hit Once the standard by which web traffic was often judged, but now a largely meaningless term replaced by page views AKA impressions. A hit happens each time that a server sends an object documents,graphics, include files, etc. Thus one page view could generate many hits.
hub (expert page) a trusted page with high quality content that links out to related pages.
HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) directives or “markup” which are used to add formatting and web functionality to plain text for use on the Internet. HTML is the mother tongue of the search engines, and should generally be strictly and exclusively adhered to on web pages.
Monday, April 13, 2009
Web 2.0 Glossary (G)
gateway page (doorway page) A web page that is designed to attract traffic from a search engine and then redirect it to another site or page. A doorway page is not exactly the same as cloaking but the effect is the same in that users and search engines are served different content.
gadget see gizmo
gizmo (gadget, widget) small applications used on web pages to provide specific functions such as a hit counter or IP address display. Gizmos can make good link bait.
Google bomb The combined effort of multiple webmasters to change the Google search results usually for humorous effect. The “miserable failure” George Bush, and “greatest living American” Steven Colbert Google bombs are famous examples.
Google bowling Maliciously trying to lower a sites rank by sending it links from the “bad neighborhood” Kind of like yelling “Good luck with that infection!” to your buddy as you get off the school bus there is some controversy as to if this works or is just an SEO urban myth.
Google dance The change in SERPs caused by an update of the Google database or algorithm. The cause of great angst and consternation for webmasters who slip in the SERPs. Or, the period of time during a Google index update when different data center shave different data.
Google juice (trust, authority, PageRank) trust / authority from Google, which flows through outgoing links to other pages.
Googlebot Google’s spider program
GYM Google Yahoo Microsoft,the big three of search
gadget see gizmo
gizmo (gadget, widget) small applications used on web pages to provide specific functions such as a hit counter or IP address display. Gizmos can make good link bait.
Google bomb The combined effort of multiple webmasters to change the Google search results usually for humorous effect. The “miserable failure” George Bush, and “greatest living American” Steven Colbert Google bombs are famous examples.
Google bowling Maliciously trying to lower a sites rank by sending it links from the “bad neighborhood” Kind of like yelling “Good luck with that infection!” to your buddy as you get off the school bus there is some controversy as to if this works or is just an SEO urban myth.
Google dance The change in SERPs caused by an update of the Google database or algorithm. The cause of great angst and consternation for webmasters who slip in the SERPs. Or, the period of time during a Google index update when different data center shave different data.
Google juice (trust, authority, PageRank) trust / authority from Google, which flows through outgoing links to other pages.
Googlebot Google’s spider program
GYM Google Yahoo Microsoft,the big three of search
Monday, March 2, 2009
Web 2.0 Glossary (F)
feed Content which is delivered to the user via special websites or programs such as news aggregators.
FFA (Free For All) A page or site with many outgoing links to unrelated websites, containing little if any unique content. Link farms are only intended for spiders, and have little if any value to human users, and thus are ignored or penalized by the search engines.
frames A web page design where two or more documents appear on the same screen, each within it’s own frame. Frames are bad for SEO because spiders sometimes fail to correctly navigate them. Additionally, most users dislike frames because it is almost like having two tiny monitors neither of which shows a full page of information at one time.
FFA (Free For All) A page or site with many outgoing links to unrelated websites, containing little if any unique content. Link farms are only intended for spiders, and have little if any value to human users, and thus are ignored or penalized by the search engines.
frames A web page design where two or more documents appear on the same screen, each within it’s own frame. Frames are bad for SEO because spiders sometimes fail to correctly navigate them. Additionally, most users dislike frames because it is almost like having two tiny monitors neither of which shows a full page of information at one time.
Web 2.0 Glossary (D)
directory A site devoted to directory pages. The Yahoo directory is an example.
directory page A page of links to related Web Pages.
doorway (gateway) A web page that is designed specifically to attract traffic from a search engine. A doorway page which redirects users (but not spiders) to another site or page is implementing cloaking. Previous Definition revised based upon advice from Michael Martinez
duplicate content Obviously content which is similar or identical to that found on another website or page. A site may not be penalized for serving duplicate content but it will receive little if any Trust from the search engines compared to the content that the SE considers being the original.
directory page A page of links to related Web Pages.
doorway (gateway) A web page that is designed specifically to attract traffic from a search engine. A doorway page which redirects users (but not spiders) to another site or page is implementing cloaking. Previous Definition revised based upon advice from Michael Martinez
duplicate content Obviously content which is similar or identical to that found on another website or page. A site may not be penalized for serving duplicate content but it will receive little if any Trust from the search engines compared to the content that the SE considers being the original.
