SEO – The commonly used acronym for “Search Engine Optimization.”  Most often used to describe the practice of optimizing a website, through both on-site and external supporting factors, in order to increase the site’s ranking and prevalence in organic search engine listings for specified keywords and keyword phrase searches.

Organic Search – Organic search results refer to the search engine listings that are essentially free.  These are usually the main body of search results shown for any given search query, excluding the paid search results (PPC ads) shown on the side and/or above and below the main body of organic listings.

PPC – Stands for “Pay Per Click.”  This is a method of paid search engine advertising, wherein a website owner bids on ads pointing to their site that are to be shown within the search engine results pages (SERPs) when a certain term is searched for.  Each time a searcher clicks through via the ad, the bid-for or pre-specified amount is charged to the site owner’s PPC account balance.

CPC – This means “Cost Per Click.” CPC refers to the bid or specified cost for each time a visitor clicks through on a PPC ad to the website.

CTR – Stands for “Click Through Rate.”  Basically, CTR is the percentage or ratio of how many times a PPC ad is clicked on by searchers, compared to how many times it is shown or displayed.

SEM – Stands for “Search Engine Marketing.”  Basically, SEM is the practice of using SEO, PPC, and other forms of online search engine advertising and promotion to attract visitors to a website via the search engines.

Backlink – When another site links to your website, this incoming link to your site is referred to as a backlink.  Having quality backlinks that are both relevant and on-topic helps a website achieve better search engine rankings.

Link Popularity – This is basically a relative score of how many incoming backlinks a website has from other sites around the web.  Google PageRank is one popular and reliable measure of link popularity—although it does take into account additional relevancy factors beyond the sheer number of backlinks a site has.

Anchor Text – This is a word or phrase that is highlighted and selected to be linked to another web page or website.  In other words, when you link to another site or page, these are the words that a visitor would click on to visit that site or page.

Meta-tags – These are markups within the code of a website that include components such as title tags, header tags, descriptions, keywords, image titles, and so on.  Correct use of Meta-tags can effectively support a website’s search optimization strategy by providing helpful background details and clues to the search engines about what a web page is about and which parts of the page are intended to be most important.

SERP – Acronym standing for “Search Engine Results Page.”  When you perform a search on one of the search engines, the listings page that comes up for your search query is a SERP.

Search Engine Spiders – Search spiders—commonly referred to as search bots and sometimes as robots—are the programs that the search engines use to analyze and review your website to determine what it is about and how well it should be ranked within the search index.

Black Hat – Black hat is a term commonly used to describe using SEO tricks and techniques that are against the policies of the search engines or are in some other way against the best interest of the visitor (and are simply used to “trick” a searcher into visiting a site).  A few common black hat practices include doorway pages, cloaking, keyword stuffing, and spamdexing.  The bottom line is to steer clear of any of these SEO methods—while they might work for a short-term boost of traffic, they are unethical and will eventually get a site banned or substantially penalized by the search engines.

White Hat – The polar opposite of black hat SEO is what we would call “white hat SEO.”  It is the practice of following the guidelines, policies, suggestions, and terms of service set forth by the search engine companies to maximize a website’s search performance by providing the search engines with exactly the information they want to see in a helpful, organized manner.  Using white hat SEO puts the interests of the search engines and their visitors first and foremost—it helps search engines provide more accurate, helpful, and relevant results to their visitors.  It’s a win-win proposition for all involved.