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A Search Engine Optimization Glossary

Search engine optimization (SEO) techniques run the gamut from innocuous word changes to inethical or even illegal attempts to deceive web users. Some key terms in the SEO world. A sidebar to the feature story "Black Hat SEOs: Is This the Future of Search?"

PageRank (PR): Google's trademarked term for its weighted formula for determining a site's popularity. Under PR, not all links are created equal. Google differentiates a link from what it deems an important site (such as Nytimes.com) as being better than a link from Scottsnewsoftheday.com. PageRank scoring ranges from 0 to 10, 10 being the best. PageRank scores get exponentially harder to achieve the closer to 10 they are. For example, increasing your own homepage's PageRank from a 2 to 3 is easy with not a lot of additional links, and jumping from a 7 to an 8 is very difficult to achieve. The higher the PageRank of the page that's linking to you, the more your site's PageRank will benefit. The better your PageRank, the better you'll do in Google, all else being equal.

Pay-per-click (PPC): A pay-for-performance pricing model in which paid search listing or ads are priced based on number of clickthroughs rather than impressions (number of times it's served to user) or other criteria.

Robots.txt: Text file placed in a website's root directory and linked in the HTML code. An important file that dictates the actions of a search spider on the site. It can even deny a spider access to the site.

Search engine marketing/marketers (SEM): Using SEO and other techniques to generate ad revenue and referral fees from sites that rank high in the search engines, or the person who does that.

Search engine optimization/optimizers (SEO): Any tactic used to influence website rankings in search results, or the person who uses those tactics.

Spider: Also known as a robot or crawler. Programs used by a search engine to explore the Internet and collect information about webpages and store it in an index, which is then used for ranking pages in search results based on their relevance to the search. Having a site inspected is called "being spidered."

Visibility: The degree to which your website is optimized for relevant keyword searches.

White-hat SEO: SEO techniques that do not violate the search engine companies' terms of service.

Source: SEOGlossary.com, CSO Reporting