A method of testing which aims to determine the ‘best’ of two aspects. For example, it is common to split test two landing pages for a given PPC campaign to see which of the two converts better. Alternatively you could split test two ads to see which performs better.

Refers to the positioning of collateral on a web page – ‘above the fold’ refers to any collateral which can be seen without scrolling down the page. ‘Below the fold’ refers to anything which you have to scroll down to view.

A link shown in full e.g. http://www.gravytrain.co.uk/seo.php – this type of link will always point back to this page regardless of where it is placed.

See Also: Relative Link

Web Accessibility is practice of making websites accessible to those with disabilities. This can also help with SEO as search engines cannot see pictures or flash.

Within Google’s Adwords programme an Adgroup is a group of keywords which all show the same advert / variety of adverts. It is important to create tightly targeted Adgroups, so that you can then created targeted ads which will appeal to users who are searching for the keywords / phrases which you are bidding on.

See also: Adwords

AdSense is run by Google – it matches ads to the website publisher’s content, and they earn money whenever their visitors click the ads. For more information see http://www.google.com/adsense/login/en_GB/

Adwords is Google’s paid search advertising programme. For more information see https://adwords.google.co.uk/

Affiliate marketing is essentially a revenue share deal. Affiliates will display your ads for free, but will receive a percentage of the revenue which you receive as a result of direct sales from their referrals.

This refers to the name of the crawler, spider or bot (from a search engine) which is currently visiting your site to update their index.

Stands for ‘Asynchronous JavaScript And XML’. Often used on online forms, as it allows for data to be requested and received without the need for reloading the page.

Alexa is a site traffic ranking tool which allows you to view your own site stats versus your competitors. This data is collated via Alexa Toolbar users. For more information see http://www.alexa.com/

A mathematical calculation used to solve a problem or make a decision. Search Engine’s use algorithms to determine where websites appear for specific search queries.

A search engine owned by Yahoo. See http://www.alltheweb.com/

The Alt Attribute is most commonly used to enter a text description of an image. This is often used for making websites more accessible if users are unable to download graphics or for those with disabilities who use assistive technology. It is also used for SEO purposes as search engines cannot see images.

An Alt Attribute is sometimes incorrectly referred to as an image’s Alt Tag – see Alt Attribute for definition

One of the earliest search engines – it’s now owned by Yahoo! See http://www.altavista.com/

The science of analysis – businesses often use analytics packages to assist them in making business decisions. Google offer a free analytics package called – Google Analytics see http://www.google.com/analytics/

This is visible part of a hyperlink on a web page which is clickable. The words which form the anchor text can determine search engine ranking for the keywords utilised within the anchor text, as search engines (Google in particular) associate the keywords contained in the anchor text to the page being linked to. In the past manipulation of anchor text has resulted in Google Bombing – famously George W Bush was returned first in search results for the search ‘miserable failure’ – however Google claim they have now fixed this. See Google Bombs for more information

See Back Links, Link Building, Paid Links, Reciprocal Links, Link Farms

A set of defined rules that allows access and interaction with a system

Ask was formerly known as Ask Jeeves – and was the first commercial search engine to support search queries in plain English as well as traditional keyword searching. See http://uk.ask.com/?o=312&l=dir

Stands for Active Server Pages. ASP is a programming language which Microsoft developed for building dynamic web sites.

One of the many factors which search engine algorithms take into account when deciding how a particular site or page to ranks. A site maybe considered either a topical authority i.e. contain content relevant to one particular subject, or a general authority i.e. contain content relevant to many subjects e.g. Wikipedia

The practice of using automated software to submit your web pages to search engines. NB some search engines attempted to prevent this practice by including submission codes (shown as a graphic) which need to be keyed at the time of submission.

See Also: Bulk Submission Services

Abbreviation for Business to Business

Abbreviation for Business to Consumer

A link from one website to another. A site’s links and the anchor text used (see the entry on anchor text for further info) are key factors by which search engines rank sites for keywords. See also link building, paid links, reciprocal links and link farms.

See Also: In Links

Term ‘bait and switch’ was originally coined for a tactic utilised by unscrupulous retailers, who would draw customers in with a very low price for a given product, but then tell them that the low-price product was unavailable and attempt to sell them a higher priced alternative. In online marketing this refers to the somewhat dubious practice of creating content which is spidered by search engines and indexed, then switching the content to something else. Or, in a social media context creating content which various people link to, then switching the content once the links are in place.

When a search engine prevents your content from appearing in any search engine results pages. When this happens via Google this is sometimes referred to as the sandbox.

See Also: Sandbox

An online ad which is typically 468 x 60 pixels. See the Internet Advertising Bureau website for further information on ad unit guidelines http://www.iab.net/iab_products_and_industry_services/1421/1443/1452

See Also: Button Ad, Beyond the Banner

Coding which enables website owners to track visitor interactions e.g. email sign ups, purchases etc

A social networking site founded in January 2005. Bebo stands for blog early, blog often.

Targeting of advertising based on previous behaviour. This can be witnessed on when searches are conducted via Google in quick succession.

An ad which is not a banner or button e.g. Pop Up or Pop Under. See the Internet Advertising Bureau website for further information on ad unit guidelines http://www.iab.net/iab_products_and_industry_services/1421/1443/1452

See Also: Banner ad, Button Ad

As paid search campaigns become increasingly complex, some advertisers elect to utilise bid management tools to assist them in managing their spend. These tools integrate with analytics packages – to amend bids according to conversion rates and ROI; and / or stock control systems (in the case of e-tailers) to ensure clients are not bidding on terms pertaining to items which are out of stock.

Within an auction environment participants place bids (essentially state how much they are willing to pay for a given item). With reference to paid search advertisers bid (i.e. state the maximum they are willing to pay) on a per click basis for someone who is searching for a particular keyword or search term.

A term coined for unethical SEO. Essentially this is the practice of optimising a site with a view to deliberately mislead a search engine in order to rank well for search terms. Black hat methods include ‘cloaking’ and ‘keyword stuffing’

See Also: Cloaking, Keyword Stuffing

Blended search results incorporate many sources into the results pages of a search rather than simply web pages. The results may include: images, videos, maps, products, news and books. Google call this universal search.

See Also: Universal Search

Major search engines continually evolve their algorithms in order to keep one step ahead of unscrupulous SEO’s and to attempt to improve the relevance of their results. One such element is block level analysis. Block level analysis attempts to weight links according to where they appear on the page, and weight them accordingly. As such a link from the content block could be considered as more likely to be a true recommendation than a link from a text link advertisement block.

