The internet uses many phrases and abbreviations, here are some explained

Jargon Buster

The web can be a confusing place - our jargon buster gives clear and concise definitions for commonly used terms in the web design industry.

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

A

Absolute Link: A link which shows the full URL of the page being linked at.
Accessibility: A general term used to describe the degree to which a system is usable by as many people as possible.
AdWords: Google's advertisement and link auction network. Most of Google's ads are keyword targeted and sold on a cost per click basis in an auction which factors in ad clickthrough rate as well as max bid.
AJAX: Asynchronous JavaScript and XML is a technique which allows a web page to request additional data from a server without requiring a new page to load. This makes websites appear faster and more responsive.
Alt Attribute: Blind people and most major search engines are not able to easily distinguish what is in an image. Using an image alt attribute allows you to help screen readers and search engines understand the function of an image by providing a text equivalent for the object. Sometimes referred to as 'alt tags'.
Analytics: Software which allows you to track your page views, user paths, and conversion statistics.

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Broken Link: A hyperlink which is not functioning. A link which does not lead to the desired location.
Browser: An application used to view the world wide web. The most popular browsers are Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, and Opera.

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Cache: A Copy of a web page stored by a search engine or browser.
CGI: Common Gateway Interface - interface software between a web server and other machines or software running on that server. Many cgi programs are used to add interactivity to a web site.
CMS: A Content Management System is an application that makes it easy to update and add information to a website. This allows anyone, without coding or website building experience, to edit their website, usually just using their browser. Please contact Redink if you are interested in adding a CMS to your website.
Cookie: Small data file written to your computer. Cookies are used to help websites customize your user experience.
CPC: Cost per click. Many search ads and contextually targeted ads are sold in auctions where the advertiser is charged a certain price per click. Example: Google AdWords - Google's pay per click ad program which allows you to buy search and contextual ads. Crawl Depth How deeply a website is crawled and indexed.
Crawl: Search Engines such as Google have a Bot which 'crawls' web pages - following links and recording content. This is how they maintain a searchable database of the internet.
Crawl Frequency: How frequently a website is crawled.
CSS: Cascading Style Sheets is a method for adding styles to a web page - controlling how a web page looks visually. Using a style sheet instead of inline formatting greatly speeds up the website and helps to make it more accessible and search engine friendly.

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Dedicated Server: Server which is limited to serving one website or a small collection of websites owned by a single person.
Description: In search engine results a short description near each listing is used to give the user more information about a website. Please see our Search Engine Optimisation section,
DMOZ: The Open Directory Project is the largest human edited directory of websites. DMOZ is owned by AOL, and is primarily ran by volunteer editors.
DNS: Domain Name Server or Domain Name System. an Internet service that translates domain names into IP addresses. Because domain names are alphabetic, they're easier to remember. The Internet however, is really based on IP addresses. Every time you use a domain name, therefore, a DNS service must translate the name into the corresponding IP address. For example, the domain name www.example.com might translate to 198.105.232.4.
Domain name: Domain names are used in URLs to identify particular Web pages. For example, our domain name is www.redink.uk.com. If you are interested in getting a domain name, please see our Hosting and Domain Names section.
Dreamweaver: A popular web development and editing software.
Dynamic Content: Content which changes over time or uses a dynamic language such as PHP to help render the page.
Dynamic Languages: Programming language such as PHP which build web pages on the fly upon request.

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Entry Page: The page which a user enters your site.
eFlyer: A common term for an email flyer. This can be sent in HTML or graphic format.
Evite: A common term for an email invitation. This can be sent in HTML or graphic format.
External Link: A link which references another domain.

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Favicon: A Favourites Icon is a small icon which appears next to URLs in a web browser.
Firefox: A popular standards-based web browser. Available for download free.
Flash: A vector graphics-based animation software which makes it easier to make websites look rich and interactive in nature. Search engines tend to struggle indexing and ranking flash websites because flash typically contains so little relevant content.
FTP: File Transfer Protocol is a protocol for transferring data between computers. Many content management systems include FTP capabilities.

