The SEO Glossary: The Top Terms to Know to Excel at Web Content

 

Search engine optimization, on its own, is a daunting term. And from algorithm to XML sitemap, all the additional terms, acronyms and abbreviations that fall under the umbrella of SEO can send even the savviest entrepreneurs to run for the hills.  

SEO refers to the efforts made to enhance website visibility on search engines like Google. Entrepreneurs often learn SEO on the job and are left to grapple with the associated jargon on their own.  

  The SEO landscape is vast, dynamic, and could be intimidating due to all the tech jargon. But understanding these basic terms can actually simplify the strategy, as well as the process of optimizing your small business website.  

Whether refreshing old skills or diving into SEO for the first time, this guide to SEO terms is your key to success. 

 

A  

• Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP): AMP is a “lighter” HTML that allows blog pages to load quickly on mobile devices when clicked on from Google searches. It's SEO gold.   
• Adwords: Google's Adwords lets you put paid ads on search results by bidding on certain keywords. Use the included Keyword Planner to understand popular keywords.  
• Algorithm: A set of rules that search engines use to rank pages. Google has 200+ signals or “rules” that decide a site’s ranking in search results, including SEO title, backlinks, and more.   
• Alt Text: Short for alternative text. Alt text is text that tells search engines what's in your images. Because search engines can’t see images, adding alt text allows images to become searchable and drive traffic to your site.   
• Anchor Text: Clickable text that links to other pages. It usually appears blue and underlined.  

 

B  

• Backlinks (aka inbound, inward, or incoming links): Links from other sites that direct a visitor to your site. Having more backlinks, particularly from reputable sites, boosts your appeal to search engines.   
• Black Hat Technique: Any attempt to boost a ranking that goes against search engine guidelines, such as link schemes and keyword stuffing.  
• Blog: Regularly updated articles on a site, by either an individual or company. Blogs are a great place to add fresh content and engage site visitors. They often include relevant links and images to boost a post’s searchability.  
• Bounce Rate: The rate of visitors leaving a site after viewing only one page. High bounce rates hurt SEO. 
• Bot (short for “robot”): Refers to any type of automated application. Those that scan the web are often called spiders or crawlers. Google's search engine bot, Googlebot, source websites generating a massive database that fuels search engine results.   

 

C  

• Canonical URL: The preferred version of a URL when there are multiple versions of the same page.   
• Citation: A mention of your business name and address on other web pages, which is crucial for local SEO. Knowing where your business is located helps search engines rank it when location is part of a query.   
• Click Through Rate (CTR): Number of clicks divided by impressions. A CTR can offer useful information in determining how enticing a site seems on search engine results.  
• Cloaking: Showing different content to search engines and users, a deceptive practice against search engine guidelines.  
• Content: Everything on your site – text, images, videos, infographics, and more. Having fresh, high quality, and relevant content improves a site’s ranking.  
• Conversion: Refers to a site visitor accomplishing the site's defined goal (like a purchase or subscription). Conversion is the primary goal of SEO efforts. Crawling: Search engine bot reading your site's code. (See also “Bot.”)  

 

D  

• Deep Linking: Creating hyperlinks that point to specific pages or content within a website, not just the homepage.   
• Directory: Online listing of websites, such as Yelp and Google My Business, that help search engines promote local businesses.   
• Domain: Your website's address (without the “www”). For example, yourbusiness.com. Short, easy domains tend to perform better for SEO purposes.   
• Domain Authority: Moz's score that determines a site’s SEO ranking ability. It considers factors such as links, trust rankings, popularity to award a score from 1 to 100, with 100 being highly likely a site will appear on a SERP.   
• Duplicate Content: Identical content that appears on multiple sites. It's recommended to avoid this as search engines can penalize sites with duplicate content.  
• Dwell Time: The time a user spends on a page after clicking a search result.  

