While many people might know that SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, they might not know everything about it.
Businesses and brand owners interested in hiring an SEO agency in Mumbai for their websites should have a basic understanding of the most common SEO terms and terminologies.
Thus, here is a comprehensive list of over 200 SEO definitions that can help you improve your SEO vocabulary.
A
Above The Fold
Typically, the Above The Fold content is the first thing visitors see when they land on a website. Above The Fold is the top section of the website that visitors can see without scrolling. The term Above The Fold originates from the newspapers, which were delivered folded. So, the first thing the readers came across was the top section of the newspaper unless it was unfolded.
Algorithms
Algorithms are programs, complex systems, rules or formulas that search engines use to rank websites. An example of an algorithm would be Google’s PageRank, considered the first Google algorithm written by Larry Page.
Algorithm Update
In the technological world, updates are essential to ensure that the software or program measures up to the current industry standard. Search engine algorithms get frequent updates, which helps improve the search results. These updates allow search engines to provide better and more relevant results to their users.
Alt Text
Short for Alternative Text, Alt text is an HTML attribute that describes an image. This attribute allows publishers to add a short and succinct description to every image uploaded to their website. Search engine bots/crawlers cannot visually understand an image, so an Alt Text provides meaning to these images. Also, visually impaired people and others who rely on screen readers can benefit from Alt text.
AMP
Short for Accelerated Mobile Page, AMP is a program that ensures that website pages load faster on mobile devices such as smartphones. AMP are lightweight pages created with the help of the latest web tech, such as JavaScript, HTML, and CSSS. It cuts down the page loading time, improving the user experience.
Anchor Text
Anchor Text, also known as link text or link label, is an HTML hyperlink. It is usually blue-coloured underlined text which holds a link to another web page or content. Often these links can also be used to perform other actions, such as downloading a newsletter when you click a link.
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Artificial Intelligence, often known by its abbreviation AI, is the simulation of the human intelligence process demonstrated by machines. Search engine algorithms such as Google’s RankBrain were powered by AI systems. Google continues to incorporate AI to provide more relevant results to users.
ASO
Short for App Store Optimization, ASO is the process of improving the ranking of apps on the app store. ASO increases the visibility of an app, ensuring more downloads and revenue boosts.
Authority
Authority can mean various things. Website authority is a key metric used to measure a website’s value online. To improve website authority, the website owner needs to acquire more inbound links from other reputed websites. Websites with higher authority continue to acquire links organically. Plus, the higher the number of quality links, the better a website will rank on the search result.
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Backlinks
A backlink, commonly known as an inbound or incoming link, is an external link pointing toward your website.
Below The Fold
Below The Fold is the part of the web page that becomes visible once you scroll and move away from Above The Fold content.
Bing
Bing from Microsoft is one of the other leading search engines after Google. Its interface is quite similar to that of Google’s, making it easier for users to switch between both search engines.
Black Hat SEO
SEO techniques, services, and strategies that go against the search engine guidelines are known as Black hat SEO. These techniques include keyword stuffing and link spamming. Websites can be penalised for using such black hat SEO techniques to manipulate search engine results.
Bounce Rate
Bounce Rate is the rate at which visitors leave your website without taking an action, such as filling out a form or visiting another page.
Branded Keywords
Keywords with commercial intent, when paired with a brand’s name, are considered branded keywords. Branded keywords help distinguish your products from your competitors.
Suppose a computer firm named Galaxy launched a new range of wireless keyboards. A person interested in purchasing a wireless keyboard from this company is more likely to enter the query Galaxy wireless keyboard in the Google search.
Breadcrumb Navigation
Breadcrumb navigation, also known as the breadcrumb trail, is a secondary navigation method that helps users understand where they are on a website. They can use this breadcrumb navigation to go back to previous pages, reaching as far back as the home page.
Broken Link/Dead Link
A broken link, also known as link rot or dead link, is a hypertext link that doesn’t work or return a webpage. When you click on a broken link, the web server often returns an error message. There are several reasons for broken links, including the removal of the web page to which the link pointed. It can be fixed with page redirects.
B2B SEO
B2B stands for Business to Business. In B2B SEO, the strategy is designed to improve organic traffic for businesses that sell to other businesses instead of the consumer. The target audience of B2B SEO services is industry professionals and decision-makers.
