SEO Glossary
Rank
The numerical score that is given to a website or webpage, decided by a number of factors. The general rule is, the higher the rank, the better. In search engine search results, websites appear sorted according to rank, with higher-ranked sites appearing at the top. The aim of search engine optimization is to improve a website's rank with search engines.
Ranking
See rank, above.
Rate card
A rate card is a page on an advertising website that lists fees and prices of advertising services that the site offers.
RBSE
Acronym for Repository Based Software Engineering Program.
RDBMS
Acronym for Relational Database Management System.
RDF
Acronym for Resource Description Framework.
Redirect
A redirect is a type of HTTP action that automatically switches a web user to another site or page. This can be used, for example, to lead users to another site if a site they wish to visit is under maintenance.
Resubmission
The process of resubmitting a webpage or site to a search engine or directory. This is often done to update a listing because of content changes, changes to URLs, or page deletions. It can also be done after updating or optimizing a page to acquire better rankings.
RealNames
A company that sells names associated web address queries. This is mainly for corporate brand name protection. Some search engines now use that system to generate search results. Companies can buy their Real Name and their name will be the first one returned for that search query. For example, Coke-Cola could buy Coke and have their webpage returned first for any search on Coke.
Reciprocal link
A reciprocal link is a two-way link involved in a link exchange. To illustrate, website A has a link to website B. If B returns a link to A, then that link is called a reciprocal link. Reciprocal links are helpful in improving website rankings as it benefits both sites.
Referrer
When a user visits a website or page from another site or page, the originating site or page can be called a referrer. Some sites even explicitly embed referrer tags in the outbound links to other sites as part of a pay-per-lead program, and some browsers also report the referrer website.
Refresh tag
A meta refresh tag is an instruction to the browser to reload or refresh a page at a set interval.
Registration
Registration is the act of submitting a website or URL to a directory or search engine for inclusion.
Relative link
A hyperlink on a webpage that does not specify the complete domain in its URL. Rather, the link implicitly specifies that the destination is at a location relative to the location of the link itself.
Relevance
A subjective measure of the importance of a website or page and how well it satisfies a user's need for information. Objectively, relevance of a page is measured by the number and quality of inbound links. Sometimes referred to as relevancy.
Relevancy algorithm
The algorithm that search engines use when determining a site's or page's relevance, and consequently its ranking. Such algorithms are often kept secret and their inner workings are mostly the subject of speculation.
Render
To display a webpage on a user's web browser. The act of rendering takes into account all instructions in an HTML file to properly arrange and display all content associated with the webpage. Render quality varies from browser to browser and is an important consideration in determining standards compliance among browsers.
Results page
Abbreviation for search engine results page. See search engine results page.
RFC
Acronym for Request for Comments.
RFI
Acronym for Request for Information.
RFP
Acronym for Request for Proposal.
RFQ
Acronym for Request for Quotation.
ROAD
Acronym for Return On Advertising Dollar.
ROAS
Acronym for Return On Advertising Spend.
Robot
A type of software that performs actions in an automated manner. Search engine spiders are a type of robot. Spiders are sometimes called web robots or web bots. Bots is a common abbreviation of robot.
Robots.txt
A special file on a web server that is used to restrict spiders' actions within a website. It can be used, for example, to indicate to search engine spiders that certain folders are not to be spidered and indexed. The use of robots.txt is largely optional and web bots may or may not honor the robots.txt file, but for a bot to be compliant with the Robots Exclusion Standard it must obey the robots.txt.
ROI
Acronym for Return On Investment. The meaning of ROI in the context of web marketing and advertising is essentially the same as in a conventional marketing context.
RON
RON : Run of Network. Large advertising brokers such as Burst or Double click, can sell ads across the entire network of member sites..
ROS
RON : Run of Site. An ad that can be placed anywhere on a website without restrictions..
RSS
Acronym that may stand for Rich Site Summary, RDF Site Summary, or Really Simple Syndication. RSS, regardless of version, is an XML-based file format that is used for the syndication of sites, that is, periodic sending of site updates to users who choose to receive those updates. RSS is popular among news sites where it is used to send news headlines to users.
RSS feed
An RSS feed is a source of RSS updates for a given website. News websites often have RSS feeds from which users can be sent news headlines as they are published.
RTF
Standard filename extension for Rich Text Format files. Also refers to the Rich Text Format itself.
|
read more
Webmaster World Updates