On-Page SEO Checklist
Always start with keyword selection, research and testing
Title tags
Meta tags
ALT tags
H1 tags
URL structure
Internal Linking
Content
Keyword density
Site maps
Usability
Track target keywords
Expect results in 12 months
Do not make common on-page SEO mistakes:
Duplicate content
URL variants on the same pages
Off-site images and content on-site
Duplicate title tags
Do not use on-page SEO spamming tactics such as:
Hidden text
Hidden links
Keyword repetition
Doorway pages
Mirror pages
Cloaking
Off-Page SEO Checklist
Always start with keyword research, testing and selection
Keywords in links
Links from high ranking publisher sites
One-way inbound links (not link exchange)
Different keywords in your link-ads from the same site
Gradual link building technology (no growth spikes)
Relevant keywords near your inbound link
Deep linking (from multiple pages to multiple pages)
Target a large list of keywords (5-500+)
Link from sites with a variety of LinkRanks
Track active link-ad keywords
Discontinue campaigns if ranking does not improve
Expect results in 30 days (MSN) 1-9 months (Google, Yahoo)
Do not make common off-page SEO mistakes:
Duplicate keywords in link-ads
Site-wide links causing link growth spikes
Using on-page SEOs to do specialist off-page SEO
Placing random links without keywords near your link-ad
Do not use off-page SEO spamming tactics such as:
Link farms (sites with 100+ outbound links per page)
Using irrelevant keywords in your link-ads
Garbage links
Link churning
Hidden inbound links
Thursday, October 8, 2009
SEO SEM Glossary
advertising network: A service where ads are bought centrally through one company, and displayed on multiple Web sites that contract with that company for a share of revenue generated by ads served on their site.
algorithm: The technology that a search engine uses to deliver results to a query. Search engines utilize several algorithms in tandem to deliver a page of search results or keyword-targeted search ads.
anchor text: The clickable text part of a hyperlink. The text usually gives visitors or search engines important information on what the page being linked to is about.
click through rate (CTR): The rate (expressed in a percentage) at which users click on an ad. This is calculated by dividing the total number of clicks by the total number of ad impressions. CTR is an important metric for Internet marketers to measure the performance of an ad campaign.
content network: A group of Web sites that agree to show ads on their site, served by an ad network, in exchange for a share of the revenue generated by those ads. For example: Google AdSense or the Yahoo Publisher Network.
contextual advertising: Advertising that is targeted to a Web page based on the page's content, keywords, or category. Ads in most content networks are targeted contextually.
cost per action (CPA): A form of advertising where payment is dependent upon an action that a user performs as a result of the ad. The action could be making a purchase, signing up for a newsletter, or asking for a follow-up call. An advertiser pays a set fee to the publisher based on the number of visitors who take action. Many affiliate programs use the CPA model.
cost per click (CPC): Also called Pay per Click (PPC). A performance-based advertising model where the advertiser pays a set fee for every click on an ad. The majority of text ads sold by search engines are billed under the CPC model.
cost per thousand (CPM): An ad model that charges advertisers every time an ad is displayed to a user, whether the user clicks on the ad or not. The fee is based on every 1,000 ad impressions (M is the Roman numeral for 1,000). Most display ads, such as banner ads, are sold by CPM.
geo-targeting: Delivery of ads specific to the geographic location of the searcher. Geo-targeting allows the advertiser to specify where ads will or won't be shown based on the searcher's location, enabling more localized and personalized results.
