Anchor Text: Anchor text refers to the visible text for a hyperlink.

Alt attribute: Images are not easy to distinguish for people with poor eyesight and for many search engines. This is why an image alt attribute is used to help define the image in a text format as an equivalent.

Analytics: Analytics are used to compile statistics on views of your web pages, user conversations and paths. Software is used to calculate this through log files, or by a tracker code which is in JavaScript on your website. Using analytics will give you a huge advantage over other marketers who do not use it.

Attribute: Attribute is a HMTL term that is normally used when defining aspects of a page. For example the background color of a page would be shown as bgcolour in a tag.

Banned: When pages are removed from a search engine’s index specifically because the search engine has deemed them to be spamming or violating guidelines.

Back Link: Any link on another page that points to the subject page. Also called inbound links or IBLs.

Bot: Abbreviation of 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 e-mail addresses for spammers.

Bad neighborhood: A bad neighborhood is the act of sharing an IP block or a server with other websites that have been blacklisted for using dubious Black Hat SEO methods.

Banner ad: A banner ad is an advertisement that is usually a long rectangular shape that either runs across the top of a website or down the side of it. Once clicked on these adverts take the visitor to the website being advertised.

Black hat SEO: Every search engine has a list of rules and regulations that must be followed by the owners of websites in order for them to be able to include on search engines. These sites create the revenue for the search engine so the engine owners want sites to be profitable and not include any dubious techniques to gain traffic. Any method that is seen as being deceptive is classed as being Black Hat SEO and can lead a website to be blacklisted.

Blacklisted: Being blacklisted is the same as being banned or delisted from a search engine. This is when a site is removed from a search engine normally for using unethical Black Hat SEO methods.

Blog: A blog is an online diary that can be viewed by anyone. Many blogs have chat rooms and other features on them and some even have regular subscribers.

Blogroll: A blogroll is a list of the various links that direct the reader to other blogs owned by the same person / company or to blogs written by people the blog writer knows.

Bookmarks: A bookmark is a way of remembering a site that you particularly liked, you can also share bookmarked sites.

Broken link: A broken link is a link that directs the viewer to a URL that no longer exists. As part of search engine maintenance spiders remove these dead links when they come across them.

Browser: A browser is a type of program that allows the content of the Internet to be displayed. One very popular browser is Microsoft Internet Explorer. Browsers will have certain features such as bookmarks and refresh buttons.

Cache: A cache is a web page that has been copied and stored by a search engine. This is because such pages are used in the search engines index when performing a search. These pages then allow a reader to access the rest of a website that has been indexed.

Canonical URL: A canonical URL is a URL that is the best indexed version. It does not contain any duplicate material which can be a problem when using inconsistent links as the same content can get indexed many times for different URLs and this can cause problems. In order to index the root level of a URL it is best to end it in / this prevents it being duplicated.

Captcha: A captcha is a mixture of letters and numbers that is often distorted that is used as a passcode that a person must input to gain access to certain sites. They are used to prevent automatic commenting and blogs as this is seen as spamming.

Cluster: A cluster is a number of search results that are put together, this is normally done to save space on a server that is shared domain that is top-level.

Clustering: This is a method that search engines use by which they will put together a mixture of pages from the same domain together in the search results page. If this was not done one site might have all the top spots in the ranking which can mean having to conduct a different refined search. This is done automatically and can save a lot of time for the user.

Comment (s): A comment is a thought or opinion that can be left on a blog or other CMS that can be read by other people who read the blog.

Copyright: Copyright is having the total legal rights to publish and republish a certain document or other piece of information.

CPM: CPM or Cost Per Impression is the same as the Cost Per Thousand.

CPA: CPA or Cost Per Action is the cost in advertising that is needed to generate an action from a user. An action could be signing up for emails or other information, or buying a product. Affiliate programs rely on this as do several contextual advertisements.

CPC: CPC or Cost Per Click is the total cost of advertising that is needed to generate one click through an advert. Measuring this can be useful in determining how effective an ad campaign is.

CPL: CPL or Cost Per Lead is the full cost of an advertising campaign divided by the total number of leads that are generated through it.

CPS: This is the Cost Per Sale and is the same as the Cost Per Action.

Crawl: Spiders crawl when they are looking at websites to index, they will crawl from link to link from site to site when indexing search results.

Crawler: A crawler is another name for a spider, which is a robot that crawls websites making note of links and other information, it then will sue this information to index the site on a search engine.

Cross linking: This is a method by which links across one family of domains are referred to each other. For instance links between a personal website and a business one.

Cloaking: In terms of search engine marketing, this is the act of getting a search engine to record content for a URL that is different than what a searcher will ultimately see. It can be done in many technical ways. Several search engines have explicit rules against unapproved cloaking. Those violating these guidelines might find their pages penalized or banned from a search engine’s index. As for approved cloaking, this generally only happens with search engines offering a paid inclusion program. Anyone offering cloaking services should be able to demonstrate explicit approval from a search engine about what they intend to do. If not, then they should then have explained the risks inherent to unapproved cloaking.

Destination URL: The actual URL of your landing page (the webpage you send your visitors to).

Display URL: The “cosmetic” URL that displays in your ad.

Doorway pages: are aimed at misleading search engine.

Dead Link: A dead link is a link to a site or page that no longer exists. Clicking on it will not take you anywhere and you will probably get an error message on your screen saying that the address is invalid.

Deep linking: This is the act of linking the internal pages of website. Usually a link will be provided to the homepage of a website. However there can be legal implications of doing this.

