Essentially, accessibility refers to the ability of a website to be accessible and usable by visitors with disabilities. Web accessibility makes it easier to navigate and interact on the web through visual enhancements and auditory speeches.

Ajax is a group of technologies. In short for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML, AJAX is used to create dynamic web applications and allows interactions with the user or other applications without reloading the page.

An Anchor text is the clickable text that in a Hyperlink. It is used to give an idea of the content of the page it refers. It is helpful for the user but also is a good practice for search engines.

Back end is the term used to describe the non-visible of a website for regular visitors. This is generally for administrators, editors and it includes applications and CMS to control content on the site.

Backlinks are hyperlinks from other websites which link back to yours. This can hugely impact on your website’s search ranking and overall reputation. Backlinks from high ranking sites will have a positive impact.

Bandwidth refers to the capacity of data transmission and the amount of information that can be transmitted on a transmission path for a given period of time.

The term “Beta” is used to describe a preliminary version of a project, software and web development. Beta also states the testing phase of a project.

A blog is a type of website which uses a timeline interface. In short for Web Log, a blog has articles stored and displayed according to their publication date. A blog can be personal or professional. In fact, many business have blog to deliver regular updates.

Bounce Rate is used to measure the percentage of visitors leaving a website from the same page they entered the site. This is a common indicator that show how good a website’s navigation and content quality is.

A breadcrumb is a navigation element which improves the ergonomics of navigation in a web site. It shows users the path from the home page. It is usually located on the top left of the page and looks like: Home > Services > SEO.

A broken link is a link in a web page pointing to non-existent content. A broken link, also known as dead link produces a “404” error (not found) when clicked by a visitor.

A browser (or Web browser) is a computer software used to browse the internet. The most common web browsers are Internet Explorer, Chrome, Firefox and Opera. While all the browser do the same task, they usually don’t display content alike.

A captcha is usually used in a web form. It serves to differentiate between real users (humans) and computer based programs (bots). Captchas usually contain testing numbers and letters in a box which only humans can read.

Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) is a style sheet language used to enhance the look of a webpage. Unlike HTML, CSS offers a lot more power to control how content is being displayed on the page.

Content as it name suggest refers to all the information presented on a web page. These can be in form of texts, images, videos or sounds.

Also known as CMS, a content management system is a tool used to manage a site’s content, design and functionalities. The main advantage of a CMS is that it offers an easier way to edit content of a web page or site from a browser-based interface.

A cookie, (also known as browser cookie) is a preference file saved into the visitor’s browser. A cookie serves to store information about a website and makes it load faster when revisited later.

Web Design is the first production step of any website. Web design comprehends several skills and includes, web graphic design, interface design, user experience designs (UX) and SEO-friendly designs.

DNS stands for Domain Name Service. Domain name servers convert IP addresses into domain names.

A domain name is associated with an IP address and is the name of which a website is identified.

In short for electronic commerce, E-commerce refers to the buying and selling of goods on the internet.

A favicon is a small icon of a website. The favicon is displayed just above the address bar of a web browser. This is a vital visual element to help the user navigate between open tabs in a browser.

A font is a typeface installed with a web browser and designed for screen-use. Fonts differ in size and appearance, though we have some font family, a set of typeface that share common design features.

A footer comprises of all elements located at the foot of each web page. A footer usually displays links to other pages and additional information about the website.

Typically front-end is the opposite of back-end. The front-end of a website comprises of all elements that are visible when a visitor visit your website. It is the interface that visitor will see and use on a website.

GUI stands for Graphic User Interface. It uses input devices like a mouse or a stylus and visual representations of how the user is able to interact with a web application.

A host is a computerised server which stores a website’s content on the internet.

HTML stands to Hypertext Markup Language. It is the main language used to create web pages. The language itself comprises of elements and attributes which are used to structure and format content.

A hyperlink is a link which connects one web page to another. A hyperlink can link to the same site or an external site.

