SEO Glossary

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B2B
Acronym for Business to Business. Refers to affiliate programs or partnerships between two or more online businesses.

B2C
Acronym for Business To Consumer. Refers to a direct interaction between an online business and its customer base.

B2E
Acronym for Business to Employee.

Back link
From a webpage, this is an outgoing link to another webpage that linked to it.

Bad link neighborhood
A cluster of links on a webpage that usually consists of links to sites with a negative reputation, such as casinos or porn sites. A link surrounded by these is said to be in a bad link neighborhood.

Bait-&-switch
The practice of submitting a page to a search engine, and then quickly replacing it with something else after the search engine had spidered it.

Banned
Being blacklisted from search engines because of violations of guidelines or spamming.

Banner blind
Refers to users becoming accustomed to banner ads that they do not notice banner ads anymore.

Bar coding
The machine-readable representation of the UPC. Bar codes are read by a scanner that passes over the code and registers the UPC. The width of each black line and the subsequent white space between each line coincides with the numbers of the UPC.

Below the fold
Content of a web page that is not immediately seen by the user unless the user scrolls down.

Bid management tool
Software or an ASP service used to manage and automate bids on pay-per-click search engines such as Overture.

Bidding
The process of setting the price per click in PPC programs. Advertisers bid to see whose ads get higher ranking or visibility. Ads are displayed from the highest-priced to the lowest.

Blacklist
A list of users, networks, or hosts that may not access a particular service, such as a search engine or other service. For example, search engines maintain a blacklist of search engine spammers who are banned from using those search engines. Some mail servers have blacklists of domains or other mail servers that have been known to allow unlawful or illegal activities like spamming or email scamming.

Blog
Abbreviation of “weblog.” A blog refers to a type of online journal, where the owner, called a blogger, may write essentially about anything she pleases.

Blind Traffic
Low quality website traffic generated by misleading banners or spam.

BMP
Standard filename extension for a Windows bitmap file.

Body copy
The actual textual content of a webpage. Body copy refers to the text that is directly related to the subject matter of the website, excluding graphical content, navigation, menus, or information hidden in the HTML code and invisible from users.

Boolean search
A search formed by joining simple terms with AND, OR and NOT for the purpose of limiting or qualifying the search. By default, all search engines perform Boolean searches.

BOW
Acronym for Best Of Web.

Bot
Abbreviation for “robot.” In the context of search engines, it refers to automated software programs that scan the web. Bots vary in purpose from indexing web pages for search engines to harvesting e-mail addresses for spammers.

Brick and mortar
Refers to conventional business establishments that are housed in physical buildings generally made of brick and mortar. Contrast this to e-commerce.

Bridge page
Another name for a doorway page. This is a special type of page that serves as a welcome screen for visitors to a website, often with a link that the user must click on to enter the main website. Bridge pages may also have a short timer, after which the user is redirected to the main site.

Browser
Or web browser. This is a software application used to locate and render web pages on users' PCs. Modern browsers offer features such as popup filtering, plugin support for audio and video, and browser enhancements such as themes and extensions.

BTF
Acronym for Below the Fold.

Byte
1 byte is the size of a single ASCII character, composed of 8 bits.

Bulk submission service
Software or site scripts that submit multiple URLs to search engines in an automated manner. The use of these services is discouraged by search engines and may be penalized.

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