39 Search Engine Glossary You Must Know As A Digital Marketer

There is a search engine glossary you must know if you are a digital marketer or if you manage the search engine marketing for your business or company. The goal of every Search Engine Marketing (SEM) or Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is to rank at the top in search engine results organically or via ads. Obtaining top rankings in the search engines is not an easy job, especially for some of the more competitive keywords.

It will take dozens, perhaps hundreds of hours of your time, and you will have to wait two or more months to begin to see any results whatsoever. However, the return on your invested time will be more than worth your efforts. The money you save by receiving traffic at no charge instead of paying per click to receive traffic will alone make your time well spent. The years of free prospects being sent your way without any further effort will just be icing on the cake – very valuable icing on the cake that is.

To make a search engine positioning campaign worthwhile, however, you must have the right information and must execute your plan properly. While there is quite a bit of information available on the Internet, much of it is outdated and no longer effective. The dynamic nature of the Internet means that search engine technology, spidering capabilities, ranking criteria, and strategic alliances are all changing rapidly.

Here is the search engine glossary:

1. Affiliate Program: Software that enables a business to pay affiliates a percentage or specific amount per sale. This is an effective way of obtaining incoming links.
2. Cost Per Click (CPC): Search engines that display results not by relevancy but by the amount advertisers are willing to pay to be listed on each search term.
3. Content Syndication: Either offering your content for use on other sites in exchange for a plug or link or using content from other sites with permission. This is a good strategy and an effective quid pro quo for both parties. One receives free publicity, and the other receives unique and quality articles for keyword optimisation without having to write each proprietarily. Offering your articles on other websites is a great way to build incoming links.
4. Crawler: Also known as Web Spider, it crawls your website for keywords and content to index on search engines.
5. Database: A collection of data in tables stored on a server. Generally, content within a database is not able to be indexed by search engines.
6. Domain Name: The top-level web address or Uniform Resource Locator (URL) that corresponds in the DNS records to the IP address where the site is hosted. Forbes.com is a domain name.
7. Dynamic Content: Content on a page from a database is called based on the query parameters. This content is generally not able to be indexed by search engines.
8. Frames: Multiple HTML sources (pages) that are displayed in the same page-view by a browser. The visitor will see a single page displayed that can contain top, bottom, left, right, and middle sections (the frames). Search engine spiders generally do not like frames.
9. File Transfer Protocol (FTP): The means through which web pages or web files developed by a programmer are uploaded to a server.
10. Image Maps: A single image is broken up into parts, or slices. These are often used for navigation. Different areas of a single image can be linked to different pages. Image maps are fine to use, as long as accompanying text links and ample body copy are included as well on all pages.
11. Incoming Link:– A link on another website that is to your website.
12. Indexing: The act of a search engine spider listing your site in its database so it will show up in search results.
13. HyperText Markup Language (HTML): A basic programming language used to create web pages. Optimising the HTML code on a page is essential for obtaining top search engine rankings.
14. Hyperlinks: Text or images that, when clicked on, take the visitor to another website or page within your site. These are most commonly known as simple links. The more websites that link to your website, the higher your search engine rankings.
15. JavaScript: A coding language used within browsers for various effects. Can cause a lower search engine ranking in some cases.
16. Keyword: A term for which you want your site to show up in the results when searched. Generally, you will want to compile a list of relevant and potential keywords and then optimise a page on your site for each.
17. Keyword Effectiveness Index: A term coined by the Wordtracker service that is a function of the competitiveness of a keyword and the number of searches for that keyword.
18. Keyword Frequency: The number of times your targeted keyword is in a specific area of your page, including the meta tags, heading tags, body tags, and alt-tags. Generally, you will want your keyword to be listed sometimes in each. As an approximate rule of thumb, use your keyword no more than three times per meta tag, four times in heading tags, twenty times in the body tag, and ten times in the alt-tag.
19. Keyword Prominence (Density): How close to the start of an area that your keyword appears. The closer to the beginning your targeted keyword appears, the higher the prominence; the higher the prominence, the better. Prominence applies to the words within the title, the body of the document, the meta tags, the heading tags, and the alt-tags.
20. Keyword Spamming: Using a keyword repeatedly out of context in an attempt to gain additional frequency and in turn obtain a better search engine ranking.
21. Meta Tags: The description and keyword tags with the <head> tag at the top of every web page. These are not as important as they once were, but it is still recommended to have them and insert your targeted keyword for that page within.
22. Links: Also known as Hyperlinks.
23. Link Popularity: The number of other web pages that link to your website. Search engines view links as votes of confidence, so the more links you can obtain, the better. You should avoid low-quality links from places such as Free For All (FFA) pages and link farms.
24. Link Reputation: This is the quality of the incoming links to your website. The more closely related and more trafficked sites you can obtain sites from, the better your link reputation and the higher your rankings.
25. Off-site optimisation: Optimising factors such as domain name, link popularity, and link reputation that cannot be changed through modifications in the HTML code.
26. On-site optimisation: Optimising by modifying page source code factors such as keyword frequency, keyword prominence, title, meta tags, body copy, alt-tags, navigation, etc.
27. Pay Per Click (PPC): Also known as Cost Per Click.
28. Ranking: The number that your website is listed for a specific search term in a specific search engine.
29. Ranking Algorithm: The proprietary mathematical formulas, variables, and set of weights that search engines use to determine a site’s ranking for a keyword search. Search engines guard these carefully.
30. Registrar: A company through which you can register domain names. For instance, gogetter.com, seospecialtools.com, pixietech.com, etc.
31. Search Engine: A utility that enables a user to quickly search the Internet to find websites on searched-for topics.
32. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO): The act of optimising a webpage and/or website to perform well in the search engines. There is a growing niche of consultants and firms that specialise in this.
33. Search Term: Also known as Keyword.
34. Site Map: A page on a website that lists and links to every other page on that website.
35. Source Code: The code of a web page that must be optimised for the search engines. You can view top-ranked websites’ source code to gain information on what they have done to obtain their top ranking.
36. Spider: A software robot that continuously crawls pages on the Internet and collects data that will be analysed using a ranking algorithm.
37. Static Content: Content on a website that is hardcoded onto the page and does not come from a database. Search engines have no problems indexing this content, unlike dynamic content.
38. Submission Service: A service that charges a fee to submit your site to the search engines for you. Using these will usually be unnecessary as it is free to submit to the search engines, and you only need to submit to five separate engines to be listed in every one of the top ten.
39. Wordtracker: A web-based service that enables you to research keywords for optimising your site.

Of course, there are more search engine glossaries and other digital marketing tools that digital marketers need to research and get used to if they want to become successful digital marketers.