SEM Glossary

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About.com A large directory. Formerly known as The Mining Company.

Acrobat Acrobat is part of a set of applications developed by Adobe to create and view PDF (Post-Script Document Format) files. It was developed because documents containing images and text often did not look the same when viewed on different computer systems. PDF documents look exactly the same regardless of what system they are viewed on.

Adwords Google's Pay-Per-Click advertising program.

Affiliate Marketing A way for websites to use one another to increase traffic and/or earn income. Amazon.com is probably the largest giant in the Affiliated Marketing arena. Website owners can sign on with Amazon as an affiliate. Amazon then generates a bit of code for the site owner to place on his/her site. If a visitor is directed to Amazon from the owners site and if that visitor buys an Amazon product, the site owner earns a commission. The more buyers, the more commission.

Algorithm Method used by search engines and directories to rank the content in their database. Each search engine and directory uses a different algorithm and frequently changes this formula to refresh their results data.

AltaVista.com One of the major Search Engines/Internet Portals. It was purchased by Overture.com in February, 2003.

ALT Tag or ALT Text The ALT Text or 'alternative text' is an attribute of the IMG tag (eg. <img src="image.jpg" alt="alternative text">. The ALT Text provides an alternate message to your viewers who cannot see your graphics. Without ALT Text, images on a web site are meaningless to these users. Search Engines also use ALT Text to index web pages.

Animated GIF A special graphics image file encoded with a series of images that are displayed in sequence like an electronic flip-book.

AOL Netfind America On Line's internet search engine.

AskJeeves.com A meta based search engine located at www.askjeeves.com. The special feature of this search engine is you can ask it English type questions such as, "What is the capital of New Jersey?"

ASP Active Server Pages--a server based scripting language used to provide dynamic content and build database driven web sites.

Audience The folks that would be interested in your particular market.

B2B Business to business-a site with the objective of selling to business rather than end users.

B2C Business to consumer-a site with the objective of selling to end users.

Bitmap Image (.bmp)A simple no-frills graphics file format primarily used on the Windows platform.

Blog an online log made up of frequent short postings arranged chronologically on a Web page.

Browser A computer program that allows you to navigate the portion of the internet known as the World Wide Web; examples are Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer.

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Cascading Style Sheets allow web developers to more easily control the look and feel of a website. The development of CSS its self was a big breakthrough and very quickly became an accepted standard.

Caching (Cache) Data which takes a long time to retrieve but may be viewed many times, such as images on web pages or results in a search, may be "Cached" or stored in a secondary memory for faster retrieval. Web browsers use a caching scheme so that pages load faster the second time you visit them.

Chat Room A virtual space in which participants can exchange messages online in real-time.

CGI Common Gateway Interface. A method used to provide web browsers access to software running on the server, such as shopping carts and databases.

Clean Code HTML code that is well formatted and doesn't have any extraneous characters in it. Clean code is necessary for efficient maintenance of a website. It also ensures that search engine spiders visiting your web pages will be able to see all of your content.

Client The 'user' end of a network or an Internet process; the Client sends a request to Server which performs the request and sends back a response.

Cloaking This is a general term used to describe methods by which different Web pages are displayed for different clients depending upon the information gathered about those clients. For instance, if it were detected that the client is a search engine spider, then cloaking could be used to display 'spider friendly' content to it while you're human clients are displayed 'human friendly' (normal) content. You could also use cloaking techniques to display different Web pages based on the visitor's language and browser preferences.

Code A generic term used to describe the markup of any programming language. There are a lot of different coding languages out there. For example Web pages are coded in HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language). Other popular languages used on the internet include Javascript, Java, Perl, PHP, SQL, ASP, and Cold Fusion.

Database Often abbreviated DB. A collection of information organized in such a way that a computer program can quickly select desired pieces of data. You can think of a database as an electronic filing system.

DNS (Domain Name System) Servers are located by IP Address, not Domain Name. So the Domain Name System is needed to translate between Domain Names and IP Addresses.

Download The transfer of data from a Server to a Client.

External Links HTML links on your Web site that lead to pages on other Web sites.

Form A tool for gathering user information. A form appears on a screen as a series of blank fields. The user fills in the fields with data such as her name, address, age, email address and message. Once the user clicks on the 'submit' or 'send' box the form travels electronically to the server's data processing application. Typically that is a CGI application.