Javascript is an object-oriented scripting language mainly used in HTML pages. Unlike with servers, Javascript is executed on the viewer’s computer by the browser itself.

A landing page is the first page a viewer lands on when entering a website.

Meta data contains some general information about the web page a visitor is visiting. Though it is not visible (except in the source code), Meta data is very helpful from an SEO point of view.

Named anchor are links used to link to other content on the same page. Named anchors are usually used on the FAQ page.

Nav bar is the short term used for navigation bar. It is an area on a website which contains the website’s menu. It usually contains link to the most useful and important pages of the website.

Nesting is a term used in Boolean searching. It indicates the sequence or order in which operations are to be performed. Enclosing words in parentheses identifies a group or “nest.” Groups can be within other groups. The operations will be performed from the innermost nest to the outmost, and then from left to right.

Short terms for internet

Netiquette is made up of the two words web and etiquette. It is used to describe good web/internet practices.

A news reader is a special application which allows users to read or post messages posted to Internet news groups. Microsoft Internet Explorer is an example of a web browser with in-built news readers, but there are also freeware, shareware and commercial stand-alone news readers.

A newsgroup is a discussion group same as a forum which is operated through the Internet. There are hundreds of thousands of newsgroups on the internet which serves different interests. A newsgroup is not to be confused with list servers which operate through e-mail. If you want to view or post to a newsgroup, you should have a news reader installed which will connect you to the news server.

The Not found or 404 error message is an error message meaning that the page requested by the user does not exist or is an invalid URL. It is the standard error message used by servers for pages which do not exist, were moved or deleted. Not found error messages are customizable.

The Series of strategies used off a site to optimize it on the SERP is known as off-site optimization.

Series of strategies used on a site to increase its rank on the SERP.

On the fly webpages are kinds of web pages “constructed” as a consequence of a user’s action. It is usually made up of dynamic content fetched from a server and constructed as the user loads the page.

Whenever a user is connected to the internet, he’s referred as being online.

Action of Buying things on the internet.

Opera is amongst the top ten of internet browsers. This software is compatible with most operating systems such as MS Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux.

Organic search results are listing of web pages appearing on the SERP as a result of the relevancy of the keyword typed and the page rank as opposed to paid advertising.

Padding is a term used in cascading style sheet (CSS). The padding specifies the amount of space, in px, between an element and its content.

Pagejacking is stealing a web page’s source code for later re-publishing it. Pagejacking is a form of Black hat seo. Sites doing pagejacking are penalized by Google and often see their ranking and traffic decrease. They also encounter the risk of being unindexed by the search engine.

A plug-in is an standalone application usually built into browsers to enable the browser to open or view files of a particular format. For example .pdf files, movie files etc…

A pop-up is a new window which usually opens as a result of an action undertaken by a user. For example clicking on a link.

PPC or Pay per click is an online marketing strategy whereby the advertiser pays for the number of times users click on the advertisement. The amount of clicks is usually bought or agreed on beforehand.

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a list of a website’s with new or updated content. It was developed to allow different news services for syndication of content by displaying links, articles summaries and headlines on other web sites.

Redirection is the process whereby a user is sent to a web page other than that he wanted to access in the first place. The most common redirection method is the “301 Redirect”.

The referrer is the web page URL on which a user found an URL which directed to your page.

The relevancy of a page how a search engine will attempt to measure the pertinence of a web page with regard to the query of the user.

This lets you specify if a particular page should not be indexed by a search engine.

Safari is a web browser that was developed by Apple Inc. and introduced in 2003. Initially only for use on Apple computers, it now has a Windows version too.

According to Wikipedia, “Search Engine” is a program that searches documents for specified keywords and returns a list of the documents where the keywords were found”.

Search engine optimization is a series of techniques used to affect the performance of a web page on a search engine’s results page in a positive way.

