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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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/

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

See Also: HTTP 301, HTTP 302

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

See Absolute Link

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

See Also: Mod Rewrite

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 technology for creating collaborative websites.

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.