Primary Link Building/SEO Terms

301 Redirect

301 redirect is a directive on Apache(Linux) based servers that designate that a webpage/URL has been moved permanently to a new location. 301 redirects are often used by search engine marketers to redirect search engine spiders to a new webpage when one has been removed.

404

A server response code indicating that the requested page was “Not Found.”

Above the Fold

A term traditionally used to describe the top portion of a newspaper. In email or web marketing, it means the area of content viewable prior to scrolling on a website.

Age of Domain

The number of years a particular website has been on-line. This starts with the date the domain was registered.

Anchor Text

Anchor text refers to the text that is used in the link.

Anchor Text Optimization

Anchor Text Optimization refers to the technique of purposely placing keywords in the anchor text of your incoming links in order to rank better for those keywords.

Alexa Rank

Alexa rank is a traffic score from Alexa.com that shows how a website ranks in traffic compared to other websites. A lower score is better with #1 being the best.

Algorithm

As it relates to search engines, an algorithm is a set of rules that search engines use to rank the results of a search query. Google’s original algorithm relied very heavily on its PageRank system, but in order to present the most relevant results to its users, search engines have turned to many other algorithms that include topical analysis, heuristics, etc..

Backlinks

The term used to refer to links that point to a website. Also called “Inbound Links”

Cache

A cache is a temporary storage area where frequently accessed data can be stored for rapid access. (A “cached snapshot” is the search engines last view of the content of the webpage you’re currently viewing in your browser.) You can view a cached version of a URL by using the following query in Google. Cache:

Class C IP’s

Link builders often look to get links from servers/websites with IP addresses that belong to different Class C Networks. Traditionally, search engines do not give links that are on the same IP address the same weight as links coming from different IP addresses. In addition, links coming from the same server are also potentially not as valuable. Since IP’s in different class c networks tend to be on different servers, link builders aim for obtaining links on IP’s from different class C IP’s.

IP Address Example: 155.156.125.266

Class Breakdown: A.B.C.D

Example of IP on Same Class C as Example: 155.156.125.234

Example of IP on Different Class C as Example: 155.156.124.192

More about IP addresses: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_address

CPC

Abbreviation for Cost Per Click. It is the base unit of cost for a Pay Per Click (PPC) campaign.

CRO

CRO stands for Conversion Rate Optimization. CRO is the act in which you optimize your website so that it is fully prepared to maximize the number of conversions. A conversion is a sale, a lead, or whatever else your ultimate goal is on the site.

Deep Linking

Linking to a page other than a site’s home page.

Duplicate Content

Content that is duplicated from another source.

FTP – File Transfer Protocol

a software protocol for exchanging information between computers over a network. FTP is the primary protocol for transferring files from a local computer to a web server. For example, uploading a new page to a website.

Image Link

An image that is linked to a webpage.

Impressions

When referring to advertising, impressions are when a page is loaded and an ad is shown/served.

Inbound Links

The term used to refer to links that point to a website, also known as backlinks.

Indexing

As it relates to search engines, indexing is the process of cataloging websites into a database.

READ: User-Declared & Google-Selected Canonicals: Fix Indexing Issues

READ:  Why Pages Aren’t Indexed: Fix Search Console Errors

IP Address

A numerical label that is assigned to devices participating in a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication between its nodes.

Landing Page

A page where a visitor lands on a website. This page should be optimized and consumer view ready that has a call to action details to entice the user to: buy a product, sign up for a newsletter, fill out a contact form for more information, etc.

Link Age

This refers to the amount of time that a link has been placed on a page. Link Builders prefer links that have been aged as the search engines often give more SEO value to aged links.

Link Baiting

The term used when one creates content specifically for the goal of getting others to link to that content.

Link Building

The process of increasing the number of links pointing to a website.

Link Relevancy

Relevant links are those which are in the same or similar category as your site. For example, if you sell health food you should build links from other health-related sites including fitness companies, health food vendors, and dietitians.

