SEO Glossary

Altruik - our name "Altruik" is an amalgamation of the phrase "All True Clicks." We focus on helping our customers to make the "invisible visible" and to generate "true clicks," the delivery of specific, relevant, high quality content in response to consumer search queries.

Adobe Flash - a technology developed by MacroMedia Corp. that allows a Web designer to embed interactive multimedia into Web pages, which are often used for Flash intros, games and animating navigation. More...

Alt tags - alternate text associated with a Web page graphic that gets displayed when the Internet user rolls the mouse over the graphic. Alt tags should convey what the graphic is for or about and contain good relevant keywords. Alt tags also make Web pages more accessible to the disabled. For example, a vision-impaired user may have a Web browser that reads aloud the text and alt tags on a page. (For those familiar with HTML, "alt" isn't actually a tag by itself but an attribute to the "img" tag.) Note: the value of Alt tags for SEO has been discounted over time by the search engines to the point that now it is of minimal value. More...

Anchor text - the actual text of a Web page or a link that plays a tremendous role in proving a good ranking on the search engine results. In the context of search engine optimization, anchor text may affect a site's relevance and ranking in search engines. More...

Asynchronous JavaScript And XML (AJAX) - allows JavaScript scripts to send data requests and receiveresponses without having to reload an entire Web page. More...

Application Program Interfaces (APIs) - a set of routines, protocols and tools for building software applications; it determines how a service is called upon through the application. More...

ALTRUIK AVS Search Engine Optimization Platform - the Altruik innovative software product that brings automation and new functionality to Search Engine Optimization.

Banner ad - a graphic image, usually a GIF or JPEG, that can be placed anywhere on a Web page, most frequently centered across the top. The tile ad is a smaller counterpart, typically grouped with other tile ads along a side margin. The standard banner ad is 468 x 60 pixels; the most common size for tile ads is 125 x 125 pixels. The Interactive Advertising Bureau regulates the guidelines and standards. More...

Bidding - placing a bid price that one is willing to pay as an advertiser on a pay-per-click or PPC search engine. The highest bid for a given keyword achieves the top spot in the PPC search results. Also see pay-per-click. More...

Black Hat SEO - sometimes called "spamdexing," it is any optimization tactic that causes a site to rank higher than its content would otherwise justify and is against search engine guidelines. Some of the Black Hat SEO tactics that should be avoided to keep your site away from penalties: keyword, anchor text and domain name stuffing; using hidden text or links; using techniques to artificially increase the number of links to your pages, such as link farms, spamming forums or blogs, excessive outbound links to websites that use high risk techniques or spam, etc. More...

Blacklist - lists that either search engines or vigilante users compile of search engine spammers, which may be used to ban those spammers from search engines or to boycott them. More...

Blog or "weblog" - an online diary with entries made on a regular if not daily basis. Some blogs are maintained by an anonymous author who uses a nickname or handle instead of his or her real name. More...

Bot - short for "robot," a program that is designed to automate tasks. Also see "Spider."

Branded search - when an Internet user searches on a known brand such as "Coke." These are brand keywords as those where the name of the marketer, website or trademark owned by the marketer is present.

Call-to-action - copy, such as "click here," "buy now," and "enter here" used in advertising to inspire a person to complete an action as defined by the advertiser.

Click-through - the action of clicking an ad element and causing a redirect to another Web page.

Click-through rate - the rate at which people click on a link such as a search engine listing or a banner advertisement. Studies show that click-through rates are six times higher for the search engine listings than banner ads. More...

Cloaking - a "bait and switch" tactic that serves different content to the search engine spiders than to other human visitors. The Web server feeds the visiting spiders content that is keyword-rich, fooling the search engine into ranking the page higher in search results. Search engines frown upon this practice and some will penalize or ban sites that they catch doing it. More...

Content or Web content - the textual, visual or aural content that is encountered as part of the user experience on websites, which may include text, images, sounds, videos and animations.

Content drift - as site content is updated, changes are made available immediately to search engines, thus preventing a difference in content on the Web server and the search engine.

Conversion - the act of converting a Web site visitor into a customer or at least taking that visitor a step closer to customer acquisition (such as convincing them to sign up for your e-mail newsletter).

