| Meta tag | Meta tags are special tags placed between the head tags of your page and are used to store information about the page. The content in meta tags summarizes to the search engine what the content of the page will be about. |
| Outbound link | An outbound link is a link pointing to a different page then the one being viewed. One page's outbound link is another's inbound link. |
| PageRank | Page Rank, believed to be computed on a logrithmic scale, is number between 0 and 1 that Google uses to measure a pages importance. All things held equal, a page with higher PageRank will be positioned higher in organic search. The importance of a page, thus its PageRank, is based upon the number, relevancy, and importance of links pointing to it from other websites. |
| Pay-Per-Click / Paid Listing | A paid ad placed on a search engine or in a search directory where the cost of that ad is determined by the number of times the ad is clicked. |
| Pay-Per-Click Search Engine | A search engine that provides opportunities to pay for ad placement, typically in auction style where the highest bid receives the highest position. |
| Phrase Search | A keyword search made by a user containing more than one word |
| Robot | A software program that scours the Internet by following links gathering information about new and updated pages |
| ROI | Return on Investment - Calculated by ROI = [(Sales - Spend)/Spend)]*100 |
| R/S ratio | A supply and demand ratio for the relationship between the number of competitors vs. the number of searches performed for a particular keyword. |
| Scraping | In relationship to search, scraping is where content from one website is lifted verbatim for display on another website |
| SERP | A Search Engine Results Page is the results returned from a keyword search performed within any search engines. |
| S/R ratio | Search to Results Ratio is a ratio that is used to measure the supply and demand for a particular keyword or phrase. Found by dividing the number of results returned from a search for a keyword or phrase by the number of times a keyword or phrase is searched on |
| SEO / Search Engine Optimization | A mixture of art and science where efforts are made to improve placement in natural (organic) search results for a particular set of keywords and phrases. |
| Stop Word | Words that may be ignored by a search engine and viewed as taking up valuable space in title tags and meta tags - commonly used words like conjunctions and prepositions. |
| Unique Visitor | Measured within a specified time frame, the measure of unique visitors eliminates repeated visits from the same IP address within the time period specified. |
