Search Marketing Glossary

A/B Testing

A method of comparing two versions of a webpage or mobile app experience against each other in order to test the accuracy of the testing tool.

Abandoned Domains

A web address that potentially has links pointing to it, but has not been renewed and is available for purchase. The process of buying an abandoned domain and then using a 301 status code to automatically redirect to another website is a common link building strategy.

Above The Fold

“Above the fold” refers to the content that is visible to viewers without scrolling down the page. This is an important part of SEO, and there are certain things you can do to encourage scrolling.

AdSense

Google AdSense is an advertising platform that can help you generate revenue by allowing Google to place ads on your website.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is a performance-based marketing strategy that allows marketers to expand their reach by rewarding affiliates for promoting their product, service, or site.

Aging Content

Refers to pages on a site that have lost their timeliness and relevance. Unlike evergreen content, aging content can drag the entire site down.

Algorithm

A series of steps used by a computer or program to solve a problem. The major search engines use proprietary algorithms to measure rank and display web pages in their SERPs. Google claims its search algorithms rely on over 200 measurable factors, some of which are thought to be keywords and inbound links.

Alt Text

Alt text is HTML code that is used to describe an image for visually impaired users that rely on screen-readers.

Anchor Text

Anchor text is the part of a hyperlink or link that is visible to web users.

Article Spinning

The practice of using a computer program to take an existing article and “rewrite” it. This is done by replacing certain nouns, verbs, and descriptors with synonyms. Webmasters then repost the “new” article to various sites in order to build links. This type of content is considered highly dubious, and search engines target sites that use spun articles for potential penalties.

Authority Linking

The practice of linking to a website that is considered an authority (or at least authoritative) in its field.

Automated Submitting

A site that uses a program to automatically submit its web pages to the search engines, social media sites, and directories. The risk in using such automated programs is that your website may be listed in places that are not relevant or appropriate for your purposes.

Authority (website)

A calculated metric used for ranking; comprised of its domain’s age, content, inbound link profile (quality and quantity), and search query.

Backlink

A link that is inbound from an external and independent site. The amount and quality of backlinks a site has will influence its search ranking.

Backlink Audit

The process of examining a website’s backlink portfolio and making recommendations for link removal and/or disavowal.

Backlink Profile

This refers to the appraisal of the number, quality, variety, and general health of the backlinks a website possesses.

Baidu

The world’s second-largest search engine behind Google, used primarily in China.

Black Hat SEO

Refers to a set of SEO tactics that attempt to increase the rankings of target sites through manipulation such as cloaking, keyword stuffing, and robot-driven link building. Search engines have tried to limit these strategies by penalizing websites using (or abusing) this practice. 

Blog

Short for “weblog,” is an online journal with ongoing posts. Blogs are an integral part of an overall strategy to create an online presence, have a stake in the online community, and attract people to your site. Great blog posts encourage links to your content and increase your perceived authority on the subject you are blogging about.

Boolean Search Operators

Boolean operators are a set of commands used to narrow or expand a search and can be effective tools for optimizing your search process to find the most relevant pages online.

Bots

Programs designed to crawl and copy web pages for later processing and indexing by search engines. They generally begin with a list of URLs to crawl, and while crawling, the bot identifies all the hyperlinks and adds those URLs to the list of sites to be crawled next. Also known as spiders and web crawlers.

Bounce Rate

Bounce rate is calculated as the number of single-page sessions on your site divided by all sessions.

Brand Awareness

The degree to which consumers are acquainted with or knowledgeable of the qualities/image of a particular brand. Brand awareness is managed by utilizing social media, content marketing, and various other resources that increase public knowledge of a company’s presence.

Brand Mentions

The natural or organic mention of a company’s brand online, often as a link. Business owners should monitor not only their brand mentions but those of their competitors.

Broken Links

A broken link is a link on a website that no longer takes the user to its designated target. Broken links are bad for user experience and having many broken links will make a website less trustworthy.

Cache Copy

The search engine’s copy of your website on its server. Every time the search engine crawls and indexes your site, it replaces the cached copy of your website.

