Glossary of Search Engine Optimization Terms
B
Backlink (see Inbound Link)
Bait and Switch
Marketing technique where you make something look overtly pure or as though it has another purpose to get
people to believe in it or vote for it (by linking at it or sharing it with friends), then switch the intent or purpose of
the website after you gain authority.
It is generally easier to get links to informational websites than commercial sites. Some new sites might gain
authority much quicker if they tried looking noncommercial and gaining influence before trying to monetize their
market position.
Banner Blindness
During the first web boom many businesses were based on eyeballs more than actually building real value.
Many ads were typically quite irrelevant and web users learned to ignore the most common ad types.
In many ways text ads are successful because they are more relevant and look more like content, but with the
recent surge in the popularity of text ads some have speculated that in time people may eventually become text
ad blind as well.
Nick Denton stated: Imagine a web in which Google and Overture text ads are everywhere . Not only beside
search results, but next to every article and weblog post. Ubiquity breeds contempt. Text ads, coupled with
content targeting, are more effective than graphic ads for many advertisers; but they too, like banners, will
suffer reader burnout.Battelle, John
Popular search and media blogger who co-founded The Industry Standard and Wired, and authored a popular
book on search called The Search.
See also: Searchblog - blog about the intersection of search, media, and technology.
The Search - John's book about the history and future of search.
The Database of Intentions - post about how search engines store many of our thoughts
Web 2.0 Conference - conference run by John Battelle. Battelle's Google speech
Behavioral Targeting
Ad targeting based on past recent experience and/or implied intent. For example, if I recently searched for
mortgages then am later reading a book review the page may still show me mortgage ads.
Bias
A prejudice based on experiences or a particular worldview. Any media channel, publishing format,
organization, or person is biased by: how and why they were created and their own experiences, the current
set of social standards in which they exist, other markets they operate in, the need for self preservation, how
they interface with the world around them, their capital, knowledge, status, or technological advantages and
limitations. Search engines aim to be relevant to users, but they also need to be profitable. Since search
engines sell commercial ads some of the largest search engines may bias their organic search results toward
informational (ie: non-commercial) websites. Some search engines are also biased toward information which
has been published online for a great deal of time and is heavily cited. Search personalization biases our
search results based on our own media consumption and searching habits. Large news organizations tend to
aim for widely acceptable neutrality rather than objectivity. Some of the most popular individual web authors /
publishers tend to be quite biased in nature. Rather than the bias hurting one's exposure, the known / learned
bias of a specific author may make their news more appealing than news from an organization that aimed to
seem arbitrarily neutral. I believe biased channels most likely typically have a larger readership than unbiased
channels. Most people prefer to subscribe to media which matches their own biases worldview.
If more people read what you write and passionately agree with it then they are more likely to link at it.
Things which are biased in nature are typically easier to be cited than things which are unbiased.
See also:
Alejandro M. Diaz's Through the Google Goggles [PDF] - thesis paper on Google's biases
A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History - looks at economic, biological, and linguistic history
Manufacturing Consent - Noam Chomsky DVD and book about mainstream media bias toward business interests
Comparison of the major search algorithms
Wikipedia: Bias
Bid Management Software (see Automated Bid Management Software)
Black Hat SEO
Search engines set up guidelines that help them extract billions of dollars of ad revenue from the work of
publishers and the attention of searchers. Within that highly profitable framework search engines consider
certain marketing techniques deceptive in nature, and label them as black hat SEO. Those which are
considered within their guidelines are called white hat SEO techniques. The search guidelines are not a static
set of rules, and things that may be considered legitimate one day may be considered deceptive the next.
Search engines are not without flaws in their business models, but there is nothing immoral or illegal about
testing search algorithms to understand how search engines work.
People who have extensively tested search algorithms are probably more competent and more knowledgeable
search marketers than those who give themselves the arbitrary label of white hat SEOs while calling others
black hat SEOs.
When making large investments in processes that are not entirely clear trust is important. Rather than looking
for reasons to not work with an SEO it is best to look for signs of trust in a person you would like to work with.