An abbreviation for weblog. A blog is (normally) regularly updated and allows it’s readers to interact with the blogger by leaving comments which will normally elicit a response from the writer. Readers can also elect to sign up to RSS feeds. Good blogs will attract links from their readers who find their content relevant / interesting, and / or readers may submit articles of interest to other social media sites such as Digg.

See Also: Weblog

A list of links to other weblogs or websites which are recommended by the author of the blog.

See Also: Blog, Weblog

Refers to the written content on a web page as opposed to graphics, navigation, menus etc

A list of links to websites and / or specific content within a given site. Within Internet Explorer bookmarks are stored in ‘Favourites’

Short for Robot. A bot is an agent sent out by a search engine to catalogue websites for indexing purposes.

See Also: Crawler, Robot, Spiders, Web Crawler

A social news site for women. Similar to Digg – users submit content and are encouraged to vote for the content which they appreciate. http://www.boudica.com/

See Also: Digg

Normally expressed as a percentage – this is the number of visitors who land or a site and leave without viewing any other pages

This refers to any keywords which contain a brand e.g. ‘Cheap iPod’. When building a paid search campaign many advertisers elect to bid on a variety of generic and branded terms.

Navigation system which allows users to understand how each page on the site relates back to root areas and ultimately the homepage.

Also referred to as a doorway page or a gateway page. Refers to a page whose sole purpose is SEO. It contains keyword rich copy and a link into a website.

See Also: Doorway Page, Gateway Page

One of the keyword matching options available via Google Adwords. As the name suggests this option if selected, will display your ads when the broad matched keyword appears anywhere within a given search query. It will also show for common misspellings and for synonyms.

See Also: Keyword Matching, Phrase Match, Exact Match, Negative Match

Application used to view web pages on the internet, popular examples include Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari and Opera

Services which submit your web pages to search engines.

See Also: Automated Submiting

An online ad which is typically 125 x 125 pixels. See the Internet Advertising Bureau website for further information on ad unit guidelines http://www.iab.net/iab_products_and_industry_services/1421/1443/1452

See Also: Banner Ad, Beyond the Banner

The buying cycle is a theoretical illustration of how people decide on a particular purchase. Commonly the stages are referred to as follows: identify need, search, evaluate, decide, purchase, feedback. The theory behind it is, that if you can identify where people are in the buying cycle, you will be able to target them more appropriately and ultimately achieve more conversions.

Memory used to store frequently used data which might otherwise take some time to load. Search engines hold cached copies of web pages.

Marketing / Advertising term pertaining to copy which encourages a consumer to engage in a course of within an ad. Typical calls to action include sign up now, call today, click here etc.

Abbreviation for Common Gateway Interface. The CGI allows external software to interface with a web server.

Cockney music artists… oh you can’t stop talking why don’t ya give it a rest – rabbit, rabbit, rabbit…

Refers to the rate at which users click through, normally expressed as a percentage. This metric is often used in reference to pay per click (PPC) ads.

See Also: Clickthrough, Pay Per Click

An ad which allows the user to view additional information without leaving the page they were originally viewing. Typically the additional content appears beneath the original ad. Also known as click-within ad.

See Also: Click-Within Ad

An ad which allows the user to view additional information without leaving the page they were originally viewing. Typically the additional content appears beneath the original ad. Also known as click-down ad.

See Also: Click Down Ad

Refers to a user’s interaction with an ad. If they click through they are redirected to a new page pertaining directly to the advert which they have clicked on.

See Also: Click Through Rate, Pay Per Click

A black hat technique which allows spiders or bots to see different content to human visitors, in order to manipulate search engine results. Understandably this practice is deemed unacceptable by search engines and offending websites may find themselves banned.

See Also: Black Hat SEO, Unethical SEO

An application for writing web pages which interface with databases; enabling the incorporation of live data into dynamic web pages.  See http://www.adobe.com/uk/products/coldfusion/

Simply refers to whatever is on a given website e.g. copy, pictures, video etc

See Also: Content Management System

Software which allows users with little or no technical knowledge to create, publish and edit web pages.

See Also: Content

When a pre-defined action is fulfilled. In an online environment a conversion may be a sale, a request for further information, an email sign up, a white paper downloaded, etc.

Refers to the rate at which visitors to a website convert. It is up to the site owner to decide what a conversion is e.g. a sale, an email sign up etc. Conversion rate is normally expressed as a percentage. Conversion rates can be used to help calculate maximum bids for PPC, and also to ascertain the ROI for marketing campaigns.

Often come in chocolate chip varieties…they go lovely with a cuppa OR: Data which a web site stores on a user’s hard drive; then requests when the user returns. Their purpose is to identify returning visitors, and in some instances create customised content based on their preferences / previous behaviour on the site.

An online payment model similar to pay per click, but in this instance you pay per action – e.g. a phone call rather than a click through

A calculation to determine how much a new acquisition cost. Calculated by (cost of marketing activity) divided by (no. of acquisitions)

Online payment model. Rather than being charged based on the number of impressions (the number of times an ad is viewed) you are charged only if someone clicks through to your site

See Also: CPM

A calculation to determine how much a new lead cost. Calculated by (cost of marketing activity) divided by (no. of leads)

A calculation to determine how much an order cost. Calculated by (cost of marketing activity) divided by (no. of orders)

A calculation to determine how much a new sale cost. Calculated by (cost of marketing activity) divided by (no. of sales)

A metric to allow the easy comparison of various costs. Originally used by the print industry CPM referred to the cost per thousand of a given print job. Today this is sometimes used as a payment model for online advertising. Unlike CPC where you pay on a per click basis, with CPM you are charged a fee per thousand impressions.

See Also: CPC

A program that counts and displays the number of visitors to a given web page.

How deeply a site is crawled / indexed – i.e. are all of the pages of the site indexed?

How frequently a site is crawled.

A crawler is an agent sent out by a search engine to catalogue websites for indexing purposes.

See Also: Bot, Robot, Spider

Stands for Cascading Style Sheets. When designing a site, the creation of style sheets enables any changes to the design of the site to be made via amending a single style sheet, rather than going into each individual page and making amends.

A user-friendly page which displays an error message which is more readily understandable than the default messages which are provided by web servers.

See Also: Error Page

In simple terms CRM is the process by which a company manages and communicates with it’s customers. This should ideally be reflected every time a customer comes into contact with a company – from forms of advertising, through to purchase, receiving goods, billing and so on.

