Search Engine Optimization & Marketing Glossary -Part 6

• Title - An important Search Engine Optimization element, the title is used to describe the contents of a document. It is unique to the particular page, descriptive in nature or simply catchy and appealing, and rather short. Titles appear as links for users to click on or as link anchor text on documents. When used well it can help drive traffic to your website.

• 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.

• TLP – Acronym for Top Level Page, a reference to the home page, category pages, or product pages that have unique value for the site and so are structured in the top levels of the site directory.

• TLP Feed – Acronym for Top Level Page feed, the often automatic and on-subscription feed of an advertiser’s home page or unique category pages.

• Tail Terms – Search terms that are very specific, long phrases that include one or more modifiers, such as "cheapest helicopter skiing near Banff BC." These longer, more specific terms are called "tail terms" based on a bell-curve distribution of keyword usage that displays the low numbers of little-used terms at the “tail” end of the bell curve graph. (See “The Long Tail” by Wired editor Chris Anderson.) Although long, specific and lesser-used tail terms have low CTRs, they are less competitive (and therefore cheaper) and often catch buyers at the end of the purchase decision process. This means that, even with low click-through numbers, tail terms can have good conversion rates.

• Targeting – Narrowly focusing ads and keywords to attract a specific, marketing-profiled searcher and potential customer. You can target to geographic locations (geo-targeting), by days of the week or time of day (dayparting), or by gender and age (demographic targeting). Targeting features vary by search engine. Newer ad techniques and software focus on behavioral targeting, based on web activity and behaviors that are predictive for potential customers who might be more receptive to particular ads.

• Themes - A theme is an overall idea of what a web page is focused on. Search engines determine the theme of a web page through analysis in the algorithm of the density of associated words on a page.

• Tier I Search Engines – The top echelon, or top three, search engines that serve the vast majority of searcher queries. Also referred to as Major Engines, Top Tier Engines or GYM, for Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft Live Search.

• Tier II Search Engines – Smaller, vertical and specialized engines, including general engines, such as Ask.com and AOL; meta-engines that search and display results from other search engines, such as Dogpile; local engines, shopping and comparison engines, and business vertical engines. Tier II Search Engines don’t offer the search query market share or features of the Tier I engines; however, Tier II engines can target specific, niche markets and are usually lower cost.

• Tier III Search Engines – Contextual distribution networks, through which marketers’ ads appear on pages within the PPC engine’s content network, triggered by user web site page views at the moment that contain the advertiser’s keyword in its content. Cost is usually through Cost-Per-Thousand-Impressions (CPM) charges, rather than Pay Per Click (PPC). As discussed in Fundamentals coursework, Google’s contextual distribution program is called AdSense; Yahoo!’s is called Content Match.

• Trackbacks - A protocol that allows a blogger to link to posts, often on other blogs, that relate to a selected subject. Blogging software that supports Trackback includes a "TrackBack URL" with each post that displays other blogs that have linked to it. Source: Blog Terms Glossary Tech at Whatis.techtarget.com

• Tracking URL – A specially designed and/or unique URL created to track an action or conversion from paid advertising. The URL can include strings that will show what keyword was used, what match type was triggered, and what search engine delivered the visitor.

• Trademarks – Distinctive symbols, pictures or words that identify a specific product or service. Received through registration with the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office. Tier I search engines prohibit bids on trademarks as keywords if the bidder is not the legal owner, though this keyword bid practice is still allowed by Google.

• Traffic – Refers to the number of visitors a website receives. It can be determined by examination of web logs.

• Traffic Analysis – The process of analyzing traffic to a web site to understand what visitors are searching for and what is driving traffic to a site.

• Trusted Feed – Also known as Paid Inclusion, a trusted feed is a fee-based custom crawl service offered by some search engines. These results appear in the “organic search results” of the engine. Typically, the fee is based on a “cost per click,” depending on the category of site content. It has been called a “Trusted Feed” due to the ability to actually alter the content in the feed, without changing the existing website.

• TXT//AD – Text ads as mobile device text messages.

• Taxonomy - Classification system of controlled vocabulary used to organize topical subjects, usually hierarchical in nature.

• 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.

• USPTO – Acronym for United States Patent & Trademark Office. See also Trademarks.

• Unique Visitor – Identifies an actual web surfer (as opposed to a crawler) and is tracked by a unique identifiable quality (typically IP address). If a visitor comes to a web site and clicks on 100 links, it is still only counted as one unique visit.

