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GLOSSARY
A - H I - P Q - Z
Algorithm: Rules, which a search engine uses to rank listings in its index. Algorithms are kept secret by search engines to protect themselves from people who want to gain an unfair advantage in ranking. Search engine algorithms evolve constantly and especially Google is knows to regularly roll out significant algorithm changes that can temporarily or permanently impact on a site’s search engine ranking.
Backlinks: Also see Inbound Links. Incoming links to a website, which are used as a kind of voting system by search engine algorithms to determine the importance and relevance of a website. More back links are better than fewer back links, but the quality of back links (i.e., how important is the site the link originates on) has more influence on rankings than the number of back links.
Click-Through-Rate (CTR): The number of clicks on a link compared to the number of people who see the link. A measure to assess the effectiveness of online marketing like banner advertising, emails or search advertising. Example: 100 people view a newsletter, and 8 of them click on links contained in the newsletter. This equates to a click-through-rate of 8%.
Conversion Rate: The number of positive outcomes (such as sales) a site receives divided by the amount of visitors to a site, expressed as a percentage value. Example: A website gets 200 visits per day and generates 4 paid sales, resulting in a daily conversion rate of 2%.
Cost Per Click (CPC): An agreed fee paid by the advertiser to the site which displays their link, for each click someone makes on the link leading to their website.
Crawler: Also known as a spider or robot, a program, which automatically fetches web pages and adds them to a search engine’s index.
Directory: A type of search engine where humans are responsible for the review of websites, rather than by automated crawling of the web. Websites are usually reviewed, summarized and placed in an appropriate category. DMOZ is an example of a major directory and Complete Online Directory is an example of a general smaller directory.
Doorway Page: A web page which itself does not deliver much information to those viewing it, but rather aims to rank well for a specific term and often for a certain search engine. A website may have several door pages created for different search terms and search engines with all of them linking to the same end page. Most search engines have guidelines against doorway pages as they are seen as a form of SPAM.
Geo-Targeting: Also called geographical targeting. A term mainly used in paid search advertising where it describes advertising being displayed only to users from a chosen geographical region (country, state, zip code, radius). Geo-targeting aims to increase the relevance and thus effectiveness of advertising (as measured for example in click-through or conversion rates).
Hit: A request for a file located on a web server. Since a web page can contain many different elements, e.g. graphic images, many hits can be recorded when a user visits a single page. For example, a HTLM page containing five images would record six hits – five individual hits for the five images and one for the HTML file.
Inbound Links: A website contains inbound links if other websites link to it. Inbound links are highly considered by search engines, such as Google, when determining ranking for a particular web page.
Keywords: See Search Terms.
Landing Page: The page that a visitor arrives on after clicking on an online advertising link (for example a link in a newsletter, a pay-per-click ad or an organic search engine listing). Landing pages are critical in determining conversion or interaction success, and online marketers invest a lot of effort in optimising the various elements of a landing page (calls to action, content, navigation, graphic design) to achieve the best possible conversion rate. A landing page should always be relevant to the message a visitor saw when clicking on a link. For example, an advertisement stating “Submit your URL to search engines now!” should direct to a landing page about search engine submission and not contain any off-topic content.
Link Popularity: Link popularity is one of the most important factors in getting a good ranking for a website and it is derived from the number of inbound links to your website. It is important to mention that search engines do not only take the number of inbound links into account when assigning the ranking to a website. The relevancy of those inbound links also needs to be considered, meaning that the links should come from websites that deal with topics related to your own.
Listings: Listings are the results that a search engine returns for a particular search term.
Meta Tags: Meta tags are bits of text which are placed within the HTML code, but are not displayed on the website. Search engines use these tags for the sole purpose of indexing and cataloguing your website.
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Meta Description Tag: The description Meta tag is a general description of what is contained in your web page. Some search engines (not all) display the content of the description tag below your title in the list of results.
Meta Keywords Tag: The keyword Meta tag was designed to help search engines understand the relevance between a website and the search terms people use in order to find it.
Meta Title Tag: The title meta tag is critical for search engine optimisation since content contained in title tags is not only assessed for ranking, but can also be displayed as hyperlinked text on search engine results pages and appears in the title bar of web browsers.
Natural Search Engine Optimisation: Also called “organic search engine optimisation” or simply “search engine optimisation”. Any techniques used to improve the ranking of a web page within the main search engine results. Natural search engine optimisation includes techniques that comply with search engine guidelines as well as techniques deemed to be unacceptable by search engines (also called search engine spamming or black hat SEO). Using black hat SEO techniques is highly risky and not recommended as it can lead to web pages being banned from search engine results.
Optimisation Services: A summary term for a wide range of search engine optimisation services offered by search engine optimisation companies. Services can include, but are not limited to, keyword research, review and improvement of meta data, copywriting, back link building, sitemap design, consultation on site design and navigation, and search engine submission.
Organic Results / Listings: Organic listings are the natural listings returned on the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs), which are ranked on relevancy to a search term.
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