301 Redirect (permanent redirect)
Interpreted by search engine robot that the current domain is no longer valid. All links to the domain (and PageRank) are typically assigned to the site which is pointed to by the redirect. Used to amalgamate PageRank and give a single URL for a company or group of products. This redirect is implemented on the server (server-side).

302 Redirect (temporary redirect)
Interpreted by search engine robot that both the target domain and the current domain are temporarily valid. Use for geolocation to point country specific domains (ccTLDs) as separate listings. But note this is used for domain hijacking and as a consequence can result in sites getting penalised. This redirect is implemented on the server (server-side).

Accessibility
An approach to site design intended to accommodate site usage using different browsers and settings, particularly required by the visually impaired.

Alt image tags
Graphical images that form each page can have hidden text associated with them that is not seen by the user, but will be indexed by the search engine. This is required for accessibility compliance (screen-readers used by the blind and visually impaired, read-out the alt tags), but is also used by the search engines to determine relevance.

Affiliate marketing
Typically, a commission-based arrangement where referring sites (publishers) receive a commission on sales or leads by merchants (retailers). A lead may be based on data captured during an enquiry, or it could be simply a visitor to the site (a click), in which case it overlaps with paid-search marketing.

Algorithm (Algo) is a mathematical equation. Search engines use an algorithm to sort through the 1000’s of web pages that are on-line to generate the most relevant pages at the top of the screen.

Analytics is software that allows you to track what you need to know about every visitor to your website. This will include page views, entry and exit page, and most importantly conversion statistics. Analytics is implemented by placing a piece of code into the coding of your website. Search marketing agencies that track user action and report on that visitor journey have a distinct advantage over agencies that do not.

Authority pages
A concept related to Hilltop. A page which contains many inbound links about a topic. Expert pages (hubs) are given more weighting to identify authority pages.

Backlinks
Links pointing from one website to another website. Examples of inbound links can be found on search engines using link: www.yourwebsite.com. This will show pages linking to your homepage; the results will be both internal links and inbound links.

Bid management software
Software used for automated management and reporting of managing paid-search marketing across several search engines. Control rules are set to determine bidding strategy and the bids are adjusted to optimise for different goals such as ROI or volume.

Black-hat SEO
An approach to SEO that pushes the boundaries of ethical practice. Potentially contravenes the search engine’s terms of service. High risk, high-reward approach. May gain more visitors if techniques are more effective than those of companies following an ethical, white-hat SEO approach. However, may be subject to algorithm changes. For example, the 2005 Jagger update penalised sites using Cascading Style Sheets for cloaking to effectively hide keyword rich text.

Blog
This is a user-generated website or webpage where the content is visible in a journal style which is displayed in reverse date order. A typical blog uses a combination of text, images, outbound links to other blogs, web pages, and other social media which is related to its content.

Bounce rates
Proportion of visitors to a page or site that exit after visiting a single page only, usually expressed as a percentage.

Brand misspellings
A user mistypes a brand into the search box or into the URL address box. Best practice is to ensure the brand is visible.

Breadcrumb navigation is a navigational technique applied to a webpage to help search engine spiders and website visitors understand the journey between web pages.

Broad matching
With broad matching, the search engine system automatically runs your paid ads on relevant variations of your keywords, even if these terms aren't included in your keyword lists. Keyword variations can include synonyms, singular/plural forms, relevant variants of your keywords and phrases containing your keywords.

Broad match is the default setting for your keywords. Therefore, if you submit a new keyword to your Ad Group it will appear as a broad-matched term.

Cached pages
Google robots take a snapshot of each page visited as they crawl the web. They store these and they are used as a backup if the original page is unavailable. You can view the cached page if you click on the "cached" link. Words contained within the search phrase the searcher enter are highlighted.

Cached date
This is the date when the search robot last visited a page. It is usually indicated within the search engine results page or by entering the cache: syntax within Google.