Googlebot: Google uses several user-agents to crawl and index content in the Google.com search engine. Googlebot describes all Google spiders. All Google bots begin with "Googlebot"; for example, Googlebot-Mobile: crawls pages for Google’s mobile index; Googlebot-Image: crawls pages for Google’s image index.
inbound link: An inbound link is an hyperlink to a particular Web page from an outside site, bringing traffic to that Web page. Inbound links are an important element that most search engine algorithms use to measure the popularity of a Web page.
invisible web: A term that refers to the vast amount of information on the web that isn't indexed by search engines. Coined in 1994 by Dr. Jill Ellsworth.
keyword: A word or phrase entered into a search engine in an effort to get the search engine to return matching and relevant results. Many Web sites offer advertising targeted by keywords, so an ad will only show when a specific keyword is entered.
link bait: Editorial content, often sensational in nature, posted on a Web page and submitted to social media sites in hopes of building inbound links from other sites. Or, as Matt Cutts of Google says, "something interesting enough to catch people's attention."
link building: The process of getting quality Web sites to link to your Web site, in order to improve search engine rankings. Link building techniques can include buying links, reciprocal linking, or entering barter arrangements.
meta tags: Information placed in the HTML header of a Web page, providing information that is not visible to browsers, but can be used in varying degrees by search engines to index a page. Common meta tags used in search engine marketing are title, description, and keyword tags.
pay per click (PPC): See Cost per Click (CPC).
quality score: A score assigned by search engines that is calculated by measuring an ad's clickthrough rate, analyzing the relevance of the landing page, and considering other factors used to determine the quality of a site and reward those of higher quality with top placement and lower bid requirements. Some factors that make up a quality score are historical keyword performance, the quality of an ad's landing page, and other undisclosed attributes. All of the major search engines now use some form of quality score in their search ad algorithm.
return on investment (ROI): The amount of money an advertiser earns from their ads compared to the amount of money the advertiser spends on their ads.
search advertising: Also called Paid Search. An advertiser bids for the chance to have their ad display when a user searches for a given keyword. These are usually text ads, which are displayed above or to the right of the algorithmic (organic) search results. Most search ads are sold by the PPC model, where the advertiser pays only when the user clicks on the ad or text link.
search engine marketing (SEM): The process of building and marketing a site with the goal of improving its position in search engine results. SEM includes both search engine optimization (SEO) and search advertising, or paid search.
search engine optimization (SEO): The process of making a site and its content highly relevant for both search engines and searchers. SEO includes technical tasks to make it easier for search engines to find and index a site for the appropriate keywords, as well as marketing-focused tasks to make a site more appealing to users. Successful search marketing helps a site gain top positioning for relevant words and phrases.
search engine results pages (SERPs): The page searchers see after they've entered their query into the search box. This page lists several Web pages related to the searcher's query, sorted by relevance. Increasingly, search engines are returning blended search results, which include images, videos, and results from specialty databases on their SERPs.
social media: A category of sites that is based on user participation and user-generated content. They include social networking sites like LinkedIn or Facebook, social bookmarking sites like Del.icio.us, social news sites like Digg or Reddit, and other sites that are centered on user interaction.
spider: A search engine spider is a program that crawls the Web, visiting Web pages to collect information to add to or update a search engine's index. The major search engines on the Web all have such a program, which is also known as a "crawler" or a "bot."
title tag: An HTML meta tag with text describing a specific Web page. The title tag should contain strategic keywords for the page, since many search engines pay special attention to the title text when indexing pages. The title tag should also make sense to humans, since it is usually the text link to the page displayed in search engine results.
universal search: Also known as blended, or federated search results, universal search pulls data from multiple databases to display on the same page. Results can include images, videos, and results from specialty databases like maps and local information, product information, or news stories.
Web 2.0: A term that refers to a supposed second generation of Internet-based services. These usually include tools that let people collaborate and share information online, such as social networking sites, wikis, communication tools, and folksonomies.
Anchor Text
Anchor text refers to the visible text for a hyperlink. For example:
< a href="http://www.seo-help.com/" >This is the anchor text< /a >
ATW
Abbreviation for AllTheWeb, a search engine powered by FAST.
Back Link
Any link on another page that points to the subject page. Also called inbound links or IBLs.
Bot
Abbreviation for robot (also called a spider). It refers to software programs that scan the web. Bots vary in purpose from indexing web pages for search engines to harvesting e-mail addresses for spammers.