Call to Action (CTA)

A call to action is a statement that encourages the reader to do something, such as click, download, contact, etc.

Canonical Tag

Canonical tags help search engines differentiate between web pages with very similar or duplicate content, which can negatively affect rankings.

Citation Flow

Citation flow (CF) is a metric from the SEO software company Majestic, that expresses how authoritative a website is based on a score from 0 to 100.

Click-through Rate (CTR)

Click-through rate (CTR) is a metric that measures the frequency with which people click on a link as a percentage of those who have viewed that link.

Cloaking

A black hat SEO strategy that makes a web page look different to a search engine than it does to a site visitor.

Competitive Research

The act of exploring a competitor’s backlink profile for a wealth of information such as market reach, SEO strategy, and keywords.

Content

Content Gap

Crucial information about an industry or market that should be covered but was somehow overlooked. If the gap is discovered, creating content to fill the gap can be a powerful way to build relevant links.

Content Management System

CMS platforms are a great way for individuals who aren’t as tech-savvy to create, edit, and publish content for their website all from one source. 

Content Marketing

Content that is used to advertise a company web site; such content is created and used across a broad network of sites, social media outlets, forums, etc. to increase sales and brand awareness.

Content Syndication

Content syndication is the act of re-publishing content on another platform to boost the visibility and reach of that content.

Conversion

Represents the number of site visitors that respond with a sign-up, purchase, or call to action.

Conversion Rate and Conversion Marketing

Simply put, a conversion rate is the percentage of website visitors who take action, like making a purchase or subscribing to a newsletter. Conversion marketing refers to optimizing your website and marketing campaigns to boost those conversion rates.

Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)

Conversion rate optimization is the process of increasing the number of users who visit your site that complete a desired action or goal.

Cost Per Click (CPC)

Cost per click is the monetary value assigned to each click you earn from paid search advertising.

Cost Per Thousand Impressions (CPM)

Cost per thousand, or CPM, refers to how much it costs to reach 1,000 people with your advertisement.

Crawl Frequency

Refers to how often a website is crawled. A site with more authority and unique content will be crawled more frequently than a site with low link authority.

CSS

A Cascading Style Sheet is a style sheet language that amends the page layout prescribed by a markup language.

Dead Link

A link that does not work. A dead link differs from that of a broken link because a broken link may still be working, just not for the intended purpose.

Deep Links

Links that point not to a site’s homepage, but to a page deeper in the website. For example, www.samplesite.com/page/information.

Deep Link Ratio

The relation between the number of deep links to home page links on your site.

Deindex

A site that has been removed from a search index and not included in the SERPs anymore. Deindexing is different from a site penalty, which means that the site has only lost rankings.

Directory

Web or link directories are online lists or indexes of websites. Their value for SEO and link building has become more nuanced, though they can have value in other ways too when used correctly.

Dofollow Links

A link that allows link equity to flow to the URL being linked to.

Domain Authority

Domain Authority (DA) is a metric used to estimate how your page could be ranking relative to other pages on the same topic. It was created by the SEO software company Moz, and is not a part of PageRank or Google’s ranking factors.

Duplicate Content

Duplicate content is exactly what it sounds like — content (usually text) on one site that identically matches the content on another site or page. Duplicate content can be damaging to a website's SEO.

Dynamic Website

A site that is frequently changed and will sometimes change based on the unique user’s interaction with it.

E-E-A-T

The popular SEO acronym E-E-A-T stands for experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. It comes from Google’s search quality evaluator guidelines, and though it is not actually a ranking factor, it reflects modern SEO best practices and can be a useful way to assess content for search.

Ego Bait

A tactic that involves posting flattering content about an individual in an effort to get them to link to your site or content.

Embed Code

HTML code that allows users to obtain the content for inclusion on their own site. e.g. YouTube includes embed code for the videos on its site.

Embedded Link

A type of hyperlink that has been embedded by the author into the existing text of an article or website.

Evergreen Content

In the context of SEO, “evergreen” refers to an asset with value that will not diminish quickly, or a strategy that is effective over time, not just in the near term.