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Google: The world's leading search engine.
Google Analytics: A service offered by Google which records information about visitors to your website and can be used to see how well your website is performing. We use this service to provide comprehensive reports on your website.
GoogleBot: Google's search engine spider. A spider is a program that automatically fetches web pages. Spiders are used to send pages to search engines.
Google Maps: Google's Map website. Contains detailed maps which you can add your business to, and integrate into your website. This can allow customers to get directions to your business.

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Hidden Text: SEO techniques used to show search engine spiders text that human visitors do not see. While some sites may get away with it for a while, generally the risk to reward ratio is inadequate for most legitimate sites to consider using hidden text.
Home Page: The main page on your website, which is largely responsible for helping develop your brand and setting up the navigational schemes that will be used to help users and search engines navigate your website. As far as Search Engine Optimisation goes, a home page is typically going to be one of the easier pages to rank for some of your more competitive terms, largely because it is easy to build links at a home page.
.htaccess: Apache directory-level configuration file which can be used to password protect or redirect files.
HTML: HyperText Markup Language is the language in which pages on the World Wide Web are created.
HTTP: HyperText Transfer Protocol is the means by which data is transferred from its residing location on a server to an active browser.

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Inbound Link: A link pointing to one website from another website. Most search engines allow you to see a sample of links pointing to a document by searching using the link: function.
Internal Link: A internal Link is from one page on a site to another page on the same site. It is preferential to use descriptive internal linking to make it easy for search engines to understand what your website is about.
Internet: The worldwide web - a network of computers connected via TCP/IP.
Internet Explorer: Microsoft's web browser.
IP Address: Internet Protocol Address. Every computer connected to the internet has an IP address.
ISP: Internet Service Providers are companies that provide access to the Internet.

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JavaScript: A client-side scripting language that can be embedded into HTML documents to add dynamic features. If not done correctly, using Javascript for navigation and content can damage your visibility in search engines. In AJAX, JavaScript has been combined with other technologies to make web pages even more interactive.

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Keyword: A word or phrase which people use to search the internet.
Keyword Density: In search engine optimisation (SEO) keyword density is the measurement in percentage of the number of times a particular keyword or phrase appears compared to the total number of words in a page.

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Link

A reference from one web document to another web document or another position in the same document. Most major search engines consider links as a vote of trust.

Link Building

The process of building high quality links with other websites. Link campaigns are a major piece of the jigsaw when it comes to getting your website listed successfully with search engines.

Link Popularity

The number of links pointing at a website. Link popularity is quite simply the total number of links your website has coming from other websites. The more links your website has the higher your link popularity and as a consequence your website will be looked upon more favourably by all major search engines.

Important things to remember:

Link popularity is not as simple as arranging links from hundreds of unrelated sites - this will NOT help you attain 1st page listings.
You must be linked to established websites that already have a good search engine listing.
The sites must have complimentary and related content to your own website - links from relevant sites are considered to be "more relevant" by search engines and will help to improve your rankings.

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Meta Description

The meta description tag is typically a sentence or two of content which describes the content of the page. This is sometimes used to describe the page in a Search Engine Results Page, and so can be very important.

Meta Keywords

The meta keywords tag is a tag which can be used to highlight keywords and keyword phrases which are relevant to the specific web page. Due to trust issues, most search engines ignore keywords and just take content from the website for ranking.

Meta Tags

People generally refer to meta descriptions and meta keywords as meta tags. Some people also group the page title in with these.

The page title is highly important.
The meta description tag is somewhat important.
The meta keywords tag is not that important.

Mirror Site

Site which mirrors (or duplicates) the contents of another website. Generally search engines prefer not to index duplicate content. Duplicate content can affect your page rank in search engine results.

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Navigation: A set of links designed to help website users move around your website, from page to page. Often appears on the left or top of a page.

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Opera: A fast standards based web browser. Opera is popular now for its mobile web browser and browser on the Nintendo DS and Wii.
Outbound Link: A link from one website pointing at another external website. Linking out to useful relevant related documents is an easy way to help search engines understand what your website is about.