Conversion rate - the actual rate at which visitors to the website become customers.

Crawler - or software agent is mainly used to create a copy of all the visited pages for later processing by a search engine that will index the downloaded pages to provide fast searches. Crawlers can also be used for automating maintenance tasks on a website, such as checking links or validating HTML code and to gather specific types of information from Web pages, such as harvesting e-mail addresses (usually for spam). Also see "Spider." More...

Database-driven - the website is connected to a database and Web page content is based in part on information extracted from that database.

Deep Web - or the "Invisible Web," is a vast repository of Web pages, usually generated by database-driven websites, that are available to Web users yet hidden from traditional search engines. The "spiders" used by these search engines to crawl the Web cannot reach most of the pages created on-the-fly in dynamic sites such as ecommerce, news and major content sites. More...

Domain name - is a name that uniquely identifies a site (e.g., website or ftp site) on the Internet or other TCP/IP network, and is actually a user-friendly substitute for IP addresses. Domain names are hierarchical in nature and consist of at least two levels. Each level is separated by a single period. The part on the left is the most specific, and the part on the right is the most general. For example, ww.altruik.com. See Web address and URL. More...

Dynamic content Dynamic Web page - a Web page that is returned to the user with custom content based on the results of a search or some other request. Also known as "dynamic HTML" or "dynamic content," the "dynamic" word is used with Web sites to refer to custom results individualized to each user in contrast to the billions of static Web pages that do not change.

Dynamic html - Web pages generated on demand by data in databases or by using similar technology. This can create ranking problems because a search engine's spider may not retrieve relevant content. More...

Dynamic site - displays information that changes using server-side code, generally with information retrieved from a database. If the URL ends in .asp, .php, etc. it is a dynamic site.

Grey Hat SEO - search engine optimization using both Black Hat and White Hat techniques.

"Hands-free" SEO - enabling complete content visibility by eliminating the need for time-consuming manual processing, without interruption to daily operations. In addition, the ALTRUIK AVS automatically manages all on-page SEO to optimize site ranking. And this is what Altruik refers to as "hands-free" SEO or "automatic" SEO.

Heading tag - an HTML tag used to point to a significant page or section heading on a Web page. Search engines pay particular attention to text that is marked with a heading tag, as such text is set off from the rest of the page content as being more important.

Heat pad - improves rankings in natural search results pages. More...

Hidden text - text that is visible to the search engine spiders but not to site visitors. It is used to add extra keywords in the page without actually adding content to a site. Most search engines will penalize Web sites which use hidden text. More...

Hits - the list delivered as a result of a search engine inquiry. The information may consist of Web pages, images, information and other types of files. Hits do not correlate with Web page visits, because a single access of a Web page with 15 unique graphics on it register as 16 hits - 15 hits for the graphics and one for the HTML page. Interesting note: Web metrics guru Jim Sterne says hits hits "stand for How Idiots Track Success." People who talk in terms of hits are usually either ignorant or are trying to snow their boss into thinking the website is doing better than it really is.

Homepage - the main page of a website used to welcome and inform visitors of the overall purpose of the site, offering an index of navigation that organizes content and leads to other parts of it. Even though the home page is designed to be the entry point of the website, people can go directly to other pages within the site without ever seeing the front page. It's interesting to note that in some countries such as Japan, Korea and Germany, the term "homepage" usually refers to the whole website, not just the first page. More...

HTML (HyperText Markup Language) - the programming language used to mark up Web content and display it in a formatted manner. It's up to the Web browser software, e.g. Microsoft Internet Explorer or Netscape, to render HTML source.More...

HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) - a protocol using TCP to transfer hypertext requests and information between servers and browsers.More...

Hyperlinks - text or graphic links exposed as URLs and take the Internet user to another Web page. More...

Hyperlink text - underlined text that links to another Web page. Search engines pay special attention to the keywords used in the hyperlink text and relate it to the Web page. This may be used negatively for Google bombing, which is when a group of websites mostly blogs link an unfavorable page to a company website in a manner that it ranks high on the Google search result.