Forms Certain Browsers support electronic fill-in forms. A form on a Web Page can be filled in by users all over the world, and the information sent electronically to the relevant domain site.

FTP File Transfer Protocol is a protocol that allows the transfer of files from one computer to another. FTP is also the verb used to describe the act of transferring files from one computer to another.

Hierarchical A system that is organized in the shape of a pyramid. In our case, the way we organize a website. The most important page goes on the top. That page links to the next level of sub-pages which link to sub-sub pages etc.

Host The Server computer where your Web site lives. When someone enters your domain name in the 'address box' the Domain Name Service resolves domain name and polls the the Host computer to display your site.

HTML Hypertext Markup Language. HTML is the authoring language used to create pages on the World Wide Web. It defines how a page will be layed out with a variety of tags and attributes.

HTML Editor A software program that helps create the HTML code. In the old days, all communications were done in plain text programs like Microsoft's Notepad. As with all programming, the coding had to be done exactly correct or it wouldn't display. Then along came the HTML editors. They make the exacting work much easier because they enter and check the code for the person doing the inputting.

HTTP The Hypertext Transfer Protocol is the set of rules for exchanging files (text, graphic images, sound, video, and other multimedia files) on the World Wide Web. Relative to the TCP/IP suite of protocols (which are the basis for information exchange on the Internet), HTTP is an application protocol.

Image Map An image that has different clickable areas linked to different pages. Search Engines often have a hard time spidering image maps if they use an external file as their source.

Indexing Web indexing (or "Internet indexing") includes back-of-book-style indexes to individual websites or an Intranet, and the creation of keyword metadata to provide a more useful vocabulary for Internet or onsite search engines. With the increase in the number of periodicals that have articles online, web indexing is also becoming important for periodical websites.

Internal Links The links on your site to other pages in your site.

Internet A worldwide system of computer networks - a network of networks in which users at any computer can, if they have permission, get information from any other computer (and sometimes talk directly to users at other computers). It was conceived by the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) of the U.S. government in 1969 and was first known as the ARPA Network. The original aim was to create a network that would allow users of a research computer at one university to be able to "talk to" research computers at other universities.
Today, the Internet is a public, cooperative, and self-sustaining facility accessible to hundreds of millions of people worldwide. Physically, the Internet uses a portion of the total resources of the currently existing public telecommunication networks. Technically, what distinguishes the Internet is its use of a set of protocols called TCP/IP (for Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol).

IP (or IP Address) Internet Protocol Address is an identifier for a device on a TCP/IP network.

Java A powerful platform-independent programming language i.e. it will run the same on any browser. Designers use java to create applets (small in files size, cross-platform compatible, and highly secure mini programs that make the page interactive.)

Javascript A scripting language used extensively by web designers. It integrates seamlessly with HTML and allows certain elements on the web page to be interactive. It shares some of the characteristics of Java but is less complex.

Keywords The words that best describe what people might put in the search box to find sites like yours. SEO's target keywords for sites by running multiple candidates through a variety of on- and off-line tools.

Intranet An Intranet is a private network that is contained within an enterprise, based on Internet technology. Typically, an Intranet includes connections through one or more gateway computers to the outside Internet. The main purpose of an Intranet is to share company information and computing resources among employees. An Intranet can also be used to facilitate working in groups and for teleconferences.

Keyword Phrases The keyword phrases that describe what folks might put in the search box to find sites like yours.

Keyword Density The measure of the percentage target keywords or keyword phrases appears in relation to the rest of the words on the page. Search Engines sometimes feel that if a keyword's density is too high then the page is spamming the Engine and therefore drop the page from their index.

Link Links (hypertext links, or short "hyperlinks") can be a word, phrase, image or image part, which is highlighted and clickable, and which moves to user to a different location.

Log File A website's server (host) has what is called a log file or server log for every site it hosts. This file contains a great deal of valuable information for a website marketer. It will tell you your number of unique visitors, what browser they use, what country they are from, what time they accessed your site etc.

Log File Analyzers Your log files are incredibly valuable but in raw form they are very difficult to analyze. Several companies on the web have created software that translates the data into neat pie charts and graphs.

Marketing Site Web pages that are designed to have certain keywords or keyword phrases receive high ranking in the Search Engines. This is one of the main objectives of SEO Companies.