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PageRank: PageRank is a numeric value that represents how important a page is on the web. PageRank is Google's way of deciding a page's importance. It matters because it is one of the factors that determines a page's ranking in the search results. It isn't the only factor that Google uses to rank pages, but it is an important one. Google figures that when one page links to another page, it is effectively casting a vote for the other page. The more votes that are cast for a page, the more important the page must be.
PHP: PHP Hypertext Preprocessor is an open source server side scripting language used to render web pages or add interactivity to them.
PDF: Portable Document Format is a universal file format developed by Adobe Systems that allows files to be stored and viewed in the original printer-friendly context. Redink use PDFs in many stages of our work, from design proofs to print production.
PPC: Pay Per Click ads only charge advertisers if a potential customer clicks on an ad. An example of this would be Google AdSense.

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Quality Link: Search engines count links votes of trust. Quality links count more than low quality links.

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Reciprocal Links: A reciprocal link is between two websites - the link goes both ways. Quality reciprocal link exchanges in and of themselves are not a bad thing, but most reciprocal link offers are of low quality.
Redirect: A method of alerting browsers and search engines that a page location moved. If done correctly, the user will not notice they are being redirected and a search engines will only index the resulting page.
Registrar: A company which allows you to register domain names.
Referrer: The source from which a website visitor came from.
Robots.txt: A file which sits in the root of a site and tells search engines which files not to crawl. Some search engines will still list your URLs as URL only listings even if you block them using a robots.txt file. Do not put files on a public server if you do not want search engines to index them!
RSS: Rich Site Summary or Real Simple Syndication is a method of syndicating information to a feed reader or other software which allows people to subscribe to a channel they are interested in.

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Safari: A popular standards based web browser made by Apple and included on all Macs, iPhones and iPod Touch. It is now available for PCs as well.
Search Engine: A tool or device used to find relevant information. Popular search engines include: Google and Yahoo.
SEO: Search engine optimisation is the art and science of publishing information and marketing it in a manner that helps search engines understand your information is relevant to relevant search queries. SEO consists largely of keyword research, SEO copy writing and link building.
Server: Computer used to host files and serve them to the web.
Site Map: Page which can be used to help give search engines a secondary route to navigate through your site.
Spam: Unsolicited email messages.
Spider: A program that automatically fetches Web pages. Spiders are used to send pages to search engines.
Spyware: Software programs which spy on web users, often used to collect consumer research and to behaviorally targeted ads.
SSI: Server Side Includes are a way to call portions of a page in from another page. SSI makes it easier to update websites.
Static Content: Content which does not change frequently.
Submission: Adding your Web site URL and details to search engines.

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Title

The title element is used to describe the contents of a document. The title is one of the most important aspects to doing SEO on a web page. Each page title should be:

Unique to that page: Not the same for every page of a site!
Descriptive: What important ideas does that page cover?
Not excessively long: Typically page titles should be kept to 8 to 10 words or less, with some of the most important words occurring near the beginning of the page title.

Page titles appear in search results.

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URI: Uniform Resource Identifier is the unique address of any web document.
URL: Uniform Resource Locator, a variation on URI.

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Virtual Domain: Website hosted on a virtual server.
Virtual Server: A server which allows multiple top level domains to be hosted from a single computer. Using a virtual server can save money for smaller applications, but dedicated hosting should be used for large commercial platforms. Redink offer shared and dedicated-virtual servers.

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Whois: Each domain has an owner on record. Ownership data is stored in the Whois record for that domain. Some domain registrars also allow you to hide the ownership data of your sites.
Wiki: A Wiki lets users create, edit and modify entire pages. While this sounds like a recipe for disaster, sites like Wikipedia.org prove that it's a powerful tool for generating large bodies of work quickly, with the added benefit of peer review to consistently improve it.

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XHTML: Extensible HyperText Markup Language is a class of specifications designed to move HTML to conform to XML formatting.
XML: Extensible Markup Language is a simple, very flexible text format derived from SGML, used to make it easy to syndicate or format information using technologies such as RSS.

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Yahoo!: A popular search engine.
YouTube: A video sharing site by Google. Can be used to integrate online video into your website.

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Zip: A process of compressing a file or number of files into one compact archive. A ZIP file will take up less storage making it ideal for archiving and backup as well as more efficient and quicker for a user to email or download.

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