Glossary

301 Redirect

A form of redirection that sends users to a web page’s current address from a former address. 301 redirects let search engines maintain the page’s original rankings.

A/B Test

The act of testing visually different versions of web page or conversion form on users to determine which performs best for conversion rate optimization.

Algorithm

A computer program that allows search engines to rank and display web pages on SERPs based on SEO-related factors.

Alt Text

The HTML field that describes an image’s contents. Alt text aids search engines with no other means of discerning images, and lets visually-impaired users with screen readers know what the images display.

Analytics

A term that refers to collecting and analyzing data on user behavior, as well as the programs (e.g. Google Analytics) that make this analysis possible. Analytics is key to optimizing site design, marketing campaigns, and personas.

Anchor Text

The clickable text attached to a link. Anchor text should describe the linked page with keywords in order to benefit SEO, and change color upon clicking to benefit website design.

Authority

A form of credit that websites receive from search engines when other credited sites link to them, improving the linked site’s search ranking and authority in turn.

Synonyms: Trust

B2B

An acronym for “business-to-business”, an ecommerce transaction between professionals over extended buying cycles. It is typically more expensive than B2C.

B2C

An acronym for “business-to-consumer”, an ecommerce transaction between consumers and businesses over brief buying cycles. It is typically less expensive than B2B.

Backlink

A link from one website to another. Earning relevant backlinks to gain authority is an SEO strategy called link building.

Synonyms: Inbound Link

Black Hat SEO

A term for unethical SEO strategies that search engines (e.g. Google’s Webmaster Guidelines) penalize, as opposed to the allowed white hat SEO.

Blog

A website area in which contributors publish content related to a company’s priorities, usually through an open-source Content Management System. Blogs ideally improve SEO via keyword rankings and additional landing pages, and content marketing via the posts’ value to users. The term “blog” originated as an abbreviation of “weblog”.

Bot

(See: Crawler)

Branding

The establishment of a company’s identity through graphic design, user experience, and brand awareness outreach such as content marketing.

Breadcrumbs

A horizontal bar above site content allowing users to navigate the site and view their current position.

Call-To-Action

The part of a conversion form that encourages leads to take the desired action, usually after offering something valuable in return.

Canonical URL

An HTML element specifying the preferred URL for duplicate content that otherwise has multiple URLs. Search engines transfer the content’s rankings to the canonical URL whereas duplicate content otherwise ranks poorly.

Cloak

The black hat SEO strategy of displaying different content between users and crawlers. Search engines may ban sites from results pages for cloaking.

CMS

(See: Content Management System)

Competition

The contest between businesses over leads or keywords, sometimes used synonymously with “competitor”. Competitor behavior often factors into analytics.

Content Management System

Web-based programs such as WordPress that allow webmasters to publish content such as blogs and websites over an established foundation of code, requiring little HTML knowledge.

Synonyms: CMS

Content

The consumable information of a website (e.g. text, audio, video, images). On-page SEO operates on the content, and content marketing attracts leads through valuable content.

Content Marketing

The practice of marketing through compelling content on blogs and other official publications. Content marketing benefits brand awareness by offering valuable user experience to leads who may develop brand loyalty as a result. See our Content Marketing page for more information.

Conversion

A user’s completion of a measurable goal on a web page, such as sales, subscriptions, and downloads.

Conversion Rate

The percentage of conversions per visitor traffic. Dividing conversions by visitors and multiplying by 100 yields this percentage.

Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)

Improvement of a site’s conversion rate through strategic changes in website design and content. A/B tests, satisfaction surveys, and analytics benefit CRO by showing which versions of a website perform best. See our Conversion Rate Optimization page for more information.

Synonyms: CRO

Crawler

A program that indexes web pages and gathers information on them for search engines.

Synonyms: Bot, Spider

CSS

An acronym for “Cascading Style Sheets”, a form of code determining how HTML elements such as color and font appear on web pages.

Deep Linking

A link to pages other than the site’s home page, which strengthens link building by making these into landing pages.

Directory

A paid or unpaid registry of websites. Directories such as Yahoo! Directory and Dmoz categorize businesses and relay their contact information, improving their visibility in local search particularly.

Domain

A website’s main address, every web page branching off it. Long-running domains tend to rank well.

Duplicate Content

Content identical or very similar to content from other websites or web pages. Duplicate content tends to rank poorly, but a canonical URL can resolve this for one’s own duplicate content.

Ecommerce

Online buying or selling of products and services. Businesses based primarily on ecommerce, such as online retailers, benefit most from national SEO..

Editorial Link

(See: Natural Link)

Email Marketing

Any form of marketing that sends messages to leads through a list of their email addresses. Businesses often build this list from opt-in forms subject to conversion rate optimization, and often choose email marketing for its high ROI and potential to keep customers updated. See our Website Development page for more information.

Fold

Content displayed on a web page before users scroll down. Google’s Page Layout Algorithm penalizes pages with too many ads above the fold.

Geofencing

The new practice of establishing a virtual perimeter around a physical location. Digital marketers often use geofencing to trigger advertisements on visitors’ mobile technology. See our Conversion Rate Optimization page for more information.

Geotargeting

The increasingly common practice of delivering localized marketing content to leads through tracking of a target’s physical location via their smartphone location services. See our Conversion Rate Optimization page for more information.

Google

The internationally dominant search engine founded in 1998 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Google made crawlers and algorithms the norm for search engines, which previously relied on directories. Other search engines include Bing, Yahoo, Wolfram Alpha, and Duck Duck Go.

Heading

The internationally dominant search engine founded in 1998 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Google made crawlers and algorithms the norm for search engines, which previously relied on directories. Other search engines include Bing, Yahoo, Wolfram Alpha, and Duck Duck Go.