[A-B]      [C-H]      [I-K]      [L-M]      [N-P]      [Q-R]      [S]      [T-Z]

SEO Terms

Search engine: A search engine is a website that provides visitors the opportunity to search for web pages with specific content based on the keywords that they provide. A search engine regularly uses its spider to index content from websites so as to offer users a large and updated database. While search engine results bring up web pages which have the relevant keywords or keyword phrases, a directory only provides website addresses and descriptions as written by reviewers.

Search-engine marketing (SEM): Search engine marketing or SEM is essentially the strategies and tactics used to increase the number and quality of leads created by search engines.

Search engine optimization (SEO): SEO or search engine optimization is the process of improving web pages to get better rankings on search engines.

Search engine positioning (SEP): Search engine positioning is the strategies undertaken to increase a website's ranking on search engines for certain keywords.

Search term: A search term is the keyword or keyword phrase used by an Internet user to initiate a search on a search engine.

Search term popularity: A replica is a static HTML copy of a dynamic website or a set of web pages. It is also called 'mirror'.

Spamdexing: Spamdexing is the use of unethical tactics to gain high rankings on a search engine. This includes submission of doorway pages with spamglish.

Spamglish: is basically keyword rich gibberish used to gain high search engine rankings. Spamglish usually contains keywords written in a meaningless manner.

Spamming: Spamming with respect to search engines is the use of unethical actions and tactics to get high rankings on search engines. It is also known as spamdexing.

Spider: A spider is a search engine computer that searches websites for content or text, downloads it, removes what it considers unnecessary and indexes it. It is also called a robot, bot or crawler.

SEO tutor: A search engine optimization specialist who educates others on how to optimize their website in order to gain high rankings.

Spider trap: A spider trap is an endless loop, created by a dynamic website in which URLs are constantly changing, where a spider may get caught. If search engines indexed dynamic websites they would end up downloading unnecessary content and web pages.

Splash page: A splash page is a homepage with very little content and usually has something like "Enter Here" or "Choose Flash enabled site or HTML site" on the homepage. This is annoying for the Internet user as it involves one more step to getting to a web page that they want to visit. Also since search engines consider the homepage extremely important and a splash page can negatively affect a website's ranking on search result listings.

Stop character: Characters such as ampersand (&), equals sign (=), and question mark (?) suggest that the page is dynamic and search engines usually avoid such pages due to spider traps. Eliminating stop characters from your URL tremendously increases the chances of your web site being indexed by a search engine.

Stop word: Stop words include 'a', 'an', 'the', 'of' and 'with' and are ignored by search engines when they index a page. Thus if your title tag has too many stop words it will effect keyword density. Search engines often replace stop words with a marker in order to save space.

Submitting: is the process of submitting one's web address to search engines in the hope that the web pages will be indexed by it. Submitting may be done manually or by automated methods. Some search engines penalize web pages that have been submitted as compared to web pages found by a spider.

Supplement Pages: are pages that are indexed in Goggle but currently do not exist. However when searching for a related keyword phrase they are shown to provide the internet user more information about the search.

Standards compliant: Characters such as ampersand (&), equals sign (=), and question mark (?) suggest that the page is dynamic and search engines usually avoid such pages due to spider traps. Eliminating stop characters from your URL tremendously increases the chances of your web site being indexed by a search engine.

SEM: Acronym for search engine marketing.

Search engine algorithm: These are the operational programming rules that determine how a search engine indexes text or content and shows it to the Internet users.

Stemming: This is the practice of showing search results based on the keyword's root spelling.

SERP: Acronym for search engine results page.