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.
