Search Engine Glossary
Alt Text: It is also known as alternative text or alt attribute. An HTML tag (Alt tag) used to provide images with a text description in the event images are turned off in a web browser. The images text description is usually visible while “hovering” over the image. This tag is also important for the web access of the visually impaired
Anchor Text: These are words used to link to a page. known as anchor text are an important signal to the search engines to determine the relevancy of a page.
Back Links: All the links pointing to a particular web page. Also called inbound links. Source Webmaster World Forums
Baseline Metrics: This is a time lagged calculation which provides a basis for making comparisons of past performance to current performance.
Bid: The maximum amount of money that an advertiser is willing to pay each time a searcher clicks on an ad. Bid prices can vary widely depending on competition from advertisers and keyword popularity.
Blogs: A truncated form for “web log”. A blog is a frequently updated journal that is intended for general public consumption. They usually represent the personality of the author or a web site. A good source of blogging terms is at http://www.whatis.techtarget.com
Brand: A customer or User experience represented by images and ideas often referring to a symbol ( name,logo,symbols,fonts,colors) a slogan and a design scheme. Brand recognition and other reactions are created by the accumulation of experiences with the specific product or service, both from its use, and as influenced by advertising, design and media commentary. Brand is often developed to represent implicit values, ideas and even personality. Source: Wikipedia
CPA: Acronym for Cost Per Acquisition. This is the total cost of an ad campaign divided by the number of conversions. For example, if a campaign cost $100 and resulted in 5 conversions the CPA is $20 ($100/5). It cost $20 to generate one conversion.
CPC: Acronym for Cost Per Click, or the amount search engines charge advertisers for every click that sends a searcher to the advertiser’s website or landing page. For an advertiser, CPC is the total cost for each click through received when its ad is clicked on.
CTR: Acronym for Click Through Rate, the number of clicks that an ad gets, divided by the total number of times that ad is displayed or served. ( Represented as total clicks/ total impressions for a specific ad = CTR. For example, if an ad has 100 impressions and 6 clicks, the CTR is 6 %. The higher the CTR, the more visitors your site is receiving, CTR also factors into your advertiser search engine Quality Score and therefore your minimum keyword on Tier 1 engines GYM- Google, Yahoo, MSN.
Click Through Rate: The percentage of those clicking on a link out of a total number who see the link. For example, imagine 10 people do a web search. In response, they see links to a variety of web pages. Three of the 10 people all choose one particular link. That link then has a 30 percent click-through rate. Source: Webmaster World.
Competitive Analysis: As used in SEO, CA is the assessment and analysis of strenghts and weaknesses of competing websites, including identifying traffic patterns, major traffic sources and keyword selection.
Conversion Rate: Conversion rates are measurements that determine how many of your prospect perform the prescribed or desired action step. If your prescribed response is for a visitor to sign up for a newsletter or fill out a lead form and you had 100 visitors and 1 lead form submitted then your conversion rate would be 1 %. Typically micro-conversions ( for instance, reading different pages on your site) lead to your main conversion setup (making a purchase, signing up for a service ).
Crawler: Also known as a bot and spider, a crawler is a program that search engines use to seek out information on the web. The act of crawling on the website is referred to when the crawler begins to search through documents contained within the website.
Description Tag: Refers to the information contained in the description META tag. This tag is meant to hold the brief description of the web page it is included on. The information contained in this tag is generally the description displayed immediately later the main link on many search engine result pages.
Directory Search: Also known as Directory Search. Refers to a directory of web sites contained in an engine that are categorized into topics. The main difference between a search directory and a search engine is in how the listings are obtained For example Yahoo is a Directory and Google is a Search Engine. A search directory relies on user input in order to categorize and include a web site. Additionally, a directory usually only includes higher- level pages of a domain.
Display URL: The web page URL that one sees in a PPC text ad. Display url usually appears as the last line in the ad, it may be a simplified path for the longer actual URL, which is not visible.
Domain: Refers to a specific web site address
Doorway Page: A web page specifically created in order to obtain rankings within the natural listings of a search engine. These pages generally are filled with keywords and are meant to funnel surfers into the main website. This practice is generally considered an outdated spam tactic. This term is not to be confused with a “Landing Page”
Entry Page: Refers to any page within a website that a user employs to enter your website. Also see Landing Page.
FTP: Stands for “File Transfer Protocol”
Feeds: A web document that is a shortened or updated ( revised content only ) version of a web page created for syndication. Usually served at user request, through subscription also includes ad feeds to shopping engines and paid inclusion ad models. Ad feeds are ussally in Extensible Markup Language XML or Rich Site Summary (RSS) format.
Geo Targeting: The geographic location of the searcher. Geo- targeting allows you to specify where your ads will or won’t be shown based on the searcher’s location enabling more localized and personalized results.
