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| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| .htaccess | Apache directory-level configuration file which can be used to password protect or redirect files. As a note of caution, make sure you copy your current .htaccess file before editing it, and do not edit it on a site that you can't afford to have go down unless you know what you are doing. |
| 200 | Status OK - The file request was successful. For example, a page or image was found and loaded properly in a browser. |
| 301 | Moved Permanently - The file has been moved permanently to a new location. This is the preferred method of redirecting for most pages or websites. If you are going to move an entire site to a new location you may want to test moving a file or folder first, and then if that ranks well you may want to proceed with moving the entire site. Depending on your site authority and crawl frequency it may take anywhere from a few days to a month or so for the 301 redirect to be picked up. |
| 302 | Found - The file has been found, but is temporarily located at another URI. Generally, as it relates to SEO, it is typically best to avoid using 302 redirects. Some search engines struggle with redirect handling. Due to poor processing of 302 redirects some search engines have allowed competing businesses to hijack the listings of competitors. |
| 404 | Not Found - The server was unable to locate the URL. Some content management systems send 404 status codes when documents do exist. Ensure files that exist do give a 200 status code and requests for files that do not exist give a 404 status code. You may also want to check with your host to see if you can set up a custom 404 error page which makes it easy for site visitors to: --> view your most popular and / or most relevant navigational options --> report navigational problems within your site Search engines request a robots.txt file to see what portions of your site they are allowed to crawl. Many browsers request a favicon.ico file when loading your site. While neither of these files are necessary, creating them will help keep your log files clean so you can focus on whatever other errors your site might have. |
| Above the Fold | A term traditionally used to describe the top portion of a newspaper. In email or web marketing it means the area of content viewable prior to scrolling. Some people also define above the fold as an ad location at the very top of the screen, but due to banner blindness typical ad locations do not perform as well as ads that are well integrated into content. If ads look like content they typically perform much better. |
| Absolute Link | A link which shows the full URL of the page being linked at. Some links only show relative link paths instead of having the entire reference URL within the a href tag. Due to canonicalization and hijacking related issues it is typically preferred to use absolute links over relative links. |
| Ad Slick | The final, camera-ready advertisement. It gets its name from the glossy paper on which it is printed. |
| AdCenter | Microsoft's cost per click ad network. While it has a few cool features (including dayparting and demographic based bidding) it is still quite nascent in nature compared to Google AdWords. Due to Microsoft's limited marketshare and program newness many terms are vastly underpriced and present a great arbitrage opportunity. |
| AdSense | Google's contextual advertising network. Publishers large and small may automatically publish relevant advertisements near their content and share the profits from those ad clicks with Google. AdSense offers a highly scalable automated ad revenue stream which will help some publishers establish a baseline for the value of their ad inventory. In many cases AdSense will be under priced, but that is the trade off for automating ad sales. |
| ADSL | Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line - A DSL line where the upload speed is different than the download speed. Usually the download speed is much greater. |
| AdWords | Google's advertisement and link auction network. Most of Google's ads are keyword targeted and sold on a cost per click basis in an auction which factors in ad clickthrough rate as well as max bid. Google is looking into expanding their ad network to include video ads, demographic targeting, affiliate ads, radio ads, and traditional print ads. AdWords is an increasingly complex marketplace. One could write a 300 page book just covering AdWords. Rather than doing that here I thought it would be useful to link to many relevant resources. |
| Affiliate Marketing | Affiliate marketing programs allows merchants to expand their market reach and mindshare by paying independent agents on a cost per action (CPA) basis. Affiliates only get paid if visitors complete an action. Most affiliates make next to nothing because they are not aggressive marketers, have no real focus, fall for wasting money on instant wealth programs that lead them to buying a bunch of unneeded garbage via other's affiliate links, and do not attempt to create any real value. Some power affiliates make hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars per year because they are heavily focused on automation and/or tap large traffic streams. Typically niche affiliate sites make more per unit effort than overtly broad ones because they are easier to focus (and thus have a higher conversion rate). Selling a conversion is typically harder than selling a click (like AdSense does, for instance). Search engines are increasingly looking to remove the noise low quality thin affiliate sites ad to the search results through the use of: >> algorithms which detect thin affiliate sites and duplicate content >> manual review >> implementation of landing page quality scores on their paid ads |
| Age | Some social networks or search systems may take site age, page age, user account age, and related historical data into account when determining how much to trust that person, website, or document. Some specialty search engines, like blog search engines, may also boost the relevancy of new documents. Fresh content which is also cited on many other channels (like related blogs) will temporarily rank better than you might expect because many of the other channels which cite the content will cite it off their home page or a well trusted high PageRank page. After those sites publish more content and the reference page falls into their archives those links are typically from pages which do not have as much link authority as their home pages. Some search engines may also try to classify sites to understand what type of sites they are, as in news sites or reference sites that do not need updated that often. They may also look at individual pages and try to classify them based on how frequently they change. |
| AJAX | Asynchronous JavaScript and XML - A technique which allows a web page to request additional data from a server without requiring a new page to load. |
| Algorithm | Also known as algo; a program used by search engines to determine what pages to suggest for a given search query. |
| Alias | A name that points to another name. Commonly used to identify an email account. Also used to make the original name easier to remember or to protect the site's identity. Most URLs are either wholly or partly aliases (to protect the underlying file system on the Web server they point at). |
| AllTheWeb | Search engine which was created by Fast, then bought by Overture, which was bought by Yahoo. Yahoo may use AllTheWeb as a test bed for new search technologies and features. |
| Alt Text | A description of a graphic, which usually isn’t displayed to the end user, unless the graphic is undeliverable, or a browser is used that doesn't display graphics. Alt text is important because search engines can't tell one picture from another. Alt text is the one place where it is acceptable for the spider to get different content than the human user, but only because the alt text is accessible to the user, and when properly used is an accurate description of the associated picture. Special web browsers for visually challenged people rely on the alt text to make the content of graphics accessible to the users. |
| Analytics | Software which allows you to track your page views, user paths, and conversion statistics based upon interpreting your log files or through including a JavaScript tracking code on your site. Marketers who track user action will have a distinct advantage over those who do not. |
| Anchor Text | The text that a user would click on to follow any text hyperlink. If the link is an image the image alt attribute may act in the place of anchor text. Search engines assume that your page is authoritative for the words that people include in links pointing at your site. When links occur naturally they typically have a wide array of anchor text combinations. Too much similar anchor text may be a considered a sign of manipulation, and thus discounted or filtered. Make sure when you are building links that you control that you try to mix up your anchor text. It is also important to include your keywords in anchor text used to link to your sites internal pages. |
| Apache | An HTTP server software that is commonly used online. This is a free web server that has been instrumental in the growth of the Internet. It continues to be the basis for the design of many new web servers. |
| API | Application Program Interface - A series of conventions or routines used to access software functions. Most major search products have an API program. Commonly used to create web mashups and other programs that are built through sharing or collaborating of information. |
| Applet | An embedded client-side program on a website. Usually written in Java to be included in an HTML page. They are normally used for creating a virtual object that may move or interact with the site. An applet is like a small piece of executable code that needs a full application to run it. |
| Application Server | A server software that manages other software packages, enabling them to be accessed by a web server. |