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The Maui SEO Glossary is a living designed to
explain and clarify Search Engine Optimization specific terms. Please
notify us if you want to add a term or do not find what you are looking
for.
AdWords: uses keywords to precisely target the
delivery of advertisements to people seeking out information about a
particular product or service. Advertisers choose which keywords they
want their ads associated with, then their ads appear alongside Google
search results and on web pages with information related to that
keyword. AdWords appear as clean, simple text and are clearly identified as promotional,
thereby respecting and enhancing web users’ efforts to find useful
information. Google AdWords offers cost-per-click (CPC) pricing, so advertisers
only pay when an ad is clicked on. Advertisers can take advantage of an
extremely broad distribution network, as ads can appear alongside
Google.com search results, with search results on Google’s partner sites
(AOL, Ask Jeeves, and others), and on targeted content pages on leading
websites. Advertisers can choose the level of support and spending as is
appropriate for their business.
AdWords is available on a self-service basis, in which
advertisers control the details of their campaign – creative, keyword
choices, and daily budget – via online tools and with email support.
Advertisers with more extensive campaigns and budgets can receive
strategic services, which include an account team of experienced
professionals that will help them set up, manage, and optimize their
campaigns. For more information about Google search advertising
opportunities, visit www.google.com/ads
AJ: Ask
Jeeves is becoming just Ask - Ask.com |
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Algorithm:
a complex mathematical formula
used by a search engine to rank the web pages that it finds by crawling
the web. The
algorithm of all search engines are very top secret, there are
many people who work out side of the search engine industry that attempt
to reverse engineer the code so they can understand how they work in an
attempt to help people to rank higher in the results. Algorithm
a set of rules that a search engine uses to rank the listings contained
within its index, in response to a particular query. No search engine
reveals exactly how its own
algorithm works, to protect itself from competitors and those
who wish to spam the search engine. |
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Alta Vista:
a popular search engine with one of the largest
database on the web. Its main URL is
http://www.altavista.com.
Until 1998, this search engine provided the search facility for Yahoo. Altavista indexes
all the words in a web page, and new pages are normally added to the
database fairly quickly, within a couple of working days. You are asked
to submit just the main page of your site. The
Altavista spider will then explore your site and index a
representative sample of the pages. Some problems with spamming have
been noticed. The use of keyword meta tags is penalized.
Altavista
places various alternative options before its search results, including
suggested questions (using the Ask Jeeves service), Real Names. Paid entries are beginning to
appear at the start of the search results. |
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Daily world searches:
this is the number of times a keyword
may be searched for using a major search engines according to our best
estimation. WebCEO keep database fresh by removing the search terms
older than 90 days. |
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Directory:
a compilation of websites reviewed and organized by
human editors into useful categories and topics, similar to the
organization of the Yellow Pages. Examples of directories are Yahoo!,
About.com, and the Open Directory Project. Directories
are web page or an entire website dedicated to listing Internet web
pages. Directories use human editors to review and categorize sites for
acceptance and are compiled manually by user submission. Sites such as
UKwizz have their own directory
that accept websites submitted from the general public. The biggest
directory is the Open
Directory Project, which has members of the public editing the
categories. Many other sites now use a Yahoo-like directory
including major portal sites. Submission to directories is important
because they provide a long-term link to your site from a relevant page
- it will increase your link popularity, and, as a minor advantage - you
can expect some traffic from them. Each directory
listing contains short, descriptive information about the site. Strong
directory
listings are an excellent way your company can increase its link
popularity and its Google PageRank. However, a poorly written listing
that is submitted to Yahoo! (and subsequently edited or run with
ineffective writing or keyword research) can negatively influence a
search marketing campaign. |
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FFA:
Free For All (FFA
Links Pages) LSI - Latent Semantic
Indexing - enables the Search engine algorithms to relate to what a page
is about outside of the defined search parameters. Latent semantic
indexing adds an important step to the document indexing process. In
addition to recording which keywords a document contains, the method
examines the document collection as a whole, to see which other
documents contain some of those same words. LSI considers documents that
have many words in common to be semantically close, and ones with few
words in common to be semantically distant. This simple method
correlates surprisingly well with how a human being, looking at content,
might classify a document collection. Although the LSI algorithm doesn't
understand anything about what the words mean, the patterns it notices
can make it seem astonishingly intelligent.
| Jump page ad: a
microsite reached by clicking a button or banner. The jump page itself can list
several topics, which can link to your site.
Landing
page: an
active web page where Internet users will “land” when they click your online ad.