Friday, February 27, 2009
Web 2.0 Glossary (C)
canonical issues (duplicate content) canon = legitimate or official version It is often nearly impossible to avoid duplicate content, especially with CMSs like Wordpress, but also due to the fact that www.site.com, site.com, and www.site.com/index.htm are supposedly seen as dupes by the SEs although it’s a bit hard to believe they aren’t more sophisticated than that. However these issues can be dealt with effectively in several ways including using the noindex meta tag in the noncanonical copies, and 301 server redirects to the canon.
click fraud Improper clicks on a PPC advertisement usually by the publisher or his minions for the purpose of undeserved profit. Click fraud is a huge issue for ad agencies like Google, because it lowers advertiser confidence that they will get fair value for their ad spend.
cloak The practice of delivering different content to the search engine spider than that seen by the human users. This Black Hat tactic is frowned upon by the search engines and caries a virtual death penalty of the site/domain being banned from the search engine results.
CMS Content Management System Programs such as Wordpress, which separate most of the mundane Webmaster tasks from content creation so that a publisher can be effective without acquiring or even understanding sophisticated coding skills if they so choose.
code swapping (bait and switch) Changing the content after high rankings are achieved.
comment spam Posting blog comments for the purpose of generating an inlink to another site. The reason many blogs use link condoms.
content (text, copy) The part of a web page that is intended to have value for and be of interest to the user. Advertising, navigation, branding and boiler plate are not usually considered to be content.
contextual advertisement Advertising which is related to the content.
conversion (goal) Achievement of a quantifiable goal on a website. Add clicks, sign ups, and sales are examples of conversions.
conversion rate Percentage of users who convert see conversion.
CPC (Cost Per Click) the rate that is paid per click for a Pay Per Click Advertiser.
CPM (Cost Per Thousand impressions) A statistical metric used to quantify the average value / cost of Pay Per Click advertisements. M from the Roman numeral for one thousand.
crawler (bot, spider) A program which moves through the worldwide web or a website by way of the link structure to gather data.
click fraud Improper clicks on a PPC advertisement usually by the publisher or his minions for the purpose of undeserved profit. Click fraud is a huge issue for ad agencies like Google, because it lowers advertiser confidence that they will get fair value for their ad spend.
cloak The practice of delivering different content to the search engine spider than that seen by the human users. This Black Hat tactic is frowned upon by the search engines and caries a virtual death penalty of the site/domain being banned from the search engine results.
CMS Content Management System Programs such as Wordpress, which separate most of the mundane Webmaster tasks from content creation so that a publisher can be effective without acquiring or even understanding sophisticated coding skills if they so choose.
code swapping (bait and switch) Changing the content after high rankings are achieved.
comment spam Posting blog comments for the purpose of generating an inlink to another site. The reason many blogs use link condoms.
content (text, copy) The part of a web page that is intended to have value for and be of interest to the user. Advertising, navigation, branding and boiler plate are not usually considered to be content.
contextual advertisement Advertising which is related to the content.
conversion (goal) Achievement of a quantifiable goal on a website. Add clicks, sign ups, and sales are examples of conversions.
conversion rate Percentage of users who convert see conversion.
CPC (Cost Per Click) the rate that is paid per click for a Pay Per Click Advertiser.
CPM (Cost Per Thousand impressions) A statistical metric used to quantify the average value / cost of Pay Per Click advertisements. M from the Roman numeral for one thousand.
crawler (bot, spider) A program which moves through the worldwide web or a website by way of the link structure to gather data.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Web 2.0 Glossary (B)
B2B Business to Business.