See Als: Customer Relationship Managing System

A CRM System allows a company the manage all aspects of communication with a given customer. The idea being that all communications are documented within the system so that when the customer makes contact, anyone in the company can easily see the communications which have gone on before and can therefore assist the customer accordingly.

See Also: Customer Management Relationship (CRM)

An individual or company who registers a domain with the sole purpose of later selling the domain on to the rightful owner of the company name which they have registered as a domain.

An ad which is displayed in a separate window which relates to a banner which is currently being displayed on a web site. Ordinarily the banner will appear first, then a couple of seconds later, the daughter window will appear.

Commonly used in paid search campaigns, dayparting is the process of turning ad campaigns on or off based around either your business needs, or your users behaviour. For example if you only man your phone lines from 9am-5.30pm and you are running a paid search campaign which generates calls, then it makes sense to only run paid search ads between the hours of 9am-5.30pm.

See de-listing

See Also: Sandbox

De-listing means that your site is removed from a search engines index – the effect of which means you will not appear in the results pages for that particular search engine. This may be either temporary or permanent. Sites can be de-listed for many reasons, however if your site has been manually de-listed then you may have to submit a re-inclusion request to be re-indexed.

See Also: De-Indexed, Sandbox

A link which points to a web page or server which is unavailable. Commonly this results in a 404 error.

See Also: HTTP 404

A link which leads directly to a page within a site rather than simply leading to the site’s homepage.

Deep link ratio is a metric which is calculated by dividing the number of deep links, by the total number of links to your site.

The process of submitting the URLs of all of the pages of a given web site. This is considered bad practice by some search engines as the search engine spiders or bots should be able to find all of the pages on the site by following links from the home page.

A social bookmarking website, it is designed to allow you to store and share bookmarks on the web, instead of inside your browser. Visit http://delicious.com/about

See Also: Social Bookmarking

A term often coined in direct mail, email and advertising; demographic targeting refers to the process of targeting your messages based on specific characteristics or behaviours displayed by your desired audience. This may include, age, gender, location etc. Currently Google Adwords and Microsoft AdCenter allow you to demographically target paid search ads.

See Also: Geo-Targeting

A social news site where it’s users submit all the content. Users are encouraged to vote for the content which most appeals to them – in turn these stories gain the most exposure and become popular. See http://digg.com/how

Effectively an online version of a paper based directory. Directories typically manually catalogue web sites based on their niche / business type. Like the paper based variants, some charge for inclusion. It’s acknowledged that all directories are not born equal. Search engines are more likely to place weight on links from DMOZ and the Yahoo! Directory. If a directory does not exercise editorial control over listings – i.e. if they will include any site which pays for a listing, then these links will not count favourably in terms of SEO. However, it should be noted, that strictly speaking you should be including your site in directories because you believe your customers may find you via the directory, not because you hope it might assist you in your SEO efforts.

See Also: DMOZ, Yahoo! Directory, Link building

The Open Directory Project is the largest, most comprehensive human-edited directory of the Web. It is constructed and maintained by a vast, global community of volunteer editors. It is acknowledged that a link from DMOZ will carry weight in terms of SEO. To submit a site follow this link: http://www.dmoz.org/add.html

See Also: Directory, Yahoo! Directory, Link Building

Abbreviation for Domain Name Service. DNS translates web addresses – e.g. www.gravytrain.co.uk into binary formatted IP addresses.

Also referred to as a bridge page or a gateway page. Refers to a page whose sole purpose is SEO. It contains keyword rich copy and a link into a website.

See Also: Bridge Page, Gateway Page

Refers to content on a site which is the same (i.e. duplicate, or near to duplicate) across many pages. This is frowned upon by search engines – who will not index multiple pages which they deem to contain the same content.

Where a dynamic language such as PHP is utilised to provide content for a web page on demand. In the past search engines struggled to index dynamic content – and although this has improved many webmasters still elect to create some static pages for search engines to index.

Often used in paid search advertising in order to make ads appear more relevant to searchers. Utilising a small amount of code, the keyword which the search engine user has typed into the search box is automatically inserted into the ad.

An HTML tag used to emphasise important words and / or phrases. It causes the text to appear in italics i.e. – emphasis. Whilst this can be useful from an SEO perspective, clearly if this is overused then the site may look strange to human visitors.

A page which is displayed when a given web page cannot be accessed.

See Also: Custom Error Page

The opposite of Black Hat SEO – often called White Hat SEO, this type of optimisation follows the guidelines from the search engines themselves and typically  focuses on creating quality content which will assist the site in ranking for key terms.

See Also: White Hat SEO,  Black Hat SEO, Unethical SEO

Refers to Google Adwords paid search matching options. As exact match suggests, when you bid on this type of matching term, your ad will only appear when a user types in that exact keyword into the search box. For further details see http://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=6100

See Also: Keyword Matching, Phrase Match, Broad Match, Negative Match

A banner ad expands when a user clicks on it / or if they move their cursor over it

An outbound link from one website to another.

An enhanced version of an intranet which allows either full or partial access to authorised outsiders and / or allows employees to access the intranet when outside of the office.

See Also: Intranet

Social networking site launched in February 2004. See http://www.facebook.com

A feed is a format which can be used to publish digital content which is typically updated frequently. Often used within blogs, news sites etc, visitors may elect to subscribe to an RSS or XML feed to receive this content rather than having to return to the site to view it.

A marketing term which refers to how easily your site can be found via search engines.

A web browser, developed by the Mozilla Foundation. See http://www.mozilla-europe.org/en/

See Also: Mozilla Firefox

Multimedia format for use on the web. See http://www.macromedia.com/software/flash/about/

An ad which is displayed on top of the web site’s content, thereby appearing to ‘float’ over the top of the page.

An online forum allows an individual to create and participate in discussions (or threads) with the wider community on the site.

As it sounds fresh content, is simply new content. In order to keep visitors coming back to your site, and to assist in SEO it is important to regularly update your web site with fresh content.

An abbreviation for File Transfer Protocol, which is simply a protocol for transferring data.

Also referred to as a bridge page or a doorway page. Refers to a page whose sole purpose is SEO. It contains keyword rich copy and a link into a website.

See Also: Bridge Page, Doorway Page

A term often coined in direct mail, email and advertising; geo-targeting refers to the process of targeting your messages based on where your desired audience is located. Currently Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft AdCenter allow you to demographically target paid search ads.

See Also: Demographic Targeting

The most frequently used search engine worldwide. See www.google.co.uk

Google Adsense offers web site owners the opportunity to earn revenue by placing ads which are targeted their site and content. When a web site owner signs up with Adsense they become part of the Google Content Network.

