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301 Redirect:
A permanent server redirect that reflects a change of address for a web page.

302 Redirect:
Indicates that the document requested is found but temporarily resides under a different URL. Since a permanent redirect has not been used, the client should continue to use the original requested URL for future requests.

404 Error Page:
A custom page created for the website that is presented when a user arrives at a page that no longer exists or has moved. It is beneficial to create a custom 404-error page for your users to help them navigate back to the site, to your homepage or sitemap.

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Adwords:
Google's advertisement and link auction network. Most of Google's ads are keyword targeted and sold on a cost per click basis in an auction, which factors in ad click-through rate as well as max bid.

Algorithm:
An advanced formula with a set of rules used by search engines to evaluate a website in determining its relevancy to a particular search. The search engines then rank the websites within their indexes accordingly.

Alt Tag:
An attribute included within an element link, most often an image link, to describe what the graphic is about; used to aid the visually impaired and search engine robots that cannot see images.

Analytics:
Web enabled feature that allows measurement of visitor statistics and online metrics. Analytics may be used to glean key marketing intelligence to assess hot geographic areas, keyphrases used, new or returning visitors, and referring sources. Measurables like bounce rate and time on site are valuable to understand the value of your site’s content and functionality.

Anchor Text:
The text that contains a link embedded to another page of a website. Search engines use anchor text to indicate the relevancy of the referring site and of the link to the content on the landing page.

Article Syndication:
A website promotion and Internet marketing strategy that involves distribution of press releases and articles for online publication, creating inbound links, enabling your website to rank higher on search engines.

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Banner Ad:
Graphical, web based ads that can either be static or feature movement. Banners are used as visual links to a target site and yield a measurable response via analytics.

Black Hat SEO:
Unethical search engine optimization tactics that cause a site to temporarily rank higher. Sites using “black hat” techniques can be penalized and even banned. Be wary of “quick fix” guarantees like “Your website will rank on page 1 of Google” or any type of mass link building initiatives.

Blog:
A blog is an online journal. It can be connected to your corporate website or appear on a third party site. Blog entries are usually short and posted regularly. In 2007, through their Universal (aka blended) Search, Google began displaying blog postings within their regular search results. Blog content is immediately available to the audience and can have great sharing value to the audience.

Blogging:
The act of posting a written communication, photo or video on a blog. These brief postings may contain opinions, thoughts and articles. Blog posts are formatted in chronological order similar to how one would write in a log book. Blogs should be updated weekly to maintain a strong audience base.

Bounce rate:
An analytics metric that indicates whether your website content and functionality are enjoyed by the browser. The term comes from the browser who arrives at your entry page without going deeper into the site and “bouncing” off your site onto another. A bounce rate over 50% means that the desired content on your site wasn’t apparent or useful.

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Click Fraud:
Repeatedly clicking on pay per click ads for the purpose of defrauding advertisers.

CMS:
Acronym for Content Management System; it includes solutions/tools for publishing, format management, revision control, indexing, search and retrieval. When selecting a CMS for your website, be sure to factor in SEO so that your CMS will be able to handle items such as populating unique title tags, meta data, page copy, text links, SEO friendly URL structure and redirects.

Click Through Rate:
The rate at which people click on a link such as a search engine listing, sponsored ad or banner ad.

A higher click through rate (percentage) indicates better keyword effectiveness. Website page views are recorded as “impressions”.

Following is how click through rates are measured: Clicks / Impressions = CTR

Consideration Sets:
Humans visually scan in groups of four. This relates to search marketing. Browsers upon seeing search results, focus primarily on the first four listings to find a match. They then click on one of the first four results. If the browser is not satisfied with the results, they move onto the next consideration set.

This pattern continues until the desired information is found. Browsers rarely dig deeper than one page of a search; they opt instead for a new search using revised words.

Content: (text, copy)
The written part of the web page that is intended to have value for and be of interest to the user. Advertising, navigation, branding, and boilerplates are not usually considered to be content.

Content Development:
Search engines continually “crawl” the web for fresh content to add to their search results. Continuous content development is vital to ranking random search engine ranking success.

Web content can be modified in many ways including:
Blogs
Adding new web pages
Articles
White Papers
Case Studies
Podcasts
Video
Polls
Press releases
Industry news

Conversion:
Relates to a browser being compelled by a website to take action; request an e-newsletter, completing a contact form or ordering product online. Review of analytics can provide marketing insight to increase conversions and trend analysis based on user conversion.