B2C Business to Consumer.
back link (inlink, incoming link) Any link into a page or site from any other page or site.
black hat Search engine optimization tactics that are counter to best practices such as the Google Webmaster Guidelines.
blog A website which presents content in a more or less chronological series. Content may or may not be time sensitive. Most blogs us a Content Management System such as WordPress rather than individually crafted WebPages. Because of this, the Blogger can choose to concentrate on content creation instead of arcane code.
bot (robot, spider, crawler) A program which performs a task more or less autonomously. Search engines use bots to find and add web pages to their search indexes. Spammers often use bots to “scrape” content for the purpose of plagiarizing it for exploitation by the Spammer.
bounce rate The percentage of users who enter a site and then leave it without viewing any other pages.
bread crumbs Web site navigation in a horizontal bar above the main content which helps the user to understand where they are on the site and how to get back to the root areas.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Web 2.0 Glossary (A)
301 A permanent server redirect achange of address for a web page found in the htaccess file on apache servers. Also useful for dealing with canonical issues.
adwords Google Pay Per Click contextual advertisement program, very common way of basic website advertisement.
adwords site (MFA) Made For Google AdSense Advertisements websites that are designed from the ground up as a venue for GA advertisements. This is usually, but not always a bad thing. TV programming is usually Made For Advertisement.
affiliate An affiliate site markets products or services that are actually sold by another website or business in exchange for fees or commissions.
algorithm (algo) A program used by search engines to determine what pages to suggest for a given search query.
alt text A description of a graphic, which usually isn’t displayed to the end user, unless the graphic is undeliverable, or a browser is used that doesn’t display graphics. Alt text is important because search engines can’t tell one picture from another. Alt text is the one place where it is acceptable for the spider to get different content than the human user, but only because the alt text is accessible to the user, and when properly used is an accurate description of the associated picture. Special web browsers for visually challenged people rely on the alt text to make the content of graphics accessible to the users.
analytics A program which assists in gathering and analyzing data about website usage.Google analytics is a feature rich, popular, free analytics program.
anchor text The user visible text of a link. Search engines use anchor text to indicate the relevancy of the referring site and of the link to the content on the landing page. Ideally all three will share some keywords in common.
astroturfing (the opposite of full disclosure) attempting to advance a commercial or political agenda while pretending to be an impartial grassroots participant in a social group. Participating in a user forum with the secret purpose of branding, customer recruitment, or public relations.
authority (trust, link juice, Google juice) The amount of trust that a site is credited with for a particular search query. Authority/trust is derived from related incoming links from other trusted sites.
authority site A website which has many incoming links from other related expert/hub sites. Because of this simultaneous citation from trusted hubs an authority site usually has high trust, page rank, and search results placement. Wikipedia, is an example of an authority site.
adwords Google Pay Per Click contextual advertisement program, very common way of basic website advertisement.
adwords site (MFA) Made For Google AdSense Advertisements websites that are designed from the ground up as a venue for GA advertisements. This is usually, but not always a bad thing. TV programming is usually Made For Advertisement.
affiliate An affiliate site markets products or services that are actually sold by another website or business in exchange for fees or commissions.
algorithm (algo) A program used by search engines to determine what pages to suggest for a given search query.
alt text A description of a graphic, which usually isn’t displayed to the end user, unless the graphic is undeliverable, or a browser is used that doesn’t display graphics. Alt text is important because search engines can’t tell one picture from another. Alt text is the one place where it is acceptable for the spider to get different content than the human user, but only because the alt text is accessible to the user, and when properly used is an accurate description of the associated picture. Special web browsers for visually challenged people rely on the alt text to make the content of graphics accessible to the users.
analytics A program which assists in gathering and analyzing data about website usage.Google analytics is a feature rich, popular, free analytics program.
anchor text The user visible text of a link. Search engines use anchor text to indicate the relevancy of the referring site and of the link to the content on the landing page. Ideally all three will share some keywords in common.
astroturfing (the opposite of full disclosure) attempting to advance a commercial or political agenda while pretending to be an impartial grassroots participant in a social group. Participating in a user forum with the secret purpose of branding, customer recruitment, or public relations.
authority (trust, link juice, Google juice) The amount of trust that a site is credited with for a particular search query. Authority/trust is derived from related incoming links from other trusted sites.
authority site A website which has many incoming links from other related expert/hub sites. Because of this simultaneous citation from trusted hubs an authority site usually has high trust, page rank, and search results placement. Wikipedia, is an example of an authority site.
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