By: Master Web Creations
3/3/2006

Domain : Website Address, i.e., masterwebcreations.com... more

Host : The host is the company that stores the data for a domain...more

Registration : To obtain a domain, it must be purchased from a Registrar, like Network Solutions. The person who purchases the domain is the registrant and owner of that domain name.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) : Designing (or re-designing) a website to work better with search engines, based on what you speculate your target audience to type into search engines to find your website...more

Keywords : a word or group of words that someone types into search engines when looking for something.

Alt Text : The HTML tag that defines a short description of an image. This tag is there for people who turn off the display of images on others web pages through their web browser, use a text-only web browser, or have software installed for their web browser to read the web page to them, including the description of an image...more

Meta Tags : The HTML tags that are designed for search engines to use. Massive misuse of the meta tag "keywords" has led some search engines, like Google, to disregard that particular meta tag. Other meta tags include "description", which is what search engines display that describe the web page in the search listing, and "title", which is what search engines display as the link to page, appears at the top of the web browser window, and names the web page...more

Relevance : the keywords you choose to optimize your website for must be applicable to your target audience, not everyone in the world who types something that relates to your website.

Prominence : the keywords you choose to optimize your website for should be very near the top of the page, for example, in the site title, in the heading of your page, and in the first sentence.

Frequency : the keywords you choose to optimize your website for should be found in more than one place on your page, for example, in the site title, the page heading, page description, in a subheading, in the first sentence of the first paragraph for that page or for the applicable subheading, in the navigation, and perhaps one more time, as a link to more information for good measure. The delicate part of keyword frequency is to take care not to repeat a word in any way that does not make sense to the user. Remember that you are designing your website for a purpose, whatever that may be, and you are not designing your website solely for search engine rankings.

Proximity : they keywords contained in your page must not be too close to each other. Search engines find that the closer keywords are together on a page, the less desirable that page is due to poor design.

Density : the measure of keyword frequency in relation to the amount of total content on the page...more

Link Popularity : the more websites that link to your site, the higher your site will be ranked, provided that the links are relevant and valuable and don't contain very long lists of very similar links.

Pay Per Click (PPC) : Also known as Cost per Click, this is a form of advertising through a search engine, in which the website owner purchases an advertisement listed next to search results for chosen keywords and is charged each time someone clicks on the ad. The most popular PPC service is Google AdWords, but is also offered through Yahoo! and is in the testing phase at MSN...more

Algorithm : a term common with computer programming languages, but in this case, the search engine algorithm is what determines the rank your website falls under in search engine results. The search engine's programs are very frequently updated in an attempt to provide the most relevant results to your search.

Spider : Also know as a web crawler, primarily referred to as the search engine's program that makes a copy of all pages found at a URL, through the links on the default page and subsequent pages...more

Usability : A method in which an application (or website) is created for maximum effectiveness for the end-user and smooth human-computer interaction for finding transferring data. Based on Jakob Nielsen's "movement for fast and cheap improvements of user interfaces", who is also the inventor of several usability methods. See also usability.gov...more