means of encryption and authentication. The text string “https://” appears at the beginning of secure web URLs. For example: https://www.google.com (when logged into Google)
An update to Google’s search algorithm announced September 26, 2013 but actually implemented a month earlier. The algorithm is intended to address more complex search queries, more quickly process complete questions and to rank answers to questions.
A link composed of an image as opposed to actual HTML text. The format for a image link is:
<a href=”link-goes-here.html”><img src="image.jpg" alt="optional alternate text" /></a>
In the above example “image.jpg” is the link image. The optional alt tag is used to convey information about the image to search engines, screen readers and other non-visual devices.
An image link is generally considered less valuable for SEO purposes than a text-based link.
A link to a web page from an external website. Inbound links are used by search engines as a measure of the popularity of a page and are an important factor in determining its ranking in search engine results.
Also know as backlink or incoming link.
A means of promoting a website (and/or brand) through content marketing. The idea being to attract users based upon quality content in the form of blogs, videos, white papers, social media marketing, etc. rather than through “disruptive” means such as paid advertising, email marketing, spam, etc.
The goal of inbound marketing is to create awareness and increase interest over time leading to an ongoing relationship and future sales rather than to make an immediate sale.
The default page for a website or a directory within a website. The name derives from the fact that, for some systems, a link to a directory will default to a listing (index) of the directory’s contents.
For example:
http://mydomain.com/ may display http://mydomain.com/index.html and
http://mydomain.com/mydirectory/ may display http://mydomain.com/mydirectory/index.html
Depending upon the server setup other files such as index.htm, index.php or default.html may serve this function.
Instagram is a photo-sharing social networking site that allows users to filter, transform and share photos from iOS and Android devices. A unique aspect of the service is that images are shared in a square format similar to Instamatic and Polaroid images, an effect often heightened by the available filters.
Instagram was incorporated in late 2010 and reached 100 million users in April 2012. Facebook acquired the company in April 2012 for $1 billion.
A link from a page to another page in the same website.
The operating system used to power Apple’s iPhone, iPad and iPod touch mobile devices.
For the purposes of SEO, a keyword or keyword phrase is a search term for which a website is optimized with the intention of ranking well in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) for that term.
For instance, if you manage a website for a bakery, your targeted keywords might include “cookies”, “cake” and “bread”. Your might also target keyword phrases such as “chocolate chip cookies” and “strawberry shortcake”. (more…)
The process of determining what keywords and phrases (search terms) you will target with your SEO efforts. The terms you select will guide both your on-page and off-page efforts. The goal of keyword research is to determine:
Typically keyword research involves:
A web page that receives traffic from an off-site source. In other words the page a visitor “lands” on when they first visit the site from another source (an ad, email message, search result, etc.)
More specifically, the term is most often used to refer to a custom-designed page optimized to receive traffic from an online ad or email campaign and designed to encourage the visitor to complete a specific call-to-action (CTA) such as submitting a registration form. Therefore, landing pages often use a unique page design that focuses on a single message and removes competing page elements such as navigation and advertisements.
For the purpose of SEO, landing page may also refer to a page with content optimized to receive traffic from a specific keyword search. While such a page may target a specific CTA it will generally use the same template as regular site pages and serve as an entry point for visitors to the site.
Text or an image on a web page that, when clicked on, takes the user to a specific resource, generally another web page.
In HTML a link is created using the anchor or A tag with an href attribute specifying the targeted resource such as:
<a href="http://seocoaches.com">SEO for everyone</a>
The above link will appear as SEO for everyone on the page. In this example the target of the link is the page https://www.seocoaches.com and the anchor or link text is “SEO for everyone”.
Content created for the purpose of generating links to the page containing the content.
Any activity undertaken to generate external links to a web page with the goal of improving its search engine rankings and traffic to the page.
Multiple word, highly-targeted search terms. Long Tail search terms produce more targeted traffic and less competition when compared to more generic one or two word terms.
For instance let’s assume you sell model kits of World War II era airplanes. It’s likely that most of the people (say 99%) who search for “airplanes” or “models” won’t be interested in your more specialized product. However, everyone who searches for “World War II model airplane kits” is likely to be a potential customer. Therefore the traffic (organic or paid) from one search for “World War II model airplanes kits” is more valuable to you (and easier and cheaper to obtain) than the traffic from 100 searches for “airplanes” or “models”.
The head of the Webspam team at Google. In that position he writes and speaks frequently about many SEO related topics and serves as the public face of Google to the SEO community. His blog is at www.mattcutts.com/blog/ (note: SEOcoaches received no compensation for that link).