Cloaking
Cloaking describes the technique of serving a different page to a search engine spider than what a human visitor sees. This technique is abused by spammers for keyword stuffing. Cloaking is a violation of the Terms Of Service of most search engines and could be grounds for banning.
Conversion
Conversion refers to site traffic that follows through on the goal of the site (such as buying a product on-line, filling out a contact form, registering for a newsletter, etc.). Webmasters measure conversion to judge the effectiveness (and ROI) of PPC and other advertising campaigns. Effective conversion tracking requires the use of some scripting/cookies to track visitors actions within a website. Log file analysis is not sufficient for this purpose.
CPC
Abbreviation for Cost Per Click. It is the base unit of cost for a PPC campaign.
CTA
Abbreviation for Content Targeted Ad(vertising). It refers to the placement of relevant PPC ads on content pages for non-search engine websites.
CTR
Abbreviation for Click Through Rate. It is a ratio of clicks per impressions in a PPC campaign.
Doorway Page
Also called a gateway page. A doorway page exists solely for the purpose of driving traffic to another page. They are usually designed and optimized to target one specific keyphrase. Doorway pages rarely are written for human visitors. They are written for search engines to achieve high rankings and hopefully drive traffic to the main site. Using doorway pages is a violation of the Terms Of Service of most search engines and could be grounds for banning.
FFA
Abbreviation for Free For All. FFA sites post large lists of unrelated links to anyone and everyone. FFA sites and the links they provide are basically useless. Humans do not use them and search engines minimize their importance in ranking formulas.
Gateway Page
Also called a doorway page. A gateway page exists solely for the purpose of driving traffic to another page. They are usually designed and optimized to target one specific keyphrase. Gateway pages rarely are written for human visitors. They are written for search engines to achieve high rankings and hopefully drive traffic to the main site. Using gateway pages is a violation of the Terms Of Service of most search engines and could be grounds for banning.
Google Dance
Up to June, 2003, Google has updated the index for their search engine on a roughly monthly basis. While the update is in progress, search results for each of Google's nine datacenters are different. The positions of a site appears to "dance" as it fluctuates minute to minute. "Google dance" is an unofficial term coined to refer to the period when Google is performing the update to its index. Google may be changing their index calculation method to allow for a continuous update (which will effectively end the roughly monthly dances).
IBL
Abbreviation for In Bound Link. Any link on another page that points to the subject page. Also called a back link.
Ink
Abbreviation for Inktomi, the back-end search engine acquired by Yahoo. The Inktomi search engine is being phased out as Yahoo built a new search engine incorporating Inktomi's technology with elements of Yahoo's other search acquisitions.
Keyword/Keyphrase
Keywords are words which are used in search engine queries. Keyphrases are multi-word phrases used in search engine queries. SEO is the process of optimizing web pages for keywords and keyphrases so that they rank highly in the results returned for search queries.
Keyword Stuffing
Keyword stuffing refers to the practice of adding superfluous keywords to a web page. The words are added for the 'benefit' of search engines and not human visitors. The words may or may not be visible to human visitors. While not necessarily a violation of search engine Terms of Service, at least when the words are visible to humans, it detracts from the impact of a page (it looks like spam). It is also possible that search engines may discount the importance of large blocks of text that do not conform to grammatical structures (ie. lists of disconnected keywords). There is no valid reason for engaging in this practice.
Link Farm
A link farm is a group of separate, highly interlinked websites for the purposes of inflating link popularity (or PR). Engaging in a link farm is a violation of the Terms Of Service of most search engines and could be grounds for banning.
Mirror
In SEO parlance, a mirror is a near identical duplicate website (or page). Mirrors are commonly used in an effort to target different keywords/keyphrases. Using mirrors is a violation of the Terms Of Service of most search engines and could be grounds for banning.