External Links

External links are links that lead to pages on separate domains. They have SEO benefits in the form of both enhanced user experience and increased authority.

First Crawled

Denotes the first time a website or page was crawled by a web bot.

Flash

A type of multimedia technology that allows Web developers to incorporate interactive content and animations onto their websites. Flash animations will only look the same on different browsers if they are equipped with the necessary plug-ins.

Footer

The section of web content located at the bottom (or foot) of the page. Most often contains technical information such as copyright information for the website, the name of the website’s author and business, address, and the date of the most recent update (if applicable). The footer is also treated as its own section of the web page, separate from the header, content, and sidebars.

Forum

Online discussion sites where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. Depending on the forum’s settings, users can be anonymous or may have to register and log-in to post messages.

GEO Targeting

GEO targeting is a marketing strategy that utilizes searcher location data. This data is gathered from a variety of sources to help local businesses directly target their priority audiences.

Google Algorithm

A formula employed by the Google search engine to determine which pages are most relevant to a user’s search query.

Google Analytics

A tool offered by the search engine that allows site owners to view all of the available statistics regarding the site’s traffic, page rank, unique site views, and other demographic data.

Google Authorship

Even though Google Authorship is a thing of the past, there are still ways to build up your Author Rank. Authorship was a program that helped verify well-established authors by showcasing their credentials alongside their article on the search engine result pages.

Google Trends

Google Trends can be extremely valuable in understanding the popularity of topics and associated keywords. However, if you don’t know what it is for and how to interpret the data, you’ll be hard-pressed to use it successfully in an online marketing campaign.

Grey Hat SEO

Refers to link building tactics that are neither perfectly white nor obviously black hat. The term grey is similar to a “grey area” where exceptions to the rule reside. 

Guest Blogging

Guest blogging refers to the practice of writing blogs for websites other than your own.

Header Tags

Header tags — such as H1, H2, and so on — are one of several HTML elements that affect on-page search engine optimization (or SEO).

Heat Maps

Heat maps are data visualizations representing user interactions on a webpage. They are used in content marketing campaigns and can represent several types of engagement. 

Home Page

The first page that visitors will see when they visit your website. It is important that the home page is focused and provides a clear picture of the services the site offers and the brand.

Hreflang

Hreflang tags help sites with similar content in multiple languages serve the correct version of the web page to a user based on language and region.

HTML

Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is a markup language that is used for documents and pages being displayed in a web browser. HTML is everywhere online, powering the World Wide Web as we know it today.

HTTP Status Codes

HTTP status codes — short for hypertext transfer protocol status codes — are codes that are issued by the server in response to a user’s request. There are five different classes, all of which serve a different purpose.

Hummingbird Update

The Hummingbird update was a major rewrite of Google's search algorithm that endeavored to understand natural language and context.

Hyperlink

Text on a website that contains HTML code. When that text is clicked, it directs the user to the linked target or site on the web.

Impressions

Digital marketing impressions, also known as ad views, describe the moment at which an ad is loaded on a web page.

Inbound Link

A link to your site from another site.

Inbound Marketing

Refers to “earning” leads to your site with good content, social shares, and other strategies. With inbound marketing, potential conversions come to you; not the other way around.

Index

Indexing refers to the process of search engines crawling the internet to discover webpages and storing that information within an organized database called an index.

Infographic

Short for information graphic, is a graphic visualization of data or other information. 

Interactive Content

Web content that responds to a user’s input such as playing a song, game, or video on a site. Compelling interactive content can earn quality backlinks.

Internal Link

Links between web pages on the same domain. Internal links help visitors navigate your site and help search engines understand your site's hierarchy. 

Internet Protocol (IP)

The primary procedure for relaying and routing data across networks. It has been used since its development in the 1970s, and it essentially makes the internet possible.

Interstitial

A form of Internet advertising that involves force-loading a full-page advertisement when a user navigates between pages on a domain. Usually, it will provide a link allowing the user to skip past it.