 

E  

• Evergreen Content: Content that remains relevant and valuable over an extended period, not tied to current trends.  
• External Link: Link to an external domain from your site.  

 

F  

• Fetch as Google: a helpful feature in Google Search Console that simulates Googlebot's view. It allows you to essentially “proofread” your site and correct any errors.   
• Featured Snippet: Sometimes known as “result 0,” a featured snippet is the top result with a summarized answer to a user’s query. It often includes images or graphics and occupies prime real estate at the top of a search engine result page (SERP).  

 

G  

• Gateway Page: A page created solely to rank high in search engines, that leads users to other pages.   
• Google: Is a definition necessary? Google is a tech company specializing in internet related services and products and known best for its search engine. To google something means to search for information online, via the Google search engine.  
• Google Analytics: Google’s software that tracks website traffic and behavior over time. Essential for SEO reporting.  
• Google Search Console: A free tool for verified website owners that helps to optimize your website. Verifying a website on Google Search Console is an integral part of any SEO effort. best practice.  
• Google Webmaster Guidelines:  A support document outlining all the dos and don'ts to optimize a website.   

 

H  

• Heading Tags: H1 to H6 tags are the SEO terms for titles and headlines and help Google’s bots read and evaluate a site. Hyperlink: Link connecting pages or elements.  

 

I  

• Image SEO: Optimizing images for search engines. Includes adding alt text, captions, and fast loading.  
• Inbound Link: External link pointing to your site. Same as a backlink.  
• Index: A search engine database storing URLs and website copies. Search engines crawl and index.  
• Internal Link: Links within the same site to improve navigation within a domain.  
• Impressions: Number of people seeing an item. In SEO this refers to the number of people who see your site in the search results.  

 

J  

• Juice: A web page's ability to rank well in SEO that can be shared with other sites through links. Sometimes referred to as a site’s “SEO power.”   

 

K  

• Keyword: Short phrases (two to five words) that users type in searching for a business like yours. Choosing the right, relevant keyworks is a crucial part of SEO strategy. Tools, such as Keyword Planner can help you identify what words are relevant for your business. Just avoid Keyword Stuffing (see below).   
• Keyword Density: Percentage of keywords to the total words on a page. Quality matters more than quantity.  
• Keyword Stuffing: Loading a page with keywords to manipulate ranking. The practice can result in a negative user experience and hurt a page’s SEO ranking. Avoid the temptation.  

 

L  

• Landing Page: The webpage where users "land" after clicking on a link, often used in marketing campaigns.   
• Link Building: Getting quality backlinks to boost trust and ranking.  
• Link farm: A group of highly interlinked sites that aims to inflate the sites’ popularity. This is considered spamming and can carry repercussions.   
• Link Juice: The value or authority passed from one webpage to another through hyperlinks.  
• Local SEO: Actions to make your site visible in local searches.  
• Local Pack: the local business listings shown in a map on a search results page  
• Long Tail Keyword: Phrases containing four or more words targeting specific audiences. Because they target a defined audience, they can improve conversion.   

 

M  

• Meta Description: A website description that appears on a search engine results page (SERP) under the green web address. Also found in the source code of your website.  
• Meta Keywords: Outdated and now redundant SEO technique that used keyword lists visible only to the search engine. Search engines now understand content better.  
• Meta Title: HTML code telling search engines your page's name. See also SEO Title.  
• Mobile First Index: Google ranking based on a site’s mobile version, which Googlebot now prioritizes over a site’s desktop counterpart. Having a fast and seamless mobile site is integral for favorable SEO results.   
• Mobilegeddon: refers to the 2015 Google update that favored mobile-friendly sites.  

 

N  

• Noindex: A piece of HTML code that prevents a page from being listed in Google, even when linked to elsewhere.   