PFI
Abbreviation for Pay For Inclusion. Many search engines offer a PFI program to assure frequent spidering / indexing of a site (or page). PFI does not guarantee that a site will be ranked highly (or at all) for a given search term. It just offers webmasters the opportunity to quickly incorporate changes to a site into a search engine's index. This can be useful for experimenting with tweaking a site and judging the resultant effects on the rankings.
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.
PPC
Abbreviation for Pay Per Click. An advertising model where advertisers pay only for the traffic generated by their ads.
PR
Abbreviation for PageRank - Google's trademark for their proprietary measure of link popularity for web pages. Google offers a PR viewer on their Toolbar.
Robots.txt
Robots.txt is a file which well behaved spiders read to determine which parts of a website they may visit.
Scumware
Scumware is a generic/catch-all label that applies to software that:
* Installs itself secretly, dishonestly or without consent
* Does not allow for easy uninstallation / removal
* Monitors or tracks users actions without the users awareness or consent (aka spyware)
* Alters the behavior/default options of other programs without the users consent or awareness (aka thiefware)
SEM
Abbreviation for Search Engine Marketing. SEM encompasses SEO and search engine paid advertising options (banners, PPC, etc.)
SEO
Abbreviation for Search Engine Optimization. SEO covers the process of
* making web pages spider friendly (so search engines can read them)
* making web pages relevant to desired keyphrases
SERP
Abbreviation for Search Engine Results Page/Positioning. This refers to the organic (excluding paid listings) search results for a given query.
Spam
In the SEO vernacular, this refers to manipulation techniques that violate search engines Terms of Service and are designed to achieve higher rankings for a web page. Obviously, spam could be grounds for banning. Alan Perkins has published an excellent white paper on Search Engine Spam that is highly recommended. Here are some definitions of spam from the search engines themselves:
* Google
* Yahoo
* MSN
Spamdexing
Spamdexing was describes the efforts to spam a search engine's index. Spamdexing is a violation of the Terms Of Service of most search engines and could be grounds for banning.
Spider
Also called a bot (or robot). Spiders are software programs that scan the web. They vary in purpose from indexing web pages for search engines to harvesting e-mail addresses for spammers.
A refers to either a continuous loop where spiders are requesting pages and the server is requesting data to render the page or an intentional scheme designed to identify (and "ban") spiders that do not respect robots.txt.
Splash Page
Splash pages are introduction pages to a web site that are heavy on graphics (or flash video) with no textual content. They are designed to either impress a visitor or complement some corporate branding.
Stop Word
Stop words are words that are ignored by search engines when indexing web pages and processing search queries. Common words such as the.
www2/www3/www-xx
Google dance watchers use these terms as short-hand to refer to Google's different datacenters. You can add .google.com to the end of them to visit the data center that corresponds to the term.
Incremental CPC
"incremental clicks" is (change in cost/change in clicks = incremental CPC).
algorithm: The technology that a search engine uses to deliver results to a query. Search engines utilize several algorithms in tandem to deliver a page of search results or keyword-targeted search ads.
anchor text: The clickable text part of a hyperlink. The text usually gives visitors or search engines important information on what the page being linked to is about.
click through rate (CTR): The rate (expressed in a percentage) at which users click on an ad. This is calculated by dividing the total number of clicks by the total number of ad impressions. CTR is an important metric for Internet marketers to measure the performance of an ad campaign.
content network: A group of Web sites that agree to show ads on their site, served by an ad network, in exchange for a share of the revenue generated by those ads. For example: Google AdSense or the Yahoo Publisher Network.
contextual advertising: Advertising that is targeted to a Web page based on the page's content, keywords, or category. Ads in most content networks are targeted contextually.
cost per action (CPA): A form of advertising where payment is dependent upon an action that a user performs as a result of the ad. The action could be making a purchase, signing up for a newsletter, or asking for a follow-up call. An advertiser pays a set fee to the publisher based on the number of visitors who take action. Many affiliate programs use the CPA model.