An individual who has passed the Google Advertising Professional exam. The exam and syllabus is designed and run by Google to help provide training for those who manage paid search campaigns.

Google’s free analytics package -see http://www.google.com/analytics/ It was originally modelled on Urchin on Demand after Google acquired Urchin Software Corp. in April 2005. The system has since been enhanced after Google acquired Measure Map from Adaptive Path in 2006.

An online database provided by Google into which any user can add almost any type of content, which, if Google deem it relevant, may appear on its shopping search engine, Google Maps or other online property. Currently, Google Base acts like a free classified ads service.

The practice of getting a web page on a site you do not own or work on behalf of, to rank in Google for a particular keyword or phrase. The intent behind this could be humorous or malicious. Google bombers work by asking the internet community to link to a particular page on a website using prescriptive anchor text. Because Google’s algorithm takes into account anchor text from links to sites, if enough sites link using a particular word or phrase, the page / website will begin to rank for this term. Initially Google took the position that they would not alter any search engine results in order to preserve the integrity of their search engine. However, in September 2007, changes were made to the indexing structure in an attempt to defuse these bombs.

See Also: Anchor Text

Google’s Search Engine spider.

See Also: Bot, Crawler, Robot, Spider, Web Crawler

A malicious black hat technique of undertaking a link building campaign to purchase links from poor quality sites and point them at a competitor’s site with the express intention of getting that site penalised by Google (or even de-indexed).

See Also: Black Hat SEO, Links

Google’s online payment service. It allows users to store their credit or debit card details in one place and pay on a variety of sites.

When Google update their algorithm sites often see their positions in the search engine results move and / or fluctuate for period of time until each of Google’s data centres update.

Also referred to as Link Juice this refers to the reflected glory some pages will receive if they are linked to other pages with lots of high quality links. This is because Google’s algorithm sees pages with high quality links as being an authority.

See Also: Link Juice

A free tool which Google provide to assist advertisers to decide which keywords they should utilise within paid search campaigns. In addition to providing keyword suggestions, the tool offers an indication of cost per click and search volume for specific keywords. See https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

Google Labs is where Google’s latest developments are launched in beta for testing. Users are encouraged to ‘play’ with the prototypes and provide feedback to Google’s developers. See http://labs.google.com/

Free software which has been selected by Google and can be downloaded directly via http://pack.google.com/intl/en-gb/pack_installer.html?hl=en-gb&gl=uk

Web pages will end up in Google’s Supplemental Index if Google’s algorithm judges them to be made up of largely duplicate content and / or they have a lower trust score. Pages in the supplemental index may still rank in search results, but only if Google finds relatively few results in its main index which are relevant to the search query which the user has entered.

An internet browser add on created by Google. Features include pop up blocker, Google Search Box, Page Rank display, Spell Check.

A free tool which Google provide to give an indication of the likely traffic levels of selected keywords. It provides a visual indication of the search volume, estimated average cost per click and estimated clicks per day. To obtain more accurate data use the version of the tool available via Adwords when you are in the Adgroup which you would like to add the keyword to.

A tool from Google Labs which allows users to view the volume of specific search queries. See http://www.google.com/trends

Google’s free multivariate testing and optimisation tool which allows web site owners / marketers to understand how a site’s design and content affect conversion rates, bounce rates etc. See https://www.google.com/accounts/

XML files that list all of a site’s URLs for indexing purposes.

When a two word query is entered into Google, but returns only one result. Made famous by British comedian Dave Gorman who authored a book called “Googlewhack Adventure” wherein he travelled the world finding people who had authored them. See http://www.davegorman.com/projects_googlewhack_adventure.html

Somewhere in between White Hat and Black Hat SEO (often incorporating techniques from both).

See Also: Black Hat SEO, White Hat SEO

As the name suggests, an HTML tag used to denote a heading on a web page. Search engines give more weight text that is marked with a heading text so this is often used for SEO.

See hidden text

See Also: Black Hat SEO

A Blackhat SEO technique that involves inserting text which only Search Engine spiders can see (often this is achieved by placing text which is the same colour as the background colour on the page). Whilst this may result in better rankings in the short term, Search Engines are wise to this technique and sites employing it are likely to be penalised.

See Also: Black Hat SEO

Widely regarded as an out-moded metric, a hit is not the same as a visit. A hit is a download of a file from a web server – so if a page on your site contains 5 graphics, then you will generate 6 hits every time this page is requested – 5 for the graphics and 1 for the page.

See Also: Visit

The main page of a web site where visitors typically land. It’s function is to explain the purpose of the site, and provide navigation to access key areas of the site.

An abbreviation for Hyper Text Mark-up Language, used for formatting websites.

See Also: HTML Source

The source code is the unformatted version of the site.

See Also: HTML

abbreviation for Hyper Text Transfer Protocol. This protocol is used to transfer data residing on a server into an active web browser (i.e. to display the web page on the users computer from the server where it is stored).

A 301 redirect alerts search engines that the site which previously resided at this domain has been permanently moved to a new one.

See Also: HTTP 302

A 302 redirect alerts search engines that the site which previously resided at this domain has been temporarily moved.

See Also: HTTP 301

This message means that the document (or page) which you requested could not be found by the server.

See links

A marketing metric which refers to the number of times your ad is viewed.

Another term for Back Links

See Also: Back Links

Links which point to your site from domains other than your own. Good quality inbound links from trusted sites are widely acknowledged to be an important element in search engine ranking.

In online terminology an index typically refers to a search engine’s database.

See Also: Search Engine

The way in which a site and the information within it is organised and structured.

Inktomi Corporation was a Californian software company who specialised in the development of online search technology. They were the first to launch a paid inclusion directory, which Yahoo (who purchased Inktomi in 2003) continue to utilise today.

Refers to a media booking (either on or offline). Typically the insertion order will include details of where your ad(s) will be placed, pricing and so on.

A link which leads to a page with the same website. These links can be used for navigation, and are also used by search engines to crawl and subsequently index sites.

The internet is a series of computer networks which are publicly accessible.

Developed by Microsoft in 1995 Internet Explorer (often abbreviated to IE) is the most widely used web browser.

Term my Dad uses, he means internet

See Also: Internet

A private computer network based on internet technology which can only be accessed by authorised individuals (rather than being accessible to all). Intranets are often used by companies to share information.

See Also: Extranet

In web terms, inventory refers to the advertising space which is available for sale on a specific site.

