Recently we published three posts about SEO and online marketing jargon (read them here). In this post, we take a look at some of the more unusual SEO slang that you may have come across.

Algoholic - Someone who pays close attention to search engine algorithms in order to improve and optimise their website(s) accordingly.

Bad neighbourhood - A phrase made popular by Google, linking to “bad neighbourhoods” can have a negative effect on a website’s search engine rankings. Known web spammers and link farms are examples of bad neighbourhoods, which the search engines recommend avoiding.

The Big G - A nickname for Google, which highlights its importance and relevance as the biggest search engine and also as the main rule-setter in the SEO world.

Caffeine - The codename given to the latest version of Google’s search engine, which is due to be launched after Christmas. Previous other codenames Google has given its updates include Vince, Big Daddy and Florida.

Dofollow - When the nofollow attribute was introduced in 2005, the term “dofollow” started to become synonymous to regular, followed links, those that pass on a SEO benefit to the search engines.

Google Bowling - The act of sabotaging a competitor’s site by intentionally trying to incur them a penalty and therefore banning them from the search engines. For example, if Site A is aware that buying links from a dodgy site is bad practice, rather than buying the links for themselves, they might buy them  for Site B - a direct competitor - in order to get them into trouble with the search engines. A major worry years ago, Google now claims to have ways to find out how links are acquired and even who has acquired them on your behalf.

GYM - The initials of the three main search engines: Google, Yahoo! and MSN (although MSN’s search engine has recently been renamed Bing).

Keyword cannibalization - An issue with a website’s architecture whereby a number of pages on a site are competing for a single keyword term or phrase. This can be confusing for the search engines as they will not know which of the pages to show in the search results for the relevant keyword.

Link condom - The method of providing a outbound link but purposefully not passing on an SEO benefit. For example, a website might reference a link that it knows to be dodgy for the purpose of a research article, in which case it could add a link condom to it (such as the nofollow attribute) so that the search engines do not think the linking site is willingly acknowledging a dodgy site in order to help its rankings, otherwise the linking site itself might get into trouble.

Link juice - The passing of trust and authority from one site to another.

Link love - The effect that a website will rank better in the search engines if it has numerous high quality inbound links pointing to it.

Spamdexing - The method of deceptively modifying web pages to increase the chance of them ranking higher in the search engines. The term is a combination of spamming and indexing.

Spider trap - A set of web pages that cause a spider, crawler or robot to get trapped. An example of an intentional trap would be one that stops spiders from collecting email addresses from a website for the purpose of sending spam emails. Also known as a crawler trap.

Splog - A spam blog, which has little to no use to human visitors and has been created solely to spam the search engines. Not to be confused with “spam in blogs”, which might concern a genuine blog with human readers that occasionally receives spam in its comments sections.

Stickiness - The act of reducing a website’s bounce rate and therefore improving its “stickiness”, meaning that a visitor will be more inclined to stay on the site and access other pages before moving on, rather than leaving straight away.

This is a follow up post to Confusing search engine marketing and SEO jargon made simple (A-F) and More confusing search engine marketing and SEO jargon made simple (G-N).

Outbound link - Hyperlinks leading out of your website to other websites are known as outbound links.

PageRank - The value given to a web-page by Google. Ranging from 0 to 10 (with 10 being the best), the rank is primarily made up on the basis of in-bound link quality and quantity.

Paid link - When a website pays another website, search engine or directory for a link. Although not a black hat SEO technique per se, Google frowns upon such practices, however commercial sites must pay in order to appear in the Yahoo! Directory. Also known as Pay For Inclusion (PFI).

Pay Per Click (PPC) - The advertising system where businesses pay for each click their advert receives. The adverts are mainly displayed on search engine pages and once clicked, the user will be sent through to the website belonging to the advertiser.

Reciprocal link - When two websites exchange links with each other, this is known as reciprocal linking. An activity that used to be more popular than it is today, since the search engines started discounting the value of reciprocal links. Also known as link exchanging or link partnering.

Robots file - The robots.txt file is stored within a website and tells search engines what they can do with the website, such as the pages not to show in the index and links not to follow.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) - The process of improving a website’s rankings in the search engines and therefore its traffic volume.

SERPs - Stands for Search Engine Results Pages and is simply the results you see when you perform a search query.

Social media - A term used to describe a variety of websites where people meet to share information and often express their opinions. Blogs, forums, video hosting sites, user review sites and wiki's, are examples of popular social media sites.

Sitemap - A page on a website that lists and links to all of the other accessible pages on that website. Useful not only for users but for the search engine spiders.

Spider - A search engine robot that jumps from website to website, via hyperlinks, for the purpose of scanning information to add to the search engine’s database.

URL - The Uniform Resource Locator, or more simply, the address of the webpage.

White hat SEO - Techniques used to improve website rankings that confirm to best practice guidelines and do not try to manipulate or trick the search engines into ranking a specific site.

This is a follow up post to Confusing search engine marketing and SEO jargon made simple (A-F), where we hope to help demystify the world of search engine marketing.