According to his blog, Matt joined Google in 2000 and wrote the first version of SafeSearch. He has degrees in mathematics and computer science and a doctorate in Computer Graphics.
An HTML meta tag located in the <head> of a document used to convey a description of the page’s content in the format:
<meta name="description" content="Your concise and incisive description of the page goes here." >
Meta descriptions are not used by search engines in determining a page’s search rankings but may be displayed in search results. This offers webmasters an opportunity to craft a description which may be more inviting to searchers than the generic description a search engine generates. So it is a good practice to include a concise and inviting description for each page. It is recommended that descriptions be limited to a maximum of 155 characters.
An HTML meta tag inserted into the <head> of an HTML page which provides a list of keywords intended to indicate what the page is about.
At one time information provided in the keyword meta tag was used by search engines as a factor in ranking pages but its abuse (keyword stuffing and the use of meta keywords unrelated to the page’s actual content) caused search engines to abandon its use. Currently meta keywords have no use for SEO purposes.
HTML tags located in the <head> of a document that convey page metadata. Meta data is “data about data” – in this case data about the page.
The most commonly used meta tag attributes are keywords and description. Below is a sample of a description meta tag:
<meta name="description" content="Your concise and incisive description of the page goes here." >
Since information stored in meta tags can be exploited by including terms not relevant to the page, search engines have not used meta data for ranking purposes for several years. However, a page’s meta description may still be displayed by search engines in their results pages. There is no valid SEO purpose for using the keyword meta tag.
Navigation in web terms refers to the user interface elements designed to help the user move through the site.
Most commonly, navigation takes the form of links, usually in the form of lists, menus, icons or buttons.
An attribute of the anchor (link) tag that instructs search engines not to follow the link.
<a href="http://www.example.com/" rel="nofollow">Link text</a>
Nofollowed links do not pass page rank. Google guidelines require that paid links be nofollowed to indicate that the link has been purchased rather than occurring “naturally”.
A document meta tag instructing search engines not to index the page.
<meta name="robots" content="noindex" />
See also: Meta Tags, No Index, Robot Exclusion Standard
The result returned by Google Analytics for the keyword when the search was conducted on Google by a user who is logged into Google.
In Google Analytics, the search term used to access your site is reported under the Traffic Source tab in Sources > Search > Organic. Beginning in October 2011 Google began to block the referral data including keyword data from searchers who are logged into any Google property (ostensibly to protect the searchers’ privacy). All searches by logged in users are now reported as “(not provided)”.
NOTE: On September 23, 2013 a report on the Threadwatch forum stated that Google has begun the process of redirecting all searches to https (secure searches) which will have the effect of hiding all Google keyword data from Google Analytics users.
See also: Link Building, On-site SEO
SEO practices that rely upon changes made to your website. These are the simplest to implement since you have complete control over the content and structure of your site. Good on-site SEO practices are a necessary foundation for SEO but will have limited impact without additional off-site efforts.
Examples of on-site SEO include:
See also: Offsite SEO
A product, generally software but also images and content, distributed with minimal licensing restrictions. Generally a user is free to use, modify and redistribute open source code and content as long as they include the original attribution and make their variation freely available under the same licensing restrictions. A variety of open source licenses exist including the GNU Public License (GPL), Creative Commons and others.
Advantages of open source software cost (generally free) and portability. Since the open source model is widely used, broad generalizations about open source software are impossible. However many open source projects (such as the WordPress CMS) are supported by a large and knowledgeable community.
See also: Proprietary Software
The section of a search results page devoted to search results based upon their relevance to the search term as opposed to paid (or non-organic) results. Traditional SEO focused on improving the ranking of pages in organic search results.
While still extremely valuable, the organic search results for some terms has been minimized due to the prevalence of paid listing, advertising and additional products on results pages.
A typical Search Engine Results Page (SERP)
A link from your site to another site.
PageRank is a Google algorithm that ranks the importance of web pages based upon links between pages.
A page’s PageRank is not the same as its ranking in Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). While PageRank is a foundation for Google’s search engine results it is only one of many factors used to determine SERP rankings.
For the purposes of PageRank each link to a page is essentially a “vote” for that page. More links to a page results in a higher PageRank. In addition a link from a page with high PageRank counts as more “votes” than a link from a lower ranked site.
A link which has been purchased, usually with the intent of improving a page’s ranking in search results.