cost per click (CPC): Also called Pay per Click (PPC). A performance-based advertising model where the advertiser pays a set fee for every click on an ad. The majority of text ads sold by search engines are billed under the CPC model.
cost per thousand (CPM): An ad model that charges advertisers every time an ad is displayed to a user, whether the user clicks on the ad or not. The fee is based on every 1,000 ad impressions (M is the Roman numeral for 1,000). Most display ads, such as banner ads, are sold by CPM.
geo-targeting: Delivery of ads specific to the geographic location of the searcher. Geo-targeting allows the advertiser to specify where ads will or won't be shown based on the searcher's location, enabling more localized and personalized results.
Googlebot: Google uses several user-agents to crawl and index content in the Google.com search engine. Googlebot describes all Google spiders. All Google bots begin with "Googlebot"; for example, Googlebot-Mobile: crawls pages for Google’s mobile index; Googlebot-Image: crawls pages for Google’s image index.
inbound link: An inbound link is an hyperlink to a particular Web page from an outside site, bringing traffic to that Web page. Inbound links are an important element that most search engine algorithms use to measure the popularity of a Web page.
invisible web: A term that refers to the vast amount of information on the web that isn't indexed by search engines. Coined in 1994 by Dr. Jill Ellsworth.
keyword: A word or phrase entered into a search engine in an effort to get the search engine to return matching and relevant results. Many Web sites offer advertising targeted by keywords, so an ad will only show when a specific keyword is entered.
link bait: Editorial content, often sensational in nature, posted on a Web page and submitted to social media sites in hopes of building inbound links from other sites. Or, as Matt Cutts of Google says, "something interesting enough to catch people's attention."
link building: The process of getting quality Web sites to link to your Web site, in order to improve search engine rankings. Link building techniques can include buying links, reciprocal linking, or entering barter arrangements.
meta tags: Information placed in the HTML header of a Web page, providing information that is not visible to browsers, but can be used in varying degrees by search engines to index a page. Common meta tags used in search engine marketing are title, description, and keyword tags.
pay per click (PPC): See Cost per Click (CPC).
quality score: A score assigned by search engines that is calculated by measuring an ad's clickthrough rate, analyzing the relevance of the landing page, and considering other factors used to determine the quality of a site and reward those of higher quality with top placement and lower bid requirements. Some factors that make up a quality score are historical keyword performance, the quality of an ad's landing page, and other undisclosed attributes. All of the major search engines now use some form of quality score in their search ad algorithm.
return on investment (ROI): The amount of money an advertiser earns from their ads compared to the amount of money the advertiser spends on their ads.
search advertising: Also called Paid Search. An advertiser bids for the chance to have their ad display when a user searches for a given keyword. These are usually text ads, which are displayed above or to the right of the algorithmic (organic) search results. Most search ads are sold by the PPC model, where the advertiser pays only when the user clicks on the ad or text link.
search engine marketing (SEM): The process of building and marketing a site with the goal of improving its position in search engine results. SEM includes both search engine optimization (SEO) and search advertising, or paid search.
search engine optimization (SEO): The process of making a site and its content highly relevant for both search engines and searchers. SEO includes technical tasks to make it easier for search engines to find and index a site for the appropriate keywords, as well as marketing-focused tasks to make a site more appealing to users. Successful search marketing helps a site gain top positioning for relevant words and phrases.
search engine results pages (SERPs): The page searchers see after they've entered their query into the search box. This page lists several Web pages related to the searcher's query, sorted by relevance. Increasingly, search engines are returning blended search results, which include images, videos, and results from specialty databases on their SERPs.
social media: A category of sites that is based on user participation and user-generated content. They include social networking sites like LinkedIn or Facebook, social bookmarking sites like Del.icio.us, social news sites like Digg or Reddit, and other sites that are centered on user interaction.
spider: A search engine spider is a program that crawls the Web, visiting Web pages to collect information to add to or update a search engine's index. The major search engines on the Web all have such a program, which is also known as a "crawler" or a "bot."
title tag: An HTML meta tag with text describing a specific Web page. The title tag should contain strategic keywords for the page, since many search engines pay special attention to the title text when indexing pages. The title tag should also make sense to humans, since it is usually the text link to the page displayed in search engine results.
universal search: Also known as blended, or federated search results, universal search pulls data from multiple databases to display on the same page. Results can include images, videos, and results from specialty databases like maps and local information, product information, or news stories.