Meta Tag

Meta elements are HTML or XHTML elements used to provide structured metadata about a Web page. Such elements must be placed as tags in the head section of an HTML or XHTML document. Meta Tags such as the title tag are especially important for SEO.

No Follow

rel=”nofollow” is an attribute that can be added to the “A” HTML tag in order to indicate to Google that their spider should not follow a link. It was first created by Google as a way to let bloggers deter comment spam.

One-way links

These are links where one site points to another without a link on the other site pointing back.

Online Reputation Management

Online Reputation Management is the process of tracking, deterring, and repairing derogatory search results.

Organic Listings

Organic search engine listings appear after all of the paid advertising (PPC ads). The results are formulated from the search engine’s index. Also known as Natural Search listings.

PPC – Pay Per Click

An advertising model where advertisers pay only for the traffic/clicks generated by their ads.

READ: SEO vs PPC – Pros and Cons
VIEW: Paid Search Marketing Services

PR – Pagerank

Google’s trademark for its proprietary measure of site link popularity. The PR ranges from 1 – 10, 10 being the highest.

Reciprocal links

A reciprocal link is where website [A] links to website [B], Website [B] in turn links to website [A]. In short, it`s an exchange of links.

Robots.txt

Robots.txt is a file that well-behaved search engine indexing spiders read to determine which parts of a website they may or may not index.

ROI – Return On Investment

In the context of SEO, the term refers to sales generated as the direct result of a search engine marketing campaign.

SEM – Search Engine Marketing

SEM encompasses both organic and paid search engine management (SEO, PPC, etc.)

READ: Are Google Ads Worth It?

SEO – Search Engine Optimization

SEO is the process of optimizing webpages so that they rank better in search engine results.

READ: SEO Resources
READ: The Complete SEO Process Explained: Step-By-Step
VIEW: SEO Services

SEO Friendly

As it relates to link building, SEO Friendly refers to a link being coded in a way as to allow/permit search engine spiders to follow it. Unfriendly links would be those that use the rel=”nofollow” attribute or that are not coded using standard server-side compiled HTML (i.e. javascript etc).

Search Engine

As it relates to the internet, a search engine is a computer program (usually in the form of a website) that retrieves documents (i.e. webpages), or files, or data from a database.

SERP

Acronym for “Search Engine Results Page”. This refers to the page that appears after you do a keyword search in a search engine.

Sitemap

A list of pages of a web site accessible to crawlers or users. It can be either a document in any form used as a planning tool for web design or a web page that lists the pages on a web site, typically organized in a hierarchical fashion. This helps visitors and search engine bots to find pages on the site.

Sitewide

A link that appears on each page of a site.

Social Bookmark

A bookmark of a website that is made available to others socially. Often used for link building and is now considered outdated.

Social Media

Social media is media designed to be disseminated through social interaction, created using highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques. Some types of social media are forums, message boards, blogs, wikis, and podcasts.

Source Code

Source code is the un-compiled programming code containing all the tags and instructions used to generate a webpage or an application. Most internet browsers have a function for the user to view the source code of the HTML page they are viewing. Meta Tags are located in the source code of a webpage.

Spider

As it relates to search engines, a spider is a computer program used to crawl from webpage to webpage in order to index the web. Another term for these programs is “web crawler”.

Text link

A link that is linked to a webpage using text. Also referred to as anchor links.

Title Tag

The HTML tag used to define the title of a webpage/document. Search engines use the title tag to name webpages listed in search engine result pages. The title tag is often referred to as the most important meta tag for SEO due to the value that search engines place on the title of a webpage.

Topic Clusters

A topic cluster refers to a group of blog posts or pages that all link back to a central page that contains a ton of useful information for your audience. Site owners cluster content to make sense of what’s on their site and streamline information delivery.

READ: Why You Need Topic Clusters

URL

Uniform Resource Locator / Universal Resource Locator. A unique internet domain/address that every internet resource must have in order to be located.

