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SEM/ SEO Glossary

H to N

Heading

As part of your HTML, the heading section should contain content rich text that includes your best keywords. The Heading is given primary consideration by many of the major search engines.

Hidden Text

When text on a web page is visible to search engine spiders but not visible to the searcher it is called hidden text. Text may be hidden by using the same color as the background, by using multiple TITLE tags or as a HTML comment. Many search engines consider this spamdexing and can detect it, so hidden text is not recommended. Search engines will either remove these pages from their database or lower where they are positioned.

Hit

The loading of an image or HTML page is referred to as a hit. It could take 25 hits to load one page if there were 24 images plus the HTML page. We do not use hits to determine visitor counts.

HTML

HyperText Markup Language is the language used to define and describe the page layout of each web page on the WWW (world wide web).

HTTP

HyperText Transfer Protocol is the (main) protocol used to communicate between web servers and web searchers.

Image Map

An image map is a set of hyperlinks attached to areas of an image and if included within the web page, the search engines should have no problem following the links. As an added precaution, be sure to provide text links as well for those users accessing the web with graphics switched off or using text only browsers.

Inbound Link

An inbound link is a hypertext link from an outside source that brings traffic to that page. Search engines like inbound links and use them to measure a page's popularity. Searches for the inbound links to a page can be made on Altavista, Infoseek and Hotbot.

Index

An index or searchable index refers to the database of web pages maintained by a search engine or directory. Index can also refer to the default or main page of a website.

Java

Is a computer programming language that allows programs to run on a number of different types of computers and/or operating systems.

JavaScript

JavaScript is a rather simple computer language that can be run or interpreted on a web browser's computer and is often used for small programming tasks within HTML web pages.

Keyword

A keyword (or keyword phrase) is the name used to describe the word or phrase a searcher is most likely to use to find relevant websites.

Keyword Density

This is the concentration percentage (compared to the overall word count) of the keyword or keyword phrase on a web page. Each search engine algorithm has its own "optimum" keyword density. The density can be obtained from the page body text, meta tags, alt tags, links and headings.

Keyword Domain Name

Sometimes the use of keywords within the URL of a website will help improve positioning on some search engines.

Keyword Phrase

See Keyword.

Link Popularity

See Page Popularity.

Listings

See Positioning .

Meta Search

This is a query that is submitted to more than one search engine or directory and displays results reported from all those sources. There is a Meta search engine at http://www.metasearch.com, which will conduct a search of searches.

Meta Search Engine

Examples of meta search engines include Ask Jeeves, Dogpile, Infind, Metacrawler, Metafind and Metasearch. They are servers that pass queries on to many search engines and/or directories and then summarize all the results for the searcher.

Meta Tag

As part of the HTML header of a web page, a Meta tag provides valuable information to the indexing spider (for the purpose of better indexing) that is not visible to web browsers. Content within the Meta tags, such as the TITLE, KEYWORD and DESCRIPTION Meta tags are highly regarded by many of the top search engines and may factor prominently in how your pages are ranked.

Mirror Sites

Mirror sites are duplicate copies of web sites or web pages. Found on different servers, often the mirror site will lead the visitor to the originating website.

Misspellings

Sometimes searchers will misspell keywords or keyword phrases when they query the search engines. Common misspellings are often used in alt tags, keywords, titles, and page names as an optimization strategy to attract these extra hits.

Multiple Domain Names

This is the practice of using additional domains to store content rich pages and mirror sites in order to increase the number of keyword listings or create additional themes.

Multiple Keyword Tags

Sometimes to increase relevancy, more than one Keyword Meta tag is used, but this is not recommended. Search engines consider this a spamming technique and it could hinder your efforts.

Multiple Titles

Most search engines can detect when the HTML title tag in the header section of a page is repeated for the purpose of improving search engine positioning, and it is not recommended.

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