Cascading style sheets (CSS)
Web page content (text body copy) is separated from code used for presentation (layout and formatting), which is stored in a separate Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) file (.css).

Canonical domain
The simplified version of a domain: http://domain.com without the www subdomain prefix http://www.domain.com.

Click fraud
Clicking on sponsored links, typically arranged through competitors, for the sole purpose of costing the advertiser money.

Clickthrough rate (CTR)
The number of clicks on ad or link as a proportion of ads or pages served. Usually expressed as a percentage.

Cloaking
Showing a different version from of search engines to search robots and human visitors according to the user agent of the site visitor. Generally consider as spamming except when used to improve index inclusion, e.g. through permitting Session ids.

Content Management System (CMS)
is a tool that can be used to make it easy to add information and update a website without any technical abilities.

Cost per acquisition (CPA)
is a measure of how effective forms of online advertising have been. Very simply it means how much it has cost the advertiser to get a paying client. The sale value and CPA go together to work out the ROI.

Content network listings
Sponsored links are displayed by the search engine on third-party sites Content network paid-search marketing Sponsored links are displayed by the search engine on third-party sites. Ads are paid for on a PPC basis or on a CPM basis.

Conversion rates
Proportion of visitors to a page or site that convert to the outcome required, such as lead or sale, usually expressed as a percentage. Conversion rates can be measured as a proportion of visits or visitors.

Country code top-level domain (ccTLD)
A top-level domain used for a specific country or dependent territory, for example, .co.nz, .ca, .ie, .fr. A full list is provided at http://www.iana.org/domains/root/db/.

CPM (Cost per thousand or CPT)
A payment model for online advertising where the advertiser is charged for every 1000 views of the page containing the ad (page views or impressions) or more accurately, the ad itself (the ad is served 1,000) times.

Deeplink
is a result from a search engine that directs the user to an internal page of a website rather than the home page.

Domain
A label indicated by the domain naming system (DNS) to denote the Internet address (IP address) of a server. Global Top-level domains (gTLDs) include countries such as .co.uk, .fr, .de as well as .com etc

Domain popularity
The number of different domains that link to you. Term not as widely used as link popularity, but useful since indicates the number of unique domains (many links from the same domain may be counted together).

Domain hijacking
Potential search visitors are directed elsewhere. The most common situation is where web domains that have expired are claimed by another owner and then used for some other purpose. It also means where the search traffic for a site is hijacked using a 302 redirect.

Doorway or bridge pages
An approach to SEO no longer widely used and no longer recommended due to search engine penalties. Doorway pages not connected to the remainder of the site and are optimised for a particular key phrase to entice site visitors and sometimes a specific search engine. Often used cloaking and redirected to other content.

Duplicate content filter
Search engines make an assessment of duplicate content within a site or on different domains and may penalise for this if they judge duplication. Alternatively, they may simply give a higher relevance and ranking to the page with the highest link equity. Limited duplication such as print and screen versions of content should not cause a problem. You should check for deliberate and accidental duplication of pages within your site.

Duplicate content penalty
This term is often used to describe the problem of pages not being included within the index. In fact it is a filter that is applied. See duplicate content filter.

Dynamic keyword insertion
Keyword insertion is an advanced feature that can help make your ad more relevant to a diverse audience. To use keyword insertion, you place a short piece of code into your ad text. Each time the ad shows, AdWords will automatically replace the code with the keyword that triggered the ad.

Exact match
Exact match is the most precise method for targeting your keywords. Use exact match when you want your ad to appear only on a query that precisely matches the keyword you have chosen. With exact match, your ad will not appear for search queries that include extra words or letters or for queries that do not match the sequence of your exact-matched keyword.

Gap analysis
Assessing the difference between the potential search volume on a phrase with the volume you actually receive (separated into SEO and PPC).