HTTP: Stands for “Hypertext Transfer Protocol”
Index: A search engine’s “index” refers to the amount of documents found by search engine crawler on the web.
IP Address: Abbreviation for Internet Protocol Address, a unique combination of numbers assigned to individual electronic devices or networks that communicate over the internet. Basically, it is a tractable address for any computer, and it can be used to localize results. Internet Assigned Numbers Authority ( IANA ) overseas global IP address allocation.
Keyword: A single word that relates to a specific subject or topic. For example “glossary” would be a keyword for this document.
Keyword Phrase: A specific word or combination of words that a searcher might type into a search field. Includes generic, category keywords, industry- specific terms, product brands, common mis spellings and expanded variations ( called keyword stemming ) or multiple words ( called long tail for their lower CTR but sometimes better conversion rate ). All might be entered as a search query. For example, someone looking to buy coffee mugs might use the keyword phrase ” ceramic coffee mugs” Also, keywords- which trigger as network and contextual network ad serves- are the auction components on which PPC advertisers bid for all Ad Groups/Orders and campaigns.
Landing Page/ Destination Page: The web page at which a searcher arrives after clicking on an ad. When creating a PPC ad, the advertiser displays a URL ( and specifies the exact page URL in the code) on which the searcher will land after clicking on an ad in the SERP. Landing Pages are also known as ” where the deal is closed” as it is the landing page actions that determine an advertisers conversion rate success.
Lead generation: Web sites that generate leads for products or services offered by another company. On a lead generation site, the visitor is unable to make a purchase but will fill out a contact form in order to get more information about the product or service presented. A submitted contact form is considered a lead. It contains personal information about a visitor who has some degree of interest in a product or service.
Link popularity: Link popularity generally refers to the total number of links pointing to any particular URL. There are typically two types of links pointing to any particular URL. Internal and External. Internal link popularity typically refers to the number of links or pages within a web site that link to a specific URL. External link popularity refers to the number of inbound links from external web sites tha are pointing to a specific URL. If you have more “links” than your competitors, you are typically known to have link cardinality or link superiority.
Long Tail: Keyword phrases with at least three, sometimes four or five words in them. These long tailed keywords are ususaly highly specific and draw lower traffic than shorter, more competitive keyword phrases, which is why they are also cheaper. Oftentimes, long tailed keywords, in aggregate, have a good conversion ratio for the low number of click throughs they generate.
Metrics: A system of measure to quantify particular characteristics. In SEO the following are some important metrics to measure, overall traffic, search engine traffic, converions, top traffic driving keywords, top conversion-driving keywords, keyword rankings etc Google analytics is a very good free tool to use http://www.google.com/analytics/
Multivariate Testing: A type of testing that varies and tests more than one or two campaign elements at a time to determine the best performing elements and combinations. Multivariate testing can gather significant results on many different components of, for example alernative PPC ad titles or descriptions in a short period of time. Often it requires special expertise to analyze complex statistical results. Compare to A/B Split Testing which changes only one element at a time, alternately serving an old version ad and a changed ad. In search advertising, you might do A/B Split or Multivariate testing to learn what parts of a landing page ( background color, title, headline, fill in forms, design, images ) produce higher conversions and are more cost effective.
Negative Keywords: Filtered out keywords to prevent ad serves on them in order to avoid irrelevant click through charges on for example products that do not sell, or refine and narrow the targetting of your Ad group’s keywords. Microsoft ad center calls them “excluded keywords”. Formatting negative keywords varies by search engine, but they are ususally designated with a minus sign.
Organic Results: Listings on SERP’s that are not paid for , listings for which search engines d not sell space. Sites appear in organic ( also called “natural” ) results become a search engine has applied formulas ( algorithms ) to its search crawler index, combined with editorial decisions and content weighting, that it deems important enough inclusion wihout payment. Paid Inclusion content is also often considered “organic” even though its paid advertising because paid inclusion content usually appears on SERP’S mixed with unpaid, organic results.
Organic Search listings: Listingsthat search engines so not sell ( unlike paid listings) . Instead, sites appear solely beacuse search engine has deemed it editorially important for them to be included regardless of payment. Paid Inclusion Content is often considered ‘organic” even though it is paid for. This is because paid inclusion content ususally appears intermixed with unpaid organic results.
Organic Search Rankings: Search engine rankings of web pages found in the SERP’s
PPC: Acronym for Pay Per Click, a model of online advertising in which advertisers pay only for each click on their ads that directs serachers to a specified landing page on the advertisers website.PPC advertisers only pay when their as is clicked on. Charges per ad click-through are based on advertiser bids in hybrid as space auctions and are influenced by competitor bids,competition for keywords and search engines proprietary quality measures of advertiser ad and landing page content.
