Database-driven || SEO Glossary: D

As in "database-driven web site." Means that the website is connected to a database and web page content is based in part on information extracted from those databases.

Counter | SEO Glossary: C

A simple program which tracks the total number of webpage impressions.

Cost Per Click (CPC) | SEO Glossary: C

The cost incurred or price paid for a clickthrough to your landing page.

Content Integration

Advertising woven into editorial content or placed in a special context on the page, typically appearing on portals and large destination sites. Also known as web advertorial or sponsored content.

Cloaking | SEO Glossary: C

Serving different content to search engine spiders than to human visitors. Cloaking is basically a "bait and switch" tactic, where the web server feeds visiting spiders content that is keyword-rich, thus fooling the search engine into placing that page higher in the search results. Yet when the visitor clicks on the link they are given different content, which may be totally unrelated. Search engines frown upon this practice and some will penalize or ban sites that they catch doing it.

Call To Action | SEO Glossary: C

Call to action words are "doing words" such as "Click here", "Buy Now", "Enter Now" or "Click to download"

and

A call to action is copy used in advertising to encourage a person to complete an action as defined by the advertiser.

Bulk submission services | SEO Glossary: B

An ASP that submits many URLs to the search engines on your behalf. For example: SubmitWolf. Search engines don't like these. (see "automated submitting")

Body copy | SEO Glossary: B

The 'meaty' textual content of a web page. Body copy refers to text visible to users, doesn't include graphical content, navigation, or information hidden in the HTML source code.

Blacklist | SEO Glossary: B

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.

Black Hat SEO | SEO Glossary: B

Black Hat SEO is sometimes called spamdexing (the opposite of White Hat SEO). Black Hat SEO can be any optimization tactics that cause a site to rank more highly than its content would otherwise justify or any changes made specifically for search engines that don�t improve the user�s experience of the site. In other words, Black Hat SEO is optimizations that are against search engine guidelines. If you step too far over the mark, your site may be penalized or even removed from the index.

For example, adding product reviews to e-commerce site is encouraged, because it adds useful content to the site. However, using bait-and-switch techniques to create a doorway page that hooks people querying for information on soccer, it then leads to information about health products will be unacceptable.

The following Black Hat SEO tactics 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
� Excessively cross-linking sites to increase link popularity
� Cloaking, delivering different pages depending on the IP address and/or agent who is requesting it
� Doorway / Gateway / Jump Pages
� Duplicate content taken from other sites
� Auto-generated content of no value to the end user
� Spamming forums or blogs
� Excessive outbound links to websites that use high risk techniques or spam

Bidding | SEO Glossary: B

Bidding means placing a bid price that you are willing to pay as an advertiser on a pay-per-click search engine. The highest bid for a given keyword achieves the top spot in the PPC search results. In Overture, the top three bids are "featured" on Overture's partners' sites, including AOL, Altavista, Infospace, and others. The minimum bid amount on Overture is 5 cents per click through.

Pay-per-click (PPC):- a pay-for-performance pricing model where advertising (such as banners or paid search engine listings) is priced based on number of click troughs rather than impressions or other criteria. Overture is an example of a search engine which charges advertisers on a pay-per-click basis.

Beyond The Banner | SEO Glossary: B

Any advertisement that is not a banner, such as an interstitial or a pop-up ad.

Beacon | SEO Glossary: B

A line of code placed in an ad or on a web page that helps track the visitor's actions, such as registrations or purchases. A web beacon is often invisible because it's only 1 x 1 pixel in size and has no color. Also known as web bug, 1 by 1 GIF, invisible GIF or tracker GIF. 

Banned | SEO Glossary: B

When a search engine blocks your site from appearing in its search results.

Back links | SEO Glossary: B

Back links are inbound links pointing to a web page.


Inbound links (IBL):- Links that point to your site from sites other than your own. Inbound links are an important asset that will improve your site's PageRank (PR).

ASP | SEO Glossary A

An acronym for Active Server Pages, a Microsoft-invented, proprietary programming language for building dynamic web sites. ASP is also an acronym for Application Service Provider, a hosted service available via the Internet.

API || SEO Glossary A

Abbreviation for Application Program Interface. An API is a set of routines, protocols and tools for building software applications; it determines how a service is invoked through the application.

Announcing | SEO Glossary A

Announcing == Submitting

submitting a web page address to a search engine in the hopes that it will index it. Submitting your pages using an automated tool (see "automated submitting"), submitting multiple pages of the same web site (see "deep submitting"), or submitting multiple times (see "resubmitting"), particularly if those pages are already indexed, are techniques typically frowned upon by search engines. It is suspected that some search engines apply a penalty factor to pages that were submitted versus those that the search engine spiders found on their own. Indeed, Inktomi was engaging in this practice before they discontinued accepting free submissions altogether.

Animated Ad | SEO Glossary A

An ad with movement, often an interactive Java applet or Shockwave or GIF89a file

Anchor text | SEO Glossary A

Anchor text is the actual text part of a link (usually underlined). Used by search engines as an important ranking factor. Google pays particular attention to the text used in a hyperlink and associates the keywords contained in the anchor text to the page being linked to. Also see "Google bombing.