Gateway pages – A website or web-page that exists to attract search engine traffic and re-direct it through to another site. Gateway pages (also known as doorway pages) are an example of black hat SEO and are frowned upon by search engine companies.

Googlebot – The name given to the spider used by Google to crawl over, and index, web pages.
 
Google dance – The changes seen in Google results, often around the time of a change to the algorithm or update to the index. The Google dance is something all SEO professionals will be familiar with and is often a time of great stress as rankings can shoot up and down quite dramatically.

HTML - Stands for HyperText Markup Language and is the programming language in which web pages on the internet are written.
 
Hub – A web page respected as having expert content, that links out to other sites of the same subject.
 
Inbound link – Hyperlinks coming into your website from others are inbound links. Important to search engine optimisation, as the more inbound links a website has from relevant, good quality sites, the more likely it is to rank highly and increase search traffic share.
 
Keyword – The word or phrase that a user submits into a search engine query.
 
Landing page – The first page a person lands on after clicking on a Pay Per Click advert or search engine listing.
 
Link bait – Content that has been created to attract in-bound links from other sites. Common types of link bait include informative articles, videos, audio, downloads, blog posts.
 
Link farm – A group of websites which exchange links between one another. Link farming is an example of black hat SEO and if discovered, can lead to a website being penalised by the search engines.
 
Long-tail – A more targeted search made using a number of words. Whilst a broad search might be “Mercedes coupe”, a long-tail example would be “Used black Mercedes CL500 coupe”. The amount of people using long-tail searches to find information is growing, so website owners need to be aware of both the broad and long-tail keywords used in their market.
 
META data – Information held within the HTML make-up of web-pages that describe to search engines what that page is about. The META title and META descriptions need to be written well as these are displayed to users within the search engine results, and should contain keywords the page is targeting (as should the META keywords list, obviously). META data are also often referred to as META Tags.
 
Monetisation – The process of turning a normal website into an income producing one. Placing adverts or becoming an affiliate are two of the most popular ways.
 
Natural listings – The web pages displayed on the left hand side of the search engine which are not labelled as “sponsored listings”. Search Engine Optimisation is the technique used to bring websites higher up in the natural search listings.
 
Nofollow – An instruction that can be placed on a web-page that tells search engines not to follow the links from the page. Nofollow can also be applied to individual links.
 
Noindex – An instruction that can be placed on a web-page that tells search engines not to index that page.

I recently spoke at an event, teaching small business owners some of the basics of search engine marketing and optimisation. A few times I used basic industry terminology which created a sea of puzzled faces. Hopefully the following list of the more common terms will help clear up any confusion caused by SEO jargon.

Adwords – The name for Google’s Pay Per Click advertising system. Businesses that use Adwords will find their adverts displayed on the Google search results labelled as “sponsored listings”.

Affiliate – A person or business that doesn’t sell products or services, rather existing to send traffic to retail sites and take a commission or fee for any sales generated.

Alt text – A description given to an image on a webpage. Not often shown to users unless their browser cannot show graphics but important to search engine optimisation as search engines use these tags as a factor in determining keywords.

Anchor text – The blue, underlined text displayed for a hyperlink. Placing your keywords in anchor text of links pointing to your site has a positive impact on SEO.

Black hat SEO – Techniques used to trick and manipulate search engines into ranking a webpage. Examples include cloaking, gateway pages and keyword stuffing. Black hat SEO is frowned upon by search engines and can lead to a site being penalised or banned from search results.

Bounce rate – The number of visitors who leave a site without visiting any pages other than the one they land on. Shown in a percentage in website analytics tools, for the majority of sites the lower the bounce rate the better.

Canonization – Strangely, search engines see http://www.yoursite.com and http://yoursite.com as separate sites, which can lead to duplicate content penalties. Canonizing one of these URLs tells the search engines to only focus on one, and can lead to improved search engine rankings.

Cloaking – To cloak a website is to show one version to the visitors, and another to the search engines. Cloaking is an example of black-hat SEO and if discovered on your site, could lead to a falling out with the search engines.

Content Management System  (CMS) – The software that many websites come with which allows people to easily add to, and update, content such as text and images. Blogging systems are a good example of simple, user friendly CMS.

Conversion rate – The percentage of visitors who reach a goal. Conversion goals include signing up to a newsletter, making a purchase, filling in an enquiry form, clicking an advert, etc.

Cost Per Click (CPC) – The amount of money each click costs a Pay Per Click advertiser, which can range from a penny to over £10, depending on the competitiveness of the keyword.

Duplicate content – Content on a website that is a copy, or very similar, to content that search engines have found elsewhere. Web-pages containing duplicate content are less likely to outrank the originals in the search engines.

Ecommerce – Selling products online. Many of the most popular sites on the internet are ecommerce based. Some sell a wide range of products, like traditional department stores, while some stick to one or two specialist lines of product.

Free For All (FFA) – The name given to web pages that allow anyone to place links on them. These pages are not very well respected by the search engines as a lot of the links are low quality and point to spammy websites.

A follow-up post for terminology starting with letters G-N will be made soon.