Generic search phrase
A simple keyphrase without any qualifiers such as ‘car insurance’

Google APIs      
Google APIs are an Application Programming Interface which enables any third party to develop software which call Google functions to perform queries with specific keyphrases. It requires the use of a Google API key. Google has different APIs, e.g. for Web (search engine), Mapping, Adwords and Desktop. Developing programmes which interface with the API can help agencies or clients gain competitive advantage through performing more sophisticated analysis.

Google API Key
Effectively a username issued by Google to control access to the different Google APIs87. To see the importance of links to SEO, Google 'miserable failure' and take your pick.

Google bombing
The practice of denigrating someone or an organisation by creating many pages which link to a site based on a theme (high link context). The best known is the 'miserable failure' example. The site does not contain this phrase, but contain links into the site with pages or links referencing this phrase.

Google “sandbox effect”
Sites which are added to the index do not perform well, in terms of ranking, for a period of several months.  Although the existence of this effect is debated, it is evident in many cases and is clearly intended to prevent unscrupulous sites gaming the index by frequently creating new sites.

Google quality score
An assessment of the quality of a Google Adwords ad based on several factors including historical clickthrough rates and the quality of the landing page.

Google Sitemaps
A facility to submit an index of a website’s pages to Google to assist its robots with spidering the site. Also contains reporting tools.

Google Universal Search
With Google Universal Search, Google (and other search engines) now return other relevant results about a query, currently video, books and images, blended within its results. At the foot of the page it may also show related searches. This does initially seem to be limited to more popular phrases such as celebrities, cities, etc.

Hill top
An algorithmic approach to assessing the quality of links between pages based on the identification of hub and authority pages. Pioneered by Krishna Bharat, an engineer at Google. Sites with pages identified as hubs and authorities are given more weighting in determining the relevance of a target page.

Hub page (or Expert page)
A concept related to Hilltop. A page which contains many outbound links about a particular topic.

Inbound link
see Backlinks

Index
A database created by search engine robots which contains information on the URL of each page crawled, the keyphrases it contains together with other information which determines weighting in SERPs such as keyword density, formatting and PageRank.

Index inclusion
Ensuring that as many of the relevant pages from your domain(s) are included within the search engine indexes you are targeting to be listed in. See search engine submission.

Index coverage
The number and proportion of all the pages on a domain which are included within the index of each search engine.

Information architecture
The combination of organisation, labeling, and navigation schemes comprising an information system.

International SEO
See Multilingual SEO

IP address
The unique numerical address of a computer.

Keywords
The keyphrase or search query which is typed into the search engine.

Keyword density
The proportion of a page taken by a keyword or keyphrase.  Usually expressed as a percentage.

Keyword Stuffing
Writing webpage content that uses excessive amounts of the keyword that the page is themed around. This will result in the page being seen as mechanical and will not convert well. This type of page content is NOT link worthy which will not rank well within the search engines.

Keyphrase (keyword phrase)
The combination of words users of search engines type into a search box which form a search query.

Keyphrase analysis
A structured approach to identification of key phrases used to attract visitors to your site through search marketing

Keyphrase qualifiers
These are added to the generic keyphrase (e.g. car insurance) to narrow the search, e.g. ‘car insurance nz'.

Keyphrase variants
Different forms of a given keyphrase, i.e. plurals and different word sequence. Careful analysis of these can give better results.

Link anchor text
The hypertext used to form the text of a link, in the HTML <a href= http://www.domain.com>[Anchor text which forms link when viewed in browser]</a.>

Link-building
A structured activity to include good quality hyperlinks to your site from relevant sites with a good PageRank and link context.

Link (Internal Link)
a direct connection from one webpage to another webpage or to connect to somewhere else within the same document. Most major search engines put huge importance on links and therefore see links as a vote of a trusted website.

Link baiting
is a way of targeting, formatting, and creating content that provokes an on-line audience to direct high quality links to your website. Most link baiting techniques are aimed towards social media and bloggers.

Link context
The relevance of a link for a particular keyphrase based on different aspects of the page where the link originates. Context includes link anchor text, keywords adjacent to the link, keyword density and markup in other tags such as title tag.