W3C – World Wide Web Consortium

This is a league of super-geeks that helped formulate the standards that web developers use to program their websites. Many people ask if your website is “W3C compliant” which basically asks if your website is written in standard coding practices.

Whois

A utility that returns ownership information about domain names, such as owner name, creation date, etc..

Secondary Industry Terms

302

A web server response code indicating that the queried webpage is active but is temporarily located at another URI.

AdSense

Google’s contextual advertising network.

AdWords

Google’s primary advertising network that generates much of its revenue and profit. Adwords are the paid ads that appear on search engine result pages.

READ: How to Analyze a Digital Ad (for Performance & Results)

Affiliate

An individual or company that markets a merchant’s products or services and is paid only once an action occurs. That action may be a click or a sale.

Affiliate Site

A site created with the sole purpose of generating revenue from ads or links to merchants the affiliate has a relationship with.

Alt Attribute

Alt is an attribute usually used in IMAGE HTML tags to provide additional information about the image in a text format that is easy to read for search engines and those that are visually impaired.

Analytics

Analytics refers to the detailed statistics about a website’s visitors that can be obtained by viewing a server’s log files or by placing code on your website to allow a 3rd party solution to analyze your website traffic and report on it. Google has the most popular Analytics solution primarily due to the service being provided free of charge.

• Learn More About Google Analytics
• How to Perform a Google Analytics Audit
• Data-Driven Analytics In Marketing And Decision-Making

Authority Site

A site that is deemed to be authoritative in a particular field or subject matter or that is highly linked to and has a large amount of traffic. Links on Authority sites are desirable to link builders because of the SEO value that search engines give them.

B2B

Business to Business

Bad Neighborhood

An individual website or a group of websites that have participated in excessive search engine spam resulting in a search engine penalty

READ: Unethical SEO Practices: Harmful Black Hat SEO Tactics

Bandwidth

Refers to the amount of data that can be transferred in a given amount of time.

Banner Ad

An advertising banner (most often graphic) displayed on site to advertise another website or service.

Blog

A blog (short for weblog) is an online journal or diary of an individual or group’s opinions and latest news that is updated regularly, in chronological order. Many blogs allow visitors to make comments, or “postings” in response to the blogger, or ask questions.

Check out Our Blog/Resources

Blogger

The author of a blog.

Bookmarks

Most browsers come with the ability to bookmark your favorite pages. Many web-based services have also been created to allow you to bookmark and share your favorite resources. Sites such as Del.icio.us & Digg are Social Bookmark sites.

Bookmarks are considered outdated for link building purposes.

Bot

Abbreviation for a robot (also called a spider). It refers to software programs that scan the web. Bots vary in purpose from indexing web pages for search engines to harvesting email addresses for spammers.

Branding

The emotional response associated with your company and/or products. A brand is built through controlling customer expectations and the social interactions between customers.

Broken Link

A hyperlink that is not functioning. A link that does not lead to the desired location.

Captcha

A numbered and lettered code that many websites use to verify that what is being done is by a human rather than a script.

Cloaking

Cloaking, as it relates to search engine spam, describes the technique of serving a different page to a search engine spider than what a human visitor sees.

Compete Score

Compete.com is a United States web traffic analysis service that publishes the approximate number of U.S. visitors to the top 1,000,000 web sites in the United States. This number is computed from sources including internet service providers, opt-in panels, application providers, and users of the Compete toolbar.

Conversion Rate

The rate at which traffic is converted to achieve a goal. That goal can be a form-based lead, a phone call, a sale, or any goal that is found as useful.

CTR – Click Through Rate

It is a ratio of clicks per impressions

Directory

A directory is a list of websites categorized into appropriate categories.

READ: Programmatic SEO: What Is It And How To Do It

Directory Link

A link on or within a Directory site (such as dmoz.com).

Directory submission

Refers to the act of submitting a website to be included in a Directory.

Domain Name

Location of an entity on the Internet. Also referred to as a URL. I.E.  breaktheweb.agency.

