SEO – Search Engine Optimization (right away with our first term) has its own jargon, phrases, and abbreviations. We’ve compiled a list of the most important SEO definitions that any digital marketer will undoubtedly come across at some time during their career in this post.
General Terms
SEO
Without a solid foundation, we can’t get started. The term SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, but it’s not as simple as it sounds. It includes numerous activities and methods aimed at improving the quality and quantity of organic traffic to a website (or page) from search engines. Unsurprisingly, most SEOs are focusing on Google.
SERP
One of the most essential SEO-related terms and abbreviations. It refers to “search engine results page,”. Simply said it is the webpage with results we see when doing a search:
Search Engine
A software that is used to conduct online searches. They systematically explore the Internet for certain specific information in a text-based search query.
Search engines’ primary objective is to assist users in answering their inquiries and obtaining the information they need. Of course, Google has long been #1, with popular rivals including Microsoft Bing, Baidu, Yandex, Duck Duck Go, Ecosia, and so on.
Algorithm
An algorithm is a set of rules for extracting information (found in the search filed) and delivering the most relevant and useful replies.
HTML
HTML stands for Hypertext Markup Language, and it’s the most popular programming language for “building” a web page’s text, links, and pictures.
Traffic
When it comes to SEO, we most often talk about organic traffic, which is the traffic that originates from search engines. In other words, when individuals look for something on Google, Bing, Yahoo, or any other search engine and come across an organic search result (not a sponsored ad) instead of a commercial link. All visits to your website from search engines are considered organic.
URL
The Uniform Resource Locator (URL) is one of the most important ideas in Internet and digital marketing. In a nutshell, it’s the address of a specific, unique resource on the Web. This item might be an HTML page, a .PDF file, an image, video, or anything else.
Google Search Operators
Google Search operators are mixtures of words and symbols that improve your search results. They allow you to use Google more accurately and effectively by restricting or emphasizing certain keywords. The following are examples of search operators: AND; OR; exclamation marks; @ or $; site: and so on.
Local pack
The Local Pack is a portion of Google’s search results that displays local businesses related to your inquiry. When you type in something with local intent, Google will usually display three nearby businesses that might help you.
Search Engines
Crawling
Crawling is a method of finding new and fresh content where search engines unleash a “team” of robots (also known as crawlers or spiders) to find it. Links are responsible for the discovery of any variety of material, whether it’s a webpage, an image, a video, a PDF, or else.
Indexing
Another key term in the SEO world is indexing. While crawling involves going through each URL they find on the internet, indexing entails putting data collected during crawling into a database and arranging it (ranking). To be visible and rank for various keywords, pages must be indexed first.
Ranking
The position that a website occupies in search engine results pages (SERPs) is referred to as rankings in SEO. The content relevance of the search term, as well as the quality of backlinks linking to the page, influence whether a website appears higher on the SERP based on the content’s usefulness to the query.
Crawlers
Web crawlers, also known as web spiders or internet bots, are automated programs that browse the internet in search of material to index. Crawlers can examine a wide range of information, including content, links on a page, broken links, sitemaps, and HTML formatting validation.
Cache
The term cache refers to the temporary storage of information. For example, a Google Cache is a webpage’s data that has been saved in Google’s search index. A cache is a digital copy of the page as it appeared on the preceding crawl.
Cloaking
The use of black hat SEO tactics, such as cloaking, is a form of deception that deceives search engines and humans. Because it delivers users with distinct information than they expected, cloaking is against Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.
Manual Penalty
Manual penalties are levied by actual Google staff for content quality and security concerns, as well as for maliciously manipulating the algorithm via black hat SEO. Manual penalties, unlike algorithmic ones, are simple to identify and fix.
Sitemap
A sitemap is a “diagram” of your website that aids search engines in finding, crawling, and indexing all of the pages on your site. Search engines also use sitemaps to determine which webpages on your site are most important. It’s usually presented as an XML Sitemap that connects to various parts of your website.
Onsite Terms Glossary
Meta title
A meta title, sometimes called a title tag, is the text that appears on search engine result pages and browser tabs to identify the subject of a webpage.
Meta description
A meta description is a short blurb of text that appears below your site’s search engine results page (SERP) and informs users about the content on your page. It’s designed to offer visitors a quick overview of what they’ll find on your site so they know whether it will provide the information they need.
Rel Canonical
A canonical tag (also known as “rel canonical”) is a method for conveying to search engines that a certain URL is the main version of a page. Using the canonical tag eliminates issues caused by duplicate or “near duplicate” content being displayed on numerous URLs.
Thin Content
The phrase “thin content” refers to text or content that is largely worthless.
Internal Duplicate Content
Internal duplicate content is when one domain creates duplicate material via numerous internal URLs on the same website (on the same domain).
External Duplicate Content
When the content of a page occurs on other domains, it’s known as external duplicate content (often referred to as cross-domain duplicates).
