SEO Glossary – A

Absolute Link
<a href=”http://www.netconcepts.com”>www.netconcepts.com</a>
The above is an example of an Absolute Link.
It specifies a
– transfer protocol
– domain name
– and often a file name

A/B Test
A/B Test it the practice of creating two documents or sites that are nearly the same for the purpose of determining which design or copy variation produces the better result. Often used in PPC marketing, occasionally used in organic SEO.

Accessibility
Accessibility is the practice of making websites usable by disabled people – especially blind people.

Because search engines are essentially blind (ie they can’t see pictures or use Flash) accessible websites tend to have better search engine rankings than inaccessible websites.

AdSense
Google AdSense is a fast and easy way for website publishers of all sizes to display relevant Google ads on their website’s content pages and earn money. Because the ads are related to what your visitors are looking for on your site (or matched to the characteristics and interests of the visitors your content attracts) you’ll finally have a way to both monetize and enhance your content pages.

It’s also a way for website publishers to provide Google web and site search to their visitors, and to earn money by displaying Google ads on the search results pages.

Adwords
Google’s CPC (Cost Per Click) based text advertising. AdWords takes clickthrough rate into consideration in addition to advertiser’s bid to determine the ad’s relative position within the paid search results. Google applies such a weighting factor in order to feature those paid search results that more popular and thus presumably more relevant and useful. Google has also started taking into account the quality of the landing page and applying a quality score to the landing pages.

Agent Name
Agent Name is the name of the Crawler/spider that is currently visiting a page. Spider is a robot sent out by search engines to catalogue websites on the internet. When a spider indexes a particular website, this is known as ‘being spidered’.

AJAX
Asynchronous JavaScript And XML
AJAX allows you to create a more user-friendly web application by working behind the scenes (inside a web browser) by making web pages feel more responsive.

In short, it allows JavaScript scripts to send data requests and receive responses without having to reload the entire page.

Algorithm
An algorithm is a set of finite, ordered steps for solving a mathematical problem. Each Search Engine uses a proprietary algorithm set to calculate the relevance of its indexed web pages to your particular Query. The result of this process is a list of sites ranked in the order that the search engine deemed most relevant. Search engine algorithms are closely guarded in order to prevent exploitation of algorithmic results. Search algorithms are also changed frequently to incorporate new data and improve relevancy.

Algorithmic Results
Algorithmic results are the ranked listings search engines provide in response to a Query. They are often referred to as Organic Listings in contrast to Paid Listings because their rank is based on relevancy rather than advertising revenue paid to the search engine. However, paid listings do appear alongside algorithmic results in many search engines, provided they are relevant. Improving a website’s unpaid algorithmic results is known as Natural Search Engine Optimization.

Alt Tags
Alt tags is an alternate text associated with a web page graphic that gets displayed when the Internet user hovers the mouse over the graphic. Alt tags should convey what the graphic is for or about and contain good relevant keywords. Alt tags also make web pages more accessible to the disabled. For example, a vision-impaired user may have a web browser that reads aloud the text and alt tags on a page. (For those familiar with HTML, “alt” isn’t actually a tag by itself but an attribute to the “img” tag.). Note that the value of Alt tags for SEO have been discounted over time by the search engines to the point that now it is of minimal value.

Analytics
Analytics refers to all the technology, programming, and data used in Search Engine Marketing to analyze a website’s performance or the success of an Internet marketing campaign.

Anchor Text
Also known as link text, anchor text is the visible, clickable text between the HTML anchor and tags. Clicking on anchor text activates a Hyperlink to another web site. Anchor text is very important in Search Engine Optimization because search engine algorithms consider the Hyperlink keywords as relevant to the Landing Page.

API
Abbreviation for Application Program Interface. An API is a set of routines, protocols and tools for building software applications; it determines how a service is invoked through the application.

ASP
An acronym for Active Server Pages, a Microsoft-invented, proprietary programming language for building dynamic web sites. ASP is also an acronym for Application Service Provider, a hosted service available via the Internet.

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