B2C SEO
B2C stands for Business to Consumer. B2C SEO is for businesses selling directly to consumers. A B2C SEO strategy aim to reach as many people as possible and inform them about the brand and the products or services. If your target market consists of the final consumer, you should go for a B2C SEO package.
C
Cache
Cache typically refers to the hidden storage of data on the closest server for quicker access. It refers to a web cache that stores data such as HTML, CSS, Javascript and images into the browser files to offer faster loading speeds, which are essential for good SEO.
Cached Pages
Cached pages are web pages stored on the user’s local device, so they remain accessible even when the servers are down or the user has no internet connection. Cache pages also provide previous versions of the web page that are updated frequently.
Call to Action (CTA)
CTA, short for Call to Action, is text or button that influences visitors to take action on a web page. Consider a new haircare brand launching a new product. They could add an incentivised CTA such as “Get Your Free Conditioner Today”. Offering a freebie with CTA usually leads to higher conversions.
ccTLD
ccTLD, an abbreviation for Country Code Top-Level Domain, is a top-level domain name used for a specific geographical area or a country. A ccTLD is essential for international SEO. It tells the search engines that the website content targets a specific geographical region.
Clickbait/Link Bait
Clickbait is a misleading or deceptive link. Its main purpose is to grab attention and influence visitors to click on a particular link that will direct them to a inferior website or webpage.
Cloaking
Cloaking is a black hat SEO technique that misleads the search engine crawlers by presenting it with content or URLs different from the ones presented to the human users. This is done to rank for specific keywords. It compromises the quality of results the search engine returns and is therefore considered a violation of Google’s webmaster guidelines.
Comment Spam
Comment Spam, like most spam, serves the purpose of trying to either sell goods and services or infect your device with malicious malware. Comment spam is typically found on blogs, online forums, and other website platforms.
Canonicalization
Canonicalization is the process of identifying and choosing a URL as canonical. It is required when there are different versions of a similar web page. Canonicalization tells the search engines that a particular URL (canonical URL) is the most authoritative one and so should be shown in the search results.
Core Web Vitals
Core Web Vitals are metrics that give quantitative data on a website’s real-time performance. You can use Google’s Search Console or Google’s Page Speed Insights to access these metrics and data. It includes essential metrics such as First Contentful Paint, Speed Index, Largest contentful paint, and Cumulative layout shift (CLS).
Content Marketing
Content marketing is a digital marketing strategy that focuses on creating, publishing, and promoting informative and commercial intent content.
Competitor Analysis
Competitor analysis is an SEO technique that allows SEO experts and digital marketers to analyse the competitor’s data with the help of SEO tools specialising in keyword research. Competitor analysis lets them perform research that helps identify competitors’ plus points and pain points. This data can be used to improve their website.
CTR
An abbreviation for Click Through Rate, CTR is a metric used to measure the effectiveness of digital marketing campaigns. Typically CTR is the ratio of the number of clicks on the search results divided by the number of times the result is viewed on the search engine result pages. CTR can be measured for both organic results and paid adverts.
CSS
CSS, short for Cascading Style Sheets, is a web development language used to make static web pages more presentable. Developers can change the colour, background images, layout designs, and several other parameters with the help of CSS.
Conversion
Conversion is the number of people who have converted from casual browsers to purchasing loyal customers.
Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO)
CRO, short for Conversion Rate Optimization, is one of the best SEO practices that optimise a web page for higher conversion.
Content Management System/CMS
Content Management Systems or CMS are applications that can be used to manage and monitor digital content. WordPress is a leading CMS platform.
Crawl Error
When a search engine crawler or bot fails to reach a page on your website, it results in a crawl error.
D
Deep Links
In the case of mobile apps, deep links are links that point to specific locations within a mobile app. Suppose a clothing store is running social media advertisements for clearance sales. On social media, a user can click this link and directly reach the clearance sales page on that particular app. For those who don’t have apps, it will take them to the browser.
Disavow
Disavow is an advanced tool provided by Google. It allows website owners to disavow links, which tells the search engines not to consider these links while indexing and ranking your website.