Web 2.0: A term that refers to a supposed second generation of Internet-based services. These usually include tools that let people collaborate and share information online, such as social networking sites, wikis, communication tools, and folksonomies.
Anchor Text
Anchor text refers to the visible text for a hyperlink. For example:
< a href="http://www.seo-help.com/" >This is the anchor text< /a >
ATW
Abbreviation for AllTheWeb, a search engine powered by FAST.
Back Link
Any link on another page that points to the subject page. Also called inbound links or IBLs.
Bot
Abbreviation for robot (also called a spider). It refers to software programs that scan the web. Bots vary in purpose from indexing web pages for search engines to harvesting e-mail addresses for spammers.
Cloaking
Cloaking describes the technique of serving a different page to a search engine spider than what a human visitor sees. This technique is abused by spammers for keyword stuffing. Cloaking is a violation of the Terms Of Service of most search engines and could be grounds for banning.
Conversion
Conversion refers to site traffic that follows through on the goal of the site (such as buying a product on-line, filling out a contact form, registering for a newsletter, etc.). Webmasters measure conversion to judge the effectiveness (and ROI) of PPC and other advertising campaigns. Effective conversion tracking requires the use of some scripting/cookies to track visitors actions within a website. Log file analysis is not sufficient for this purpose.
CPC
Abbreviation for Cost Per Click. It is the base unit of cost for a PPC campaign.
CTA
Abbreviation for Content Targeted Ad(vertising). It refers to the placement of relevant PPC ads on content pages for non-search engine websites.
CTR
Abbreviation for Click Through Rate. It is a ratio of clicks per impressions in a PPC campaign.
Doorway Page
Also called a gateway page. A doorway page exists solely for the purpose of driving traffic to another page. They are usually designed and optimized to target one specific keyphrase. Doorway pages rarely are written for human visitors. They are written for search engines to achieve high rankings and hopefully drive traffic to the main site. Using doorway pages is a violation of the Terms Of Service of most search engines and could be grounds for banning.
FFA
Abbreviation for Free For All. FFA sites post large lists of unrelated links to anyone and everyone. FFA sites and the links they provide are basically useless. Humans do not use them and search engines minimize their importance in ranking formulas.
Gateway Page
Also called a doorway page. A gateway page exists solely for the purpose of driving traffic to another page. They are usually designed and optimized to target one specific keyphrase. Gateway pages rarely are written for human visitors. They are written for search engines to achieve high rankings and hopefully drive traffic to the main site. Using gateway pages is a violation of the Terms Of Service of most search engines and could be grounds for banning.
Google Dance
Up to June, 2003, Google has updated the index for their search engine on a roughly monthly basis. While the update is in progress, search results for each of Google's nine datacenters are different. The positions of a site appears to "dance" as it fluctuates minute to minute. "Google dance" is an unofficial term coined to refer to the period when Google is performing the update to its index. Google may be changing their index calculation method to allow for a continuous update (which will effectively end the roughly monthly dances).
IBL
Abbreviation for In Bound Link. Any link on another page that points to the subject page. Also called a back link.
Ink
Abbreviation for Inktomi, the back-end search engine acquired by Yahoo. The Inktomi search engine is being phased out as Yahoo built a new search engine incorporating Inktomi's technology with elements of Yahoo's other search acquisitions.
Keyword/Keyphrase
Keywords are words which are used in search engine queries. Keyphrases are multi-word phrases used in search engine queries. SEO is the process of optimizing web pages for keywords and keyphrases so that they rank highly in the results returned for search queries.
