SEO Glossary

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Hallway page
A webpage that serves as an index or linking point for a group of pages. Typically, all the main pages in a site are reachable via the hallway page. A site map is the typical hallway page. It is important to have a hallway page such as a site map because search engines can easily spider the rest of the site through this page. Also, when making site submissions, it is generally a good idea to submit the site map URL in addition to the start page URL.

HB
Acronym for HotBot, a search engine.

HCI
Acronym for Human Computer Interaction.

Heading
A heading is an HTML construct for establishing structure in text content. It is used to set page, paragraph, and section titles. It is generally a good idea to use headings properly and to put important keywords within headings.

Heading tag
The HTML tag for specifying headings. See heading, above.

Hidden text
Text that is normally invisible to human users because they are set to have the same color as the background. In the past, websites would unscrupulously use hidden text to fill pages with keywords in order to get higher rankings with search engines, but the practice has long been found out and sites can be penalized for using hidden text.

Hit
A hit is, generally speaking, a page view or visit. More accurately, a hit is a request for any file on a web server. For example, page hits are requests for a whole web page. Servers are tuned for performance to handle a large number of hits at once.

Host
A PC, machine, server, or computer connected on a network, such as the Internet.

HTC
Standard filename extension for Microsoft HTML Component files.

HTM
Standard filename extension for HTML documents in Microsoft nomenclature, generally considered bad taste.

HTML
Acronym for Hypertext Markup Language. Also the standard filename extension for HTML documents, generally considered the right way to name such documents.

HTML link
An HTML link is also called a hyperlink, or simply a link. Links are text markers that, when clicked, would lead the user to another website or webpage.

HTML source
The raw content of HTML files. This is composed of tags and code, along with the textual content, and is really only meaningful to web designers or HTML coders.

HTTP
Acronym for Hypertext Transfer Protocol. HTTP is the protocol used when connecting to web servers.

HTTPS
Acronym for Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure. HTTPS is an encrypted form of HTTP.

Hubs and Authorities
Noted search engine researcher Jon Kleinberg wrote a paper on Hubs and Authorities on the internet. It described a system that would count inbound and outbound links to identify central sites in a community...

Hyperlink text
Hyperlink text is another name for anchor text. This is the specific text that indicates an HTML hyperlink. Users click on the hyperlink text if they wish to follow the link to whatever page or site it leads to. In the context of search engine optimization, hyperlink anchor text is given importance and is used to determine a site's relevance and ranking.

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