Do-follow Link
A do-follow link is a hyperlink pointing toward another site. When you use do-follow links on your website, you pass link juice to the other website, ensuring it benefits from your website authority. When a search engine robot crawls your website, it will follow the hyperlink and also crawl the linked website.
Domain Age
Domain age is the amount of time that a domain has been in existence. It is calculated from the date when the domain was registered to the current date. It is believed that a higher domain age is better for driving more traffic, but this is not proven.
Domain Authority (DA)
Domain Authority or DA is a metric that measures the authority of a website by combining several SEO ranking factors. Digital marketers can use tools such as Ahref and Moz to find a website’s domain authority.
DuckDuckGo
DuckDuckGo is a search engine focused on protecting the privacy of users. It doesn’t profile its users and shows every user the same result for the same search query.
Duplicate Content
Duplicate content can be either an exact copy of content published on another website or rephrased & rewritten content that confuses the Google algorithm. Duplicate content can affect the rankings of both the original creator and the thief.
Dwell Time
In simple words, Dwell time is the period of time a visitor spends on your website before leaving.
Dynamic URL
A Dynamic URL is a Variable URL that changes depending on the user’s query. These are specially used by websites that store content in the database and fetch the content when requested by users.
De-index
You can de-index a web page on your website by using the no-index tag, which tells Google search crawlers and bots not to index that particular page.
Directory
Online directories offer digital marketers, publishers, and SEO experts a directory where they can find backlinks and citations to support their websites.
E
E-E-A-T
E-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. E-E-A-T is a criterion used by Google to determine a web page’s and website’s credibility. It is a crucial component of a website’s ranking and traffic.
Error 404
A web server returns a 404 error when a web page is not found. It mostly happens in cases where the web page has been either moved or deleted.
External Link
External links are links that point to any website other than the website the link exists on. It is merely a link from one website to another website. It is the opposite of internal links, that point toward a link within the website.
Evergreen Content
Evergreen content is SEO content that stays relevant long after it has been published. For example, consider the Killer WordPress Checklist – 101+ Easy Steps to Launch a Website. This checklist is a strong contender for evergreen content and remains so unless new information is uncovered.
eCommerce SEO
An SEO campaign created to improve an eCommerce website, thereby boosting its ranking, is known as eCommerce SEO. eCommerce SEO services are focused on increasing traffic, brand awareness, and sales.
Editorial Link
Editorial links are backlinks that a site collects organically, without requests or payments. Such links usually come from authoritative sites and stand to improve your website’s authority.
.edu Links
.edu links are backlinks that come from authentic educational websites. It helps establish a strong brand presence and build trust.
Engagement Metrics
Bounce rate, conversion rate, CTR, and dwell time are a few examples of Engagement metrics that help users determine the quality of a website.
Enterprise SEO
Enterprise SEO strategies are used for larger companies and websites (often decided by the number of web pages on a website). They differ from other SEO strategies in terms of scale, tools, and challenges. For a bigger company knowing about enterprise SEO services can help make informed decisions.
Entities
In SEO an entity is any individual thing that can be clearly identified and defined. This includes people, places, organisations, websites, events, groups, and other things.
F
Featured Snippets
A featured snippet is a refined search result. It typically offers direct answers to your search queries, which can be seen from the above screenshot. It shows the result of the search query: cluster headache causes.
Feed
Feed refers to the content delivered to users in a specific format through content distribution platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
Fresh Content
Fresh content, as the name suggests, is new content updated to the website periodically, either weekly or monthly.
FTP
FTP, short for File Transfer Protocol, is a protocol used to transfer files between two devices, networks, or websites.
Footer Link
Links are present in the footer of the web page. A web page’s footer is the very bottom part of the web page. The space is typically used to offer either navigation links or to improve conversion.
G
Geotargeting
Geotargeting is a technique used by SEO to target location-specific users by using maps.
Googlebot
GoogleBot is Google’s web crawler that crawls the internet, performs indexing, and assists in ranking website content.
Google Alerts
Google Alerts are email notifications sent to subscribers when Google finds new search results that either match users’ search query or are relevant to it.
Google Analytics (GA)
Google Analytics is a complete website analytics solution provided by Google. It performs behavioural, demographic and traffic analysis, helping site owners understand their visitors.
Google Search Console (GSC)
Google Search Console is another tool that helps website owners identify the locations and methods of incoming traffic. It helps improve your website’s indexing and performance by identifying issues affecting your search performance.