While the practice of buying links is not intrinsically bad (web advertising is purchasing links), Google guidelines prohibit selling links that pass PageRank (affect Google’s PageRank algorithm). Other search engines have similar policies. Sites which buy or sell such links can be penalized or removed from search engine rankings.
To prevent paid links from passing PageRank, webmasters may add the rel=nofollow attribute to the link or redirect the paid links using JavaScript.
Note: The FCC also requires persons being paid to promote a company’s product to disclose their relationship to the company.
The practice of purchasing ads – generally on a pay per click (PPC ) basis to appear on search engine results pages (SERPs). In addition, the ads may also appear on relevant websites that are part of the paid search network (also called contextual advertising).
The most popular Paid Search platform is Google’s Adsense, which generates over $12 billion annually – roughly one quarter of Google’s revenue.
A February 2011 update to Google’s ranking algorithm aimed at “low quality” sites such as those with a high ratio of advertising to editorial content.
The code name for a Google algorithm update released in April 2012 aimed at combatting web spam by penalizing sites employing optimization tactics that violate Google’s guidelines.
While Google’s algorithms are a closely held secret, Google cited “black hat web spam” as the target, which is generally believed to refer to keyword stuffing, unnatural linking patterns and the buying and selling of links that pass page rank.
On May 22, 2013, Google began the roll out of Penguin 2.0, an updated, “more comprehensive” Penguin algorithm.
Unlike Google’s Panda update, Penguin has only been updated three times since its initial release making recovery a very difficult proposition.
Refers to the fact that different users may see different search results based upon whether they are logged into the search engine, their previous browsing and search habits, and their location.
A photo and video-sharing social networking site based upon a pinboard metaphor. Users can save photos and videos (known as pins) on pinboards that are generally organized by category. Other users can then follow boards that interest them.
Pinterest began in 2009, launching as a private beta with 5000 users. By early 2010 it was growing about 50% per month. In 2011 usage began to grow almost exponentially, fueled in part by the release of the Pinterest iPhone app.
By July 2013, Semicast was estimating that Pinterest had over 70 million users. Current estimates are that over 80% of those users are women.
Google’s local search interface which organizes search results around specific locations. Rather than being dependent upon information indexed from a business’ website, Places uses information (including customer reviews) gathered from a variety of sources. In addition business owners can claim and customize their places listing. (more…)
A method of purchasing online advertising that bases the payment upon the number of times an ad is clicked on rather than the number of times the ad is seen (number of impressions).
Many advertisers prefer pay per click because they can avoid paying large sums for ineffective ad placements. In addition, PPC incentivizes publishers to position ads to increase their effectiveness and to promote the ads which prove most effective.
Software which requires the user to obtain and abide by the terms of a license from the copyright holder. Most commercial software is proprietary.
An issue which users should be aware of – particularly with a proprietary Content Management System (CMS) is data portability or the ability to move your data (and website) from one platform to another. With a proprietary system you may be “locked into” a particular vendor and find it difficult and expensive to move your existing site to a new hosting solution.
See also: Open Source
Online, this refers to a method for automatically transferring a visitor from the requested resource to a relocated or different resource.
Redirects are commonly used when a website is moved to a new domain name, the URL structure of a site is changed (for instance when a site is moved from static HTML pages to a content management system) or a page is moved or replaced.
Common redirect methods include:
Meta refresh: An HTML meta tag that appears in the <head> of a page and redirects the visitor to a new page. The format is:
<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="10; url=http://example.com/">
which redirects the visitor to http://example.com/ after 10 seconds (any number may be used, the use of “0” results in an immediate redirect.
JavaScript redirect: A redirect using JavaScript in the format
<script type="text/javascript"> <!-- window.location = "http://example.com/" //--> </script>
The above code redirects the visitor to http://example.com/
301 Redirect: A redirect performed by the server (often accomplished through an entry in the .htaccess file) that returns a 301 status code to the browser indicating that the requested resource has moved to a new location and that the move is permanent.
Information passed in the HTTP Header identifying the URL of the webpage that linked to the requested resource.
For example, if I visit the page http://somedomain.com/referrer.html and click on a link to http://anotherdomain.com/requested.html, the logs (and analytics) will show somedomain.com/referrer.html as a referrer to anotherdomain.com/requested.html.
This information is valuable for SEO purposes as it allows site owners to identify the sources of their traffic.
A relationship (rel) attribute inserted into an HTML link to indicate the author of the page the link appears on. Google recognizes two formats.