Doorway Page/Gateway Page

A doorway page exists solely for the purpose of driving traffic to another page. They are usually designed and optimized to target one specific keyphrase. Doorway pages rarely are written for human visitors. They are written for search engines to achieve high rankings and hopefully drive traffic to the main site.

DTC / D2C

DTC/D2C stands for Direct-to-Consumer, which is a business model where companies sell their products or services directly to the end-users without intermediaries such as retailers or wholesalers. DTC/D2C has become increasingly popular in recent years, particularly with the rise of e-commerce and social media platforms that enable brands to reach and engage with their target audience more easily.

READ: DTC eCommerce SEO Agency: Benefits of Specialization

LEARN MORE: Our Shopify SEO Agency

Dynamic Content

Content that changes over time or uses a dynamic language such as Javascript to render the elements on a webpage.

Email Marketing

Referring to the act of using email to market a business

FAQ

Acronym for Frequently Asked Questions

Firewall

A hardware or software link in a network that relays only data packets clearly intended and authorized to reach the other side.

Footer

The bottom of a webpage is usually fed via an internal template so that all pages on the website share common information such as copyright dates etc..

Framing

A frame is an area of a webpage that scrolls independently of the rest of the webpage.

Google

Google is a web search engine owned by Google, Inc., and it is the most used search engine on the Web.

Google Toolbar

An internet browser toolbar provided by Google which provides additional data about a webpage, such as Pagerank.

The Google toolbar is no longer accessible.

Hacker

An individual who attempts to break into a computer or website without authorization.

Header

The information at the beginning of a webpage, email, bulletin board message, article, etc.

Hit

One hit is one request for a file on a web server.

HTML – HyperText Markup Language

A programming (coding) language used to create documents for display on the World Wide Web (Internet).

HTTP – Hypertext Transfer Protocol

is the most common transfer protocol used to facilitate communication between servers and browsers. You`ll find it at the beginning of the URL (web address).

HTTPS – HyperText Transfer Protocol Secure

The same as HTTP, but using encryption software so that nobody can intercept, and read what you just transferred from halfway across the world.

Infographic

An infographic is a graphic visual representation of complex knowledge within a given industry. These graphics show detailed information in a visual form that is clear for individuals to read and retain.

Landing Page

Referring to the webpage that a visitor lands on when entering a website from an external link.

Link Profile

The types of backlinks that link to a website.

Meta Tag

This is an element of HTML that often describes the contents of a Web page, and is placed near the beginning of the page’s source code. Search engines use the information provided in meta tags to index pages by subject.

Metadata

Structured information that describes, explains, locates, and otherwise makes it easier to retrieve and use an information resource.

PHP

A server-side, cross-platform, HTML-embedded scripting language.

Proxy

An Internet server that controls client computers’ access to the Internet. Using a proxy server, a company can stop employees from accessing undesirable websites, improve performance by storing webpages locally, and hide the internal network’s identity so monitoring is difficult for external users.

Reinclusion

If a site has been penalized for spamming they may fix the infraction and ask for re-inclusion. Depending on the severity of the infraction and the brand strength of the site they may or may not be added to the search index.

RSS Feed

Really Simple Syndication – is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated digital content, such as blogs, news feeds

Server

A computer or other device that manages a network service. Websites are stored and “Served” to their visitors via a server.

Splash Page

Splash pages are introduction pages to a website.

Stop Word

Stop words are words that are ignored by search engines when indexing web pages and processing search queries. Common words such as “the,” “a”, “an,” “of,” and “with”.

TLD – Top Level Domain

These domains are reserved for the big 3, dot COM, Net, and ORG. If you own any of these, you own a TLD website.

Viral Marketing

Viral marketing is the process of promoting and selling products or services through the use of messages or ads that are self-regenerative. Viral messages or ads include a pass-along tag line that encourages recipients of the message to send or forward the message to other people.

XML

Extensible Markup Language, a set of rules for encoding documents in machine-readable form.