There are many terms used in Search Engine Optimization that can be confusing. SEOmoz has posted “A Complete Glossary of Essential SEO Jargon.” We have included a few of our favorite terms:

Astroturfing (the opposite of full disclosure) attempting to advance a commercial or political agenda while pretending to be an impartial grassroots participant in a social group. Participating in a user forum with the secret purpose of branding, customer recruitment, or public relations.

Canonical Issues (duplicate content) canon = legitimate or official version - It is often nearly impossible to avoid duplicate content, especially with CMSs like Wordpress, but also due to the fact that www.site.com, site.com, and www.site.com/index.htm are supposedly seen as dupes by the SEs - although it’s a bit hard to believe they aren’t more sophisticated than that. However these issues can be dealt with effectively in several ways including - using the noindex meta tag in the non-canonical copies, and 301 server redirects to the canon.

Google Dance The change in SERPs caused by an update of the Google database or algorithm. The cause of great angst and consternation for webmasters who slip in the SERPs. Or, the period of time during a Google index update when different data centers have different data.

Keyword Cannibalization The excessive reuse of the same keyword on too many web pages within the same site. This practice makes it difficult for the users and the search engines to determine which page is most relevant for the keyword.

LSI(Latent Semantic Indexing) This mouthful just means that the search engines index commonly associated groups of words in a document. SEOs refer to these same groups of words as “Long Tail”. The majority of searches consist of three or more words strung together. See also “long tail”. The significance is that it might be almost impossible to rank well for “mortgage”, but fairly easy to rank for “second mortgage to finance monster truck team”

Mashup A web page which consists primarily of single purpose software and other small programs (gizmos and gadgets) or possibly links to such programs. Mashups are quick and easy content to produce and are often popular with users, and can make good link bait. Tool collection pages are sometimes mashups.

Pagerank (PR) a value between 0 and 1 assigned by the Google algorithm, which quantifies link popularity and trust among other (proprietary) factors. Often confused with Toolbar Pagerank. - Previous Definition revised based upon advice from Michael Martinez

Web 2.0 Is characterized by websites, which encourage user interaction.

Here are a few more of the best SEO glossaries we have bookmarked:

SEO Book’s Glossary - Extensive list of SEO terms
SEO Glossary - SEO Glossary that contains about 200 definitions.
SEO Terms Glossary - SEO Terms Glossary, SEO Acronyms, SEO Abbreviations
SEO Glossary - Webmaster Brain’s SEO Glossary
SEO for Google - Definitions of the terms used to describe actions and event in the world of Search Engine Marketing.
Apogee Search SEO Jargon - Glossary of terms (jargon, really) seen in the Search Engine Marketing industry

Let us know if you know of any others and we will add them to the list.

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