• Usability – This term refers to how "user friendly" a web site and its functions are. A site with good usability is a site that makes it easy for visitors to find the information they are looking for or to perform the action they desire. Bad usability is anything that causes confusion or problems for the user. For example, large Flash animations served to a visitor with a dial up connection causes poor usability. Easy, intuitive navigation and clear, informative text enhance usability.

• User Agent - This is the identity of a web site visitor, spider, browser, etc. The most common user agents are Mozilla and Internet Explorer.

• Unethical SEO - Some search engine marketers lacking in creativity try to market their services as being ethical, whereas services rendered by other providers are somehow unethical. SEO services are generally neither ethical or unethical. They are either effective or ineffective.

• URL - Uniform Resource Locator. The web address of a site or page.

• Unique Visitor: A visitor that interacts with a site. They may interact more than once, but within analytics reporting, they are only counted one time.

• Universal Search: Google's process of blending listings from its news, video, images, local and book search engines among those it gathers from crawling web pages.

• Viral Marketing:Any marketing technique that induces Web sites or users to pass on a marketing message to other sites or users, creating a potentially exponential growth in the message's visibility and effect. See article,

• Visitor Session: Interaction by a site visitor. The session ends when the visitor leaves the site.

• Value Propositions – “A customer value proposition is the sum total of benefits a customer is promised to receive in return for his or her custom and the associated payment (or other value transfer).“ A customer value proposition is what is promised by a company's marketing and sales efforts, and then fulfilled by its delivery and customer service processes.” Source: Wikipedia

• Vertical Creep – Positioning trends when vertical listings appear at the top of organic search engine results and below top sponsored listings (when they are displayed on the SERP).

• Vertical Portal / Vortal – Search engines that focus on a specific industry or sector. Such vertical search engines (also called “vortals”) have much more specific indexes and provide narrower and more focused search results than the Tier I search engines.

• Verticals – A vertical is a specific business group or category, such as insurance, automotive or travel. Vertical search offers targeted search options and PPC opportunities to a specific business category

• 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.

• Web Forwarding - Web forwarding allows for redirects to exist within an .htaccess file on a separate server.

• Web Server Logs – Most web server software, and all good web analytics packages, keep a running count of all search terms used by visitors to your site. These running counts are kept in large text files called Log Files or Web Server Logs. Useful for developing and refining PPC campaign keyword lists.

• Web TV – Television set-top boxes that allow users to browse the Internet from their televisions without a computer system. Perennial future opportunity as new PPC ad channel offering the option to use rich media formats.

• Wiki -- Software that allows people to contribute knowledge on a particular topic. A wiki is another web publishing platform that makes use of technologies similar to blogs and also allows for collaboration with multiple people.

• Wikipedia – “Wikipedia is a multilingual, web-based, free content encyclopedia project. Wikipedia is written collaboratively by volunteers; its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the web site.” Source: Wikipedia

• Word Count - The total number of words contained within a web document.

• White hat - legitimate optimization techniques employed that are agreeable to search engine companies, such as the proper use of meta-tags, an adequate keyword saturation and spider friendly page design.

• Whois - records store the identity of the owner of each domain online, except for those that hide such information. Indeed, some domain registrars allow the ownership information to remain hidden, a feature often taken advantage of by large scale spammers.

• XML – Stands for “Extensible Markup Language,” a data delivery language.

• XML Feeds – A form of paid inclusion in which a search engine is fed information about an advertiser’s web pages via XML, rather than requiring that the engine gather that information through crawling actual pages. Marketers pay to have their pages included in a spider-based search index based on an XML format document that represents each page on the advertiser site. Advertisers pay either annually per URL or on a CPC basis – and are assured of frequent crawl cycles. New media types are being introduced into paid inclusion, including graphics, video, audio, and rich media.

• XML Maps - XML maps are specially formatted links to your pages. They will never replace the need for HTML site maps

• Xenu-Link verification is important to ensure that internal and external links on a website are not broken. Xenu is free software, popularly used for checking broken links of any kind, text, graphic or other, and reporting to the website owner the status of his links.

• Yahoo!-Sunnyvale, California based Internet services company founded by Stanford students Jerry Yang and David Filo in 1994. Its products include a search engine and the Yahoo! Directory, email service and a popular web portal.

• Yahoo! Search Marketing -Yahoo! Runs a PPC or Sponsored results advertising service, based on keyword that are based on a bidding system over keywords and placement. The platform was formerly known as Overture.