Page Speed
The amount of time it takes for a website’s content to load is known as page speed. It’s easy to misuse this phrase, especially when you’re looking at SEO-related terms like “site speed,” which refers to the average loading time of numerous sample pages on a site.
SSL Certificate
An SSL certificate is a digital certificate that verifies a website’s identity and allows for an encrypted connection. The acronym SSL stands for Secure Sockets Layer, a security mechanism that creates an encrypted link between a web server and a browser.
Anchor text
The visible, clickable text in a hyperlink is referred to as anchor text. It’s often blue and underlined in contemporary browsers, such as this link to the LLAMARKETING homepage.
An example would be <a href=”https://llamarketing.co.uk/”>the LLAMARKETING homepage</a>
Redirects
Sometimes, webpages shifts from one URL to another. That’s when you’ll need a redirect. A redirect instructs the browser to move from one address to another without user input or action on their part.
Link Building
Backlinks
A backlink is a connection from one website to another. A webpage, page, or directory on the Internet is considered a web resource. A backlink is similar to a reference in that it is an indication of appreciation.
Internal Links
An internal link is a type of hyperlink on a website that leads to another page or resource on the same website or domain.
Domain Authority
A website’s domain authority represents its relevance to a certain topic or industry. Moz created the Domain Authority metric, which is a search engine ranking score. The evaluation of domain authority is assisted by automated analytical algorithms that try to evaluate domain authority through AI analysis.
Broken Links
A broken link is a web page that cannot be found or accessed by a person for reasons. When a user attempts to access a broken link, the web server may give an error message. Broken links are also known as “dead links” and “link rots.”
Outreach
Outreach entails connecting off-site websites to the client’s website in order to provide value. It’s an important component of the SEO if done incorrectly.
Brand Mentions
Online mentions about a business, brand, or service are known as brand mentions. These references are frequently found in product and service reviews, blog posts, instructional material, and news articles. A company’s online reputation can be influenced by brand mentions. It is crucial to use media monitoring tools to discover brand comments and work to correct any bad ones.
Follow/ NoFollow Attributes
A dofollow and a nofollow link are two methods for indicating a connection and telling Google how to connect the page you’re referring to from your website. Follow links are a way to pass on authority, while nofollow links do not pass authority.
Here’s an example: <a href=”http://www.anydomain.com/” rel=”nofollow”>And here’s the anchor</a>
Unnatural Links
Unnatural links are usually fraudulent connections that are created to improve a website’s ranking. These can include paid links or scraped and spammy links that attach themselves to your site undetected and link it to another one.
Keyword Research
Keywords
Keywords are the words that describe your content, such as “rear-view mirror” or “biking.” They’re also known as “search queries,” which are the words and phrases that searchers input into search engines. Your primary keywords are the words and phrases that represent everything on your page when reduced to its simplest form.
Search Intent
The primary aim a user has while searching a query in a search engine is referred to as search intent (also known as user intent). Users frequently conduct searches for particular sorts of answers or resources.
Take sushi for example. Searching for a sushi recipe has a different intent than searching for takeout sushi, which is also different from searching for the history of sushi. Though they all revolve around the same overall topic (sushi), all these searches have different intents.
Keyword Stuffing
Keyword stuffing is a type of web spam or spamdexing that uses keywords to be crammed into a website’s meta tags, visible content, or backlink anchor text in an attempt to gain an unfair ranking advantage in search engines. It’s an old-school search engine optimization technique that could lead to a penalty by google.
Search Volume
The search volume for a certain term measures how many people are looking for that query. When developing your content strategy, you must consider search volume because it reflects the popularity of the query’s popularity. One strategy is to find key phrases with high search volumes and low competition.
Keyword Difficulty (KD)
The Keyword Difficulty (KD) is a metric that estimates how hard it would be for a website to organically rank a page in the top 10 results for a particular term in search engines (mainly google).
Head Terms
Head terms are search phrases that are short, popular, and clear (e.g., “skiing”). Head terms are defined as those that have a bell curve distribution of keyword use, with the majority of used terms showing up toward the “head” end of the curve.
Longtail Keywords
Long-tail keywords are phrases with low search traffic and a high degree of variation. In other words, these queries are only searched a few times a month because they are very particular, or people may phrase them in many ways.
Informational, Navigational, Transactional & Commercial Keywords
- Informational – queries used by internet users while looking for information about a certain subject and have only informative intent. They commonly include terms such as “When?” “How?” and “Where?”
- Navigational – When a user is already familiar with a company and wants to discover their online (or physical) address in order to go to the website or social media account.
– For example, a lot of people type “amazon” in the search rather than opening it directly by typing amazon.com.
- Transactional – Transactional keywords are used when people are ready to make a purchase. Their search intent is clear, they are ready to order products or services.
- Commercial – The queries used for sponsored advertisements are known as Pay Per Click Keywords or commercial keywords.
Local Keywords
Keywords that are relevant to your area of operation, such as “climbing centre in Bristol”. Can be used to help with your local search engine optimization (SEO) plan. These terms encourage local users to visit your business and play a significant role in improving your marketing strategy.