Google Autocomplete
Google Autocomplete is a time-saving tool incorporated in Google search that predicts and suggests queries as you start typing in the search box. Look at the prediction and suggestion Google Autocomplete provided for the query: how to bake.
Google Bomb
Google Bomb, a black hat SEO technique, is where an orchestrated link campaign builds enough backlinks to force Google Algorithm to rank a web page on the top regardless of relevancy and core metrics.
Google Dance
In the past, Google Dance referred to the major fluctuation in rankings that occurred due to the updates to the search ranking algorithm.
Google Drive
Google Drive is a free 15 GB of cloud storage offered to users by Google. It allows publishers and experts to access and share data on the go.
Google Hummingbird
In August 2013, Google rolled out Google Hummingbird – a search engine algorithm that improved semantic search and focused on the user’s search intent to serve results.
Google RankBrain
In October 2015, Google confirmed the rollout of RankBrain – a machine-learning-based search engine algorithm that was implemented to refine search results. It uses AI to analyse website content, looking for relevance to the search queries.
Google Keyword Planner
In the past, Google Keyword Planner was a free keyword research tool available to all. However, now it is a paid tool included in Google Ads.
Google Mobile-Friendly Test
Google Mobile-Friendly Test checks if your website is responsive and works optimally across all devices.
Google Business Profile (GBP)
Google Business Profile or GBP is a free Google tool for local and online businesses that have a physical address they can list on Google Maps. Local SEO uses GBP to improve a brand’s visibility.
Google PageSpeed Insights
Google PageSpeed Insights is a tool that allows business owners and digital marketers to check their website performance, diagnose performance issues, and offer quick solutions to fix the issues affecting their websites’ loading speed.
Google Passage Indexing
Google Passage Ranking feature uses featured snippets to return a relevant passage as an answer to the search query.
Google Panda
Released in February 2011, Google Panda was a Google search algorithm that focused on rewarding websites with quality content, ranking them higher. It also lowered the ranking for sites with poor content quality.
Google Penguin
Rolled out in April 2012, Google Penguin was a Google search algorithm that focused on manipulated or black hat link-building practices that led to link spamming. It also targeted keyword stuffing, another black hat SEO technique banned by Google.
Google Pigeon
In July 2014, Google rolled out yet another search algorithm, Google Pigeon. This algorithm update was focused on improving the ranking of local listings on Google maps and regular searches.
Google Search Console Crawl Stats Report
Google Search Console offers a detailed craw stats report that allows users to monitor and understand how Google crawls their website. It includes metrics such as host status, total crawl request, and craw request breakdown.
Google Search Operators
SEO experts and Google professionals use Google Search Operators to quickly refine searches with the help of special commands that can be typed into the search bar. Some of the common search operators are Cache, Allintext, allinurl, Inurl, filetype, site, and related.
Google Penalty
Google penalises websites when they fail to adhere to the Google’s official webmaster guidelines and use black hat SEO techniques to manipulate rankings with irrelevant or spammy results.
Google Trends
Google Trends is a web application that allows users to analyse popular topics across various regions and languages.
Google Webmaster Guidelines
Google’s official webmaster guidelines are general rules that help Google effectively rank your website for relevant queries.
Grey-hat SEO
Grey-hat SEO straddles the fine line between black hat SEO and White-hat SEO techniques. In some cases, grey-hat SEO techniques might improve website ranking without any negative consequences. However, on the flip side, it could end up earning you a Google penalty, banning your website.
Guest Blogging
Guest blogging is a content marketing and backlink generating technique used by SEO experts. In guest blogging, website owners write content for blogs in the same niche, gaining relevant backlinks, traffic boost, and improved website authority.
H
Headings
Headings help search engines understand the value of text within the content. Generally, there are five headings from H1 to H5, with H1 being the most prominent. H1 tags are reserved for important headings. It is also often used for page titles.
Hidden Text
In SEO, hidden text is a black hat SEO technique used to manipulate Google search algorithms. Spammers used this technique to submit long essays to search engines, but the content presented to the users doesn’t match up.
Homepage
The homepage is the website’s main page. Every website has one. Website visitors can typically click on the homepage tab or the website logo on the top to reach the homepage.