See also:
Black Hat SEO.com - parody site about black hat SEO
White Hat SEO.com - parody site about white hat SEO
Honest SEO - site offering tips on hiring an SEO
SEOConsultants.com - reviewed directory of SEO professionals
SEO Black Hat - blog about black hat SEO techniques
Block Level Analysis
A method used to break a page down into multiple points on the web graph by breaking its pages down into
smaller blocks.
Block level link analysis can be used to help determine if content is page specific or part of a navigational
system. It also can help determine if a link is a natural editorial link, what other links that link should be
associated with, and/or if it is an advertisement. Search engines generally do not want to count advertisements
as votes.
See also
Microsoft Research: Block-level Link Analysis
Blog
A periodically updated journal, typically formatted in reverse chronological order. Many blogs not only archive
and categorize information, but also provide a feed and allow simple user interaction like leaving comments on
the posts.
Most blogs tend to be personal in nature. Blogs are generally quite authoritative with heavy link equity because
they give people a reason to frequently come back to their site, read their content, and link to whatever they
think is interesting.
The most popular blogging platforms are Wordpress, Blogger, Movable Type, and Typepad.
Blog Comment Spam
Either manually or automatically (via a software program) adding low value or no value comments to other sites.
Automated blog spam:
Nice post!
by
Discreat Overnight Viagra Online Canadian Pharmacy Free Shipping
Manual blog spam:
I just wrote about this on my site. I don't know you, but I thought I would add no value to your site other than
linking through to mine. Check it out!!!!!
by
cluebag manual spammer (usually with keywords as my name)
As time passes both manual and automated blog comment spam systems are evolving to look more like
legitimate comments. I have seen some automated blog comment spam systems that have multiple fake
personas that converse with one another.
Blogger
Blogger is a free blog platform owned by Google.
It allows you to publish sites on a subdomain off of Blogspot.com, or to FTP content to your own domain. If you
are serious about building a brand or making money online you should publish your content to your own domain
because it can be hard to reclaim a website's link equity and age related trust if you have built years of link
equity into a subdomain on someone else's website.
Blogger is probably the easiest blogging software tool to use, but it lacks many some features present in other
blog platforms.
See also:
Blogger.com
Blogroll
Link list on a blog, usually linking to other blogs owned by the same company or friends of that blogger.
Bold
A way to make words appear in a bolder font. Words that appear in a bolder font are more likely to be read by
humans that are scanning a page. A search engine may also place slightly greater weighting on these words
than regular text, but if you write natural page copy and a word or phrase appears on a page many times it
probably does not make sense or look natural if you bold ever occurrence.
Example use:
<b>words</b>
<strong>words</strong>
Either would appear as words.
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. The popularity of a document (as
measured in terms of link equity, number of bookmarks, or usage data) is a signal for the quality of the
information. Some search engines may eventually use bookmarks to help aid their search relevancy.
Social bookmarking sites are often called tagging sites. Del.icio.us is the most popular social bookmarking site.
Yahoo! MyWeb also allows you to tag results. Google allows you to share feeds and / or tag pages. They also
have a program called Google Notebook which allows you to write mini guides of related links and information.
There are also a couple meta news sites that allow you to tag interesting pages. If enough people vote for your
story then your story gets featured on the homepage. Slashdot is a tech news site primarily driven by central
editors. Digg created a site covering the same type of news, but is a bottoms up news site which allows readers
to vote for what they think is interesting. Netscape cloned the Digg business model and content model. Sites like
Digg and Netscape are easy sources of links if you can create content that would appeal to those audiences.
Many forms of vertical search, like Google Video or YouTube, allow you to tag content.
See also:
Del.icio.us - Yahoo! owned social bookmarking site
Yahoo! MyWeb - similar to Del.icio.us, but more integrated into Yahoo!
Google Notebook - allows you to note documents
Slashdot - tech news site where stories are approved by central editors
Digg - decentralized news site
Netscape - Digg clone
Google Video - Google's video hosting, tagging, and search site
YouTube - popular decentralized video site
Boolean Search
Many search engines allow you to perform searches that contain mathematical formulas such as AND, OR, or
NOT. By default most search engines include AND with your query, requiring results to be relevant for all the
words in your query.
