dgm university

Term

Definition

Hallway page

A page that serves as an index to a group of pages that you would like the search engine spiders to find. Once a search engine spider indexes the hallway page, it should also follow all the links on that hallway page and in turn index those pages as well.

Heading tag

An HTML tag that is often used to denote a page or section heading on a web page. Search engines pay special attention to text that is marked with a heading tag, as such text is set off from the rest of the page content as being more important.

Hidden keywords

Keywords that are placed in the HTML source in such a way that these words are not viewable by human visitors looking at the rendered web page.

Hits

A download of a file from a web server. Hits do not correlate with web page visits. Every graphic on a web page counts as a hit. Thus, a single access of a web page with 20 unique graphics on it register as 21 hits - 20 for the graphics and 1 for the HTML page. Web metrics guru Jim Sterne says hits "stand for How Idiots Track Success." People who talk in terms of hits are usually either ignorant or are trying to snow their boss into thinking the website is doing better than it really is.

HTML

Stands for HyperText Markup Language. The programming language used to mark up web content and display it in a formatted manner. It's up to the web browser software, e.g. Microsoft Internet Explorer or Netscape, to render HTML source

HTML source

The raw, unrendered programming code. It can be accessed in Internet Explorer by going to the "View" menu then selecting "Source".

Hyperlinks

see "links" 

Impression

The number of times your search ad is served to users by search engines.

Inbound links

Links that point to your site from sites other than your own. Inbound links are an important asset that will improve your site's PageRank

Index

A search engine's database in which it stores textual content from every web page that its spider visits. 

Inlinks

A synonym for back links. Popularized by Yahoo!

Invisible web

A term that refers to the vast amount of information on the web that is not indexed by the search engines. Coined in 1994 by Dr. Jill Ellsworth. 

Java Applets

Small programs written in the Java programming language that can be embedded into web pages. Applet programs run on the Internet user's computer rather than the web server's computer. Search engines can not run Java applets. Consequently, if navigation or content is embedded in a Java applet, it will be invisible to the search engines and will not get indexed. Java source code gets compiled into executable code called "bytecode." 

Java Scripts

Programs written in the JavaScript programming language. JavaScripts run on the Internet user's computer rather than the web server's computer. Search engines can not run JavaScripts

Key phrase

A search phrase made up of keywords. See "keyword.

Keyword

A word that a search engine user might use to find relevant web page(s). If a keyword doesn't appear anywhere in the text of your web page, it's highly unlikely your page will appear in the search results (unless of course you have bid on that keyword in a pay-per-click search engine). 

Keyword density

The number of occurrences that a given keyword appears on a web page. The more times that a given word appears on your page (within reason), the more weight that word is assigned by the search engine when that word matches a keyword search done by a search 

Keyword popularity

The number of occurrences of searches done by Internet users of a given keyword during a period of time. Both WordTracker.com and Overture's Keyword Selector Tool (http://inventory.overture.com) provide keyword popularity numbers.

Keyword prominence

The location (i.e. placement) of a given keyword in the HTML source code of a web page. The higher up in the page a particular word is, the more prominent it is and thus the more weight that word is assigned by the search engine when that word matches a keyword search done by a search engine user. Consequently, it's best to have your first paragraph be chock full of important keywords rather than superfluous marketingspeak. This concept also applies to the location of important keywords within individual HTML tags, such as heading tags, title tags, or hyperlink text. So get in the habit of starting off your title tags with a good keyword rather than "Welcome to." 

Keyword Research

Determining the words and phrases that people use to find something, then compiling them into a list for use on web pages, etc. 

Keyword stuffing

Placing excessive amounts of keywords into the page copy and the HTML in such a way that it detracts from the readability and usability of a given page for the purpose of boosting the page's rankings in the search engines. This includes hiding keywords on the page by making the text the same color as the background, hiding keywords in comment tags, overfilling alt tags with long strings of keywords, etc. Keyword stuffing is just another shady way of gaming the search engines and, as such, its use should be strongly discouraged.