Hreflang Attribute
The hreflang attribute> is used to specify the languages of the document in the link. It is necessary to use the attribute on a multilingual website.
HTML
HyperText Markup Languages are commonly known as HTML. It is a markup language that was once used to build simple static websites. Now, it is used to create documents designed to be displayed in a website browser.
HTML <title> tag
The HTML <title> tag is used to define the title of the document in the HTML code.
HTTP
HTTP is short for the HyperText Transfer protocol. The HTTP protocol allows communication between client and web server by sending HTTP requests and receiving HTTP responses.
HTTPS
HTTPS is short for Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure. It facilitates secure communication between the client and the web server. It is a secure version of the HTTP protocol.
HTTP Status Codes
.htaccess File
.htaccess file is a distributed server configuration file used to edit and redirect website URLs. It offers a high level of website configuration.
Headline
The headline is different from regular headings. It is usually the title of the web page, usually located on the top and the first thing visitors see when they come across the web page. Generally, it is an engaging and attention-grabbing text that can positively impact a website’s SEO.
I
Image SEO
Image SEO means optimising the images on the website for SEO. It involves adding relevant image titles, captions, and alt attributes. The quality of the image and relevancy of the image also has an impact on the ranking.
Image Sitemap
Similar to a website’s sitemap, image sitemaps list all the images on the website along with their alt text.
Index
A search index is a collection of website data that the Google algorithm uses to fetch responses relevant to the search queries.
Indexability
A search engine’s indexability is its ability to analyse a web page and then add it to the search index.
Indexed Page
An indexed page has already been included in Google’s vast directory. So, when a user enters a query relevant to the web page, the indexed page shows up in the results.
Indexing
Search engine indexing is the process of collecting, parsing, and storing data to enable quick responses to search queries. It is one of the pivotal processes that help present relevant responses to queries.
Internal Link
An Internal link is a hyperlink that points toward another web page of the same website. It helps search engine crawlers smoothly crawl all the web pages that seem connected to each other. Internal links also offer the visitors relevant resources on the same website.
Inbound Link
Inbound links are links from other websites that point toward your website. Backlinks from authoritative websites increase your website authority, improving your site traffic and ranking on the search result.
IP Address
IP Address, short for Internet Protocol Address, is a unique character string identifying a computer with the help of the internet protocol.
J
JavaScript
JavaScript, also commonly known as JS, is a scripting language that allows developers to build interactive web pages. It powers around 98% of the internet.
K
Keyword
In SEO, a keyword refers to a word or phrase that a user enters into the search box. Keywords help website owners understand user behaviour, influencing them to optimise their website with these words and phrases.
Keyword Cannibalization
In simple terms, keyword cannibalization refers to a scenario when multiple pages on a particular website rank for the same keywords. This can confuse search engines and cause them to prioritise content that might not be relevant.
Keyword Research
Keyword research, one of the essential SEO techniques, is the process of identifying the words or phrases your audience is likely to enter as a search query. With Keyword research comes a deeper understanding of the workings of search engines.
Keyword Density
Keyword density is the ratio of the number of times a keyword is mentioned in the content to the total word count for the content. Suppose the keyword dog food is used 7 times in 500 words blog post, then the keyword density will be (7/500)*100= 1.4%.
Keyword Stuffing
Keyword stuffing is a black hat SEO technique that involves adding excessive keywords in the content to manipulate search engine ranking. It goes against Google’s guidelines. Websites that use this technique receive a penalty or are banned.
Keyword Prominence
Keyword prominence is a white hat SEO technique used by experts. It involves adding the target keywords in the first part of the content, informing Google what the webpage is about.
Knowledge Graph
The knowledge graph represents information about a number of entities, such as events, people, and organisations and illustrates how they are connected.
Knowledge Panel
Google’s Knowledge Panels are information boxes that appear as a response to a search query. As you can see, a search for sickle cell anaemia brought up this knowledge box about the disease.
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
Key performance indicators are metrics used to measure the performance and effectiveness of the SEO strategy. Different SEO strategies have different KPIs. If these KPIs are met, it means that the SEO strategy is working as expected.
L
Landing Page (LP)
A landing page is one of the most crucial tools for conversion. It is a web page created for specific events, and for influencing visitors to perform an action. All landing pages have a CTA.