An abbreviation for Internet Protocol Address. It is separated into four parts by full stops to indicate the domain, the network, the sub network and the host computer. Each number ranges from 0-255.

An abbreviation for Internet Service Provider. An ISP provides a variety of services including hosting, domain registration, email and connectivity.

Java is a programming language which was created by Sun Microsystems and was released in 1995. However sometimes when people refer to Java they mean coffee, if you’re feeling kind you could go fetch them a cup of the good stuff…

See Also: Java Applet, JavaScript

Java Applets are platform-neutral (meaning they can run on a variety of different systems without being recompiled). All that is needed to run them is a Java-enabled browser. Typical uses include animation, calculators, games etc

See Also: Java

JavaScript is a scripting language that runs locally on a users’ browser and is generally used for web development. Its primary use is through functions that can either be included from or embedded in HTML pages. Although syntactically similar to the programming language Java; JavaScript and Java are actually unrelated.

See Also: Java

A spammy, keyword stuffed page which has been created specifically for the purpose of generating revenue from contextual search ads such as AdSense.

A word or group of words which are entered into a search engine to form a search query.

KPIs are typically agreed  metrics by which a company’s, website’s or individual’s performance are measured. Examples include average spend per customer, conversion rate, bounce rate etc

The number of times a keyword appears on a given web page. Density is calculated by dividing the total number of times a keyword appears divided by the total number of words on the page. Keyword density assists the search engine spiders in identifying the page’s content for ranking purposes. However if the keyword density is too high the spider is likely to interpret this as spam which may result in poor rankings or even deindexing.

See Also: Keyword Stuffing

Refers to the options which paid search advertisers can elect to ‘match’ the keyword terms which they are bidding on. Match types include broad, phrase, exact and negative.

See Also: Broad Match, Phrase Match, Exact Match, Negative Match

Keyword popularity refers to how frequently searches are conducted on a given keyword or phrase. For example ‘car insurance’ is more popular than ‘insurance for mini cooper’.

Keyword prominence refers to the position of a keyword in a given web page. The higher up the page a keyword appears, the more relevant it will appear to a search engine spider. Similarly, the location of keywords within individual HTML tags e.g. title tags and heading tags will add weight to a given keyword’s prominence.

Simply refers to researching appropriate keywords to target for either SEO or Paid Search.

Simply means a given web page is rich in good quality keywords without compromising usability / readability of the page for human users (as opposed to spiders)

The practice of placing excessive keywords into a web page with no regard for usability / readability in a vain attempt to rank well. This is frowned upon by search engines and can lead to penalties.

See Also: Keyword density

The page a visitor arrives on (or lands on) after clicking on an advertisement or link.

The page a visitor arrives on (or lands on) after clicking on an advertisement or link.

Link bait is content which has been specifically created to generate (or bait) links from other sites.

See Also: Links

It is widely acknowledged that search engine algorithms take into account the number of links to a site when determining how sites should rank in the results pages. As such building links from other quality sites is a technique which site owners / employees undertake to try to improve their rankings. These links should be generated naturally based on quality content – links should not be bought or sold.

See Also: Directory, DMOZ,  Paid Links, Yahoo! Directory

Link Churn is a measure (normally expressed as a percentage) which illustrates the rate at which a site loses links over time. For example a site started out with 100 links, and over the course of a year they lost 10 they would have a churn rate of 10%.

A site which freely links to other sites without any regard for the relevancy or quality of these links. These types of sites can be deemed as ‘bad neighbourhoods’ by search engines, and having these types of sites linking to yours can actually damage your rankings.

See Also: Paid Links

This refers to the reflected glory some pages will receive if they are linked to other pages with lots of high quality links. This is because Google’s algorithm sees pages with high quality links as being an authority.

See Also Google Juice

Refers to the number of sites which link to a given site – the more sites that link to it – the greater the link popularity.

See Also: Link Building

It is widely acknowledged that search engine algorithms take into account the number of links to a site when determining how sites should rank in the results pages. The phrase Link Spam refers to links which have been set up purely to improve search engine ranking, but have no particular use or relevance to human users.

See Also: Link Building

A clickable image or piece of text which takes the user to another web page.

Search engine powered by MSN. This has now been replaced by Bing.com

Server files which hold details on where your visitors were referred from e.g. other sites, search engines, or whether they typed your web address directly into your browser. If your visitors were referred from a search engine these files also include the search query which the user entered to find your site.

The long tail refers to the numerous and very varied keywords which when aggregated typically account for far more web traffic and conversions than the more generic ‘head’ keywords. For example a term such as ‘SEO’ may account for around 10% of our site’s traffic; but around 80% of our traffic will come from other far more specific long tail queries such as ‘managing Google paid search campaigns’.

Submitting your site to a search engine manually rather than using a submission tool or service. In an ideal world you will not need to submit your site to search engines at all, as they should be able to find and crawl your site by following links from other sites.

Richard Dawkins originally coined the term ‘meme’ in his book the Selfish Gene to describe the viral nature of the spread of ideas and cultural phenomena. As with natural selection some memes will spread successfully and eventually mutate, whereas some will fail to spread and therefore become extinct. This term has also been used to describe the spread of content from one person to another online.

This is a tag which should contain a sentence or two (NB no more than 155 characters) which describes the content on a given web page.

See Also: Meta Tag

This tag can be used to highlight keywords and phrases that the page is targeting. However as many people spammed these tags in an endeavour to influence ranking, search engines lend little weight to this tag.

See Also: Meta Tag

Search results which are aggregated from various search engines – an example of which is myriadsearch.com

Many people group the following tags together and refer to them as meta tags -  meta description, meta keywords, page title.

See Also:  Meta Description, Meta Keywords, Page Title

The largely pointless practice of cramming tags full of keywords which are unrelated to a site’s content. Because of abuse of these tags in the past, most search engines give little or no weight to the contents of meta tags when determining rank.

The shiny thing in the bathroom which you use to check your look prior to heading out. Not to be confused with Mirror Site…

See Also: Mirror Site

A site which mirrors or duplicates the content of another site. This is a blackhat technique, however as search engines rarely index duplicate content now it rarely works, and you may face a penalty from the search engines if you are discovered employing this tactic.