Your landing page doesn’t need to be your home page. In fact, ROI
usually improves if your landing page directly relates to your
ad and immediately presents a conversion opportunity — whether that means
signing up for a newsletter, downloading a software demo, or buying a product.
Also known as a destination URL or click through URL. Landing pages
are pages that users would click through to from a PPC campaign or XML feed. For
best results, these pages are highly targeted for the reader and specific to the
PPC ad or feed description (for instance, if a PPC ad advertises a coat sale,
sending prospects to the company home page would invoke frustrations and
decrease conversions). Rewriting landing pages is one of the
easiest ways companies can increase their conversion rates.
MSN Search:
Microsoft's search engine at http://www.msn.com
The Open Directory Project (http://dmoz.org/)
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Off-The-Page Optimization:
in addition to on-page
factors, search engines are increasingly using off-page factors
to calculate relevance. This is because off-page factors are
more difficult to manipulate artificially. The most important
off-page factor is link popularity. Others include link text,
link community and click popularity. Off-page optimization
involves ensuring that these elements are in place to boost
relevance for the targeted terms. |
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SEO:
Organic Search Engine
Optimization. To Build a site that ranks high in search engines
without spending large amounts of cash. |
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PageRank for Money:
selling or buying a
link from a web page with a high Google PageRank for the stated
purpose of increasing the other page's PR. This is highly
frowned upon by Google and will result in a penalty for both
pages if Google finds out about it. |
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Portal:
Designation for websites that are either authoritative hubs
for a given subject or popular content driven sites (like
Yahoo) that people use as their homepage. Most
portals offer significant content and offer
advertising opportunities for relevant sites. |
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Ranking:
the order a search engine
shows results extracted from its database, relevant to the
searcher's query. Each search engine uses its own unique
algorithm to rank pages. Most major search engines use the
ranking algorithms that combine both keyword
relevance and page popularity. |
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Ranking algorithm:
the methodology by which search engines
calculate positioning results. Ranking algorithms
can be influenced by a wide variety of factors including domain
name, spiderable content, submission practices, HTML code and
link popularity.
Search engine ranking algorithms are closely
guarded and constantly updated to attempt to filter out those
sites which attempt to manipulate the results.
Relevancy: What is "relevancy"? Relevancy
is how important the engine considers your page with regard to
your keyword
phrase. If the engine assigns a high relevancy to your page for
a particular keyword phrase, it thinks your page
provides the information that a searcher would be looking for
when searching for the keyword phrase. |
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Return on investment:
ROI the benefit gained
in return for the cost of your ad campaign. Although exact
measurement is nearly impossible, your click through rate and
your conversion rate combined with your advertising costs, can
help you assess the ROI of your campaign. |
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Search Engine:
a search engine
is a searchable online database of internet resources. It has
several components:
search engine software, spider software, an index (database),
and a relevancy algorithm (rules for ranking). The
search engine software consists of a server or a
collection of servers dedicated to indexing Internet Web pages,
storing the results and returning lists of pages to match user
queries. The spidering software constantly crawls the Web
collecting Web page data for the index. The index is a database
for storing the data. The relevancy algorithm determines how to
rank queries. Examples of major search engines
are Google, AOL, MSN and Lycos, etc.. Examples of major
directories are Yahoo!, LookSmart and ODP |
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Search Engine Optimization:
SEO Search engine optimization is the process of optimizing a website or web page to increase
its visibility within the search engine results. Search
engine optimization entails making sure that there is
content relevant to the targeted key phrases on the web site,
and that search engine spiders can find this content easily.
Good search engine optimization will ensure
that this content is also useful to the user. Without
relevant
content, SEO techniques can only be partially successful, and
will probably stray into the wrong side of search engine
Acceptable Use Policies.
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Search engine optimization writing:
is specialized
copywriting that entails weaving keywords and keyphrases into
marketing or informational copy. The purpose of search engine
optimization copywriting is to gain prime positioning for the
desired keyphrases, as well as increase page conversion rates. |
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Search Engine Positioning:
also known as Search Engine Optimization (SEO),
is a phrase to describe the practice of positioning a web site
within the search engine results. A multitude of techniques are
involved in successful search engine positioning.
Not only must a web site be optimized, but it's link popularity
must also be built. Good visibility in directories must be
gained and other search engine marketing techniques pursued,
such as Pay Per Click campaigns. Search engine positioning has
evolved over the last few years. While initially involving only
search engine optimization, the industry has grown to include a
whole array of additional techniques. |
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Search Engine Results Pages:
(SERPS) the ranked
listing of web pages that are returned for a specific search
query |
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SOAP - Simple Object Access Protocol
W3:
World Wide Web |
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