Invisible Web - refers to the huge amount of information on the Internet that is not stored or indexed the search engines. Also see Deep Web. More...

Keyword - a word that a search engine user might use to find relevant Web page(s). One must use the keyword in their Web page text, and if not used, it is highly unlikely your page will appear in the search results (unless of course you have bid on that keyword in a pay-per-click search engine).

Keyword stuffing - writing copy that uses excessive amounts of the core keyword into page copy and the HTML in such a way that it detracts from the readability and usability but is done for the purpose of boosting the page's rankings in the search engines. This is accomplished by hiding keywords on the page by making the text the same color as the background, hiding keywords in comment tags, overfilling alt tags with long strings of keywords, etc. More...

Keyword prominence - the location or placement of an identified keyword in the HTML source code of a Web page. The higher up in the page a particular word is, the more prominent it is - and the more weight that word is assigned by the search engine when that word matches a keyword search done by a search engine user. So it is best to have the first paragraph of any page packed with important keywords rather than marketing jargon. This concept also applies to the location of important keywords within individual HTML tags, such as heading tags, title tags or hyperlink text. So get in the habit of starting off your title tags with a good keyword rather than words like "Welcome to."

Landing page - the page that an Internet user goes to by clicking on a banner ad or a search result listing. More...

Long tail keyword - phrases with at least three, sometimes four or five, specific keywords in them.

Manual submitting - performed by hand to an individual search engine and doesn't use an automated submission tool or service.

Metadata - "data about other data," of any sort in any media. An item of metadata may describe an individual datum, or content item, or a collection of data. For example, metadata may include descriptive information about the context, quality and condition, or characteristics of the data. More...

Meta description - the meta tag that describes the page's content and is embedded in the HTML. It is about 12-20 words long and has a good chance of influencing the manner in which the Web page is described in the search results, but it will not improve search rankings. Make sure the meta description reflects the page content or one may be accused of spamming.

Meta keywords - a meta tag that contains keywords pertaining to the web page content and is hidden in the HTML. It is now ignored by most search engines due to the abuse of meta keywords by search engine spammers.

Meta tags - meta-information or "information about information" about the relevant Web page and meta tags are within the HTML. Meta tags cannot be viewed by Internet users and are usually paid no attention to by the search engines. The two important examples of meta tags are meta description and meta keywords. More...

Natural search results or organic search results - the listings that appear on a search engine results page (SERP) that do not form part of a paid-for or sponsored advertisement. More...

Negative SEO - constitutes bringing down a page or website from search engine results pages (SERPs). Most often used against a competitor that is above your site in the SERPS but can be used purely for fun.

Non-branded search - when an Internet user searches on a generic term rather than a known brand term like "Coke." Non-brand keywords are those which do not include any reference to the marketer, its website, its trademarks, or its proprietary brands.

Off-page SEO - the incoming links from other websites or the aspect of a website that is not located on the site itself, rather elsewhere on the Web, but can have a significant influence on the ranking of a particular website. (It is much more difficult to control the off-page factors, than the on-page SEO.) More...

On-page SEO - the optimization of a website's content, text, tags, links and other elements.

Pay-per-click (PPC) - a pay-for-performance pricing model where advertising (such as banner ads or paid search engine listings) is priced based on number of click-throughs rather than impressions or other criteria. More...

Query - a keyword or phrase inquiry entered into a search engine or database. A person types in words and the search engine database returns results that matches the user's inquiry. More...

Ranking - usually refers to a URL's or site's position in a search engine (such as Google) for a certain keyword or key phrase. Ranking optimizes the position of the content within the natural search results pages. Google and other search engines all factor in the number and quality of links to a site when giving a site its ranking.

Relevance - creates the connection between the visible site content and a search query.

RSS (Real Simple Syndication) a family of of XML-based Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated - a family of of XML-based Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated works-such as blog entries, news headlines, audio and video-in a standardized format and is meant for content sharing for a collection of information from across the Web. An RSS document (which is called a "feed," "Web feed," or "channel") includes full or summarized text, plus metadata such as publishing dates and authorship. More...