Conversion Rate:
The rate at which visitors are converted to customers or are moved a step closer to becoming a customer.

Cost Per Click:
An online advertising model where advertisers pay a fee each time a user clicks on their online ad. Cost Per Click appears under “sponsored results” and are typically found on the right-hand side of search results.

Cost Per Lead:
This represents the marketing spending necessary to create a single lead. The lower the cost per lead, the more efficient the marketing program.

Crawler-based Search Engines:
Search engines that frequently “crawl” websites for new content. Google, Yahoo and (MSN/Bing) Live Search represent 94% of all searches.

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Directory:
A group of websites that are broken down into categories and provide site descriptions that are submitted to them. With a directory, picking the right category and composing a description rich in key phrases will ensure maximum visibility.

Domain:
The online address of your website, it will direct the visitor to your website when typed into any browser.

Dynamic Content:
Frequently changing web content including new copy, news items, photos or blogs. Continuous content development is vital to ranking random search engine ranking success.

Duplicate Content:
Content that is similar or identical to that found on another website or page. This may result in a penalty by search engines.

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E-Commerce Site:
Website devoted to buying and selling items online.

External Link:
A link from another website to your website.

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Facebook:
Social network that recently surpassed Google in number of users. It is a social utility that connect friends. Facebook also has practical corporate uses allowing customer interaction, VIP programs and an informal way to communicate corporate culture.

Feed:
Software or a hosted application that collects feeds from various sources and displays it in a single consolidated view, either in a window on your desktop or in a Web browser.

Forums:
Web-based communities where users can interactively discuss topics. Forums provide valuable insight into consumer perception regarding products and services.

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Geotargeting:
Placing an online sponsored ad where it is only visible in specific markets.

Google:
Primary search engine resource that provides responses to keyword queries. Google’s revenue is primarily dependent on Pay Per Click ad sales. Google's North American market share is approximately 65%. Its search engine can index blogs, video and dynamic web content as search results.

Googlebot:
A search bot that is used by Google to collect documents from the web to build a searchable index for the Google search engine.

Google PageRank:
Unique to Google, PageRank counts a link from one page to another as a “word of mouth” vote. The idea being that more referrals to a specific site indicate its overall credibility. The higher the credibility the better the PageRank.

Google cross-references PageRank with keyword matching for site relevance in a query to provide optimal results for the browser.

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Heading Tags:
An HTML element that provides structure and tells search engines which parts of your page are most important.

Hits:
Once the standard by which web traffic was often judged, but now a largely meaningless term replaced by page views (impressions). A hit happens each time that a server sends an object - documents, graphics, includes files, etc. Therefore one page view could generate many hits.

HTML:
An acronym for Hypertext Markup Language; it is the fundamental coding language used to create webpages.

HTML Sitemap:
A webpage that lists all of the pages on a web site, typically organized in hierarchical fashion. This helps visitors and search engine bots find pages on the site. It is similar to a table of contents.

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Impression:
The frequency with which a Pay Per Click ad was displayed on a website or search results.

Inbound Link:
Links to your website from another website. Links from high traffic sites have more value to search engines than low traffic sites.

Index:
Information collected by search engines through frequent “crawling” of pages for content. These indexed results occur in random results to search queries in order of relevance to the search term.

Index: (noun)
A database of webpages and their content used by the search engines.

Index: (verb)
To add a webpage to a search engine index.

Inlinks:
A synonym for back links. Popularized by Yahoo!

Internal Link:
A link within your website to another page within the site. These serve as navigation help to both search engine crawlers and browsers. Internal links help random search rankings.

International Search:
Refers to enhancing web visibility on an International level. The option to this is “Local Search” which features local geographic areas to draw interest from specific markets.

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Key Phrase/Keywords:
Words entered into a search engine to find information. Websites can be optimized with specific keywords and phrases to attract specific buyers. Most searches initiate with a generic keyword and are later refined with a key phrase for specific results.

Keyword Research:
Identification of most popular words searched regarding a specific topic and keyword trends. Due to competition, new buzzwords and seasonality, keyword research should be an ongoing process.