See Also: Replica

Mod Rewrite is a tool which allows you to return a different URL from the one that was requested. One of it’s uses is to convert dynamic URLs into static looking HTML URLs in order to make them more memorable to users. mod_rewrite is also used for SEO purposes as Search Engines are not keen on dynamic URLs and they generally take longer to index them. An example of mod rewrite: A user may ask for http://www.gravytrain.com/marketing/ppc/, but will really be given http://www.gravytrain.com/index.php?subject=marketing&service=ppc by the server.  So the user will be viewing the content on the dynamic page http://www.gravytrain.com/index.php?subject=marketing&service=ppc, but the URL address in the browser will read http://www.gravytrain.com/marketing/ppc/

See Also: URL Rewrite

A mouseover is a GUI event that occurs when a user hovers their mouse over a particular area of the GUI. Mouseover events are commonly used in web browsers where the URL or hyperlink can be viewed in the status bar when users’ hover over the link on a webpage. Web designers can also create their own mouseover events using JavaScript and/or Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) – An example of a common application of the mouseover event is a tooltip.

A web browser, developed by the Mozilla Foundation. See http://www.mozilla-europe.org/en/

See Also: Firefox

Microsoft’s web portal which includes a search engine called Bing. See http://uk.msn.com/

A popular social network owned by News Corporation.

Refers to algorithms which attempt to understand the users intent (or true meaning) behind the search query which they have entered into the engine.

Sometimes known as ‘Organic Search Results’. Refers to the results which are provided via a search engine which are not paid for. Normally search engines will make a differentiation by putting any paid listings under a heading which reads ‘Sponsored Results’ or similar. Whereas a company will be charged when users click on their paid listings, when a user clicks through an natural listing the company is not charged.

See Also: Organic Search Results

This is the top level navigation in any given website. Ordinarily this will either sit at the top of the page, or down the left hand side.

In Paid Search you can add negative keywords to prevent your ads from displaying for certain searches. For example, if you sell bathrooms, you might consider using  as a negative keyword so that your ads do not show for searches for ‘how to build fitted wardrobes’.

See Also: Broad Match, Exact Match, Phrase Match,  Keyword Matching

An American computer services company best known for it’s web browser. It was once the dominant browser, but lost out to Internet Explorer.

The topic which a site is primarily focused on.

Nofollow is an attribute used to tell search engines not to pass any authority to the site which they are linking to. As search engine algorithms view links as ‘votes’ by nofollowing a link, sites effectively are not ‘voting’ or passing on any authority via this link. Nofollow is commonly used on user-generated content sites such as blog comments to discourage spamming.

An HTML tag used to display text contained within frames to browsers that do not handle frames.

A phrase coined by people who do not believe in spending time networking… ‘it’s not networking, it’s notworking’

As the phrase suggests, this refers to web content which is relevant to a particular theme or topic.

Open Source is a development methodology which offers developers access to the source code of the software product.

Sometimes known as ‘Natural Search Results’. Refers to the results which are provided via a search engine which are not paid for. Normally search engines will make a differentiation by putting any paid listings under a heading which reads ‘Sponsored Results’ or similar. Whereas a company will be charged when users click on their paid listings, when a user clicks through an organic listing the company is not charged.

See Also: Natural Search Results

A link from one website to another. Whilst some sites are unwilling to link out to other sites; outbound links can assist search engines in understanding what your site is about, and may make other sites more likely to link to you.

Originally branded as GoTo.com, they rebranded themselves as Overture Services Inc in Oct 2001. They were the first company to successfully provide paid search placement. They worked with MSN and Yahoo! and went on to acquire AltaVista and AllTheWeb. In 2003 Overture was purchased by Yahoo!

This tag should be used to describe the contents of the web page. Ideally it should be unique, descriptive and no more than 70 characters in length.

See Also: Meta Tag

Marketing metric which refers to the total number of times a page has been viewed over a given time frame. So 5 page views maybe 5 different visitors viewing a page once each, or one visitor returning to a page 5 times.

The dubious technique of stealing high ranking content from one site and placing it on to another with the aim of manipulating search engine results. This is a black hat technique and may result in receiving a penalty.

PageRank is an algorithm utilised by Google to access the importance of a web page.

Paid inclusion differs from a paid link in that the site has editorial control over whether or not they link to you. So effectively you pay for them to review your site, and if it passes editorial guidelines then you will be included, if your site does not, it will not be included. Yahoo! are perhaps best known for this.

See Also: Paid Links

The practice of purchasing links i.e. paying other to link to you, rather than acquiring links based on the merit of your content. The practice of buying and selling links is frowned upon by search engines as it undermines their algorithms which take into account the number of links a given site has in determining ranking. Google in particularly have been known to de-index where they believe links have been bought or sold.

See Also: Link Building

See Paid Search

Often referred to as sponsored listings, paid search is a method of advertising whereby you bid on relevant keywords / phrases which users type into search engines, which you would like your ads to appear. Paid ads within the search engine results pages appear above and to the right of the natural or organic results.

PPA goes one step further than PPC – rather than paying when someone clicks your ad, you only pay when someone goes on to complete a predefined action (or conversion) on your site.

See Also: Pay Per Click (PPC)

Traditional media pricing models were based on reach – e.g. offline this may be readers (in the case of newspapers or magazines) and online this was based on impressions or views of a given web page. PPC differs from this model in that you only pay when someone clicks on your ad rather than simply viewing it.

PDF – stands for Portable Document Format. It is a document format that was created by Adobe Systems in the early nineties to ease document exchange. PDF’s are independent of the application software, hardware, and operating system.

Search engines have been known to levy penalties or even go so far as to de-index sites which they believe are employing dubious tactics to manipulate their ranking in the search engine results.

See Also: Banned,  De-Listed

In SEM terms personalisation refers to the delivery of personalised search engine results based on a users location, previous search behaviour, etc

PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor) – PHP is a general-purpose server-side scripting language that is commonly used for web development. It has many other applications including client-side GUI application development and command line scripting. Benefits include that it is available free of charge and it can be deployed on most web servers.

Phrase match is one of the keyword matching options available on Google to target your ads to users’ search phrases. Phrase match keywords are entered between quotation marks, for example “football boots” – Your ads will appear for any searches containing the phrase “football boots”, with any additional words before or after the phrase in quotations.

See Also: Broad Match, Exact Match, Negative Match, Keyword Match

A web page (often an advert) which appears in a separate window behind the current active window. The ad can therefore only be seen when the active window is moved, closed or resized.

A web page (often an advert) which appears in a smaller window on top of the current active window.

A portal or web portal is a site which acts as an access point for various services and / or presents various information sources in a unified way. An example of a web portal is Yahoo! who offer a search engine, news, email, weather and a variety of other products and services all of which are accessible via their portal.

