Search engine optimization (SEO) can seem to be shrouded in mystery when you’re on the outside looking in. But don’t worry, we got you! We compiled this SEO glossary to help you navigate the SEO world and familiarize yourself with the most common terms.
It’s impossible to list ALL the terms here. But we picked the ones that you might across more often.
What is search engine optimization?
Search engine optimization is the art and practice of growing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website by increasing its visibility to search engines through organic search results.
If all that sounds like a foreign language to you, then you’re in the right place. This glossary list will have you sounding like a pro in no-time!
SEO Glossary – Basic Terms
- 10 blue links – refers to the organic search results shown on search engines such as Google. These exclude advertisements.
- Backlinks – also known as ‘inbound links‘, these are links from other websites that point to your website.
- Black hat – SEO practices that violate Google’s guidelines, used to make a website rank higher in search results. These practices can result in a penalty imposed by search engines.
- Cached Page – this is a page that has been saved by a search engine on its servers.
- Cloaking – this is when your website shows different content to search engines than what it show to human visitors.
- Content Management System (CMS) – is a computer software used to manage web content. For example, WordPress, Joomla, etc.
- E-commerce – refers to the buying or selling of products or services via the internet.
- Engagement Metrics – show how users are engaging with your content. The most common ones are likes, shares, comments, etc.
- Featured Snippet – also known as ‘answer boxes‘, they appear at the top of Google’s search results and quickly answer a searcher’s query. We call this prime real estate as it’s where we all want to be!
- Google My Business Listing – a free service offered by Google to local businesses.
- HTML – Hypertext manual language. The language used to create web pages
- Image carousel – is a sliding row of images or video that normally appear at the top of a search engine results page.
- Indexing – a process that search engine use to store and organize content.
- Index Coverage Report – a report that shows the index status of all pages on your site that search engines have tried to crawl.
- Intent – also known as user intent, is the purpose of an online search.
- Login forms – pages on a website that require authentication credentials before allowing access.
- Manual penalty – a penalty issued by a human viewer (as opposed to a robot) at Google when they determine that your website is in violation of some guidelines.
- Meta robots tag – a piece of code that allows you control on what a search engine can crawl or index on your website.
- Noindex tag – a meta tag on a website that instructs search engines not to index a page.
- Organic – placement on a search results page that’s earned organically, not through paid advertising.
- People Also Ask boxes – another piece of prime real estate. A box on the search results page with a list of questions related to the term you looked for.
- Ranking – refers to a website’s position on a search result page.
- Search Engine Results Page – or SERP, are pages displayed by a search engine in response to a user query.
- Search forms – refers to search functions that help users find pages on a website.
- Traffic – the number of visitors to a website.
- Webmaster Guidelines – guidelines set out by search engines such as Google and Yahoo to help web owners to make their websites more indexable and crawlable.
- White hat – the opposite of black hat. Practices that comply with Google’s guidelines.
SEO Glossary – On-Site Optimization
On-site SEO, or on-page SEO, refers to optimization practices done on the website in order to improve search engine ranking.
- Alt text – written copy that describes an image on a web page. It’s primary purpose is to describe images to users who are unable to see them, such as robots and the visually-impaired
- Ambiguous intent – search phrase where the user’s intent is unclear.
- Anchor text – clickable text on a page that links to another page. Normally in a different colour to the rest of the text and usually underlined.
- Authority – website authority is an SEO concept that refers to the strength of a given domain.
- Broken link – a link that doesn’t work.
- Content – videos, images, text, or audio found on a web page.
- Dead-end page – a web page that does not link to any other page on a website.
- Geographic modifiers – a location-specific keyword used in a search query. For example, sushi restaurant in Morningside.
- Image compression – reducing the size of an image without compromising its quality in order to speed up web pages.
- Internal links – links on a website that point to other pages on the same website.
- Keyword – word or phrase that best describes what your content is about.
- density – number of times a keyword appears on a web page.
- difficulty – an estimate of how difficult it is for a site to outrank their competitors for a given keyword.
- research – a process where you research popular keywords used to search for products or services similar to yours.
- stuffing – the excessive use of a keyword to try and manipulate a site’s ranking.