Latent Semantic Indexing Keywords
Latent Semantic Indexing Keywords, commonly known as LSI keywords, are words and phrases related to the target or main keyword. These keywords are semantically related. Example: The main keyword for a page is cupcakes. LSI Keywords for cupcakes would be baking a cupcake, buy cupcakes, cupcake recipes online, and more.
Link equity/ Link Juice/ Link Authority
Link Equity, also known as link juice, is the authority or value of links on a website. In SEO, link equity begets the idea that a website authority can be transferred from one website to another through links.
Link Audit
Link Audit is a process of analysing the inbound links that are pointing at your websites. It helps determine issues in the links, thereby allowing you to fix them.
Link Building
Link building is a white-hat SEO technique. It is the process of acquiring high-quality and relevant links for your website. Writing and publishing authoritative content usually ensures organic link building.
Link Profile
A website’s link profile shows the collection of backlinks pointing toward the website. The higher the variety of backlinks coming from authoritative sources, the greater the value of the link profile.
Local SEO
Local SEO is SEO for getting local results. It optimises websites to ensure that local people within the region where the website or business is based can find your website through their queries.
Log File
A log file is a record of all requests received by your website’s server, even if the requests remain unfulfilled. It has information such as requested urls, visitor’s IP address, and HTTP status codes.
Log File Analysis
Log File Analysis is a technical SEO technique that allows users to see how web crawlers, such as Googlebot, interact with their websites.
Long-tail Keyword
Long-tail keywords are search engine queries made from around three to five words. Compared to generic keywords, long-tail keywords are more specific and allow search engines to understand your queries, thereby providing suitable results.
Example of long-tail keyword: consider baking to be a generic keyword. A person looking to bake a cupcake would search for baking recipes for cupcakes, a long-tail keyword which is much more specific.
Link Velocity
Link velocity is the measurement of the speed at which new backlinks are added to your website. It is often measured as new links obtained per month.
Lead
Lead is a term in marketing, advertisement, and sales. In digital marketing or SEO, a lead is a prospective customer who has expressed their interest in your products or services. Lead does not equal a converted customer. It is simply a possibility.
Link Farm
Technically, a link farm is a website or group of websites that are created for the sole purpose of boosting the backlinks of a brand website. It is often considered a black hat SEO method.
M
Manual Action/Manual Penalty/Penalty
When a human website reviewer at Google determines that a page on a particular website does not comply with Google’s webmaster quality guidelines, they issue manual actions against the website. Manual actions are typically penalties against websites that try to manipulate search engine rankings with shoddy tactics.
Meta Description
A meta description is a short and quick summary of the web page shown below your website title and link in search results. Ideally, the meta description should be up to 130 characters.
Meta Title
A meta title is the title of the web page that shows up in the Google search. Since this is the first time new visitors will come across your website, ensure that it is descriptive, specific, and eye-catching.
Meta Tags
Meta tags are part of a website’s metadata. These tags are words and phrases that provide search engines information to accurately profile a website. Meta description, meta title, and meta charset are a few commonly used meta tags.
Mobile-first Indexing
Google’s mobile-first indexing ensures that the mobile version of the website content is indexed and ranked primarily. Earlier the indexing was done with the desktop version of page content, but since most users access Google search with their phones, the shift was made. Since September 2020, mobile-first indexing has been enabled for all websites.
Mobile SEO
Mobile SEO optimises your website for a great user experience on mobile. This ensures that your website rankings aren’t affected by a poor mobile version of your website.
N
Negative SEO
Negative SEO is a malicious SEO technique used to sabotage a competitor’s search engine rankings. It includes tactics such as hacking, backlinks spamming, intentionally creating duplicate copies of the website’s content, and posting fake negative reviews.
Nofollow Link/Nofollow Attribute
Nofollow links are links that are assigned the HTML tag nofollow. The nofollow tag or attribute tells search engines to not crawl that particular link. Since nofollow links aren’t crawled, they do not pass their link juice to the other website.
Noindex Tag
A noindex tag tells search engines that it should not index that page, meaning it shouldn’t include the page in the search results.
