SEO Glossary

200 – OK The file request was successful. For example, a page or image was found and loaded properly in a browser.
301 - Moved Permanently A server response code, meaning “page has been permanently moved to x” A 301 redirect is commonly used to redirect sites or individual pages in cases where a domain or page name is changed and is usually the preferred method of redirection by search engines.
302 – Found A server response meaning, “Page has temporarily moved form this location”.
304 - Not Modified If the client has performed a conditional GET request and access is allowed, but the document has not been modified, the server SHOULD respond with this status code.
307 - Temporary Redirect The requested resource resides temporarily under a different URI. Since the redirection MAY be altered on occasion, the client SHOULD continue to use the Request-URI for future requests.
400 - Bad Request The request could not be understood by the server due to malformed syntax. The client SHOULD NOT repeat the request without modifications.
401 – Unauthorized The request requires user authentication. The response MUST include a WWW-Authenticate header field containing a challenge applicable to the requested resource.
403 – Forbidden he server understood the request, but is refusing to fulfill it. Authorization will not help and the request SHOULD NOT be repeated.
404 - Not found The server was unable to locate the URL.
410 - The requested resource is no longer available at the server and no forwarding address is known. This condition is expected to be considered permanent.
500 - Internal Server Error The server encountered an unexpected condition which prevented it from fulfilling the request.
501 - Not Implemented The server does not support the functionality required to fulfill the request. This is the appropriate response when the server does not recognize the request method and is not capable of supporting it for any resource.
Above the Fold - The part of a Web page that is visible once the page has loaded. It is normally the top part of a Web page. This term comes from the newspaper industry and refers to the top half of the front page, which is visible when the newspaper is folded in half.
Alexa ranking - Alexa is a famous search engine that provides extra information such as traffic rankings. An Alexa ranking is an indicator used to gauge site performance.
Algorithm - A set of mathematical equations or rules that a search engine uses to rank the content contained within its index in response to a particular search query.
ALT Image tag - Spiders cannot able to read images as such, so the alt tag or text attribute describes what the specific image represents.
Analytics - Technology that helps analyze the performance of a website or online marketing campaign.
Anchor Text - The visible text component of a hyperlink.
Associate - A synonym for “affiliate.”
Auto-Approve - An affiliate application approval process where all applicants are automatically approved for an affiliate program.
Auto-Responder - An email feature that automatically sends an email reply to anyone who sends it a message.
Banner Ad - An electronic billboard or ad in the form of a graphic image that comes in many sizes and resides on a Web page. Banner ad space is sold to advertisers to earn revenue for the website.
Benchmark Report - A report used to market where a website falls on a search engine’s results page for a list of key words. Subsequent search engine position reporters are compared to that.
Black hat - A person engaged in or tactic used to increase search engine rankings using methods prohibited by search engines.
Blog - A chronological journal that is available on the Web. Blogs are typically updated daily using software that allows people with little or no technical background to update and maintain the blog.
Blogosphere or Blogsphere - The current state of all information available on blogs and/or the subculture of those who create and use blogs.
Bot - Used in reference to a search engine robot or spider; software applications that retrieve web page information to feed into a search engine database.
Browser - A client software program such as Internet Explorer, Netscape or Opera that is used to look at various kinds of Internet resources.
Charge Back - An incomplete sales transaction (for example: merchandise is purchased and then returned) that results in an affiliate commission deduction.
Click and Bye - The process in which an affiliate loses a visitor to the merchant’s site once they click on a merchant’s banner or text link.
Click Fraud - The deceitful practice of posing as pay-per-click (PPC) traffic for the purpose of costing advertisers’ money or helping to generate false revenue by those affiliates serving the ads.
Click Through - The process of activating a link, usually on an online advertisement connecting to the advertiser’s website or landing page.
Click-Through Rate (CTR) - The percentage of those clicking on a link out of the total number who see the link. For example: if 20 people do a Web search and 10 of the 20 people all choose one particular link, that links has a 50 percent click-through rate.
Client - A software program that is used to contact and obtain data from a server software program on another computer, often across a great distance. Each client program is designed to work with one or more specific kinds of server programs and each server requires a specific kind of client. A Web browser is a specific kind of client.
Cloaking - A deceptive process that sends search engine spiders to alternative pages that are not seen by the end user. Also the process of getting a search engine to record content for a URL that is different from what the visitor sees. It is often done as a way to obtain more favorable search positions.
Co-branding - The situation where affiliates include their own logo and branding on the pages to which they send visitors through affiliate links.
Collaborative Commerce Networks - An organization of merchants and websites that work together as true business partners. Merchants give their affiliates the same support that manufacturers would give to their resellers.
Commission - The income an affiliate receives for generating a sale, lead or click-through to a merchant’s website. Sometimes it is called a “referral fee,” a “finder’s fee” or a “bounty.”
Context-centric - The process of matching your product or service offer closely to the visitors of an affiliate’s site. By placing the product or service in an area close to related or relevant item, more people will buy.
Contextual Link - The integration of affiliates links with related text.
Contextual Merchandising - The act of placing targeted products near relevant content.
Conversion Rate - The percentage of clicks that result in a commissionable activity such as a sale or lead.
Conversion Reporting - A measurement for tracking conversions and lead generation from search engines queries. It identifies the originating search engine, keywords, specific landing pages entered and the related conversion for each.
Cookies - Small files stored on the visitor’s computer that record information of interest to the merchant site. With affiliate programs, cookies have two primary functions: to keep track of what a customer purchases and to track which affiliate was responsible for generating the sale and is due a commission.
Cost Per Acquisition - Online advertising ROI model in which return is based solely on qualifying actions such as sales and registrations as measured against the marketing costs associated with that sale or registration.
Cost Per Action (CPA) - The cost metric for each time a commissionable action takes place.
Cost Per Click (CPC) - The cost metric for each click to an advertising link.
Cost Per Order (CPO) - The cost metric for each time an order is transacted.
Cost Per Thousand (CPM) - The cost metric for one thousand banner advertising impressions.
Crawl - The process by which search engine spiders fetch web page information.
Crawler - Component of a search engine that gathers listings by automatically trolling the Web and following inks to Web pages (also called a spider or robot or bot). It makes copies of the Web pages found and stores them in the search engine’s index.
CSS - Cascading Style Sheets. Used mainly to decrease the amount of source code on a page, by referencing a single set of instructions on how to display various elements on web page.
Customer Bounty - The merchant payment to an affiliate partner for every new customer that they direct to a merchant.