Quality Score is a metric applied by Google Adwords to assist ranking their paid search ads. See http://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=10215

The phrase which a user enters into a search engine.

See Also: Search Term

The number of people who might view a particular type of media e.g. a magazine, newspaper, TV ad, or online ad.

As the name suggests, reciprocal links are links placed on a site on the condition that the site which they are linking to, links back. Clearly within given niches there will be a degree of reciprocal links which occur naturally; however excessive reciprocal linking, particularly to low quality, unrelated sites may actually harm rankings.

Used to alert search engines that a page location has moved.

See Also: HTTP 301, HTTP 302

In online terms, where a visitor to a site came from, e.g. a search engine, another site, an affiliate etc

In the event that a site has been penalised by a search engine, they may make the necessary amendments to their site and then submit a reinclusion request. However it is worth noting that reinclusion is entirely at the discretion of the search engine.

A link that is relative to where it resides eg. /seo.php

See Absolute Link

Typically refers to low-quality advertising space which is deemed undesirable by advertisers.

An individual who visits a site more than once over a given period of time.

A site which replicates the content of another site. This is a blackhat technique, however as search engines rarely index duplicate content now it rarely works, and you may face a penalty from the search engines if you are discovered employing this tactic.

See Also: Mirror Site

In online terms this means managing the search engine results of search queries which directly relate to your brand e.g. your brand name, key product names, the names of the directors of the company etc. In reality it is unlikely that you will be able to prevent any / all negative reviews of your products or services from appearing in the results, however you wherever possible aim to open an dialogue with customers and try to resolve any queries.

See Also: Technorati

A calculation to determine the efficacy of activity. To calculate ROI divide the total cost of the campaign or project, by the total profit driven by this activity.

A Robot or bot is an agent sent out by a search engine to catalogue websites for indexing purposes.

See Also: Bot, Crawler, Spider, Web Crawler

A text file which tells search engines which can be used to control the actions of search engine spiders and/or deny access to specific files.

Stands for Really Simple Syndication. It allows sites to share and broadcast content with both other sites and their users.

Refers to online advertising which appears across the site rather than the units being sold on individual pages or areas of the site.

A web browser, developed by Apple. See http://www.apple.com/safari/

When a Google prevents your content from appearing in any search engine results pages.

Sites which take (or ’scrape’) their content exclusively from other sites.

A tool which users utilise to find relevant web pages on the internet which pertain to the query which they have entered.

See Also: Google, Index, MSN, Yahoo!

Also known as Search Marketing, SEM is a cover-all phrase for marketing via search engines. It encompasses SEO and Paid Search.

Stands for ’search engine optimisation / optimization’ and/or ’search engine optimiser / optimizer’ (if you are referring to an individual as an SEO).

The results page which is displayed by a search engine in response to the search query entered by the user.

See Search Engine Marketing

The phrase which a user enters into a search engine.

Refers to the relative popularity of a particular search term – e.g. ‘car insurance’ is a very popular search term; but ‘renault 5 car insurance’ will be less popular.

An online marketing metric. A session is when a user accesses a site and then either leaves of their own accord, or the session will expire after a period of inactivity.

See Also: Visit

A marketing metric which is calculated by dividing a specific company’s spend by the total spend in the sector to give a percentage.

A Marketing Metric which refers to the amount of spend you get from your customers versus their total spend. This can be difficult to calculate as you will not always know exactly how much your customers have to spend.

A sitemap is a representation of the structure of a website and should include all of the pages on a given domain. It’s typically used at the planning stage to assist in the design process, and when included on a live site acts as an alternative way to navigate for both search engine spiders and human users.

An industry standard sized banner with the following dimensions: 120 pixels (wide) x 600 pixel (high). The following other ad types also come under the Skyscraper banner – Wide Skyscraper 160 x 600 & Half Page 300 x 600.

A program which identifies which browser a visitor is using and serves them an appropriate version of the website. These scripts are also used to ascertain whether or not a user has flash, and therefore serve them an appropriate version of the site.

Social bookmarking allows users to organise, save and share bookmarks of web pages which they find interesting / useful / of value. Social Bookmarking sites include Delicious and Stumbleupon

See Also: Delicious, Stumbleupon

Websites specifically set up to encourage social interaction between members. Examples include Facebook, Bebo, Digg, Twitter, Plurk etc.

In techie speak spam refers to unsolicited or undesirable messages – these can come in many forms – examples include email spam, SMS (mobile phone message) spam, instant messenger spam, forum spam, comment spam etc.

Spamdexing is a blackhat method (or set of methods) used to manipulate the relevancy of a site indexed by a search engine. An example of a spamdexing technique is repeating certain phrases in order to dupe a search engine’s algorithm into thinking a particular page contains content or resources that are relevant to the repeated phrase.

See Also: Spam

Spamglish refers to the language commonly used on spammy sites – it’s often keyword rich, but to the point where the copy is meaningless to the reader. This phrase is also coined for spam emails which contain similarly nonsensical language.

See Also: Spam, Spamdexing

A verb – meaning to spam – e.g. send unsolicited electronic messages.

See Also: Spam

A spider is an agent sent out by a search engine to catalogue websites for indexing purposes.

See Also: Bot, Crawler, Robot, Web Crawler

Web pages which either intentionally or unintentionally cause a spider or bot to make an infinite number of requests – e.g. a calendar where there is always a link to the next day.

See Also: Bot, Crawler, Robot, Web Crawler

A splash page is a webpage that a user sees just before the homepage, almost like a pre-homepage. Splash pages have many uses, e.g. to advertise a particular product, to warn users of adult content, to direct a user to the appropriate website for their country or language etc

A catch all term for potentially harmful software which is installed on a user’s computer without their knowledge or consent. The function of spyware programs can vary, but include the collection of personal data, can cause changes in computer settings, redirect browsers to other sites which can result in infecting the computer with further viruses etc.

A term which refers to a website’s design being compliant with the World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) standards. See also Web Standards.

Static means unchanging; the opposite of dynamic. For example a Static URL will always lead to the same web page; whereas in sites where URLs are generated dynamically a given URL will not always lead to the same page; and may instead cause an error message to appear as the web page cannot be found.

Stemming is a process in which an algorithm reduces a word to its root or stem. For example a stemming algorithm will identify that the words “running”, “runner”, “runs”, all stem from the word “run”. Search engines use algorithms like this to identify a range of associated words related to a users search phrase.

A stop character is a character within a URL that tells a search engine that page being crawled is dynamic. Examples of stop characters are question marks or ampersands.

