Some search industry terms you should know

All in-depth subjects have jargon and acronyms that insiders toss around without thinking twice about. The SEO community is no different. Here are some terms you should be familiar with.

Anchor Text: These are the words used in a text link. In this example link, "example link" is the anchor text. Sometimes used as a value in ranking web pages for relevance.

ASP: Application Service Provider. All template-based website companies are ASPs.

Backlink: A link from another web page to yours. Your number of backlinks is used by some search engines as a value to determine your page ranking for particular keywords. Also known as an Inbound Link.

Bot: Short for search engine robot. An automated software program used by search engines to visit and analyze your web pages. Also called a search engine spider.

Conversion: Converting a site visitor into a customer. The most effective way of determining your website's success is your conversion ratio.

CPC: Cost Per Click. Used in search engine and other online advertising programs to determine your ad rates.

CPM: Cost Per Thousand ad impressions or views. Used in banner or other online advertising. You pay a set sum per 1000 ads delivered to users.

Crawl: What search engine bots or spiders do – visiting web pages and collecting data about them.

CTR: Click Through Rate. Used as an online advertising measurement. The percentage of how many times an ad was clicked on versus how many times it was displayed.

Domain: Short for domain name. A website address, i.e. cnn.com.

Impressions: How many times your ad was delivered to a viewer. Used in on-line advertising.

Inbound Link: A link from another web page to yours. Some search engines use the number of pages that link to you to determine relevance.

Index: The search engine index is the complete collection of pages that they have visited and analyzed.

Indexing: What a search engine bot or spider does – visit and analyze your web pages for relevance. Synonym for crawl.

Keyword: A term or phrase used on a search engine to find the most relevant web pages. Usually not a single word.

Link Exchange: Agreeing with another website owner to cross promote your websites: I link to you, you link to me. Useful in building link popularity. Also called a Reciprocal Link.

Link Popularity: Literally, how many other web pages link to your pages. Used by some search engines as a value to determine page rankings. Also known as Link Pop.

Page Rank: Page Rank is Google's way of determining your web page's value. It is named after Larry Page, one of the founders of Google and is NOT your web page ranking in the search results.

SEM: Search Engine Marketing.

SEO: Search Engine Optimization.

Do you have more search industry terms that you know or have heard and don't understand? Send us a note and we will add your suggestion if it is useful.