IP Address

A numeric representation of a computer’s “location” when it is connected to the internet. IP addresses are part of the overall way computers network and interact with one another.

JavaScript

A scripting language developed to create interactive effects within web browsers. Most search engines do not index content in JavaScript.

jQuery

An open-source JavaScript library that helps simplify the creation and coding of various web applications.

JSON-LD

Stands for JavaScript Object Notation for Linked Data and describes a method for encoding linked data with JSON which makes it easier to organize, read, and write.

Juice

Commonly referred to as link juice, it’s the quality and authority of the links in your backlink portfolio. Links from authoritative and relevant websites pass more value to your website, potentially increasing your site’s position in search engine rankings.

Keyword Density

Keyword density describes the ratio of SEO keywords on a webpage as a percentage of the total words on that page.

Keyword Equity

The amount of authority or relevancy assigned to a domain based on the keywords in that website’s tags, URL, and content.

Keyword Popularity

A keyword’s popularity refers to how many times that keyword was searched for during a set amount of time. This is similar to “trending” terms on social media sites such as Twitter.

Keyword Research

The investigation of a search term’s popularity used to determine the best search terms and anchor text to increase a given website’s search engine visibility.

Keyword Stuffing

Keyword stuffing is the unnecessary repetition of keywords or phrases that site owners use in an attempt to boos their search rankings for said keywords.

Key performance indicator (KPI)

A key performance indicator (KPI) is a specific, measurable value that a business uses to track progress towards desired goals.

Landing Page

The destination of a given hyperlink. That hyperlink might be embedded in the text, an image, an advertisement, a flash game or a video.

Last Crawled

The last time a website or page was crawled by a search engine bot. This information used to be available in Google’s Webmaster Tools, but they have since removed it. To check your site’s last crawl date you can use the “cache” search operator. For example, entering the search cache:example.com will display the last cached copy of the site along with its last crawled date.

Lead Generation

Lead generation describes the marketing process that is implemented in order to capture and convert interested customers.

Linkable Asset

A linkable asset is a page that is designed to earn backlinks from other relevant websites, in order to boost the authority of your site.

Link Building

A system of tools, tactics, marketing strategies, and sometimes schemes created with the purpose of gaining links back to your website. Gaining links can increase the position of a website in search engine rankings, and that leads to increased traffic and revenue.

Link Disavowal

A formal request to Google to disregard certain harmful links accompanied by evidence of attempts to have those link removed by the responsible webmasters.

Link Juice

Link juice, also called link equity, is one of the primary factors that determine rankings within search engine results pages.

Link Neighborhood

Link neighborhoods refer to the sites that you link to on your site, and sites that link to your site. There are good and bad link neighborhoods, and you want to be sure to live in a good link neighborhood.

Link Spam

Link spam refers to backlinks that are placed on pages and websites regardless of context or user experience, as an attempt to boost search rankings. Search engines have clear guidelines warning against link spam and will punish or devalue spammy links.

Link Velocity

The speed at which a site gains new links. Generally, a steady and reasonable increase of links enhances a website’s potential to rank in the SERPs. Acquiring a large number of links quickly is a red flag for search engines and usually indicates some type of automation at work.

Linking Domains

The domains that have given links to your site. The greater the variety the better.

Local Citations

Local citations include your business’s name, address, phone number, and sometimes, a link to your website. These citations can increase online visibility for a physical business.

Local SEO

A geotargeted optimization strategy that focuses on name, address, and phone number citations to build an association between a website/business and a certain location.

Long Tail Keywords

Phrases that are usually specific to a niche or industry. These are easier to rank for than more general, high traffic keywords. Optimizing for many different long tails can help rank a website for important individual keywords without the danger of over-optimization.

Main and Supplementary Content

Web pages contain main and supplementary content. Main content is focused on fulfilling the premise of the page’s title and is usually found in the body copy of the page, while supplementary content is used to enhance the user experience on the page and should be designed to function without distraction.

Manual Submission

The process of submitting URLs to search engines manually rather than using software that automates the process. Manual submission tends to be a more effective and inexpensive method of ensuring that your pages are indexed.

