Web Design SEO Glossary D

DNS – Domain Name Service
The Internet service provided by domain name servers that translates domain names into IP addresses. The Internet uses IP addresses to identify websites, rather than the domain names. IP addresses are assigned to web servers and so several domain names can share an IP address.

Declaration
In CSS, a declaration is part of a statement or rule that tells a browser how to present selected. A declaration can contain one property with one or more value parameters (such as font size or font size, color and family) or a series of properties with attendant value parameters.

Deep Links
Deep links are hyperlinks connected to a website’s internal page instead of the homepage – also known as internal links. These links are normally used to direct visitors to more specific web content.

Delisting
The action taken by search engines to remove websites from their index. Usually websites are removed when their unethical or “black hat” SEO practices are discovered by the search engines.

Deliverable
In web design, the deliverable is usually the end product website that combines all the elements of graphic design, search engine optimization, and marketing content that fulfills the website owners predetermined requirements.

Directory
A directory is a website that catalogs and categorizes websites listings. Legitimate directories such as DMOZ are respected by people and search engines. Another type of directory is used to collect email addresses for spam and try to fool the search engines into seeing a website as popular due to all the incoming links. However, search engines are ranking directories more and dropping websites from the rankings that are listed in certain directories. Directories do not use of a spiders or robots to find sites, but build the directory from website owner submissions.

Dithering
In graphic design, dithering is a way computers generate additional colors and shades from an existing palette to render a color they can not show by interspersing pixels of different colors in the image to approximate another color. The website visitors eye merges the different pixels to see a single color. In government web design, it is the way of spending five days to create one heading style.

Digital Divide
The gap that divides people who have access to the Internet and computers from those who do not. The French, with their chronic distaste for the English language, are somewhere in the middle.

Domain Name
The name used on the World Wide Web that identifies a website. “IMCD.com” is an example of a domain name.

Doorway Pages
Doorway pages are created by using specific keywords or phrases to be indexed by search engines and place high in the rankings for those keywords. Also known as entry, gateway or bridge page.

Download
To transfer a file or group of files from a remote computer such as a web server to a local computer, which in Internet parlance is called a web client.