Stop words are commonly used words such as ‘the’. If they are included within a query, search engines will ignore them, as they are used too frequently to have any bearing on the relevancy of the results.

When media is streamed it allows the user to view and / or listen to a continuous audio and / or visual without the need to download a file. Streaming is a method whereby the data is sent in small packets which are instantly displayed to the end user.

Stumbleupon is a social bookmarking service which comprises of a web browser plug-in and an internet community which encourages it’s users to rate web pages.

See Also: Social Bookmarking

Refers to the process of submitting a website to a search engine for indexing.

Refers to web pages which rank lower (normally due to having low trust rank – this may be due to duplicate content, low levels of links etc) and are therefore placed in supplemental indices.

Web syndication is a means of sharing information on multiple websites. Web syndication usually refers to making web feeds available to provide a website with useful information. For example, The BBC website contains web feeds for different types of news broadcasts.

See Also: RSS

Marketing jargon for the desired person or group of people who you would like to see your marketing messages. Also referred to as Target Market

See target audience

Refers to the science of classification.

Monitors blogs in real time and offers search functionality. Very useful for Reputation Management. See www.technorati.com

A search engine founded in 2000, it was acquired by Ask Jeeves in 2001 and powered ask.com and other international Ask Jeeves sites. In 2006 Teoma was re-branded and redirected to ask.com

An advert which is comprised purely of text rather than images, video etc.

In the context of SEO, the theme of a web page is the primary focus of the keywords.

See Page Title

A token is an object which allows a user to  perform an operation or access a particular service. Tokens are often used to uniquely identify users and record their actions.

An add on for a web browser – examples include the Google Toolbar which includes a search box, pop up blocker etc

See Also: Google Toolbar

A notification that a site has been mentioned by another. These notifications are often included within blogging software.

Websites allow a plethora of tracking opportunities, and there are many tools (both free and paid for) which allow you to track the way in which users navigate your site and convert (if applicable).

A distinctive name, phrase, motto, slogan, logo, sound etc which identifies a product or service that has been registered by a given company. Trademark ownership grants the owner to prevent the competition from using similar wording, logos etc.

Offline – a good excuse for being late for work. Online – refers to the amount of visitors which your site receives.

See Google Traffic Estimator

Refers to search engine algorithms which place more weight on links given out from highly trusted web pages from trusted sources such as educational institutions, governments etc

A social networking site which allows friends / family / co-workers to communicate via short messages (140 character limit)

A blogging service from Six Apart Ltd, launched in 2003.

See Blackhat SEO

Marketing metric which refers to the number of unique visitors which visit your site over a given period of time – most commonly over a month

Blended search results incorporate many sources into the results pages of a search rather than simply web pages. The results may include: images, videos, maps, products, news and books. Google call this universal search.

See Also: Blended Search Results

Advertising jargon – as opposed to meaning everyone it refers to the total target market.

Stands for Uniform Resource Locator. A URL is a unique character string which represents the location of a web page or resource on the internet.

A technique to make URLs more descriptive and search engine friendly for indexing purposes.

See Also: Mod Rewrite

How user-friendly (or otherwise) a particular site or particular pages of a site are.

A precursor to the forums which we see online today, Usenet is a system which facilitates internet discussion. It was created in 1979 by tom Truscott and Jim Ellis.

Content which is generated by the users of a particular site, rather than by the site owners or employees.

Abbreviation for Unique Selling Proposition. Ideally every company should have a USP which should be reflected in all aspects of the business operation and communicated to consumers via marketing activity.

Whereas traditional search engines crawl and index the whole internet, vertical search engines instead focus on a specific topic. Frequently, companies who cater for this topic elect to advertise on these vertical search sites as although they cannot necessarily deliver the volume that a traditional search engine can, they are able to deliver a very focused audience. Vertical search sites are prevalent in the following industries – property, jobs, corporate purchasing etc

Refers to any form of advertising which propagates itself.

Refers to how well ranked a site is for particularly relevant search terms.

An online marketing metric. A visit is when a user accesses a site and then either leaves of their own accord, or the session will expire after a period of inactivity.

See Also: Session

Refers to the second generation of internet sites which allow users to interact with each other and the sites which they visit. Example Web 2.0 styles of site include Social Bookmarking Sites, Social Networks etc

See Also: Social Bookmarking, Social Networking

Software which allows users to surf the internet and view web sites.

See Also: Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Firefox, Safari

A web crawler is an agent sent out by a search engine to catalogue websites for indexing purposes.

See Aslo: Bot, Crawler, Robot, Spider,

Web Standards most commonly refers to the guidelines issued by the W3C regarding the  accessibility and usability of web sites. For further details see http://www.w3.org/

See Also: Web Standards

A weblog is (normally) regularly updated and allows it’s readers to interact with the blogger by leaving comments which will normally elicit a response from the writer. Readers can also elect to sign up to RSS feeds. Good blogs will attract links from their readers who find their content relevant / interesting, and / or readers may submit articles of interest to other social media sites such as Digg.

See Also: Blog

The opposite of Black Hat SEO – often called ethical SEO, this type of optimisation follows the guidelines from the search engines themselves and typically  focuses on creating quality content which will assist the site in ranking for key terms.

See Also: Black Hat SEO, Ethical SEO

A TCP based query used to determine the owner of a domain name.

A technology for creating collaborative websites.

A free, multilingual, open content encyclopaedia project operated by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its name is a blend of the words wiki (a technology for creating collaborative websites) and encyclopaedia. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

Wordpress is a free open-source publishing system for content which is frequently updated e.g. blogs. See http://wordpress.org

See Also: Blog

Wordtracker is a keyword generating tool. It utilises search terms collected from Dogpile and Metacrawler. See http://www.wordtracker.com

Xenu link sleuth is a free to download tool which checks sites for broken links. See http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html

Stands for Extensible mark up Language. Recommended by the World Wide Web Consortium, XML started as a subset of SGML (standard generalised mark-up language). It is used to facilitate the sharing of data via different information systems, particularly online.

Yahoo! Provides many services including a search engine, the Yahoo! Directory, a Web Portal, Yahoo! Mail, news, and posting. See http://www.yahoo.com

The Yahoo Directory was originally utilised for search until they switched to crawler-based listings for their results in 2002. It is widely acknowledged that search engine algorithms do place value on the Yahoo! Directory. See https://ecom.yahoo.com/dir/submit/intro

See Also: Directory, DMOZ, Link Building

A website where users can upload, view and share their video clips. http://www.youtube.com

A black and white striped equine