Keyword Stuffing
Keyword stuffing refers to the practice of adding superfluous keywords to a web page. The words are added for the 'benefit' of search engines and not human visitors. The words may or may not be visible to human visitors. While not necessarily a violation of search engine Terms of Service, at least when the words are visible to humans, it detracts from the impact of a page (it looks like spam). It is also possible that search engines may discount the importance of large blocks of text that do not conform to grammatical structures (ie. lists of disconnected keywords). There is no valid reason for engaging in this practice.
Link Farm
A link farm is a group of separate, highly interlinked websites for the purposes of inflating link popularity (or PR). Engaging in a link farm is a violation of the Terms Of Service of most search engines and could be grounds for banning.
Mirror
In SEO parlance, a mirror is a near identical duplicate website (or page). Mirrors are commonly used in an effort to target different keywords/keyphrases. Using mirrors is a violation of the Terms Of Service of most search engines and could be grounds for banning.
PFI
Abbreviation for Pay For Inclusion. Many search engines offer a PFI program to assure frequent spidering / indexing of a site (or page). PFI does not guarantee that a site will be ranked highly (or at all) for a given search term. It just offers webmasters the opportunity to quickly incorporate changes to a site into a search engine's index. This can be useful for experimenting with tweaking a site and judging the resultant effects on the rankings.
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.
PPC
Abbreviation for Pay Per Click. An advertising model where advertisers pay only for the traffic generated by their ads.
PR
Abbreviation for PageRank - Google's trademark for their proprietary measure of link popularity for web pages. Google offers a PR viewer on their Toolbar.
Robots.txt
Robots.txt is a file which well behaved spiders read to determine which parts of a website they may visit.
Scumware
Scumware is a generic/catch-all label that applies to software that:
* Installs itself secretly, dishonestly or without consent
* Does not allow for easy uninstallation / removal
* Monitors or tracks users actions without the users awareness or consent (aka spyware)
* Alters the behavior/default options of other programs without the users consent or awareness (aka thiefware)
SEM
Abbreviation for Search Engine Marketing. SEM encompasses SEO and search engine paid advertising options (banners, PPC, etc.)
SEO
Abbreviation for Search Engine Optimization. SEO covers the process of
* making web pages spider friendly (so search engines can read them)
* making web pages relevant to desired keyphrases
SERP
Abbreviation for Search Engine Results Page/Positioning. This refers to the organic (excluding paid listings) search results for a given query.
Spam
In the SEO vernacular, this refers to manipulation techniques that violate search engines Terms of Service and are designed to achieve higher rankings for a web page. Obviously, spam could be grounds for banning. Alan Perkins has published an excellent white paper on Search Engine Spam that is highly recommended. Here are some definitions of spam from the search engines themselves:
* Yahoo
* MSN
Spamdexing
Spamdexing was describes the efforts to spam a search engine's index. Spamdexing is a violation of the Terms Of Service of most search engines and could be grounds for banning.
Spider
Also called a bot (or robot). Spiders are software programs that scan the web. They vary in purpose from indexing web pages for search engines to harvesting e-mail addresses for spammers.
A refers to either a continuous loop where spiders are requesting pages and the server is requesting data to render the page or an intentional scheme designed to identify (and "ban") spiders that do not respect robots.txt.
Splash Page
Splash pages are introduction pages to a web site that are heavy on graphics (or flash video) with no textual content. They are designed to either impress a visitor or complement some corporate branding.
Stop Word
Stop words are words that are ignored by search engines when indexing web pages and processing search queries. Common words such as the.
www2/www3/www-xx
Google dance watchers use these terms as short-hand to refer to Google's different datacenters. You can add .google.com to the end of them to visit the data center that corresponds to the term.
Incremental CPC
"incremental clicks" is (change in cost/change in clicks = incremental CPC).
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