Link equity
A page that is rated by the search engine as having higher relevance based on its link popularity and link context.

Link farm
A network of sites that link to other sites for the sole purpose of increasing link popularity. Tend to contain links to totally unrelated sites. Search engines can identify and penalise most forms of link farms.

Link popularity
Is the amount of links you have pointing to various web pages

Link quality
An assessment of the importance of a link in indicating relevance for a particular keyphrase based on the link context, the PageRank of the page and the dilution effect of outbound links. Alternatively, an assessment of the link popularity for a range of backlinks for a page or site.

Long-tail concept
A frequency distribution showing the typical decline in popularity of items within a sector when a consumer has a choice in selecting these items. In search, the most common search terms for a site or market sector have much higher volumes than the less common phrases, which together are important in generating qualified visitors.

Magento
An award winning eCommerce platform for online shops.

Mesh structure
An approach to SEO where a group of pages link to each other to distribute PageRank more evenly.

Meta description meta tag
A meta tag which summarises the content of the page in a short paragraph Example: <meta name="description" content="Buy from the world’s largest bookshop">

Meta keywords meta tag
A meta tag which used to list keywords relevant to the page.
Example: <meta name="keywords" content="book, books, shop, store, book shop, bookstore, publisher, bookshop, general, interest, departments,">

Meta-tags
Markup which is part of the HTML file, typed in by web page creators, which are read and displayed by the browser.

Multilingual SEO
Multilingual SEO involves improving results from users of local versions of search engines using their local language (sometimes in combination with English). The main activities are directed at including pages developed by a company in the index of the local language version of search engine targeted, improving rankings for target keyphrases through on-page optimisation and local link-building.

Negative match
Negative keywords prevent your ad from appearing when a search includes a keyword that is not relevant to your ad. Your ad will not appear when a negative keyword you have specified is included in a user's search query.

Natural or organic listings
The pages listing results from a search engine query which are displayed in a sequence according to relevance of match between the keyword phrase typed into a search engine and a web page according to a ranking algorithm used by the search engine.

Nofollow attribute or tag
The ‘no-follow attribute or tag applies to the A HREF HTML command for coding hyperlinks which indicates that the search robot should not follow a link. This has been used in many ways. In particular, it is applied to commonly used in forums to prevent comment spam with links posted to forums for the purpose of building PageRank on third party sites. Google has also advised that this approach should be used for paid static ads on sites. It can also be used to limit
PageRank leakage if required. An example of the syntax is:

<a href="http://www.externalsite.com" rel="nofollow">Visit external site</a>.
This could be used to limit PageRank leakage if required.

On-page optimisation
Devising page content, structure and HTML markup to prove relevance of a search keyphrase to the search engines.

Outbound links
Links from a page to another page. The origination point of backlinks or inbound links.

PageRank (PR)
Google’s patented on screen scoring system based around another algorithm which scores a webpage out of 10 based on the pages link equity.

PageRank sculpting
Page Rank sculpting refers to attempts to focus PageRank within a site to on pages targeted for SEO rather than less relevant pages primarily through adding the nofollow attribute to internal site links such as links to a privacy page.

Paid-search marketing
There are two types of paid-search marketing: Pay Per Click paid-search engine marketing and Content-network paid-search marketing (which may be on a PPC basis or on a CPM basis). A relevant text ad with a link to a company page is displayed when the user of a search engine types in a specific phrase. A fee is charged for every click of each link, with the amount bid for the click mainly determining its position.

Paid listings of a search engine
A relevant ad with a link to a company page is displayed when the user of a search engine types in a specific phrase. A fee is charged for every click of each link, with the amount bid for the click mainly determining its position.

Pay-per-click (PPC)
Is a way of advertising within the search engines, which allows the advertiser to determine how much they are willing to pay per visitor. This technique is also called cost per click marketing.

Persuasion
An approach to website design which involves maximising returns from web investments based on web analytics, heuristics and usability.