Marketing Funnel

The marketing funnel is a concept that identifies stages on the road to customer conversion, including top, middle, and bottom.

Meta Description

A meta description is a short synopsis of a webpage that displays in search, underneath the title of the corresponding page.

Meta Tags

These are special HTML tags which define metadata about a particular HTML document. They can specify things such as page descriptions, keywords, author’s name, and date last modified. This information is used by web browsers and search engines but is not displayed on the web page itself.

Mobile-first Design

Mobile-first design refers to the practice of designing a website in a way that prioritizes mobile visitors and their experience with the site.

Mobile Optimization

Mobile optimization is the practice of creating the best possible user experience for site visitors using mobile devices.

Multimedia

Multimedia and rich media represent similar ideas, but serve different purposes. Rich media refers to specific types of ads, while multimedia is more broadly applicable. 

Naked Link

A link whose anchor text is the same as the website’s URL. For example pageonepower.com.

NAP

NAP, or Name, Address, and Phone Number, is an acronym that refers to how physical location information is cataloged for your business online.

Navigation Bar

A static list of links that lead to other locations on the site. The navigation bar serves as the primary means for easily navigating a website.

Niche Edits

Niche edits are a link building tactic used commonly by SEOs as part of a backlink strategy, to build out a backlink profile. 

Nofollow Links

The nofollow tag was originally created to deter spam comments from making an impact on comment sections of blogs, advertisements, paid links, and more.

NoIndex

A noindex tag informs search engines not to index a page or website, excluding it from appearing in search engine results.

Off-Page Optimization

Refers to optimization practices that occur externally from your site. The most common off-page optimization strategy is link building.

On-Page Optimization

A part of SEO that involves optimizing the source code of a website. More particularly: HTML, header tags, URLs, and the robots.txt.

Organic Link

A link that your site attracts naturally with quality content. It’s the objective of link bait or any other quality-driven web initiative.

Organic Search

Returned search results that appear because of their relevance to the search query and/or keywords. In contrast to paid search results, these results have not been purchased and show up based on their own merit.

Outbound Link

A link from one website leading to another website. Relevant outbound links can help build credibility and boost rankings.

PageRank

Google PageRank evaluates and scores your page’s external and internal links, and is one of Google’s oldest and well-known ranking algorithms.

Pageviews and Sessions

Pageviews are metrics in Google Analytics that refer to when a user loads a webpage on a site and sessions (also from Google Analytics) consists of every action they take during the entirety of their visit to that site.

Page Authority

Page Authority (PA) is a metric used to estimate how your page could be ranking relative to other pages on the same topic. It was created by the SEO software company Moz, and is not a part of PageRank or Google’s ranking factors.

Page Speed

Page speed — also known as load speed — refers to the amount of time that a webpage on a site takes to load. There are various ways to optimize your site for page speed.

Paid Links

When one website offers a link to another website for money. Paid links are a violation of Google’s quality guidelines, and therefore buying or selling links is a high-risk proposition. 

Panda Update

Panda is a Google algorithm update that was designed to filter low-quality content out of Google's search results.

Pay Per Click (PPC)

Pay Per Click (PPC) is an advertising campaign with the intention of driving user activity to a given business's website, where the advertiser pays for each ad click.

Penalty

A virtual reprimand against site owners for engaging in practices that search engine companies find unacceptable such as black hat SEO. A penalty typically consists of a site losing rankings in the SERP. Many penalties are timed (30, 60, or 90 days), while some are permanent, remaining in place until the offending issue is resolved.

Penguin Update

Google Penguin is an update to Google's search algorithm that is specifically designed to combat link spam and manipulative link building tactics.

Private Blog Networks (PBNs)

A private blog network (PBN) is a network of websites that only exist to link to a central website in order to influence that website's authority in search.

Query

A search query refers to the words and phrases that people use in order to search for something through a search engine.

Qualified Traffic

Qualified traffic consists of the people who visit your website that are most likely to become leads or customers.

RankBrain

RankBrain is a machine-learning system that is used by Google Search to better understand the meaning and intent of queries that use natural language.

