Industry Glossary

Definition: An Internet marketing practice that connects businesses selling products online with websites related to those products. These websites are run by third parties who sell products and services for the Internet company and, in return, receive a small commission.

Also Known As: Associate programs

Definition: A link coming from another website to your own. The number and quality of backlinks that your site has can affect your search engine optimization efforts, as some search engines put significant weight on a site's backlinks.

If you're working on an SEO campaign, it's a good idea to have related, well-ranking sites link to yours. This “link love” will help improve your search engine ranking, as well. Try to avoid being linked on link farms (see “Bad Neighborhoods” below)—it can hurt your search engine results.

Also Known As: inbound links, incoming links, inward links

Definition: Any website that uses dirty or unethical tricks to try and increase their site's rankings or do harm to customers reading the site. These include:

These include:

• cloaking
• spamming
• installing viruses or malware
• link farms
• breaking other laws

Search engines will discipline or ban a site that fits any of these categories, and if you link to these sites, your site could be penalized, too.

How to Check if a Site is a Bad Neighborhood
Search Google for links to that site. If there are none, chances are the site has been banned. In the Google search engine, type: site: (URL of the site in question)

If no results are found, it's not a good idea to link to that site, as it is probably considered a bad neighborhood.

Also Known As: Link farms, spam sites

Definition: A computer program that allows a user to view and interact with Internet web pages.

Example: Internet Explorer 6, 7, & 8; Firefox, Safari, Opera, Netscape

Definition: A web server that is leased or owned outright. Dedicated servers provide you exclusive use of the web server resources for your business. In most cases, you'll have full control of the server, including root access and server administration. Some dedicated server plans provide administration consoles to manage the server, while others require you to use help desk employees to manage your web server. Make sure that you know what access your plan provides.

Also Known As: Dedicated hosting, managed colocation, managed hosting service

Definition: A small graphic associated with a page or website. It allows the web developer to customize the site in the browser, both in the tab bar displayed in many browsers and in the bookmarks, if the site is saved. Most favicons resemble a small rendition of the brand's logo. The name comes from Internet Explorer, where favicons were first developed—bookmarked sites are called "favorites" and these icons are displayed in the favorites menu.

Also Known As: Favorites Icon

Definition: The language used to write web pages; based on SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language) and recently rewritten to follow XML (Extensible Markup Language) guidelines.

Also Known As: Hypertext Markup Language

Definition: The set of rules used to exchange information on the web. When seen as part of a web address, it tells the user-agent what protocol to use to gather the data for display and use.

Also Known As: Hypertext Transfer Protocol

Definition: A protocol used by web servers to securely transfer and display content. The data transferred is encrypted so it can't be read by anyone except the recipient. HTTPS is used by any website that is collecting sensitive customer data, like banking or purchasing information. If you're making a transaction online, you should make sure that the site uses HTTPS to keep the data secure.

You can tell when a page is using HTTPS in two ways:

• A lock icon will appear in the browser window pane (usually at the bottom).
• The web address, or URL, will begin with "https://"

Also Known As: HyperText Transfer Protocol over SSL (Secure Socket Layer)

Definition: An image or portion of web text that is highlighted in some way (usually underlined or another color) and connects the current document to another. Hyperlinks are what make plain text into "hypertext."

Definition: In SEO, the phrase that the author attempts to target for search engines. Keywords should represent the main point of a page and are the words that someone would type into a search engine to find your page. Most of the time, you should focus on one keyword or keyword phrase per page.

Definition: Data about data; in other words, information about the web page that you are currently on. Metadata is usually most useful to scripts and programs (so, important in SEO) rather than to the customers reading the page. It's mostly descriptions and keywords that are stored in meta tags hidden in the HTML document. These are sometimes used by search engines to place the pages in the search directory, and are used to provide a short description of the web page in the search results.

Definition: Most search engines offer two types of search results to their customers: paid results (typically located at the top or on the side of the page) and natural results (generated by popularity and common usage). While paid results can improve your site's rank for a specific keyword phrase, most customers consider these results to be little more than advertising and will often skip over them in favor of the natural search results. When you do SEO, you're attempting to adjust the content of your web pages to rank well in the natural search results.

Also Known As: Organic search

Definition: A type of XML (Extensible Markup Language) that allows web producers to provide content from their website for publication on other websites. It allows a website's readers to stay informed about new info posted on the site. Information is collected in a standard format and is readable by many different types of RSS tools and readers. You might subscribe to the RSS feeds of your favorite news sites or blogs.

Also Known As: Really Simple Syndication, Rich Site Summary, Atom (not exactly a synonym, but rather another XML syndication language)

Definition: A web editor that allows you to work primarily with the layout and design of the page.

Also Known As: What You See Is What You Get