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

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

See Aslo: Bot, Crawler, Robot, Spider,

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

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

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.

See Page Title

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

See Also: Bot, Crawler, Robot, Web Crawler

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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 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 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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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%.

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

See Also: Links

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

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)

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.

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

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.

Another term for Back Links

See Also: Back Links

See links

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

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

See Also: Black Hat SEO, White Hat SEO

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

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