Keyword Stuffing:
Placing excessive amounts of keywords into the page copy and HTML in such a way that it detracts from the readability and usability of a given page for the purpose of boosting the page's rankings in the search engines. Websites can be banned from search engines if they engage in this practice.

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Landing Page:
The specific page on a website that a visitor lands on after clicking a search engine listing.

Link Bait:
Online content that attracts other website owners to link to it because of its unique value.

Link Exchange:
When one website agrees to link to another website in return for a link back to their site to increase link popularity.

Link Farming:
A group of highly interlinked websites with the purposes of inflating link popularity to help ranking in a search engine. Links that participate in link farms are penalized by search engines.

Live Search:
The third largest search engine in the US, Live Search was launched in 2006 to replace MSN. Live Search presently holds a 10% market share in North America.

Local Search:
Refers to targeting web content for regionalized search results.

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Meta Tags:
Data placed in the code of a webpage that helps search engines find more information regarding the page. Hidden from view in a website’s source code, these tags help classify web content and search engines list the website in their index.

Micro-sites:
Mini-websites with targeted messages in a relevant environment. They usually act as a less cluttered version of a company’s website, focusing on a specific topic, product or service.

Mirror Site:
An identical site with a different URL or address.

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Navigation:
The process of moving from one place to another on a web page and through a web site. From an online perspective, navigation may begin when the searcher uses a search engine to navigate to a resource or web site. Once the user arrives on the site of choice, they are presented with other navigation options including top bar navigation at the top of the web page. Sidebar navigation that happens on the left or right side of a web page. Navigation through text links from within page copy or navigation from an image link.

Non-Reciprocal Link:
If site A links to site B, but site B does not link back to site A, then the link is considered non reciprocal. Search engines tend to give more value to non-reciprocal links than reciprocal ones because they are less likely to be the result of collusion between sites or link exchange.

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Online Marketing:
Online promotion attracts prospects that have already expressed interest in your products and services. This can be accomplished through modified web content, banner advertising, search optimization, Pay Per Click, online article and public relations distribution.

Online Public Relations:
Public relations activities (press releases, articles, blogs, etc.) that are released to Internet media sites and are geared towards influencing audiences that exist solely on the Internet.

Offline Marketing:
Traditional (offline) advertising pushes your message at prospects who may or may not be interested. This includes “branded” advertising in media such as television, billboard, newspaper, magazines and radio as well as direct mail.

Optical Scanning:
Research shows web browsers scan in an “F” pattern. They read first few lines of content on a website for relevance to their interests then begin to scan vertically without reading complete sentences.

Optimization:
Also called “Search Engine Optimization” or SEO, this encompasses making a website as “search engine friendly” as possible, enhancing the possibility of a website ranking high in random search. This includes content modification and technical changes to the source code of a website to encourage indexing of the site by search engines. The end result is more visibility and visitors for a site.

Organic Search:
Search results that appear naturally (unpaid). These results typically appear in the main body of a search results page and are clicked through 70% more than sponsored results. Also called “random” and “natural” results.

Outbound Links:
A link from one site to another site. Outbound links play a small role in the search engine algorithms as to how your site will rank in the index. Conversely inbound links play a more dramatic role as to how well your site will rank in the organic/natural listing of the search results.

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Page Views:
Page views are used in measuring traffic, specific pages, visits and visitors. A page view is the result of a click on a link from a search engine for a specific URL A page view is not a hit, but results from a number of hits. Each page view requires a visit and a visitor.

Pay Per Click: (PPC)
Pay Per Click appears under “sponsored results” and are typically found on the right hand side of search results. Pay Per Click can be geotarget keyphrases. A daily budget may be set and once the click through limit is reached the ad is removed from search results.

Pay Per Click is designed to attract a pre-qualified market to a website. It is an advertising model offered by search engines that is fundamentally an auction for keywords. The higher the bid for a specific word, the higher the ranking. The search engines derive income from these "sponsored links" by charging per click thru to the destination site.

Podcast:
A podcast is a digital media file that can contain audio, video or both and is downloaded by interested subscribers. It is distinguished from other digital media by its ability to be syndicated and downloaded when new content is added.

Positioning:
The visibility of a website in search results. The higher a website is ranked on search engine results, the better the positioning. Optimized websites with more relevant content to a search are positioned higher in organic search. Positioning can be controlled in Pay Per Click by spending more per click.

