SEO Glossary

Search engine optimization glossary:

AdSense – Google’s contextual advertising program which allows web site owners to generate income by displaying Google ads on their websites / blogs.

AdWords – Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising program by Google.

Alt Tag – The HTML tag (alt attribute) that provides alternative text relevant to any image or graphics.

Backlink – Also known as Inbound Link. Backlinks (BLs) are incoming links to a website or webpage.

Black Hat SEO – It refers to the unthical methods such as used to get high search engine rankings for a website.

Blog – A web blog is an online journal of a blogger where he/she can write about ideas on any topic.

Broken Link – A link which will not provide any information / web page. Or simply, a link that doesn’t work.

Cloaking – The method or a technique (basically unethical way) to serve a search engine spider / robot a different page than a web surfer sees.

CPC – Cost per Click. It refers to the cost which an advertiser pays for every click on the sponsored ad in Pay per click advertising campaigns.

CTR – Click Through Rate or Click Through Ratio.

Deep Link – A link (an internal web page link) to a web page other than a home page or index page.

Doorway Pages – A black Hat SEO technique to make web pages just for search engines and have no connection with the website pages to get more web traffic for a particular keyword from search engines.

Ethical SEO – Also known as White Hat SEO.

FFA – An abbreviation for “Free For All”. The site which can allow anybody to add / place or submit a link without any kind of relevancy on the page.

Hidden Text – The text which is visible to search engines but invisible to the online visitors. Also, it can be of the same color as the background in a web page to increase the keyword density.

Inbound Link – A link to a website from any other external website or web page.

Keyword – A word or a phrase used to search a relevant information in search engines.

Keyword Research – A research to find the targeted and relevant keywords / phrases for a website in search engine optimization process.

Keyword Stuffing – A unnecessary repetion of a keyword or a phrase in the webpage to get higher search engine rankings.

Link Building – A process of exchanging links with other related websites to increase backlinks.

Link Popularity – Total amount of links pointing to a website.

Organic SEO – Totally a natural search engine optimization which doesn’t include any paid listings for a website.

PPC – Abbreviation for Pay per click.

Reciprocal Links – The link exchange between two websites in order to get more backlinks.

Robots.txt – A text file which is used to control the search engine robot in accessing the web pages for a website.

ROI – Return on Investment.

SEM – Search engine marketing

SEO – Search engine optimization (optimisation)

SERP – Search engine result pages.

Sitemap – A collection of all important links for a website.

SMO – Social Media Optimization

Spamming – It refers using different kinds of methods or techniques to achieve search engines rankings and web traffic inlcuding unsolicited junk emails, comment spamming etc.

Unethical SEO – Just opposite of ethical SEO.

White Hat SEO – Just opposite of Black Hat SEO.