Search Engine Optimization Terminology
Keyword
A word which forms (part of) a search engine query.
Open Directory Project
A directory project run by thousands of volunteer editors. In principal, this is a very exciting and powerful way to organise the web. In practice, there have been some problems with the behaviour of some of the editors, which has caused some initial difficulty for the organisers. Initially known as NewHoo, the project is now part of Netscape (and therefore of AOL).
Dead Link
An internet link which doesn't lead to a page or site, probably because the server is down or the page has moved or no longer exists. Most search engines have techniques for removing such pages from their listings automatically, but as the internet continues to increase in size, it becomes more and more difficult for a search engine to check all the pages in the index regularly. Reporting of dead links helps to keep the indexes clean and accurate, and this can usually be done by submitting the dead link to the search engine.
Back Link
A backlink is a link "back" to one of your pages. Preferably, it's placed on someone else's website and has clickable text ("anchor text") that contains keywords relevant to your web site.
URL
Universal Resource Locator. An address which can specify any internet resource uniquely. The beginning of the address indicates the type of resource - e.g. http: for web pages, ftp: for file transfers, telnet: for computer login sessions or mailto: for e-mail addresses.
Optimization
Changes made to a web page to improve the positioning of that page with one or more search engines. A means of helping potential customers or visitors to find a web site. Optimization may involve design/layout changes, new text for the title-tags, meta-tags, alt- attributes, headings, and changes to the first 200-250 words of the main text. A large image map at the top of a page should be moved further down the page. Frames should be avoided (unless navigational links are also provided within the frames).
Page Rank
Page Rank is Google's measure of the link popularity of a page. It depends upon various factors like number of page views, site popularity.
Politeness Window
Most spiders do not crawl the complete site in one go or session. They crawl some pages and return after a day or two to crawl a more and so on until they have indexed the entire site. This is a self-imposed discipline created so that server should not be overburdened. These gaps between sessions are collectively known as the politeness window.
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