Examples:
A Google search for SEO Book will return results for SEO AND Book.
A Google search for "SEO Book" will return results for the phrase SEO Book.
A Google search for SEO Book -Jorge will return results containing SEO AND Book but NOT Jorge.
A Google search for ~SEO -SEO will find results with words related to SEO that do not contain SEO.
Some search engines also allow you to search for other unique patterns or filtering ideas. Examples:
A numerical range: 12...18 would search for numbers between 12 and 18.
Recently updated: seo {frsh=100} would find recently updated documents. MSN search also lets you place more
weight on local documents
Related documents: related:www.threadwatch.org would find documents related to Threadwatch.
Filetype: AdWords filetype:PDF would search for PDFs that mentioned AdWords.
Domain Extension: SEO inurl:.edu
IP Address: IP:64.111.97.133
See also:
Search Engine Showdown Features Chart -
Brand
The emotional response associated with your company and/or products.
A brand is built through controlling customer expectations and the social interactions between customers.
Building a brand is what allows you to move away from commodity based pricing and move toward higher
margin value based pricing.
See also:
Rob Frankel - branding expert who provides free branding question answers every Monday. He also offers
Frankel's Laws of Big Time Branding™, blogs, and wrote the branding book titled The Revenge of Brand X.
Branded Keywords
Keywords or keyword phrases associated with a brand. Typically branded keywords occur late in the buying
cycle, and are some of the highest value and highest converting keywords.
Some affiliate marketing programs prevent affiliates from bidding on the core brand related keywords, while
others actively encourage it. Either way can work depending on your business model and marketing savvy, but
it is important to ensure there is synergy between internal marketing and affiliate marketing programs.
Breadcrumb Navigation
Navigational technique used to help search engines and website users understand the relationship between
pages.
Example breadcrumb navigation:
Home > SEO Tools > SEO for FirefoxWhatever page the user is on is unlinked, but the pages above it within
the structure are linked to, and organized starting with the home page, right on down through the site
structure.
Brin, Sergey
Co-founder of Google.
See also:
Wikipedia: Sergey Brin
Broken Link
A hyperlink which is not functioning. A link which does not lead to the desired location.
Links may broken for a number of reason, but four of the most common reasons are: a website going offline,
linking to content which is temporary in nature (due to licensing structures or other reasons), moving a page's
location, changing a domain's content management system. Most large websites have some broken links, but if
too many of a site's links are broken it may be an indication of outdated content, and it may provide website
users with a poor user experience. Both of which may cause search engines to rank a page as being less
relevant.
Xenu Link Sleuth is a free software program which crawls websites to find broken links.
Browser
Client used to view the world wide web.. The most popular browsers are Microsoft's Internet Explorer, Mozilla's
Firefox, Safari, and Opera.
Bush, Vannevar
WWII scientist who wrote a seminal research paper on the concepts of hypertext and a memory extension
device titled: As We May Think.
Business.com
A well trusted directory of business websites and information. Business.com is also a large pay per click
arbitrage player.
See also: Business.com
Buying Cycle
Before making large purchases consumers typically research what brands and products fit their needs and
wants. Keyword based search marketing allows you to reach consumers at any point in the buying cycle. In
many markets branded keywords tend to have high search volumes and high conversion rates.
The buying cycle may consist of the following stages:
Problem Discovery: prospect discovers a need or want.
Search: after discovering a problem look for ways to solve the need or want. These searches may contain
words which revolve around the core problem the prospect is trying to solve or words associated with their
identity.
Evaluate: may do comparison searches to compare different models, and also search for negative information
like product sucks, etc.
Decide: look for information which reinforces your view of product or service you decided upon
Purchase: may search for shipping related information or other price related searches. purchases may also
occur offline
Reevaluate: some people leave feedback on their purchases . If a person is enthusiastic about your brand they
may cut your marketing costs by providing free highly trusted word of mouth marketing.
See also: Waiting for Your Cat to Bark? - book by Brian & Jeffrey Eisenberg about the buying cycle and
Persuading Customers When They Ignore Marketing.