• YouTube - Feature rich amateur video upload and syndication website owned by Google.

• Zeitgeist (Google Zeitgesit) Weekly, monthly, and annual reports released by Google and based on millions of searches. The service reveals emerging and declining trends in real time of searches conducted on the Google search engine.

• Zeal- Non-commercial directory which was bought by Looksmart for $20 million, then abruptly shut down with little to no warning.

Search Engine Optimization & Marketing Glossary -Part 5

· Query – The keyword or keyword phrase a searcher enters into a search field, which initiates a search and results in a SERP with organic and paid listings.

· 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.

· Quality Content Web content that is user friendly as well as search engine friendly is considered quality content. For a website to rank high on SERPs and be popular among users it must provide interesting, well written, relevant and unique content. It can be looked at as content that is link-worthy, not merely generic text that appears on hundreds of sites.

· Quality Link Links on websites are important factors when search engines consider the site’s value and theme. Links are much like votes of trust, with better quality links counting more than low quality links for optimization purposes. A high quality link will be to or from a trusted and familiar source, not easily attainable, an older site that has been around for long and which includes quality content.

· ROAS – Acronym for Return On Advertising Spending, the profit generated by ad campaign conversions per dollar spent on advertising expenses. Calculated by dividing advertising-driven profit by ad spending.

· 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.

· RSS – Acronym for Rich Site Summary or Real Simple Syndication, a family of web feed formats that leverages XML for distributing and sharing headlines and information from other web content (also known as syndication).

· Raw Data Feed – Raw data is information that has been collected but not formatted, analyzed or processed. This raw data can be used to build an optimized XML feed.

· Reciprocal Link – Two different sites that link out to each other. Also referred to as Cross Linking.

· Relative URL’s Link - Relative URLs link to just the file, for example, “page1.htm”. (See also Absolute URL’s link.)

· 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.

· Revshare / Revenue Sharing – A method of allocating per-click revenue to a site publisher, and click-through charges to a search engine that distributes paid-ads to its context network partners, for every page viewer who clicks on the content site’s sponsored ads. A type of site finder’s fee.

· Rich Media – Media with embedded motion or interactivity. A growing option for PPC advertisers as rates of broadband connectivity increase.

· Right Rail – The common name for the right-side column of a web page. On a SERP, right rail is usually where sponsored listings appear.

· 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.

· RSS (Really Simply Syndication, Rich Site Summary, RDF Site Summary) - A family of web feed formats used for distributing frequently updated digital content, such as blogs, news, podcasts, and videos

· RSS Aggregators – “A client software that uses web feed to retrieve syndicated web content such as blogs, podcasts, vlogs, and mainstream mass media websites, or in the case of a search aggregator, a customized set of search results….Such applications are also referred to as RSS readers, feed readers, feed aggregators, news readers or search aggregators. These have been recently supplemented by the so-called RSS-narrators [such as TalkingNews or Talkr] which not only aggregate news feeds but also converts them into podcasts.” Source: Wikipedia

· SE - Search engine -Search engines generate lists of Websites and pages based on the user’s specifications – often certain keywords or phrases – in order of relevancy based not only on the Website’s name but also on its entire pages’ HTML content. Search Engine Marketing is designed to advance a Website’s ranking on a search engine’s results page.

· 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."

· Saturation (Search Engine Saturation) -- A term relating to the number of URLs included from a specific web site in any given search engine. The higher the saturation level or number of pages indexed into a search engine, the higher the potential traffic levels and rankings.

· Search Directory - Similar to a search engine, in that they both compile databases of web sites. A directory does not use crawlers in order to obtain entries in its search database. Instead, it relies on user interaction and submissions for the content it contains. Submissions are then categorized by topic and normally alphabetized, so that the results of any search will start with site descriptions that begin with some number or non-letter character, then moving from A-to-Z.

· Search Funnel – Movement of searchers, who tend to do several searches before reaching a buy decision, that works from broad, general keyword search terms to narrower, specific keywords. Advertisers use the search funnel to anticipate customer intent and develop keywords targeted to different stages. Also refers to potential for switches at stages in the funnel when, for example, searchers start with keywords for a desired brand, but switch to other brands after gathering information on the category. Microsoft AdCenter tested a search funnel keyword tool in 2006 to target keywords to search funnel stages.

· Search Query – The word or phrase a searcher types into a search field, which initiates search engine results page listings and PPC ad serves. In PPC advertising, the goal is to bid on keywords that closely match the search queries of the advertiser’s targets. See also Query.