Public Relations: (or PR)
is a field concerned with managing communications to shape audience opinion to benefit the organization as well as the target audience. Public Relations tactics may include public speaking, social media, events like open houses, and written newsworthy articles. It is not tangible, which separates it from advertising. Any organization that is in the public arena can engage in public relations to sway perception.

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Query:
Entering keywords into a search engine to gain results. Initial queries are typically generic. Farther along the buying curve browsers use more specific words to better define a search.

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Random Search:
Search results that appear naturally (unpaid). These results typically appear on the left side of search results and are clicked through 70% more than sponsored results. Also called “organic” and “natural” results.

Reciprocal Link:
An exchange of links between two websites.

Relevancy:
A measurement of how similar a website’s content is to a random search query.

Repeat Visitor:
A metric used in analytics to describe a visitor returning to a site more than once. This typically indicates that a sites content has value to its users.

ROI: (Return on Investment)
Acronym for Return On Investment. A measure of revenue made or lost from marketing activity. Return on Investment is a metric used to evaluate the success as well as the efficiency of a marketing effort.

RSS Feed:
RSS is an abbreviation for Really Simple Syndication and is a way for browsers to identify specific content that they wish to have automatically downloaded for their own use. RSS is ideal for people who desire automated, customized content to be delivered to their PC. It is a web feed that can come in a variety of formats such as blog entries, articles or podcasts. RSS feeds are ideal for broadcasting specific content to a highly qualified market. Most computers now have built in RSS readers or "aggregators," meaning content is delivered to the user computer by clicking on an RSS button to initiate a subscription.

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Search Engine:
A search engine is web-based application that indexes websites by content and relevance. The most popular search engines in the US by market share are, in order: Google, Yahoo! and Live Search (MSN/Bing).

Search Engine Optimization: (SEO)
The practice of modifying a website to attract the best prospects for your products or services.

Search Engine Marketing: (SEM)
A comprehensive Search Engine Marketing Program that includes Pay Per Click as well as random Search Engine Optimization.

Sitemap:
Basically a “map” of your website pages. XML Sitemaps are added to websites to flag search engines such as Google about the specific content on a website. They can be updated and rate content importance for search engines.

Social Networking:
Connecting with people online. This may include but is not limited too: blogs, groups, videos, music, photos, email and search engines. MySpace, Facebook and LinkedIn are some of the leading social networking sites.

Sponsored Links:
Paid listings on SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). Sponsored links in Google, for example, generally appear on the right hand side of the page in a vertical column or along the top of the page in a horizontal strip (below the search box, but above the normal Organic Search Results).

Stickiness: (Site Stickiness)
The length of time a browser spends on a specific site. The longer the stay, the “stickier” the site. Marketers prefer a sticky site because it significantly helps the possibility of a conversion. Future search engine algorithms will include “time on site” as a ranking metric.

Syndication:
Making web content available for other sites to uses. One method of syndication is the use of RSS Feeds. Content available for syndication may include press releases and blog content.

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Target Market:
A defined audience base. This could be by some combination of demographic, geographic region, vertical industry market or market sector.

Text Link:
These links typically appear underlined and as a color other than black within a web page. They are helpful to browsers, allowing them to navigate quickly to an area of interest. Text links also are helpful to better search engine rankings.

Title Tag:
This is displayed at the top of a browser window and is searchable by some major search engines. This is often overlooked by web developers who name the home page “home.”

Traffic:
Relates the number of visitors to a website in a given time period.

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Unique Visitors:
First-time visitors to a website.

Usability:
Relates to user friendliness of a website which includes navigation structure, content and arrangement of content.

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Video Search:
Digital video is now being indexed and returned as search results by Google and other major search engines. Resources for video include MySpace and YouTube.

Visibility:
Refers to how accessible a website is in search engines. Website visibility can be increased by building external web links, content improvement, Pay Per Click and web optimization. The website is considered more “visible” the higher a website appears in search engine rankings.

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Web 2.0:
The new generation of web based services and communities characterized by participation, collaboration and sharing of information among users online.

White Hat SEO:
Ethical SEO techniques, which conform to best practice guidelines and do not attempt to unscrupulously “game” or manipulate search engines.

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Yahoo!:
Yahoo! is the second largest search engine. It is a distant second to the leading search engine, Google.

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