Every industry has its own jargon, and SEO is no exception. Since there are no interviews scheduled today and I actually have some down time (shhhh, don't tell Rand, or he'll make me scrub his Pumas again), I thought I'd share my picks for SEO terms that make you go "Huh?" These are terms that almost always require some sort of explanation, since the words associated with the ideas or phenomenons themselves fail to be self-explanatory. Some terms I like, some I loathe, and all confused the hell out of me when I first dove into SEO.

1.  Sandbox

I figured I'd come out of the gate blazing and start with the obvious "Huh?" term, the Sandbox Effect. When I first started working at SEOmoz, I had the Sandbox Effect explained to me. I've since explained the effect to others. It's like the STD of SEO--the explanation gets passed on from one confused newbie to another. (A horrible metaphor, I know.)

The only overly complex metaphoric explanation I can think of that justifies the term "sandbox" is this: Every website is a grain of sand, and the search engines are the little kids sitting in the sandbox, scooping shovel-fuls of sand into their buckets. Sandboxed sites are those that don't get scooped (or maybe they get eaten by the metaphoric kid in the sandbox; whatever). Instead, these sites get buried by new grains of sand and fall further and further down in the sandbox.

I know. It's an unnecessarily long and stupid metaphor. I've heard similar explanations, typically along the lines of "Some websites are banished to time out by sitting in the sandbox until they're let out to play." Rand clamored to rename the Sandbox Effect the March filter, to no avail (at least his term utilized the word "filter", which already does a better job of defining the concept), because much like many lame terms, once it's caught on it's pretty much all over...so sandbox it is and sandbox it shall be.

2.  Google Bombing

My personal opinion is that while I find the definition of "Google Bombing" quite interesting, I sort of hate that it's called Google Bombing. I honestly don't know what a better term would be, but Google Bombing just gives me images of blue, red,  yellow, and green explosions and Googlebot shrapnel flying all over the place. Those poor Googlebots...

3.  CPM

So if CPC is Cost Per Click and CPA is Cost Per Acquisition, then CPM must mean Cost Per...Thousand? WTF? (which obviously means What The Woozle)

4.  Viral Marketing

I have to agree with marc71's comment from Rand's Arguing with Link Moses blog post: viral marketing, viral search marketing, viral content generation, viral this and viral that--it all sounds quite disease-esque. Something that sounds like a disease should have a cure, right? So should viral marketing be cured? Is it eeeeeevil? A plague on the Internet? To me, viral marketing has a negative connotation. Viral bad. Viral bad.

5. Link Bait

Link Bait good. Link Bait good. I know people have issues with this term, arguing that "bait" implies that you're manipulating users by baiting them to visit your site. Personally, I like the term. When a successful link baiting campaign is launched and users visit in droves, it's like "Look, Pa! I caught one!" It's exciting to have a link bait idea be successful, and if it's relevant to the site and to what the particular company does, it shouldn't feel manipulative.

6.  Keyword Self-Cannibalization

It's an ugly term, but I love it nonetheless. Rand wrote about keyword self-cannibalization in an earlier post, defining it as "the practice of heavily targeting the same keyword phrase on multiple pages of a site." I think it's a clever term, but it does fall on the "a mouthful to say" and "a tad gruesome" side. Whatever; if "sandbox" can catch on, then I'll be damned if "keyword self-cannibalization" gets shunned.

7.  Siloing

This term actually makes sense when you think about it, but it just looks so darn ugly. (What's with all the vowels? Grrrrrr.) Graywolf recently posted about "SEO Siloing", thereby creating some nifty alliteration. Another problem I had with siloing is that it took me a while to find a pretty straightforward explanation of it; finally, thanks to Bruce Clay, I found my diamond in the rough: 

"Siloing...[allows] you to achieve high search engine placement both for general and targeted keyword phrases through themed vertical page linking and/or construction."

Hmmm...like a silo? Hot diggity, that's not too bad! We can even start a whole agricultural theme here. We can have keyword threshing, plowing the SERPS, and tag tilling. Whaddya think?

Well, that's all I've got for now. I'd like to hear any other terms that made you awesome readers go "Huh?" when you first heard them. Anything? Bueller?