DNS: DNS or Domain Name Server, Domain Name Service or Domain Name System is the term for the name of a computer, every computer has its own IP address which is different for every computer. It is similar to a telephone but instead it uses letters as they are easier to remember. The DNS enables letters rather than numbers to be used and it is a static hierarchical name service. Turning these names back into the IP address is known as “resolving” the Domain.

Domain / domain name: Domain is a term used for the organization and location of the web, this can often be logical. A domain name is the term for a specific website.

Duplicate content: Duplicate content is content on a website or page that has been used elsewhere. Duplicate content that is taken from another website is frowned upon and is classed as plagiarism. If you are in doubt about the content of your website there are several online checking tools that you can use to make sure the content on your website is original, such as Dupecop or Copyscape.

Ethical SEO: Ethical SEO is SEO that does not use unethical methods to rank highly in a search.

Favicon: Favicon or Favorites Icon is a small icon that on a web browser will be next to a URL. To give your site a favicon you need to upload an image of your choice called favicon.ico to the root file of your website.

Flux: Shuffling of search engine positions in between major search engine updates

Feed: Feed is a term that is associated with blogs and other content management systems. It allows users to subscribe to a certain feed and receive new updates each time one is published. These are usually in the form of XML or RSS feeds.

Feed aggregator: A feed aggregator is a type of application that is hosted or software that enables feeds collected from various sources to all be shown in a single view. This can either be in a web browser or a desktop window.

Feed reader: A feed reader is a website or software program that will allow the user to receive notifications of new feeds.

FTP: FTP or File Transfer Protocol is a method of transferring files between computers. Blogging platforms use FTP and there are several free or very cheap. FTP systems available such as Leach FTP and Core FTP.

Google bomb / Google bombing: This is a method where a website is made popular by pointing hundreds and sometimes thousands of links at it that contain the keywords in the anchor text.

Google bowling: Google Bowling is a method of pointing hundreds, or more, poor quality links at a site in order for it to be poorly ranked. This is quite easy to do with a new site, but more difficult for an older one.

Google checkout: The Google Checkout is a payment service which can assist Google in understanding conversion rates for merchants, markets and keywords.

Google dance: The Google Dance was the term for the monthly update Google performed on its whole index of websites. It used to last for one or two days and was used to keep up to date with the latest content. However today this is done almost constantly.

Google juice: This is a term that means the added benefits a website has to enable it be highly ranked on Google.

Google trends: Google trends is a software tool which enables the user to see Google’s search volumes and track the changes in keywords over a period of time.

Google whacking: This is a game played on Google where the user enters two words into the query, without quotes ” ” with the aim of only returning one result. Both of the words must be included in the dictionary and when you get the message results 1 of 1 you have just got a Google Whack.

Googlebot / Google bot: This is the name of Google’s spider.

Google washing: Google washing is a method where Google will replace the old meaning of a word in its database with a new one. However you can still find the old meaning of the word by altering your query.

Google Wave: A wave is equal parts conversation and document. People can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more. A wave is shared. Any participant can reply anywhere in the message, edit the content and add participants at any point in the process. Then playback lets anyone rewind the wave to see who said what and when. A wave is live. With live transmission as you type, participants on a wave can have faster conversations, see edits and interact with extensions in real-time.

Google Dance/ Google Shuffle: It’s the period when Google is rebuilding its rankings, and results fluctuate widely for a 3 to 5 day period. The name “Google Dance” was in the past used to describe the period that a major index update of the Google search engine are being implemented. These major Google index update occurred on average every 36 days or 10 times per year.

Hallway: A hallway is a type of crawl page which is only linked to doorway pages.

Hijacking: This is the practice of fooling a search engine into believing another website is on your URL.

HTTP: HTTP or Hypertext Transfer Protocol is the most popular method of transferring information between servers and browsers.

Hyperlink / link: A hyperlink or link is part of a website that contains clickable content which will then direct the user to another part of the site or another site altogether. Links and hyperlinks are used by search engine’s spiders to crawl from one page to another.

Impression: When somebody views your ad but doesn’t click on it, it means your ad has got one impression. Impressions are counted by the number of searches that your ad is being displayed for.

Keyword: A keyword is a word in the text on a website that a person may search for when looking for a topic. For example if a person was looking for holidays in Greece, the keywords could be Greece and holidays.

Keyword density: is the number of times keywords are used in a body of text. The average density of keywords is 2-3%, although sometimes it can be as high as 6%.

Keyword or Keyphrase: Keywords are words which are used in search engine queries. Keyphrases are multi-word phrases used in search engine queries. SEO involves the process of optimizing web pages for keywords and keyphrases so that they rank highly in the results returned for search queries.

Keyword Status: In your AdWords account, your keywords may have four statuses: Disabled, In Trial, Normal and On Hold.

Keyword Stuffing: Keyword stuffing refers to the practice of adding superfluous keywords to a web page. The words are added for the ‘benefit’ of search engines and not human visitors. The words may or may not be visible to human visitors. While not necessarily a violation of search engine terms of service, at least when the words are visible to humans, it detracts from the impact of a page. It looks like spam. It is also possible that search engines may discount the importance of large blocks of text that do not conform to grammatical structures (such as lists of disconnected keywords). There is no valid reason for engaging in this practice.

Keyword Tool: A tool that you can use as soon as you set-up your AdWords account. It allows you to estimate numbers like keyword-popularity and maximum cost per click.