C
B
Backlink (see Inbound Link)
Bait and Switch
Marketing technique where you make something look overtly pure or as though it has another purpose to get
people to believe in it or vote for it (by linking at it or sharing it with friends), then switch the intent or purpose of
the website after you gain authority.
It is generally easier to get links to informational websites than commercial sites. Some new sites might gain
authority much quicker if they tried looking noncommercial and gaining influence before trying to monetize their
market position.
Banner Blindness
During the first web boom many businesses were based on eyeballs more than actually building real value.
Many ads were typically quite irrelevant and web users learned to ignore the most common ad types.
In many ways text ads are successful because they are more relevant and look more like content, but with the
recent surge in the popularity of text ads some have speculated that in time people may eventually become text
ad blind as well.
Nick Denton stated: Imagine a web in which Google and Overture text ads are everywhere . Not only beside
search results, but next to every article and weblog post. Ubiquity breeds contempt. Text ads, coupled with
content targeting, are more effective than graphic ads for many advertisers; but they too, like banners, will
suffer reader burnout.Battelle, John
Popular search and media blogger who co-founded The Industry Standard and Wired, and authored a popular
book on search called The Search.
See also: Searchblog - blog about the intersection of search, media, and technology.
The Search - John's book about the history and future of search.
The Database of Intentions - post about how search engines store many of our thoughts
Web 2.0 Conference - conference run by John Battelle. Battelle's Google speech
Behavioral Targeting
Ad targeting based on past recent experience and/or implied intent. For example, if I recently searched for
mortgages then am later reading a book review the page may still show me mortgage ads.
Bias
A prejudice based on experiences or a particular worldview. Any media channel, publishing format,
organization, or person is biased by: how and why they were created and their own experiences, the current
set of social standards in which they exist, other markets they operate in, the need for self preservation, how
they interface with the world around them, their capital, knowledge, status, or technological advantages and
limitations. Search engines aim to be relevant to users, but they also need to be profitable. Since search
engines sell commercial ads some of the largest search engines may bias their organic search results toward
informational (ie: non-commercial) websites. Some search engines are also biased toward information which
has been published online for a great deal of time and is heavily cited. Search personalization biases our
search results based on our own media consumption and searching habits. Large news organizations tend to
aim for widely acceptable neutrality rather than objectivity. Some of the most popular individual web authors /
publishers tend to be quite biased in nature. Rather than the bias hurting one's exposure, the known / learned
bias of a specific author may make their news more appealing than news from an organization that aimed to
seem arbitrarily neutral. I believe biased channels most likely typically have a larger readership than unbiased
channels. Most people prefer to subscribe to media which matches their own biases worldview.
If more people read what you write and passionately agree with it then they are more likely to link at it.
Things which are biased in nature are typically easier to be cited than things which are unbiased.
See also:
Alejandro M. Diaz's Through the Google Goggles [PDF] - thesis paper on Google's biases
A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History - looks at economic, biological, and linguistic history
Manufacturing Consent - Noam Chomsky DVD and book about mainstream media bias toward business interests
Comparison of the major search algorithms
Wikipedia: Bias
Bid Management Software (see Automated Bid Management Software)
Black Hat SEO
Search engines set up guidelines that help them extract billions of dollars of ad revenue from the work of
publishers and the attention of searchers. Within that highly profitable framework search engines consider
certain marketing techniques deceptive in nature, and label them as black hat SEO. Those which are
considered within their guidelines are called white hat SEO techniques. The search guidelines are not a static
set of rules, and things that may be considered legitimate one day may be considered deceptive the next.
Search engines are not without flaws in their business models, but there is nothing immoral or illegal about
testing search algorithms to understand how search engines work.
People who have extensively tested search algorithms are probably more competent and more knowledgeable
search marketers than those who give themselves the arbitrary label of white hat SEOs while calling others
black hat SEOs.
When making large investments in processes that are not entirely clear trust is important. Rather than looking
for reasons to not work with an SEO it is best to look for signs of trust in a person you would like to work with.
