F

favicon (or favorite icon); a small, 16×16 or 32×32 image – usually in PNG, ICO or GIF format – associated with a website and displayed in the address bar or the tab of the web browser

feeder sites; a website or web page created specifically to generate traffic to another website using redirects

Flash (or Adobe Flash); interactive media technology used to create web content that combines animation, sound and video; search engines can’t index a Flash content directly, therefore is bad for SEO

frame; HTML technique used to divide the browser window into multiple sections (frames) in order to display different HTML documents (basically web pages ) in each section; the result (different content and multiple pages associated with the very same URL) is confusing for search engines and they might not index the “divided” page at all

frontend; the publicly visible and accessible content of a website

FTP (or file transfer protocol); a two-way network protocol used to transfer data (files) between a local computer and a web server

G

geo-targeting; targeting visitors, leads and customers exclusively from a specific country or geographical area

Google AdWords; advertising service which places relevant, keyword-targeted advertisements on the search results pages alongside the organic search results (usually on the top)

Google algorithm; an extremely complex formula used by Google to rank a certain number of web pages resulted from a custom search query

Google Analytics; complex and literally vital free service provided by Google, used to generate detailed website stats, conversion reports, etc

Google authorship; a method used by Google to show the ownership of a given content in the Google SERPs, connecting the content with a Google+ profile and displaying additional enriched information about the author

Google Hummingbird; Google algorithm update launched in 2013 in order to provide more specific results based on advanced contextual analysis

Google Panda; Google algorithm update launched in 2011 in order to identify and penalize websites with poor quality content

Google Penguin; Google algorithm update launched in 2012 in order to detect forced over-optimizations and bad neighborhood issues

grey hat; a mixture of white hat and black hat SEO (and online marketing) techniques

H

heading tag (or header tag); HTML tag used to differentiate the headings and sub-headings of a page from the rest of the content; the H1 heading defines the most important heading and the H6 heading indicates the lowest-level heading; the heading tag keywords are important, heavy-weight SEO factors

.htaccess; hypertext access file that allows you to manage the web server configurations

HTML (or Hypertext Markup Language); a standardized coding language used to create web pages and web applications; the final code is a set of markup symbols – elements and tags – compiled in one file intended for display on a WWW browser page

HTTP (or HyperText Tranfer Protocol); communication protocol used to connect to web servers on the internet or on a local network; its primary function is to establish the connection with the web server and to send the HTML pages back to the user’s browser

HTTPS (or HyperText Transfer Protocol Secure); a secured communication protocol used to connect to web servers on the internet or on a local network; basically is an HTTP protocol which uses a secure socket layer (SSL) to encrypt the link between the server and the browser

hyperlink (or link); a clickable, usually highlighted text or image used to send or redirect a user to a different page or website