A link tag inserted into the <head> of the page as follows:
<a rel="author" href="https://plus.google.com/012345678901234567890"/>
A link in the content of the page that points to the author’s Google+ profile:
<a href="https://plus.google.com/012345678901234567890/about?rel=author" target="_blank">Joe Author</a>
The number strings in the links above indicate the Google+ profile ID of the author.
Once Google has verified the link, it will include the author’s profile picture with the page listing in its results.
A Google search result displaying the Google+ profile picture of the author.
A link in which the URL is given in reference to the current page or to the root of the current site.
If the URL in a link begins with a file or directory name, the link is relative to the current page:
<a href="directory/file.html">link relative to current page</a>
If the URL in a link begins with a slash, the link is relative to the root directory of the current site:
<a href="/directory/file.html">link relative to root of current site</a>
A Public Relations term referring to the monitoring and managing of a person’s or business’ reputation. Online this involves monitoring and responding to negative information in reviews, news, blog posts and social media. It also includes fostering favorable reviews, publicity, posts and social media mentions. The goal is to overwhelm negative impressions with positive ones and, in the case of search engine results, to drive negative information lower in the rankings.
A website design technique that adapts the layout of the page to the size of the browser window (more…)
A file placed in the root folder of a website (for example www.example.com/robots.txt) to give instructions to bots. A common usage is to instruct search engines to ignore certain files or directories. The robots.txt file is advisory and relies upon the creator of the bot to follow the instructions. (more…)
A common measure of the profitability and effectiveness of an investment. The method for determining the ROI is:
Profit after Expenses / Total Investment = Return on Investment
So, if you invested $10,000 in an advertising campaign that generated a net profit (profit after expenses) of $2500, your return on investment would be:
$2500 / $10,000 = .25 or 25% ROI
To accurately determine ROI all campaign expenses (salaries, taxes, etc.) must be considered when determining net profit.
A program used to retrieve information from a database or network. The term most commonly refers to web-based search engines such as Google and Bing.
In it’s original and purest form SEO refers to the practice of tailoring the content of web pages to improve their ranking in Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). Today that includes on-page optimization (use of keywords, etc.) and off page optimization (link building, etc.).
However the term has grown to encompass all manner of online marketing including many that are not directly related to search engines. A few examples include:
As the name suggests, SERPs are the pages search engines generate to display the list of results from a user’s search.
SERPs may contain organic (or natural) results as well as paid results. In addition SERPs may contain a variety of search result types such as local, map, image and news results.
A typical Search Engine Results Page (SERP)
1. An XML formatted listing of Uniform Resource Indicators (URIs) and associated metadata used to inform search engines about pages within a site that are available for crawling.
2. May also refer to a page within a website outlining the content of the site with a list of text links used to aid users in finding content within the site.
A specialized bot or script used by search engines to crawl the web (hence the term spider) analyzing and indexing web pages and other files.
Well known spiders include Googlebot, BingBot and Facebook External Hit.
A link composed of actual HTML text as opposed to an image. The format for a text link is:
<a href=”link-goes-here.html”>link text goes here</a>
In the above example “link text goes here” is the anchor text.
A text link is generally considered more valuable for SEO purposes than an image-based link, especially if the anchor text is optimized by including keywords for the page being linked to.
By using various CSS techniques (backgrounds, the hover pseudo state, etc.) it is possible to make a text link appear similar to an image link while retaining its SEO value.
The title attribute of an HTML element is used to convey additional information about the element. It is commonly used with images and is often shown as a tool tip when the mouse hovers over the object.
In HTML5 the title attribute can be used with any HTML element. However it is not well supported by many devices and therefore should not be used as a replacement for the image alt attribute.
An HTML tag containing, logically enough, the title of the document. It is located within the <head> of the document and is not visible within the document. It is displayed in the title bar of the web browser when viewing the page and is typically used by search engines as the headline of results snippet on search results pages. (more…)
A domain at the top level of the DNS (Domain Name System) heirarchy. It appears as the last item in a domain name. Common top-level domains include .com, .org, .edu, .gov, .info, .biz and two-letter country codes such as .us.
A user interface element consisting of a horizontal or vertical strip of buttons, menus, etc. For our purposes, a toolbar generally refers to an add-on product that adds functionality to a web browser such as Firefox. (more…)
A means by which a website requests notification when a document within the site is linked from an external site. Trackbacks are typically used between blogs and require that both blogs be trackback-enabled to function. (more…)
A method, pioneered by Stanford University and Yahoo!, to distinguish the value of pages based upon a seed set of selected “trusted” sites. The reliability of trust rank decreases with increased distance (linking steps) between a page and the seed set. While Google claims not to use trust rank specifically, it does use a variety of factors within its algorithm which reflect “trust.