See also:
Black Hat SEO.com - parody site about black hat SEO
White Hat SEO.com - parody site about white hat SEO
Honest SEO - site offering tips on hiring an SEO
SEOConsultants.com - reviewed directory of SEO professionals
SEO Black Hat - blog about black hat SEO techniques
Block Level Analysis
A method used to break a page down into multiple points on the web graph by breaking its pages down into
smaller blocks.
Block level link analysis can be used to help determine if content is page specific or part of a navigational
system. It also can help determine if a link is a natural editorial link, what other links that link should be
associated with, and/or if it is an advertisement. Search engines generally do not want to count advertisements
as votes.
See also
Microsoft Research: Block-level Link Analysis
Blog
A periodically updated journal, typically formatted in reverse chronological order. Many blogs not only archive
and categorize information, but also provide a feed and allow simple user interaction like leaving comments on
the posts.
Most blogs tend to be personal in nature. Blogs are generally quite authoritative with heavy link equity because
they give people a reason to frequently come back to their site, read their content, and link to whatever they
think is interesting.
The most popular blogging platforms are Wordpress, Blogger, Movable Type, and Typepad.
Blog Comment Spam
Either manually or automatically (via a software program) adding low value or no value comments to other sites.
Automated blog spam:
Nice post!
by
Discreat Overnight Viagra Online Canadian Pharmacy Free Shipping
Manual blog spam:
I just wrote about this on my site. I don't know you, but I thought I would add no value to your site other than
linking through to mine. Check it out!!!!!
by
cluebag manual spammer (usually with keywords as my name)
As time passes both manual and automated blog comment spam systems are evolving to look more like
legitimate comments. I have seen some automated blog comment spam systems that have multiple fake
personas that converse with one another.
Blogger
Blogger is a free blog platform owned by Google.
It allows you to publish sites on a subdomain off of Blogspot.com, or to FTP content to your own domain. If you
are serious about building a brand or making money online you should publish your content to your own domain
because it can be hard to reclaim a website's link equity and age related trust if you have built years of link
equity into a subdomain on someone else's website.
Blogger is probably the easiest blogging software tool to use, but it lacks many some features present in other
blog platforms.
See also:
Blogger.com
Blogroll
Link list on a blog, usually linking to other blogs owned by the same company or friends of that blogger.
Bold
A way to make words appear in a bolder font. Words that appear in a bolder font are more likely to be read by
humans that are scanning a page. A search engine may also place slightly greater weighting on these words
than regular text, but if you write natural page copy and a word or phrase appears on a page many times it
probably does not make sense or look natural if you bold ever occurrence.
Example use:
<b>words</b>
<strong>words</strong>
Either would appear as words.
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. The popularity of a document (as
measured in terms of link equity, number of bookmarks, or usage data) is a signal for the quality of the
information. Some search engines may eventually use bookmarks to help aid their search relevancy.
Social bookmarking sites are often called tagging sites. Del.icio.us is the most popular social bookmarking site.
Yahoo! MyWeb also allows you to tag results. Google allows you to share feeds and / or tag pages. They also
have a program called Google Notebook which allows you to write mini guides of related links and information.
There are also a couple meta news sites that allow you to tag interesting pages. If enough people vote for your
story then your story gets featured on the homepage. Slashdot is a tech news site primarily driven by central
editors. Digg created a site covering the same type of news, but is a bottoms up news site which allows readers
to vote for what they think is interesting. Netscape cloned the Digg business model and content model. Sites like
Digg and Netscape are easy sources of links if you can create content that would appeal to those audiences.
Many forms of vertical search, like Google Video or YouTube, allow you to tag content.
See also:
Del.icio.us - Yahoo! owned social bookmarking site
Yahoo! MyWeb - similar to Del.icio.us, but more integrated into Yahoo!
Google Notebook - allows you to note documents
Slashdot - tech news site where stories are approved by central editors
Digg - decentralized news site
Netscape - Digg clone
Google Video - Google's video hosting, tagging, and search site
YouTube - popular decentralized video site
Boolean Search
Many search engines allow you to perform searches that contain mathematical formulas such as AND, OR, or
NOT. By default most search engines include AND with your query, requiring results to be relevant for all the
words in your query.