Rank Tracking

Rank tracking is the process of monitoring a page’s position on the search engine results pages to help detect changes in the website’s visibility for different keywords.

Reciprocal Links

Occurs when one site offers to link to another site if they get a link in return. Technically, reciprocal links are a violation of Google’s quality guidelines which means websites can be penalized if caught engaging in this practice. 

Reconsideration Request

A formal written request accompanied by an extensive link disavowal request that’s submitted to Google’s webspam team through Webmaster Tools in order to have a manual ranking penalty removed from a website.

Redirect

A redirect occurs when a user’s requested URL automatically forwards them to another URL, either on a new webpage or website.

Referring Domains

Referring domains and referring URLs are the sites and pages that have backlinks pointing to your content and site.

Relevance in SEO

Relevance in SEO can refer to searcher intent, a brand, breadth of appeal, and keywords. Leveraged correctly, relevance can be beneficial to your site’s SEO overall.

rel=doindex

An HTML command that can be used to tell robots to index a specific link or page, even if the respective page or section of the website has a blanket noindex command.

rel=noindex

An HTML command that tells robots not to index either a page (if it’s in the header) or an individual link.

Resource Pages

A site that collects and aggregates websites and content related to a specific online niche and publishes this information into a list of web pages. Many specialized markets have websites that host resource pages and it can be worthwhile to pursue them for relevant links.

Responsive Web Design

Responsive web design is an approach to designing websites on a fluid grid that responds to the media device of the user.

Rich Media

Multimedia and rich media represent similar ideas, but serve different purposes. Rich media refers to specific types of ads, while multimedia is more broadly applicable.

Robots.txt

Robots.txt is a text file that tells search engines what to crawl on a site by using certain commands.

Root Domain

A root domain is the base domain of a site. For example, www.ebay.com, not www.ebay.com/felines/kittens/kittenbeds.

RSS Feeds

Short for RDF Site Summary, RSS feeds are subscriptions to the posts the user selects for aggregation into a personalized stream of content.

Schema

Schema is data markup within HTML that helps search engine crawlers better understand a webpage.

Scraped Content

Scraped content refers to data that is stolen or “scraped” off your site and then used on someone else’s domain. The practice is illegal and disrespectful to webmasters that have invested time, money, and resources into building their site.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

Search engine marketing (SEM) refers to the paid side of search marketing which involves paying for advertisements within search engine results and on webpages.

Search engine results page (SERP)

The webpages that search engines display after a searcher inputs a question or query into their platform.

Searcher Intent

Searcher intent, also called user intent, is the primary goal a user has when entering a query into a search engine.

Search Modifiers

Types of modifiers used in a web search to affect the results of the search. For example inurl, intitle, quotation marks, and intext modifiers.

Search Ranking

Search ranking or SEO ranking refers to the position a website or webpage holds within a specific search engine results page.

Semantic Search

Google’s move to improve search accuracy by incorporating more intuitive artificial intelligence and focusing more on searcher intent with the contextual meaning of terms as they appear in the searchable data space.

SEO

Acronym for Search Engine Optimization which involves using technical tools and strategies to maximize a website’s potential for ranking highly in the page results from a web search.

SEO Competition

A competitor, in the context of SEO, is a website or webpage that is competing with your target page for ranking in the search engine results.

SEO Keywords

SEO keywords are the terms and phrases associated with your business that people use when entering a query into search engines to find your website.

Sitewide Link

A sitewide link on a page remains in the same location on the website, no matter what page of the site you are on. These are typically in a static header or footer of a website.

Spider

A search engine robot (bot) that crawls a site for information to determine site-relevance to a queried term.

Subpage

A page that is not the top-level domain. Pages following the forward-slash (/) of a site’s root domain are the site’s subpages.

Target Audience

A target audience is a strategically selected group of consumers that your content and products or services are intended for. Understanding your target audience is crucial to any content creation campaign.

Testimonial

A positive affirmation on a company or its products. Writing and submitting testimonials to sites that publish these increases links, brand awareness, etc.