Page Rank: PR is the Google technology developed at Stanford University for placing importance on pages and websites. At one point PageRanl ( PR ) was a major factor in rankings. Today it is one of hundreds of factors in the algorithm that determines a page’s rankings.
Paid Inclusion: This refers to the process of paying a fee to a search engine in order to be included in that search engine or directory. Also known as “guaranteed inclusion”. Paid inclusion does not impact rankings of a web page. It merely gurantees that the web page itself will be included in the index. These programs were typically used by web sites that were not being fully crawled or were incapable of being crawled, due to dynamic URL structures, frames etc.
Podcasts: A podcast is a media file that is distributed over the internet using syndication feeds, for playback on portable media players and personal computers. Like “radio” it can mean both the content and the method of syndication. The latter may also be termed podcating. The host or author of a podcast is often called a podcaster. Source Wikipedia.
Quality Score: A number assigned by Google to paid ads in a hybrid auction that, together with maximum CPC, determine’s each ad’s rank and SERP position. Quality Score reflect an ad’s historical CTR,keyword relevance, landing page relevance, and other factors proprietary to Google. Yahoo refers to the Quality Score as a Quality Index. And both Google and Yahoo display 3-5 step indicators of qulaity evaluations for individual advertisers.
Query: The keyword or the keyword phrase a searcher enters into a search field, which initiates a search and results in a SERP with organic and paid listings.
ROI: Acronym for Return On Investment, the amount of money you make on your ads compared to the amount of money you spend on your ads. For example if you spend $100 on PPC ads and make $150 from those ads, then your ROI would be 50% ( Calculated as ($150-$100= $50/100=50%) The higher your ROI, the more successful your advertising.
RSS: Acronym for Rich Site Summary or Real Simple Syndication, a family of web feed formats that leverage XML for distributing and sharing headlines and information from other web content ( also known as syndication)
Rank: How well positioned a particular web page or web site appears in search engine results. For example, if you rank a position #1, you’re the first listed paid or sponsored ad. If you are in position #18, it is likely that your ad appears on the second or third page of the search results, after 17 competitor paid ads and organic listings. Tank and position affect your click-through rates and, ultimately, conversion rates for your landing pages.
Reciprocal Link: Two different sites that link out to each other. Also referred to as Cross linking.
Relevance: In relation to PPC advertising, relevance is a measure of how closely your ad title, description and keywords are related to the search query and the searcher’s expectations.
Reverse DNS: A process to determine the hostname or host associated with an IP or host address
Robots.txt: A text file present in the root directory of a website which is used to direct the activity of search engine crawlers. This file is typically used to tell a crawler which portions of the site should be crawled and which should not be crawled.
SEO: Acronym for “Search Engine Optimization”. This is the process of editing a web site’s content and code in order to improve visibility within one or more search engines. When this term is useed to describe an individual, it stands for ” Search Engine Optimizer” or one who performs SEO.
SERP: Acronym for”Search Engine Results Page”, the page delivered to a searcher that displays the results of a search query entered into the search field. Displays both paid ad (sponsored) and organic listings in varying positions or rank.
Search Directory: Similar to a Search engine, in that they both compie databases of web sites. A directory does not use crawlers in order to obtain enties in its search database. Instaed, it relies on user interaction and submissions for the content it contains. Submissions are the categorized by topic and normally alphabetically, so that the results of any search will start with site descriptions that begin with some number or non-letter character, then moving A-Z.
Search Engines: A search engine is a database of many web pages. Most engines display the number of web pages they hold in their database at any given time. A search engine generally “ranks” or orders the results according to a set of parameters. These parameters ( called algorithms) vary among search engines, they are always inproving in order to identify spam as well as improve relevance.
SPAM: Any search marketing method that a search engine deems to be detrimental to its efforts to deliver relevant, quality search results. Some search engines have written guidelines on their definations and penalties for SPAM, Examples include doorway landing pages designed primarily to game search engine algorithms rather than meet searcher expectations from the advertiser’s clicked on ad, keyword stuffing in which search terms that motivated a click-through are heavily and redundantly repeated on a page in place of relevant content, attempts to redirect click -through searchers to irrelevant pages, product offers and services, and landing pages that simply compile additional links on which a searcher must click to get any information. Determining what contributes SPAM is complicated by the fact that different search engines have different standards, including what is allowed for listings gathered through organic methods versus paid inclusion ( referred to as spamdexing), whether the listing is from commercial or reseacrh/academic source. Source Webmaster World Forums
Splash Page: Refers to an entry page or main page of the website that is interactive or graphically intense. Many splash pages are designed using Flash.
Stop Word: A word that often appears in a page’s copy or content, but it has no significance by itself. Examples of stop words are: and,the,of etc
Submissions: The act of submitting a website to search engines and search directories. For some search engines, this is performed simply by typing in the absolute home page url of the website you wish to submit. Other serach engines and directories request that descriptions of the website be submitted for approval.
