Glossary for SEO
HKWebDesign.net provides this SEO glossary to explain some common terms and glossary used on search engine optimization service. If you have any question about our SEO service, please feel free to let us know.
Age
Age is not the registration date of the domain name. For SEO purposes, the age starts when a website is indexed by a search engine. It involves the site credibility.
Algorithm
Algorithm is a series of rules used by a search engine to determine rankings of a website.
Analytics
Analytics is generally refered to Google Analytics which provides a free statistic to measure the website traffic.
Backlinks
Backlinks are the number of links from other websites to your website. It is an important factor in the search engine’s algorithm to affect web ranking.
Ban
Ban is a severe search engine penalty to de-list a website. It is generally caused by using black hat SEO techniques.
Black-Hat SEO
Black hat SEO is an unethical SEO technique in the eyes of a search engine to try to higher the website’s search ranking. If it is found, it may result the website to be de-listed.
Bounce Rate
Bounce rate is the number of site visitors leaving the website without visiting any other pages. A high bounce rate will negatively affect search engine rankings over time.
Chinese SEO
Chinese SEO (Chinese search engine optimization) is to use various on-page and off-page SEO techniques (similar to English SEO) to optimize a Chinese website according to the Chinese search practice and culture.
Cloaking
Cloaking is the process to trick search engines by showing an optimized content-rich page to the search engines and a different page to humans. It is one of the black-hat SEO techniques.
Content
It usually refers to the body text on the website readable to the search engine.
Conversion
Conversion usually refers to an action being completed by the site visitor. It may fill out a form or purchase online.
Conversion Rate
Conversion rate is the total number of conversions divided by the total number of site visitors.
Crawl Rate
Crawl rate means the frequency that search engine robot visiting the website. Generally, websites with more interesting and frequently-updated content get higher crawl rate. Pages with higher PageRank also get visited more often.
Description Tag
Description tag is an HTML meta tag for a brief description of the web page's content.
Directory
Directory is a website that lists other websites in categories.
Doorway Page
Doorway page is a web page being filled with keywords and specifically created in order to obtain rankings. It is one of the black-hat SEO techniques.
Duplicate Content
Duplicate content refers to the similar web content on the same website or other websites. Duplicate content is non-original content and generally ignored by search engines.
External Link
External link is a link to another website from your website. It is also called as outbound link.
Frame
Frame is an HTML technique that allows two or more web pages to display in one browser window. Many search engines had trouble indexing websites with frames.
Google Sitemap
Google sitemap is an XML sitemap that lists web pages on a website so that Google robot can easily find them. It is different from a sitemap on a website.
Hidden text
Hidden text is the text that is visible to the search engines but hidden to a website visitor. It is one of the black-hat SEO techniques.
IFrame
IFrame is an HTML element which makes it possible to embed another HTML document inside the main document. Many search engines had trouble indexing websites with iFrame.
Internal Link
Internal link refers to link from webpages on the same website.
Keyword Stuffing
Keyword stuffing is a black-hat SEO technique used by unethical SEO experts to excessively repeat multiple keywords on a web page.
Keyword Tool
Keyword tool is a tool that helps determining keyword demand.
Keyword Research
Keyword research is a strategic research into the keywords relevant to a website's topic. Good keyword research helps to uncover search terms improving website traffic.
Links
In SEO, links commonly refer to inbound links to a website. It is an important factor in the search engine’s algorithm to affect web ranking. Links from websites trusted by search engines are more valuable than links from low quality websites.
Link Building
Link building is a SEO campaign to attract more external links to the website. Link building is an important factor for higher search engine ranking.
Link Popularity
It is a measurement of the link value of a website or web page. Link popularity is determined by links from outside sources and links from other web pages on the website.
Long Tail Keyword
Long tail keyword is a keyword that contains a long search phrase. It usually has a lower search volume but a higher conversion rate.
Meta Tag
Meta tag is an HTML page code which describes the content of the web page and is invisible to a website visitor. The Meta title, keywords, and description tags are the common meta tags on the website and used by search engines.
Meta Title
Meta title is the title of each web page telling search engines about the topic of each page.
Page Rank
Page rank is generally referred to as PR which is a numerical representation shown on the Google toolbar to indicate the link value of a web page.
Pay-Per-Click (PPC)
Pay-per-click is the paid search engine advertisements with its cost based on the numbers of click. PPC can be executed within hours while SEO can take months.
Penalty
Penalty means a site ban or a reduction in search engine rankings due to violating rules of search engines.
Ranking
Ranking is a keyword position of a web page on a search engine.
Reciprocal Link
Reciprocal link is two different sites that link out to each other. It is also referred to as two-way link or cross linking.
Robot
Robot is an automated program that visits a website.
Robots.txt
Robots.txt is a file on the web server that can control how search engine robots crawling the website.
Sandbox
Sandbox is an artificially low ranking due to having a new website. Search engines use sandbox to prevent junk sites from getting rankings. New sites are usually required to pass spam filter to show trust-worthy during the period of observation. It may take at least 3 months to a year for a new website.
Search Engine friendly web design
Search engine friendly web design (SEO friendly web design) means a website structure and web pages are specially designed to be easily crawled and indexed by a search engine spider.
Search Volume
Search volume is the numbers of a keyword search in a certain period (e.g. a month) in a given search engine.
Short Tail Keyword
Short tail keyword is a one or two word search term that gets a high search volume but is not very specific.
Spider
Spider is a search engine robot that crawls a website for information.
SEM
SEM is the short term of Search Engine Marketing which includes Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Pay-per-click (PPC) advertisement. Generally, it often refers to PPC advertisement.
SEO
SEO is the short term of Search Engine Optimization which is the practice of getting websites ranked higher on search engines through a variety of on-site and off-site SEO techniques.
SERP
SERP is the short term of Search Engine Results Page which is the list of websites being returned as a result when someone make a search on a search engine.
Submission
Submission means submitting a web site to search engines or directories.
White-Hat SEO
White-hat SEO is a search engine optimization technique that are acceptable by search engines.