Personalised search
With personalised search, the search engine monitors a users preferences based on their search preference or potentially on profile information and returns what it believes are the most relevant search results based on the users search history and other similar types of searches and sites performed by other searchers. The search engine is likely to place more weighting in the search results on sites the user has visited before and related sites indicated by bookmarks and linking
patterns.

Phrase Match
A phrase-matched keyword will trigger your ad for any query on the search engine that includes your keyword or phrase in the exact sequence and form that you specify. (Additional terms in a user's query can precede or follow the phrase.)

Preferred landing pages (PLPs)
Preferred Landing Pages are pages which are targeted to be the first listing returned for search on a target keyphrase. Performance of PLPs will be assessed against the target keyphrases.

Quality Score
A measure of relevance for Google Adwords based on the ad clickthrough rate and user engagement with destination website.

Ranking factors
The criteria used by the search engine in their algorithms to determine how high a website / page is displayed in the natural listings for a particular phrase.

Really Simple Syndication (RSS)
This is a web feed used to publish frequently updated content, such as blogs, podcasts or news feeds. RSS delivers information in an XML file format which is known as an RSS feed.

Rich media SEO
Including rich media such as audio and video or podcasts within own site or through syndication on third-party sites to engage searchers with brands.

Reciprocal linking
Links are exchanged between sites. The effectiveness of this will depend on the link quality and whether links are direct or not.

Robots
Automated software agents located on a search engine server that collect page data from different sites by following links between pages and sites. Robots follow policies which determine how often they visit a site. Search engine robots collect data about each page which is added into the search engine index.

Robots.txt
Robots.txt is text file located on the root directory of each domain used to instruct a robot to include or exclude page(s) from a site. http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/exclusion-admin.html

Search engine ranking algorithm
The search engine users a complex evaluation of different ranking factors occurs to assess the order of relevance of results returned on the SERPs for a given search phrase.

Search engine index
A database containing details of pages crawled by search engine robots. Includes assessments of keyphrases and information need to determine ranking factors.

Search engine marketing (SEM)
Promoting an organisation through search engines to meet its objectives by delivering relevant content in the search listings when they search and encouraging them to click through to a destination site. The two key techniques of SEM are search engine optimisation (SEO) to improve results from the natural listings and paid-search marketing to deliver results from
the sponsored listings.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
Search engine optimisation is the process of modifying the structure and content of your website to create a themed impression so that the search engines understand exactly which topics your site is relevant for and should therefore rank well search results.

Search journey
The sequence of searches a user will type in and the different types of sites they will visit from when they start searching until they find what they are looking for

Search engine results page (SERP)
The page(s) containing the results after a user types in a keyphrase into a search engine. SERPS contain both natural or organic listings and paid or sponsored listings.

Search engine submission (registration)
A search engine is notified of a URL (usually the homepage) for indexing either directly or indirectly.

Search Marketing Agency
A new media company that has chosen to utilise the search landscape and its knowledge of best practice SEO to enable its clients to benefit greater from the traffic that search engines can provide. This can also include SMO, email marketing and link building.

Server log files
Files stored on a web server that records every item downloaded by users. These include .html files and images files. Each item is time-stamped with the time of download and the referring source (previous page) leading to site visit including search engines and keyphrase entered also recorded. Server log files are summarised and analysed by web analytics software.

Session IDs
Included as part of the URL as a parameter for tracking visitors between different pages. May cause difficulty in the robot indexing the site.

Sitelinks
Google has a completely automated algorithm to produce what it calls “sitelinks”. These are the links to different parts of a site below the main heading link and description. Google have not officially explained the algorithm, but it typically occurs in response to a brand or company name search for larger companies.

Snippets
Occur in the SERPs below the hyperlink to the site. In order of precedence, this text is taken from the meta tags, snippets within body copy or the open directory. Which is displayed depends on match with search term entered.