· Secondary Links – Links that are indirectly acquired links, such as a story in a major newspaper about a new product your company released.

· Semantic Clustering – A technique for developing relevant keywords for PPC Ad Groups, by focusing tightly on keywords and keyword phrases that are associative and closely related, referred to as "semantic clustering.” Focused and closely-related keyword groups, which would appear in the advertiser’s ad text and in the content of the click-through landing page, are more likely to meet searchers’ expectations and, therefore, support more effective advertising and conversion rates.

· Server-side Tracking -- The process of analyzing web server log files. Server-side analytics tools make sense of raw data to generate meaningful reports and trends analysis.

· Session Id’s – dynamic parameters, such as session IDs generated by cookies for each individual user. Session IDs cause search engines to see a different URL for each page each time that they return to re-crawl a web site.

· Site-Targeted Ads – Site targeting lets advertisers display their ads on manually-selected sites in the search engine’s content network for content or contextual ad serves. Site-targeted ads are billed more like traditional display ads, per 1000 impressions (CPM), and not on a Pay-Per-Click basis.

· Spam - Unsolicited email messages.

· Spamming – Spamming refers to a wide array of techniques used to “trick” the search engines. These tactics generally are against the guidelines put forth by the search engines. Tactics such as Hidden text, Doorway Pages, Content Duplication and Link Farming are but a few of many spam techniques employed over the years. (Also see: delicious lunchmeat.)

· Spider – See Crawler.

· Splash Page – Refers to an entry page or main page of a web site that is interactive or graphically intense. Many splash pages are designed using Flash.

· Sponsored Listing – A term used as a title or column head on SERPs to identify paid advertisers and distinguish between paid and organic listings. Alternate names are Paid Listings or Paid Sponsors. Separating paid listings from organic results enables searchers to make their own purchase and site trust decisions and, in fact, resulted from an FTC complaint filed by Commercial Alert in 2001 alleging that the confusion caused in consumers who saw mixed paid and unpaid results constituted fraud in advertising.

· Statistical Validity – The degree to which an observed result, such as a difference between two measurements, can be relied upon and not attributed to random error in sampling or in measurement. Statistical Validity is important to the reliability of test results, particularly in Multivariate Testing methods. Source: UsabilityFirst.com

· 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.

· Submission - The act of submitting a web site to search engines and search directories. For some search engines, this is performed simply by typing in the absolute home page URL of the web site you wish to submit. Other engines and directories request that descriptions of the web site be submitted for approval.

· Super Verbs - Compelling verbs that trigger emotions or visual images.

· Siphoning - Techniques used to steal another web sites traffic, including the use of spyware or cyber squatting.

· Social Media Marketing (SMM): A form of internet marketing which seeks to achieve branding and marketing communication goals through the participation in various social media networks (MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn), social bookmarking (Digg, Stumbleupon), social media sharing (Flickr, YouTube), review/ratings sites (ePinions, BizRate), blogs, forums, news aggregators and virtual 3D networks (SecondLife, ActiveWorlds). Each social media site can be optimized to generate awareness or traffic.

· Social Media Optimization (SMO): A set of methods for generating publicity through social media, online communities and community websites. Methods of SMO include adding RSS feeds, adding a "Digg This" button, blogging and incorporating third party community functionalities like Flickr photo slides and galleries or YouTube videos. Social media optimization is a form of search engine marketing.

Search Engine Optimization & Marketing Glossary -Part 4

· Naked Links – A posted and visible link in the text of a web page that directs to a web site.

· Negative Keywords – Filtered-out keywords to prevent ad serves on them in order to avoid irrelevant click-through charges on, for example, products that you do not sell, or to refine and narrow the targeting of your Ad Group’s keywords. Microsoft adCenter calls them "excluded keywords." Formatting negative keywords varies by search engine; but they are usually designated with a minus sign.

· No Frames Tag - A tag used to describe the content of a frame to a user or engine which had trouble displaying / reading frames. Frequently misused and often referred to as “Poor mans cloaking”.

· No Script Tag - The noscript element is used to define an alternate content (text) if a script is NOT executed. This tag is used for browsers that recognizes the script tag, but does not support the script in it.

· NoFollow - NoFollow is an attribute webmasters can place on links that tell search engines not to count the link as a vote or not to send any trust to that site. Search engines will follow the link, yet it will not influence search results. NoFollows can be added to any link with this code: “rel="nofollow"."

