Search Engine Optimisation Glossary

May 7th, 2008 Posted in SEO

For the lay reader the world of search engine optimisation can be confusing and befuddling. Those who work in the optimisation industry tend to bandy around terms that to the outsider can seem like a foreign language. Here is a brief glossary of the terminology used in the search engine optimisation industry most often.

Anchor Text

The anchor text is a phrase or word that is likely to be entered by searchers when using a search engine; it is also referred to as a search query. Naturally, the more popular the anchor text, the harder it is to undergo a process of optimisation for it; as it is harder to achieve high rankings for more competitive phrases.

Cloaking

Cloaking is a method of search engine optimisation that can be referred to as ‘black hat’. The process involves creating a site, or information on a web page that is different from what the human user will see. The cloaked pages are there purely to attract the search engine spiders and have little to do with the relevancy of the site.

Directories and DMOZ

A directory is a website that contains lists of links from all over the internet in a categorised database. Of these directories, DMOZ is the most widely used by the optimisation industry.

Ethical Search Engine Optimisation

This is optimisation that is sometimes described as ‘white hat’; it pursues a policy of optimising a site without the use of unscrupulous strategies. Some in the industry have termed this method as search engine compliance as it works within the rules of search engines to improve rankings.

Gateway Page

This type of page is another form of optimisation which is avoided by ethical operators. Put simply, it is a method that uses a page purely there to lead visitors to another page. The gateway page has no real value however and is subsequently frowned upon in the search engine optimisation industry.

Inbound Links

This is a commonly used form of optimisation that utilises links from other relevant websites to improve the popularity of a site. This will improve rankings in engines such as Google.

META Tags

These are the snippets of information that provide additional content and information on the content of a website.

On and Off Page Elements

Off page elements are factors such as inbound links and are outside of the control of a developer. On page elements are information such as the content and META tags that are under the direct control of the website developer.

Reciprocal Links

These are links that are created after liaison between two sites. They may be deemed as artificial but can act to increase traffic between the two sites involved.

Sitemaps and Spiders

A sitemap is just that, a map of a site that in a way resembles a tree; it gives the search engines easy access to all of the information included on a website. Spiders are the information retrievers of the web and act to search a site’s information to gain an idea of its relevancy and hence it’s ranking.

And finally; Unethical SEO

This, as discussed before is ‘black hat’ methods of optimisation that may in the short term improve a site’s ranking. However, in the long term they will seriously harm a website and can even lead it to being de-listed from the search engines.

While this is simply a brief glossary of some of the terminology used in the search engine optimisation industry, it has hopefully given the uneducated a better idea of the processes and methods used to optimise a website.