A Web Directory is a web search tool compiled manually by human editors. Once websites are submitted with information such as a title and description, they are assessed by an editor and, if deemed suitable for addition, will be listed under one or more subject categories. Users can search across a directory using keywords or phrases, or browse through the subject hierarchy. Best examples of a directory are Yahoo and the Open Directory Project.

Short for Search Engine Marketing. It refers to all activities related to marketing web sites on search engines, including SEO and PPC marketing.

Short for “Search Engine Optimization”.

Search Engine Results Page. The SERP is the page that a search engine displays in response to a search by a user.

A webserver is where a webpage and information about a webpage is stored.

A shopping cart is where the products you selected during online shopping is stored before checking out.

A sitemap is a page within a web site that offers links to all the pages within that web site – or, at least, to the important pages within the web site. It is a great tool to offer your web site visitors and it helps search engine spiders to quickly find all of the internal pages on your web site, including pages that they might otherwise miss.

Social ads are small advertisements displayed on social media sites. They differ from other ads in that the type of ad displayed to you is determined by your shopping behaviour (or that of your friends) on the social media site.

Spiders are Computer robot programs, referred to sometimes as “crawlers” or “knowledge-bots” or “knowbots” that are used by search engines to roam the World Wide Web via the Internet, visit sites and databases, and keep the search engine database of web pages up to date. They obtain new pages, update known pages, and delete obsolete ones. Their findings are then integrated into the “home” database.

A static web site displays only static information that does not change based on user inputs.

Sub searching is searching through a previous search.

A subdomain is a third-level domain that is often used to organize information categories on a web site.

An approach to Web documents by a lexicon of subject terms hierarchically grouped. May be browsed or searched by keywords.

Tags are used in Hyper Text Markup Language to contain HTML code. Information in between tags are generally displayed on the webpage.

A series of the most important keywords in an article or a website.

Templates are webpages which has been designed beforehand. They can be used as examples for redesigning other web pages. Some templates are ready to be used. Many CMS like wordpress make extensive use of templates.

Top Level Domain. The TLD is the ending of a domain name, for example “.com” or “.mu”

A very broad term that refers to the amount of activity and/or the number of users on a web site. If something is advertised as a “traffic-magnet”, the advertiser claims that it can bring many new visitors to your web site.

Tweaks refers to making small improvements. Tweaking a web site means to modify the site’s appearance.

The state of a web site when it is not finished yet, but design work has started on the site.

Upload is the opposite of download. It means loading content onto a server.

URL (Uniform Resource Locator) is an elaborate term for a web site address.

Usability refers to how easily web site visitors can find what they are looking for or accomplish a task such as contacting the company. The study of usability is critical to e-commerce, where the aim is to make the customer’s path to the order page or sign-up page as clear as possible.

A visit is the number of users which accessed a website regardless of the number of pages he viewed. An user accessing a web page is called a visitor.

Web applications are software that are designed to be used on the web using a user agent such as a browser.

A collection of files, grouped under a specific domain name and published on the Internet. This web site (www.web-companies.com), for example, is a collection of HTML documents and images grouped under the www.webdesigndictionary.com domain name. Web sites can be interactive in the sense that users are allowed to contribute to the content on the site, for example YouTube.com where users may upload videos.

Working according to the guidelines set up by search engines. Refers to good practices, versus black hat which refers to bad practices.

Wikis are informative pages about a particular topic or subject. Wikis can generally be edited even though some wikis are password protected to control contribution. The most famous wiki is Wikipedia.

WordPress is a CMS mainly used by bloggers.

XHTML (Extensible HTML) is HTML that rewritten to be compliant with XML rules.

XML (Extensible Markup Language) defines rules for writing other markup languages.

Yahoo was a pioneer of web directories which later expanded to search. Yahoo was once more popular than Google.

YouTube (www.youtube.com) was launched in February 2005 and acquired by Google Inc. in 2006. The YouTube web site allows users to share videos and it offers a discussion area for each video.

A ZIP file is a windows based compression format. Zip files are often placed on websites and offered as downloads.