Search engine - software programs designed to search for precise information or content on the World Wide Web based on keywords that the Internet searcher provides. Each search engine, like Google, MSN and Yahoo, uses a different algorithm to deliver results to the searcher. Altruik bases its SEO services mainly on the Google algorithm because Google is the leader in search engines. More...

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) - strategies and tactics undertaken to increase the amount and quality of leads generated by the search engines. More...

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) - the process of making website content fully visible to ensure the highest possible ranking within the natural (organic) search results pages of search engines. The goal of SEO is to enhance the online connection between businesses and their customers and prospects through the natural search results pages (SERPs) of the search engines. More...

SEO automation - using software to submit Web pages to the search engines for inclusion.

Search Engine Visibility (SEV) - to make dynamically generated and static site content visible to the search engines for indexing. Altruik does this automatically.

Search Engine Result Page (SERP) - a page of search results delivered by a search engine. More...

Semantic Web - refers to a future state of the World Wide Web where information will be machine-processed, rather than just machine-rendered for human viewing, allowing search engines to be more intelligent. In this environment the search engines will be better able to find, organize and merge data because they will have more "understanding" of the meaning of the data. More...

Short tail keyword - general keyword phrases with one or two words in them.

Spider - aka as a bot, robot or crawler, it is a computer program that automatically retrieves Web pages for use by search engines. Spiders follow links from one page to another and from one site to another, and that is the primary reason why links to a site are so critical. Getting links to your website from other websites will give the search engine spiders more opportunities to find and re-index a site. The more times the spiders find links to a site, the more times they will stop by and visit. Recently Google publicly stated that the number and quality of links to a site will directly impact its rankings in the search results.

Static website means that the Web page was not created dynamically from a database, - or online brochure as it is sometimes called, means that the Web page was not created dynamically from a database, but instead previously created and saved as a HTML file. A "static" site is usually in HTML based code and the link simply "goes" to it. Static pages are good for SEO work in that they are friendly to search engine spiders. More...

Syndication - an option that allows one to extend their reach by distributing ads to additional partner sites. More...

Title tag or page title - the text displayed in the blue bar at the very top of the browser window, above all other text and actions. Although lots of times inconspicuous to the user, the title tag is the most important bit of text on a Web page as far as the search engines are concerned. Search engines not only assign the words in the title tag more weight, they also typically display the title tag in the search results, making the title tag an important potential call-to-action as well. Thus, the wording of each page's title tag should be thought through carefully. Also see "keyword prominence."

URL - an acronym that stands for Uniform Resource Locator, which is used interchangeably with the Web address. URLs can specify the location of a Web page, an email address, or a file on an FTP server, among other things. More...

Visibility - to make site content visible (or presentable) to the search engines for indexing.

Web 2.0 - refers to the new generation of Web-based services and communities characterized by participation, collaboration and sharing of information among users online. Web2.0 applications include wikis, folksonomies, blogs and social networking sites that encourage user-generated content (USG) and social interaction online. More...

Web 3.0 - is one of the terms used to describe the evolutionary stage of the Web that follows Web 2.0. It is defined as highly specialized information silos, moderated by a cult of personality, validated by the community, and put into context with the inclusion of meta-data through widgets.

Web address - the location, or URL, of a website, file, or resource on the Internet. For example, http://www.altruik.com/ is a Web address.

Web browser - the software installed on a computer that allows for viewing of Web pages on the Internet. Popular Web browsers include Microsoft Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari and Opera. More...

Web page - an HTML document that has its own Web address or URL. More...

Website - a collection of pages of text, images, and other files (such as audio or video clips) that make up a company or organization's presence online and viewable on the Internet, usually under a single domain name. (This is not to be confused with a Web page, which is one single page within the collection of pages that make up a website.) More...

Web server - a computer dedicated to allowing users to access Web pages housed on the server. One example is the Apache. More...

White hat - ethical SEO techniques, which conform to best practice guidelines, and do not attempt to unscrupulously "game" or manipulate SERPs and are approved by the search engines. More...

XML (Extensible Markup Language) - a scripting language that allows the programmer to define the properties of the document. It is a simple, very flexible text format derived from SGML, used to make it easy to syndicate or format information using technologies such as RSS. More...