A popular social media messaging (or microblogging) platform which limits messages, known as Tweets, to 140 characters. Twitter was launched in 2006 and currently has an estimated half billion users (100 million active each month) producing almost 9,000 tweets per second.
Twitter has become highly popular for discovering information (and occasionally misinformation) about breaking news events such as the Arab Spring and for the dissemination of viral content.
A character string used to identify a name or resource on the Internet. URIs may serve as locators (URLs) or names (URN). A URN defines a resource’s identity and a URL provides a means to access the resource. Technically, a URL is a type of URI but, in practice, the terms are often used interchangeably.
See also URL
A character string that specifies where a resource is located on the internet and the protocol to be used to retrieve it. Technically, a URL is a type of URI (Uniform Resource Identifier) but the two terms are often used interchangeably.
The syntax of a URL is:
scheme://domain:port/path?query_string#fragment_id (more…)
The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) defines usability as “The extent to which a product can be used by specified users to achieve specified goals with effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction in a specified context of use.” In our context, that boils down to how easy it is to use your website. (more…)
Refers to content uploaded to a website by the users of the site rather being created and posted by the site owners. The most popular UGC sites are social media sites such as Facebook, Pinterest, YouTube and Twitter. Online forums and wikis are another popular form of User-Generated Content.
User-generated Content can also be used for specific functions, such as reviews, in web sites with primarily admininstrator-generated content. Examples include Amazon and Yelp reviews and the comments section of blog posts.
A search that focuses on a specific type of content rather than the web as a whole. For instance a Google News search is limited to searching within news sources. There are several vertical search engines that focus on specific industries, professions and activities.
Marketing techniques that rely upon social networks (both on and off-line) to spread their message rapidly. The “viral” metaphor refers to the way the message is spread from an “infected” user to other users similar to the way an actual virus or computer virus spreads. This is in contrast to traditional marketing techniques that broadcast a message to a wide audience simultaneously. Online viral campaigns typically rely upon creating content that people will want to share in the form of links, images, videos, etc.
One of multiple domains sharing an IP address and server.
A virtual server is a virtual machine running on the same computer as other virtual machines. It provides a higher level of security than typical shared hosting since the individual virtual servers are isolated from each other. Each virtual machine acts independently, can host its own operating system and hosting software, and can be rebooted independently.
The World Wide Web Consortium is the main international organization responsible for developing web standards. It is lead by Tim Berner-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web.
Standards overseen by W3C include HTML, CSS, HTTP and many others.
Web fonts refer to fonts that are downloaded by the browser and embedded in the page through the use of the @font-face declaration included in the CSS3 specification. (more…)
A protocol for querying databases of registered users or assignees for Internet resources such as domain names and IP addresses.
A variety of tools are available for accessing Whois information including several online tools including:
See also: DNS
A collaborative website which allows for community creation and curation of content. (more…)
A free, collaboratively-edited online encyclopedia. It is the most popular reference source on the web and ranks sixth in popularity among all websites according to Alexa. For pure SEO purposes a link on Wikipedia is not valuable since the links are no-followed. However, a Wikipedia link can be valuable for the traffic it generates for your site since Wikipedia is highly favored by Google and ranks highly for many popular and competitive search terms.
The most popular Content Management System (CMS) in use on the web. According to most estimates WordPress powers about one-fifth of the sites on the web.
www (also W3) is the abbreviation for World Wide Web the system of interlinked hypertext documents commonly referred to as “the web.” (more…)
Extensible Hypertext Markup Language is an XML-compliant version of HTML intended to make HTML more extensible and interoperable with other data formats. It was originally envisioned as a replacement for HTML but was not widely adapted outside the ranks of professional developers and has been supplanted by HTML5.
Extensible Markup Language is a widely used markup language (as is HTML) designed for sharing documents and data structures. An XML schema defines a document type and the specialized tags used for the data. (more…)
An Internet portal offering search, directory listings and a variety of other services. In the past Google has indicated that a link in the Yahoo! Directory can have a beneficial impact on your SEO efforts.
As of August 2011, comScore reports that Yahoo!, whose search results are provided by Bing, has a 11.3% share of the U.S. search market behind Google’s 67.0% share and Microsoft’s (Bing) 17.9%.
Yahoo! is an acronym for “Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle.”
U.S. Search Market Share