Social bookmarking
Social bookmarking involves web users sharing their links under different categories or tags. Social bookmarks aren’t limited to one computer, but can be accessed whenever web users are online.

Social media (SM)
An online technology, and the way in which people use social media technology to share opinions, ideas, on-line experiences, and perspectives with each other. Social Media (SM) uses blogs, message boards, podcasts, and wikis. Some examples of social media websites include Wikipedia, MySpace, YouTube, Digg, Flickr and Miniclip.

Social media optimisation (SMO)
A way of optimising a website so it can be easily connected with the online community and other online community websites. This type of site is also referred to as a social media site. An example of SMO methods could be to include a RSS feeds.

Spam
Search engines have vague ever changing guidelines to determine what search marketing techniques will be accepted at any given time. Some very obvious but still typical spam techniques, also known as “Black Hat techniques” are keyword stuffing, lots of low quality Inbound Links and huge amounts of duplicated content. A site can and will be banned if any of the above, and other, techniques are carried out.

Supplemental pages
Are documents that are generally trusted a lot less and will rank lower than web pages that appear within the main search index. Google has multiple databases and documents which are not trusted due to bad inbound links and duplicate content. Documents within this database aren’t crawled as frequently as the documents in the main index.

Strategic keyphrases
Important target keyphrases that are targeted for SEO since they combine high volume and intent to purchase or other required site outcome, consistent with usage by the site’s target audience.

Target keyphrases
The phrase(s) that a particular page is being optimised for or that a landing page has Google Adwords or other paid-search as the destination URL.

TrustRank
A measure of the quality of a site based on its linking patterns reference in a paper by Yahoo! engineers and researchers. Although often associated with Google as an ancillary to PageRank, Google in fact applies a series of trust filters.

<TITLE> tag
Part of the markup in the <HEAD> section of an HTML document which is used as the hyperlink in the SERPs and appears at the top of browser window. It is also important since phrases within it are a major factor in determining the relevance of a page by the search engine.

Usability
An approach to website design intended to enable the completion of user tasks and to improve the user experience. Typically measured by increasing task completion rates and decreasing completion time (or number of clicks).

URL (uniform or universal resource locator)
A web address used to locate a web page on a web server.

User agent
The client application or software service which initiates a request for a web page. Examples include web browsers and spiders.

User generated content (UGC)
A web site owner provides facilities for site visitors to add comments or copy to existing pages create their own pages and reviews or upload their own media such as images, audio and video clips.

Vertical search engines
Vertical search engines are specialist search engines which cover a particular vertical industry sector such as travel, consumer retailer or business vertical. Alternatively vertical search engines may focus on a particular type of media like video, audio, images, blog content, news etc.

Viral marketing
Online viral marketing involves generating word-of-mouth promotion. Typically they will be an e-mail linking through to a website which includes a viral agent such as a video clip, game, competition or other content. Traditional word-of-mouth helps spread the news about the content too.

Web analytics
Techniques used to assess and improve the contribution of E-marketing to a business including reviewing traffic volume, referrals, clickstreams, online reach data, customer satisfaction surveys, leads and sales. Web analytics tools used in SEM include browser-based using Javascript and image tags and server-based transaction file log methodologies.

Web 2.0
A phrase used within the industry to describe the new phase in the progression of the internet. Web 2.0 has evolved due to the way in which users now wish to utilise the internet to obtain the required results. This movement saw the inception of Social Media websites.

White-hat SEO
An approach to SEO which follows an ethical approach of what is generally agreed as acceptable best-practice within the industry. cf Black-hat SEO.

Widgets
Widgets are different forms of tools/code made available on a website or on a user's desktop. They either provide some functionality, like a calculator or they provide real-time information, for example on news or weather. They are often placed in the left or right sidebar, or in the body of an article.

WHOIS record.
A record of the geolocation and owner of a domain. The WHOIS server (www.whois.sc) can be queried manually and is also queried by search engines to determine the country where a server is registered.