Examples:
A Google search for SEO Book will return results for SEO AND Book.
A Google search for "SEO Book" will return results for the phrase SEO Book.
A Google search for SEO Book -Jorge will return results containing SEO AND Book but NOT Jorge.
A Google search for ~SEO -SEO will find results with words related to SEO that do not contain SEO.
Some search engines also allow you to search for other unique patterns or filtering ideas. Examples:
A numerical range: 12...18 would search for numbers between 12 and 18.
Recently updated: seo {frsh=100} would find recently updated documents. MSN search also lets you place more
weight on local documents
Related documents: related:www.threadwatch.org would find documents related to Threadwatch.
Filetype: AdWords filetype:PDF would search for PDFs that mentioned AdWords.
Domain Extension: SEO inurl:.edu
IP Address: IP:64.111.97.133
See also:
Search Engine Showdown Features Chart -
Brand
The emotional response associated with your company and/or products.
A brand is built through controlling customer expectations and the social interactions between customers.
Building a brand is what allows you to move away from commodity based pricing and move toward higher
margin value based pricing.
See also:
Rob Frankel - branding expert who provides free branding question answers every Monday. He also offers
Frankel's Laws of Big Time Branding™, blogs, and wrote the branding book titled The Revenge of Brand X.
Branded Keywords
Keywords or keyword phrases associated with a brand. Typically branded keywords occur late in the buying
cycle, and are some of the highest value and highest converting keywords.
Some affiliate marketing programs prevent affiliates from bidding on the core brand related keywords, while
others actively encourage it. Either way can work depending on your business model and marketing savvy, but
it is important to ensure there is synergy between internal marketing and affiliate marketing programs.
Breadcrumb Navigation
Navigational technique used to help search engines and website users understand the relationship between
pages.
Example breadcrumb navigation:
Home > SEO Tools > SEO for FirefoxWhatever page the user is on is unlinked, but the pages above it within
the structure are linked to, and organized starting with the home page, right on down through the site
structure.
Brin, Sergey
Co-founder of Google.
See also:
Wikipedia: Sergey Brin
Broken Link
A hyperlink which is not functioning. A link which does not lead to the desired location.
Links may broken for a number of reason, but four of the most common reasons are: a website going offline,
linking to content which is temporary in nature (due to licensing structures or other reasons), moving a page's
location, changing a domain's content management system. Most large websites have some broken links, but if
too many of a site's links are broken it may be an indication of outdated content, and it may provide website
users with a poor user experience. Both of which may cause search engines to rank a page as being less
relevant.
Xenu Link Sleuth is a free software program which crawls websites to find broken links.
Browser
Client used to view the world wide web.. The most popular browsers are Microsoft's Internet Explorer, Mozilla's
Firefox, Safari, and Opera.
Bush, Vannevar
WWII scientist who wrote a seminal research paper on the concepts of hypertext and a memory extension
device titled: As We May Think.
Business.com
A well trusted directory of business websites and information. Business.com is also a large pay per click
arbitrage player.
See also: Business.com
Buying Cycle
Before making large purchases consumers typically research what brands and products fit their needs and
wants. Keyword based search marketing allows you to reach consumers at any point in the buying cycle. In
many markets branded keywords tend to have high search volumes and high conversion rates.
The buying cycle may consist of the following stages:
Problem Discovery: prospect discovers a need or want.
Search: after discovering a problem look for ways to solve the need or want. These searches may contain
words which revolve around the core problem the prospect is trying to solve or words associated with their
identity.
Evaluate: may do comparison searches to compare different models, and also search for negative information
like product sucks, etc.
Decide: look for information which reinforces your view of product or service you decided upon
Purchase: may search for shipping related information or other price related searches. purchases may also
occur offline
Reevaluate: some people leave feedback on their purchases . If a person is enthusiastic about your brand they
may cut your marketing costs by providing free highly trusted word of mouth marketing.
See also: Waiting for Your Cat to Bark? - book by Brian & Jeffrey Eisenberg about the buying cycle and
Persuading Customers When They Ignore Marketing.
C
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