SEO Glossary
Backlink
Link from another site on yours.
Black hat
Fraudulent methods to improve the position of a site, such a farm links, satellite page.
Blacklist
A blacklisted site is no longer indexed by search engine.
Cloaking
That consists in presenting to search engines a page different from that
which visitors see. That is prohibited and the site may be removed from search
engine index. Note that serving HTML to robots while users see Flash or images
is viewed as a cloaking trick: the HTML must be viewed by users too.
The JavaScript content and the noscript one must be the same.
Doorway
A doorway page is a page made specifically for search engines,
which usually contains significant quantities of links to a site, to emulate
a popularity it has not, or internal links to make anchors.That
leads to the removal of the site from the index.
An HTML sitemap (with
links to the same site) is not considered doorway if its design makes it convenient
for visitors.
GWT, Google Webmaster Tools
Panel provided by Google to get statistics and interact with the engine.
HTTP status codes
When a request is made to read a page on a server, an HTTP
status code is returned. The main codes are:
- 200: OK, the URL is reached and the page is read.
- 301: redirected permanently. This may be achieved with a PHP function or
the .htaccess file.
- 302: redirected temporarily (avoid to use such redirection).
- 404: not found.
Keyword
Keywords are the foundation of SEO, as they are the basis of search engine
and source of traffic. They may be choosen for traffic or for money. In the
second case they must be relevant with business.
The keyword density is an old measure for SEO.
Meta tag
A meta tag provides informations about a page.
PageRank or ranking
Rank in the Google hierarchy, a score given to a page dependant to backlinks and external links. The more it is raised, the more the page tends to be at the top of the list of answers from search engines (but many other criteria, are taken into account).
ROI (Return On Investsment)
Measurement of how much you earn from each invested dollar.
Sandbox
A site is known sandboxed by Google when its rank page seen to be allowed
a rank of 0. It remains indexed, but at the end of the list of results and
thus not seen by anyone. This effect can apply to all research that the site
answers, or to only a group of keywords in particular.
A new website enters also the sandbox, this is applied by google against spammers
that create new sites only to manipulate search engines.
Search Engine
Online tool to find information or a site on the Web (or local engine).
SERP (Search Engine Results Page)
In answer to a search query.
SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)
Techniques to make Web page in such a manner they are best indexed by search
engine and get a better position in results.
They consist in architecture of pages, keywords, links and renow.
Sitemap
Map of a site, concretely, a list of URL of the pages which should be indexed, and other information for robots.
Snippet
Name given by Google to the text under the title of a page in results of requests. It may come from the description meta, from Dmoz of from the contents of the page.
Spamming
Processes used to cheat search engines, therefore to privilege its site without regard to the contents, but by making profit of the way robots of search engines work instead. For example, accumulation of keyword, text hidden (white text on white background), pages of links towards its site, etc. This lead to the blacklist.
URL
Uniform Resource Locator, addresses of a site including the domain name and the name of the file, example: http://www.scriptol.com/index.php