Merchant Account Merchant accounts and processing gateways are Internet services that enable online processing of credit cards. Online merchant accounts are variations of the traditional credit card processing used by retail stores and phone order houses. A business must qualify for merchant account; each provider has a different set of requirements.

PageRank (Google) PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page's value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages important. Important, high-quality sites receive a higher PageRank, which Google remembers each time it conducts a search. Of course, important pages mean nothing to you if they don't match your query. So, Google combines PageRank with sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that are both important and relevant to your search. Google goes far beyond the number of times a term appears on a page and examines all aspects of the page's content (and the content of the pages linking to it) to determine if it's a good match for your query.

Program The thing you get at the door when you go to the Opera or an organized set of instructions that causes a computer to behave in a certain way. As the good people over at Webopedia say: A program is like a recipe. It contains a list of ingredients (called variables) and a list of directions (called statements) that tell the computer what to do with the variables. The variables can represent numeric data, text, or graphical images.

Ranking When a person puts a word and a phrase in a Search Engine's search box and hits the 'enter' key, a list of websites appears on the screen. The first site on the list is ranked #1, the 2nd is ranked #2 and so on. It is obvious that those with higher ranking receive the most traffic.

Response Form A response form is usually a page with questions and answer boxes on it. In order to make that form do anything other than sit on the page like all other HTML pages, the designer needs to make it so it is interactive. S/he does this by making it interactive with another scripting language like Javascript, CGI/Perl, PHP/mySQL etc.

Search Box That magic little blank box on all Search Engines and many web sites. The relationship between that box and how the Search Engine handles words entered into it is the #1 concern of most Search Engine Marketing Firms.

Search Engine A website that allows people to search for other websites. There are three kinds of Search Engines:

1. Crawler based--spider based method of adding websites to its index. An example is www.Google.com

2. Directories--the sites listed in directories are usually reviewed by human editors. An example is www.dmoz.org

3. Pay-per-click Search Engines--you pay a certain agreed upon amount for every person who actually clicks on your listing and travels to your site. An example is www.Overture.com.

SEO Search Engine Optimization- refers to a variety of techniques used to improve a web page's keyword or keyword phrase Search Engine ranking. The term also sometimes refers to an individual or firm who provides SEO services.

Site Map The site map is a web page within a web site that shows visitors a hierarchical (I love it...only on the net can you give a definition within a definition) view of the site. Search Engine Optimizers and Marketers use site maps for this reason and to help the spiders along the way as well.

Source Code. Go to the 'View' drop down menu on the top of this page, click 'Source' in Explorer, 'view source' in Netscape. The resulting page is the source code. Usually it is a combination of HTML and regular words. It is what tells your Internet Service Provider what and how to display your page.

Spider really isn't a spider at all. Rather it is software that travels automatically through web sites via links. They gather the text (note all website words are not text see

TCP/IP The combination of Transmission Control Protocol and Internet Protocol. The base protocols on which the Internet is founded.

Text As far as the Search Engines go, all text are words but not all words are text. One of the things many website designer do is to embed words into their images. The reason is because the Web only recognizes approximately 30 different fonts. So if a designer needs to use a particular font (say the company logo font) and it is not on the web-safe-font's list s/he can head over to a graphics program like PhotoShop and create an image, desired font and all. Be warned though, Search Engines can not see these words so they won't help with your keyword ranking.

Unique Selling Proposition (USP) A sentence or phrase that distinguishes your product or service from your competition's.

Upload The process of transferring information from a single computer to a server or host. When a design team finishes a website. They will upload all of the images, HTML, CGI, Javascript etc. from their computer to the website's host.

URL Universal Resource Locator. Example: http://www.1parkplace.com. Every resource needs an address so it can be found. That is it's URL.

Unique Visitor This is a measure from your web logs. It is the count of people (or computers) that enter you site in a given period of time. If someone visits your site in the morning and then again in the afternoon, the log files only count it as a single visit.

Vanity Site A site that acts much like an online brochure. It reflects the company's visual image exactly. Vanity sites do not have much of a chance of having high keyword ranking with the Search Engines. These sites can be designed in any HTML editor including FrontPage and Dreamweaver.

Website Architecture The way a site pages relate to one another. Think of it as the websites 'family tree'. It is the designer's goal to keep the architecture as clean and easy to follow as possible.