Glossary

301 redirections can be configured through htaccess files or directly within the code. They are chiefly used to redirect users and search engines from old non-existing URLs to their corresponding new ones.

Alexa collects traffic information from internet users via their own Alexa Toolbar and other sources. The collected information is presented at alexa.com. Though Alexa figures are not always very precise, traffic is a considerably important variable used by search engines to determine a site's ranking.

Links usually consist of a URL and an anchor text. The anchor text is the text the user usually sees, while the URL is the link's internet address.

Links and their corresponding anchor texts are strongly considered by search engines when they create their indexes and determine a site's relevance in connection with a certain topic or keyword.

When you secure links for your site from other sources, make sure the link text used for that link is in tune with your link-building strategies.

Availability is a ranking criterion that is often underestimated by businesses. .To secure a good ranking, websites, must be available online at all times. If your website becomes unavailable for any reason or your web-server performs poorly, this will have a negative influence on your rankings.

A web project's success or failure is sometimes dependent on the provider one chooses at the word go!

Duplicate content is an issue that requires special attention. It refers to the availability of the same webpage content at different URLs that are indexed by search engines. Google, Bing, Yahoo & Co might penalize websites for the inappropriate handling of their duplicate content.

With more than 90% of the market share, Google nowadays is today’s market leader among search engines.

Search engines try to get an idea of a page’s structure. For this reason, they pay special attention to the headlines used in a web page, f first order headlines (<h1>) particularly. Thus, every web page should contain an appropriate headline reflecting the page's content.

Inbound links are those links on other websites that point to your website (as opposed to outbound links).

As related to the area of search engine optimization, keywords are those words and phrases that are most likely to be used by search engine users. An e-commerce site for office supplies, for example, could be optimized for the keyword "printer cartridges".

Linkjuice is the web page's capacity or “power” that can be transferred to all the links on a site. A link placed on the home page is usually more valuable than a link placed on one of the pages located deeper within the site structure.

Linkbuilding is an essential part of offpage search engine optimization. At the end of the day, for the most part it's the number, quality and relevance of inbound links that affects website rankings.

The nofollow attribute, when added to a link, tells the search engines not to follow the link and thus not to assign any linkjuice to that link.

Off-page search engine optimization refers to optimization tasks beyond a website, including areas such as link-building and inbound links.

On-page search engine optimization refers to a website's optimization that a search engine can index according to the chosen SEO strategy. The main focus here lies on aspects like navigation structure, internal links, headlines, titles, avoiding duplicate content, etc.

PageRank (PR) is a web page's evaluation according to Google. The least possible PR score is 0, the highest 10. Google representatives have repeatedly stated that PageRank will soon disappear from the Googletoolbar.

SERP stands for Search Engine Result Pages; it refers to the results that show up after executing a search in a search engine.

The title tag is one of the most important elements of on-page optimization. It refers to the HTML element called the <title>, which every web page should contain. This is where your most important keywords or location information should appear, if you want your webpage to show up among the appropriate SERPs.