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Authority – Adjective. A document (page) pointed to by several hubs (experts). An authority page is assumed to have a lot of content relevant to a primary topic.

Blog – Noun. A Web site or portion of a Web site devoted to “Web logging” or “Web journaling”. Blogs are typically used to create content and place links for search results management (q.v.).

Body Links – Noun phrase. Hypertext links placed within the main content of a Web page.

Churn – Noun. The process by which a search engine regularly or occasionally changes listings in its results due to content or algorithmic factors. Churn is normal for most queries.

Conversion – Noun. A conversion is any desired action that is taken as a result of visiting a Web page. Conversions are used in many Web marketing metrics. Conversions fall into three categories: Informational Conversions (q.v.), Transformational Conversions (q.v.), and Transactional Conversions (q.v.).

Content-rich doorway – Noun phrase. A doorway page dressed up with graphics, navigation, and linked to from a site map so that it looks like a normal part of a Web site. The copy is written to rank for a single keyword expression.

Crawl Page – Noun phrase. A document consisting of links to other pages, provided for the sole purpose of giving crawlers (robots) links to follow. Spammers used to submit these puppies to the search engines en masse. Maybe they still do.

Doorway – Noun. A document with a small amount of text (usually coherent but sometimes gibberish) intended to rank well specifically for one targeted expression. In the old days, people created as many doorways as they had targeted keywords and search engines to work with.

Expert (page or document) – Adjective. In Jon Kleinberg’s HITS algorithm (as well as the CLEVER, ExpertRank, and Edison algorithms) an expert is a document about a specific topic for which hubs exist, such that the expert document is pointed to by many hubs. Cf. Hub.

Frogblog – Noun. Technically, other people coined the expression for blogs devoted to all things French. But I adopted the term to refer to a network of blogs that a spammer (or really active blogger) hops around, posting brief (often useless drivel) entries for the sake of being active. Frogblogs usually have a lot of Javascript ads in the margins. All six margins.

Gizmo – Noun. Now often called “widgets” (by mistake, I think, as “widgets” tend to be more under-the-hood type things), gizmos were useful mini-apps or functions used to spiff up otherwise boring pages. Hit counters are gizmos. Event countdown calendars are gizmos. Any Javascript whizbang plug-in for a page is a gizmo.

Hallway – Adjective/Noun. A crawl page that only links to doorway pages. Usually called “hallway page”, sometimes shortened to “hallway”.

Hub – Noun. A document that links out to many other documents devoted to a single topic. Think of any category page in a major directory like Yahoo! or DMOZ. All the documents linked to are assumed to be authorities (sort of a circular logic). In Jon Kleinberg’s HITS algorithm (as well as the CLEVER, ExpertRank, and Edison algorithms) a hub is a document about a specific topic that links to many experts in the topic. Cf. Expert.

Informational Conversion – Noun phrase. An informational conversion occurs when a visitor finds the precise information he is seeking on a Web page.

Landing Page – Noun phrase. A content-rich doorway most often used to receive PPC traffic. Copy is written for the visitor, not the search engine, making a sales pitch (usually — I’ve seen a few that meandered pointlessly with fake testimonials).

Link Baiting – Noun phrase. The practice of creating attention-grabbing headlines and seeding links to articles on social media sites for the purpose of generating thousands of links on blogs, forums, and other sites in a very brief period of time. It is assumed that the content is link-worthy, but this is a subjective point.

Link Building – Noun phrase. The process of acquiring links for a Web document through creation, request, reciprocation, or lease/purchase, or distribution of copy through automated services.

Link Farm – Noun phrase. Any group of Web sites where every member site in the group links to every other member site in the group.

Link Flow – Noun phrase. An expression used by many people to describe PageRank. In SEO Theory, link flow is the link pathway users and search engines may use to get from one page to another.

Mashup – Noun. A page made up from gizmos (or mostly from gizmos). The gizmos could be RSS feeds, Javascript feeds, etc. Any content pushed by free content distribution sites. Google maps is a great gizmo.