· Navigation The overall structure and layout of a website, which helps users find their way around. Knowing your position, where you want to go and how it relates to the rest of the website. For search engines to be able to follow the navigation scheme it is best not to encode it in any script other than regular HTML.

· Organic Listings Search engines list results based on varying factors they deem relevant based on the user’s search keywords. Organic search engine listings, also known as “natural” listings, are those listings that appear on the results page solely based on relevancy factors. Organic listings are juxtaposed with paid listings, which are ranked on the results page based on how much the advertiser paid the search engine to post them.

· Organic SEO Organic Search Engine Optimization is the SEM term for unpaid high ranking results on search engines. Organic SEO, also known as “natural” SEO, is juxtaposed with Pay Per Click advertising campaigns. The Organic SEO method involves complete optimization of the company’s Website and long term investment in building up towards top search engine results that will last a long time.

· Outbound Link Outbound links appear on a Web page and direct users and search engine crawlers to another Web page. They can link between different Websites or between pages on the same site. Outbound links are key elements in Search Engine Marketing campaigns, as the smart use of them helps promote a Web page’s ranking.

· Overture, a Yahoo! Search Marketing product, was formerly known as GoTo.com. It is the largest of all Pay Per Click search engines. Overture enables Website owners to purchase online marketing and advertising space on a PPC basis, keyword oriented and sponsored. Yahoo! search engine results also include paid listings of search results that are based on the bidding of the advertiser for certain keywords. Such pay for placement services are successful Search Engine Marketing tools that can serve a Website, though at a cost. Thorough, Internet-wide research by Overture assures ever more relevant keyword relevancy, help promote Websites and generate profit for itself.

· Off-page factors - Issues such as inbound links and the popularity of sites with links pointing into your site that you have little control over, but that still play a role in your rankings.

· On-page factors - A reference to the elements on your site and their role in your rankings, for example, keyword density, title tag relevance etc.

· OOP - Over Optimization Penalty. Where a search engine algorithm detects that changes you are making to a page or the way the page is constructed is to influence rankings over being useful to a site visitor.

· P2P - Pay To Play. Any search engine marketing strategy that requires payment to the search engine company.

· Page jacking - the copying of a page by unauthorized parties in order to filter off traffic to another site. Learn more about detecting and dealing with page jacking.

· PFI - Pay For Inclusion. Payment paid to a search engine company for inclusion in results

· PPCSE - A Pay Per Click Search Engine. Learn more about pay per click.

· PR/ PageRank™ - A ranking used by Google that is meant to act as indication of the quality of a site and its authority status.

· PR0/PageRank Zero - Another term relating to Google PageRank. It can indicate that a page has been spidered but appearing in general results as yet, or could also possibly indicate a penalty.

· Pay-per-Call:The ability to track offline sales through unique toll-free phone numbers. Currently available on FindWhat and CitySearch properties, this service is ideal for offline-based businesses like plumbers, contractors and other service industries.

· Pay-per-Click (PPC):Stands for pay-per-click. See “Cost Per Click” and “Paid Placement.”

· Paid Listings: Listings that search engines sell to advertisers, usually through paid placement or paid inclusion programs. In contrast, organic listings are not sold.

· Paid placement Paid placement is a SEM strategy by which placement on the search results page is allotted in return for a fee. Paid placement is temporary and usually marked as sponsored listings.

· Position
The position is the rank of the advertiser on the search engine results page. Some search engines place the highest bidder at the top position, while others use algorithms that are more complex. The assumption is that the higher the rank the more clicks the advertisement generates.

· 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 podcasting. The host or author of a podcast is often called a podcaster.” Source: Wikipedia

· PPC Advertising – Acronym for Pay-Per-Click Advertising, a model of online advertising in which advertisers pay only for each click on their ads that directs searchers to a specified landing page on the advertiser’s web site. PPC ads may get thousands of impressions (views or serves of the ad); but, unlike more traditional ad models billed on a CPM (Cost-Per-Thousand-Impressions) basis, PPC advertisers only pay when their ad is clicked on. Charges per ad click-through are based on advertiser bids in hybrid ad space auctions and are influenced by competitor bids, competition for keywords and search engines’ proprietary quality measures of advertiser ad and landing page content.

· PPC Management – The monitoring and maintenance of a Pay-Per-Click campaign or campaigns. This includes changing bid prices, expanding and refining keyword lists, editing ad copy, testing campaign components for cost effectiveness and successful conversions, and reviewing performance reports for reports to management and clients, as well as results to feed into future PPC campaign operations.