A glossary of web development terms

While we always try to use plain English, some of the terms used in the world of web promotion and development are not familiar to everyone - which is why we've provided this useful glossary to help you cut through the jargon and get a clear idea of what you're being told.

AdWords - Google's pay-per-click search engine.

Blog - Short for 'web log'. A web page in which the text content is regularly updated, often in the form of a journal or newsletter.

Bots - See 'Spiders'.

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) - A method used when building a website that ensures styles such as colours, layouts and fonts are uniform across the site. Using CSS to construct your site also cuts down bloated code.

Click - In the context of websites, the clicking on a mouse button to activate a function, most commonly a link to another web page or site.

Click-through rate (CTR) - A percentage based on the number of people who click on your pay-per-click ads against the number of times the ads have been displayed. The higher the CTR, the more successful the ad campaign.

Conversions - Visitors to your website who reach a desired goal, such as a checkout page, indicating that they have purchased or ordered a product or service from you.

Cost-per-click (CPC) - The cost incurred each time a web user clicks on a pay-per-click ad to be taken to your site.

Crawlers - See 'Spiders'.

Description Tag - A line of text which appears in the meta data of a web page, describing what the page is about.

Domain / domain name - See 'Uniform Resource Locator'.

Frames - A method of creating web pages by displaying several pages on the screen at one time. This can look effective, as when you scroll down one frame of the page, the others remain in place, but as frames are often not built so that search engines can spider a site, they can put the website at a severe disadvantage when it comes to SEO. Like most web developers today, BE Technical do not use frames in their website designs.

Home page - The main page of a website, normally the first page a person will see when visiting the site.

HTML - Stands for HyperText Markup Language. The programming language most commonly used to build websites. Web browsers translate this code into the web pages you see on the screen.

Hyperlinks - See 'Links'.

Keywords - Words or phrases which pertain to the content of a web page, and which search engines will look for when displaying results for those words or phrases.

Linking campaign - The submission of website details to a large number of search engine directories, in order to increase the site's profile in search engine results. If the submissions are accepted, a link to your website will be displayed in the appropriate section of the directory.

Links - Words or pictures on a web page which take to the user to another page or website when clicked on. Also known as hyperlinks.

Meta data - Text which appears in the coding of a web page, but not on the page that visitors see. The meta data we usually work on during SEO are the title and description tags for each web page, which explain to search engines what the page is about.

Navigation - The method of getting around the pages of a website via links.

Overture - A Pay-per-click search engine which is the main rival to Google AdWords.

Page rank (PR) - A score out of ten given to web pages by Google, based on how reliable the information on that page is deemed to be.

Pay-per-click (PPC) - A service provided by many search engines, where you can create advertisements for your site and 'bid' on keywords which cause this advert to appear in search engine results pages. Top position for an advert usually goes to the highest bidder. You are charged each time a user clicks on your advert to go to your website.

Podcast - A media file which is instantly downloadable from the web.

Ranking - The position at which a site's entry appears in search engine results pages. This is normally based on the site's perceived relevancy to the search term entered.

Robots - See 'Spiders'.

Search engine - An online database of websites, which works like a directory. Users enter words or phrases and are shown links to websites which relate to that term. Google is an example of a search engine.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) - The process of improving a site's performance, often through - but not exclusively through - SEO, PPC and site placement.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) - The process of making alterations to a website in order to improve its chances of getting a higher ranking in search engine results pages. This can include such elements as re-writes, re-development, linking and traffic monitoring.

Search engine results page (SERP) - A page listing the results of a search term entry on a search engine. As most searches produce thousands, or even millions, of results, they are usually spread over many pages, with the highest ranked results appearing first.

Search engine visibility - The prominence of a website in search engine results pages. A website with a high search engine visibility will appear near the top of search engine results for the keywords it has been optimised for.

Search term - A word or phrase entered into a search engine to find websites with related content.

Spiders - Automated systems used by search engines to search website content and assess what the site is about. This information is then used when ranking search results. Also known as crawlers, robots, or bots.

Title tag - A short line of text in the meta data of a web page, giving a brief idea of what the page is about. The web browser displays the title tag at the top of every web page, and it is also the title which will be displayed for the page in search engine results. Therefore it is very important that it is well written and contains relevant keywords.

Uniform Resource Locator (URL) - The web address of a page, for example http://www.be-technical.com/sitemap.htm is the URL for this page. Each individual web page has its own unique URL. The main part of the URL for a site, eg. www.be-technical.com, is also known as the domain, or domain name.

Web browser - A piece of software used to view web pages on the internet. Microsoft Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox are examples of web browsers.

Website traffic / Web Traffic - The visitors to a website.