 

O  

• Organic Traffic: Unpaid traffic coming from unpaid search results. A key goal of any SEO strategy is to drive as much organic traffic as possible.   
• Optimization: The process and strategy of tweaking your site to appeal to search engine crawlers with the goal of ranking high on SERPs.   
• Outbound Links: Links that lead to pages outside your site. Same as external links.  
• Outreach Marketing: A marketing approach that encourages bloggers and online influencers to recognize a site through social media shares or links.   

 

P  

• Panda: Google's 2011 algorithm update to prevent poor quality sites from appearing on search results.  
• Penguin: Google's 2012 algorithm update combating link schemes and spammy sites. Link schemes, that is buying or exchanging links, are against the guidelines outlined in Google Search Essentials.   
• Pigeon: Google's 2014 algorithm update focusing on local search results.  
• PPC (Pay-Per-Click): Paid advertising model in which advertisers pay a fee whenever an ad is clicked.   
• Pageviews: An analytic metric totaling the pages viewed on a site within a period. Higher page views indicate a visitor is engaged with the content enough to explore a domain further than the landing page.   
• Position: Derived from more than 200 factors, a website's position is its rank in search results.    

 

Q  

• Query: The words or phrases a person types in a search box.  

 

R  

• Rank Brain: Google's AI program to process queries and understand connections between queries and topics.  
• Ranking: See Position.  
• Rich Results: Search listings that contain additional information beyond the standard URL, page title and description. They also include visual enhancements and/or interactive features.  
• Robots.txt: A set of instructions used by websites that tell search engines which pages should not be crawled. This ensures search engines will not index pages not intended for public view, allowing the crawlers to focus on the pages more relevant to SEO ranking.   

 

S  

• Schema Markup: Code added to a webpage to provide additional information to search engines, enhancing rich snippets.   
• Search Operators: Special search formats to get specific search results for a given query.  
• Searcher Intent: Refers to the original purpose behind a search query. Understanding this helps inform site content and improves an SEO strategy.   
• SEO (Search Engine Optimization): The efforts made to improve a site's ranking and visibility in search results.  
• SEO Title: roughly 70 characters of HTML code that states your page’s name for search engines. It can be viewed in your site’s source code and at the top of a webpage and any time it appears in a SERP.  
• SEM (Search Engine Marketing): Paid advertising to increase search visibility. The opposite of SEO (which is free).   
• SERP (Search Engine Results Page): The list of pages that shows up for a query or keyword search.   
• SERP Features: Special features on search engine results page outside of traditional listings, such as featured snippets, review stars, knowledge panels, and local packs. They are designed to enhance a user’s search experience.   
• Sitemap: A plan of your site's pages that shows each page and how they are connected to each other. Sitemaps help search engines discover all relevant content.   
• Spider: Search engine crawler, like Googlebot, that scans site pages to index them  
• Structured Data: Data organized in a specific format, often using schema markup, to help search engines understand content better and return accurate results to searchers.  

 

T  

• Time on Page: Metric in Google Analytics showing how long visitors stay. See also Dwell Time.   
• Title Tag: See SEO title.  

 

U  

• URL (Uniform Resource Locator): Web page or file address (includes “www”)  
• User Experience (UX): The overall experience a visitor has on a website, including design, navigation, and content readability.  

 

V  

• Voice Search: Searching by speaking out loud. Voice recognition software, like Siri, registers the question and will voice an answer or pull up a response on search results.  

 

W  

• Website Speed: Time for a site's page to load. Slow loading times negatively affects user experience and SEO. 
• White Hat SEO: Ethical SEO efforts that are human focused and follow search engine rules and policies. The opposite of a black hat technique.   

 

X  

• XML Sitemap: A file that lists all the URLs of a website, helping search engines understand the site's structure. See also Sitemap.   

 

Other / Numeric  

• 200 OK: Server response code for a healthy web page.  
• 301 Moved Permanently or 301 Redirect: Redirects a user to a different web address.  
• 404 Not Found: Error message when a web address can't be found. The site may have an error in its URL or have been deleted.