MFA – Acronym. Made For Advertising (page). A broad class of pages, in my opinion, as some of them actually have sensible content (like cheap directories, article abstract pages, article reprint pages, press release reprints, etc.). The real purpose of the pages, of course, is to draw traffic in the hope people will click on the Javascript ads from Yahoo!, Google, or whomever.

Mushblog – Noun. An automated blog consisting entirely of randomly generated content, usually in the form of ellipsis (…) impregnated text fragments intended to look like fair use citations. Mushblogs host Javascript ads from Yahoo! and Google. No human fingers touch those posts. Some really cool Mushblogs actually have trails of autogenerated comments (which is the only cool thing about them, in my opinion) on some of the posts.

Navigational links – Noun phrase. The (usually uniformly used) internal links a Web site uses to provide visitors with clear pathways between pages.

Query Space – Noun phrase. The collection of all queries and their relevant results for a set of related search expressions.

Search Engine Optimization – Noun phrase. The practice of designing, modifying, and/or supplementing Web documents to rank well in search engines. Now mostly superceded by link building (q.v.) and/or link baiting (q.v.).

Search Listing – Noun phrase. The information provided by a search engine about a specific Web document in response to a query as part of a search result (q.v.). A typical search listing may include a page title, descriptive text (called a “snippet”), page name/URL, cache information, and other supplemental/incidental information.

Search Result – Noun phrase. The search listings (q.v.) provided by a search engine in response to a query.

Search Results Management – Noun phrase. The concept of managing multiple listings within a single search result. Search Results Management is instrumental to the search reputation management (q.v.) process.

Search Visibility – Noun phrase. The extent to which a Web site can be found in search engine results across all queries. A Web page has limited search visibility, whereas a Web site has full search visibility.

SEO – Acronym. Search engine optimization (q.v.).

SEO Practices – Noun phrase. The techniques and/or methodologies employed to enhance or modify Web document structure and content, as well as links pointing to Web documents, to ensure that search engines include the Web document in desired search listings (q.v.).

SEO Theory – Noun phrase. 1. The theoretical principles for optimizing search engine results pages from an outside (non-search management) perspective. 2. The principles, methods, and techniques employed by search engine optimization specialists for influencing the rankings of specific Web documents in search engine results. 3. The study of the components and interactions of complex information indexing systems with the people who use those systems to index content and to find content.

Site Map – Noun phrase. Also spelled “sitemap”. An on-site directory of important (or all) pages. Sitemaps have been divided into XML Sitemaps which are used by search engines and HTML Sitemaps which are used by visitors for quick navigation to deep content. Some specialized sitemaps may only list certain types of content.

Signpost Page – Noun phrase. A goofy advertising page. The entire page might be one advertisement built around a picture of a business or it might be a table filled with small ads from many businesses. Signposts are revenue-generating pages hosted by real Web sites with actual traffic that somehow induce their visitors to browse the signpost pages. Sort of like, “Visit our sponsors because they paid us outrageous fees to put their print-ad style advertisements on one of our Web pages.” A few sites actually consist of nothing but signpost pages, but I don’t see many of them any more. These are not classified ad sites. These are not business directories. These are random collections of advertisements plastered on Web pages in usually no real order.

SpamAd Page – Noun. An MFA page, but it’s spammy gibberish. Useless junk that no one in their right mind (and maybe not in their unright mind) would want to read. Just loaded with scraped content and/or gibberish in the hope it ranks well for something and that all visitors will click on the Javascript ads.

Transactional Conversion – Noun phrase. A transactional conversion occurs when a visitor exchanges something of value (such as money) for a product, service, or other form of valued commodity. Purchases, fee payments, bill payments, and paid membership registrations are all examples of transactional conversions.

Transformational Conversion – Noun phrase. A transformational conversion occurs when a visitor knowingly discloses information to a Web site. Subscribing to an RSS feed or newsletter, for example, is a transformational conversion.

TSETSB – Acronym. The Search Engine That Spam Built. A pejorative name for Google which became immensely popular with the SEO community after people realized the link farms they developed for Inktomi worked better on Google. Sometimes revived when people discuss the MFA/SpamAd issues and the click fraud controversy.