- Landing page– a page a visitor arrives at on your website after clicking on a link. It may not be the same as a home page.
- Lazy loading – the practice of not loading content on a page until it’s needed. This helps to improve the page speed.
- Link equity – also known as ‘link juice‘, is the authority and value that a link can pass from one website to another.
- Link volume – the number of links on a page.
- Long-tail keywords – longer search queries, normally with more than three words. They are often more specific than short-tail keywords.
- Meta description – is a snippet of about 155 characters used to describe the contents of a web page.
- Mobile-first indexing – means Google predominantly uses the mobile version of a website for indexing, instead of the desktop version.
- No-follow link – an attribute assigned to a link telling Google not to use it to influence the page ranking
- Orphan page – similar to dead-end page.
- Redirection – when a URL is moved from one location to another.
- Rel=canonical – an HTML elements that helps site owners prevent duplicate content.
- Responsive website – a website design that adapts well to different devices.
- Scroll depth – a method of tracking how far visitors to your website are scrolling down your web pages.
- Search Engine Marketing (SEM) – marketing strategy used to increase the visibility of a website in search engine result pages.
- Search volume – the number of times a keyword is searched.
- Short-tail keywords – search phrases with only one or two words. These are less specific than long-tail keywords.
- Site speed – how fast your website loads.
- Site map – a list of pages of a website
- SSL certificate – code on your server that provides security for online communication.
- Thin content – content that add little or no value to a user.
- Time on page – the amount of time a visitor spends on a web page.
- Title tag – HTML tag used to describe the title of a page.
- User experience (UX) – the overall experience a person has when visiting your website.
SEO Glossary – Off-Site Optimization
Off-site, or off-page SEO, refers to the actions you take away from your website to increase its ranking.
- Bounce rate – the percentage of total visitors who visit your website and leave without visiting other pages.
- Click-through rate – ratio of impressions to clicks.
- Conversion rate – the ratio of visits to conversions.
- Conversion rate optimization – process of enhancing content on your website to increase conversions.
- Deindexed – when a domain, or part of a domain, is removed usually as a result of a manual penalty.
- Editorial links – links that are earned naturally and not paid for.
- External links – links that point from one domain to another
- Google Analytics – a free tool offered by Google that offers site owners insight into how people engage with your website.
- Guest blogging – writing content for another website usually to attract traffic to your website.
- Link building – actions aimed at earning links to your site with the goal of increasing its ranking.
- Link exchange – it’s exactly what it sounds like. You link to a website and they link to yours.
- Link profile – the profile of the inbound links to a website.
- Pay per click (PPC) – an advertising model where you only pay when people click on the advert.
- Purchased link – a link that is purchased and not earned organically.
- Qualified traffic – traffic that is more likely to find the web content useful, and therefore the visitor is more likely to take action and convert.
- Referral traffic – traffic sent to a website from another source, like social media.
- Search traffic – traffic sent to your website from search engines.
- Unnatural links – artificial links placed to manipulate a page’s ranking
SEO Glossary – Technical Optimization
Technical SEO refers to optimizing the structure of your website to make it more efficient for search engines to be able to crawl and index the different pages.
- 2xx status codes– this status codes means a searcher’s request was completed successfully.
- 4xx status codes – a searcher’s request resulted in error and was not successful.
- 5xx status codes – the server failed to complete the request.
- Crawling – the process where search engine bots search the contents of a website.
- Domain name registrar – a company that manages the registration of domain names.
- Hreflang – an HTML attribute that identifies the language your content is in.
- HTTP – Hypertext Transfer Protocol allows for exchange of HTML web pages.
- HTTPS – is secure HTTP.
- IP address – Internet Protocol address is a string of numbers assigned to each device that’s connected to the internet.
- Rich snippet – Google search results with additional data displayed.
- Robots.txt – files that indicate parts of your website that search engines should and shouldn’t crawl.
- URL – Uniform Resource Locators, commonly known as the web address.
In conclusion
As promised in our digital marketing blog, we are doing a deep-dive into all the elements that will assist in improving your digital marketing strategy. We have already touched on building your audience persona and the perils of digital sharecropping – building your online presence on social media alone and neglecting to build your own website or blog.
Please use the space below to leave a comment and let us know what you think of our glossary.
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