Tiered Link Building

A link pyramid where very low quality and low trust sites link to slightly higher quality and more trustworthy sites that then link to better sites in turn. This is repeated in layers until a pool of fairly high value, high trust sites are created with acceptable backlink portfolios. These can be used to link to high-value sites without compromising that website's backlink portfolio. This technique is considered black hat SEO.

Read Full Description

Title tag

The title that shows when you look at a webpage on a search engine results page (SERP).

TLD

Acronym for Top Level Domain, the highest point of a given domain in the hierarchical Domain Name System.

Traffic

The numbers of web visitors to your site. Google offers a free tool called Google Analytics which will provide traffic data for your site.

Trust Flow

Trust Flow (TF) is a metric from the SEO software company Majestic that measures the perceived trustworthiness of a website based on its backlinks.

UGC

User generated content is a form of online content that is created by users or a website's audience rather than by someone affiliated with that website or business.

Unique Selling Proposition (USP)

A unique selling proposition (USP) is a feature that distinguishes a business from competitors while meeting a defined consumer need.

Unlinked Mentions

Unlinked mentions are mentions of your site, brand, or related product and services on a published site that does not link back to your site, representing a missed SEO opportunity.

Unnatural Link

A link that has been intentionally placed by a webmaster on a site for the sole purpose of deceiving the search engines.

Unnatural Link Warning

An unnatural link warning is a notice to a webmaster from a search engine such as Google. These warnings typically say that a site has unnatural links that can negatively impact a site’s rankings.

URL

A uniform resource locator, more commonly abbreviated as “URL,” is an address given to each specific website, image, CSS document, and any other type of file that can be found on the internet.

URL Structure

Refers to the organization of a URL.

For example, http://www.example.com/subject/specific/ being good.

http://www.example.com/KJFKUH823hf being bad.

Viewable Impression

Also known as impressions, viewable impressions are a metric used to estimate how many people view a given advertisement.

View-through Conversion

A metric tracked through Google's display ad network which refers to visitors that converted within 30 days of viewing your ad even though they never clicked the advertisement.

Webinar

A seminar or class held online. Users can watch via live video feed or listen in over the phone when invited to from the webinar hosts.

Website Structure

Refers to the organizational structure of a domain. This structure should create an information hierarchy from the home page to deep links ranging from general to specific and organizing various topics into groups with similar topics to make it easier to navigate.

Web Crawler

Web crawlers — also known as “crawlers,” “bots,” “web robots,” or “web spiders” — are automated programs that methodically browse the web for the sole purpose of indexing web pages and the content they contain.

Web 2.0 Sites

Sites that allow a user to interact with an online community by uploading content and commenting on other users’ content.

White Hat SEO

Search engine optimization practices that are in line with published search engine best practices and webmaster guidelines. Typically, white hat SEO involves optimizing a website with useful and fresh content and natural link building. 

Widgets

A small JavaScript or program that blogs and other websites use to create additional content depth on a site such as an email subscription form, contact form, or a live Twitter feed. Widgets can also be used as a tool, e.g. an interest rate calculator for realtor sites.

Wiki

A site that allows all users to contribute information and constantly seeks new information or contributions to make existing information more accurate, complete, and authoritative. However, a wiki site is only as reliable as the contributors on it and the people who moderate the content for accuracy.

XML Sitemap

An XML file that provides a map of a website by listing all pages to help search engines better understand site structure and crawl the site more quickly and effectively.

X-Robots-Tag

An element of the HTTP header reponse for a given URL that can instruct the same directives as a robots meta tag.

Yandex

Yandex is the major search engine in Russia.

YMYL

YMYL stands for "Your Money or Your Life" and refers to topics and pages that could have real-world effects on users.

Zero-Click Searches

Zero-click searches are searches conducted within Google that don't result in the searcher clicking one of the results or leaving the search engine.

Zero Position

Zero position or position zero refers to the Featured Snippet results which appear above the first position on a SERP. Since these results appear before position one, ranking here is commonly referred to as "ranking zero".