Nosnippet Tag
A nosnippet tag tells the Google search engine that you do not want the content on your webpage to appear as a snippet in the search results. The nosnippet tag not only stops search engines from showing your content in featured snippets but also in the meta description. It only shows meta titles and links.
Noarchive Tag
Noarchive Tag tells Google to not store a cached copy of a web page.
Niche
In SEO, a niche is a specific subset of the market or target audience that experts focus on while building a website, creating an SEO campaign, and promoting the website.
O
Off-site SEO/Off-page SEO
Off-site SEO, commonly known as off-page SEO, are SEO techniques that are performed away from a website to increase a website’s ranking and visibility. These are optimisations made out of the website.
On-site SEO/On-page SEO
On-site SEO, also known as on-page SEO, includes optimising the website to improve the brand’s visibility and website’s ranking on the search engine.
Organic Traffic
Organic Traffic is the website traffic acquired through organic search results. Organic traffic typically means traffic that doesn’t come from paid advertisements but from search algorithms results.
Orphan Page
An orphan page is a website’s page with no internal links, but it may link to other websites. This stops it from being a dead-end page. A dead-end page does not have any internal or external link connections.
Outbound Link
An outbound link is a type of external link that points toward another website. Clicking on the link will take the user to that website. Outbound links are used as a reference to make a website look more credible to the search engine.
Organic Search Results
Organic search results are the natural results on Google when a user enters a query. These are called organic or natural because they appear based on relevance determined by the search engine algorithm. These aren’t paid results displayed as ads on Google.
P
Paid Search
Paid search or paid search results are search engine results that have the Ad tag accompanied by the results. These results are sponsored results that appear on search engines in exchange for payment made by the website owner.
Page Speed
Page Speed is a metric that measures the website loading speed and how long it takes for a web page to load. It includes processing and rendering of the content.
PageRank
PageRank is a value assigned to a web page to ascertain its importance. It proves helpful for search engines to determine the order in which they should display the search results. The higher the page rank, the higher the ranking.
Pogo-sticking
Pogo-sticking happens when a user visiting the top result is not satisfied with the solution to their query. So they come back to the search result page, click on other results and continue to do so until they find the result that satisfies them. If this happens often enough, the search algorithm determines that the website that has solved the user’s query should have a higher rank, demoting the other websites.
Private Blog Network
In SEO, a private blog network, also known as PBN, is a network of authoritative websites. The network is used to build backlinks for a website. Although PBNs aren’t white or black hat strategies, they lie in the grey area.
Persona in SEO
A buyer persona or marketing person in SEO is creating an outline for different types of potential customers than could convert. It is created using aspects such as demographics, behaviour, goals and needs of an ideal buyer, which is often an existing loyal customer.
Pageview
A pageview is an SEO and website term, a tracking metric that identifies how many times a page has been viewed.
Q
QDD (Query Deserves Diversity)
Query Deserves Diversity or QDD is Google’s policy that ensures the website ranking process follows ethical guidelines, providing transparent and fair results.
QDF (Query Deserves Freshness)
QDF, short for Query Deserves Freshness, is a Google metric, a re-ranking function used by Google to identify topics and search requests which signal the user’s desire for fresh and current content. This function enables Google to present users with up-to-date information.
Quality Content
Quality content, also termed authoritative content, is compelling content that provides the information the users need, offering answers and solutions to their search queries. Quality commercial content retains the information but also adds commercial intent that influences the users to take an action that benefits the brand
Queries/Search Query
A query is nothing but a search term, also known as a keyword or phrase entered by users into a search engine.
Quality Link
Quality links are natural links that a website acquires through organic and white hat SEO techniques. These links positively influence a PageRank, authority, and website’s organic rankings.
R
Ranking
Ranking refers to search engine ranking that determines the position of search results on the search engine results page.
Ranking Factors
Ranking factors are factors that determine the position of a website on the Google search result page. Some of the common ranking factors include authoritative content, a good backlink profile, website speed, and user experience.
Reciprocal Link
When two or more websites agree to exchange links, these are known as reciprocal links. Reciprocal links should be relevant to the website page. However, this may be a black hat SEO technique as it is done to manipulate the search rankings.
Redirect
When a user clicks on a web page link and is taken to a different web page or website, it is known as a redirect. This can occur if the page they clicked on is unavailable at the time.
Referrer
A referrer is an optional field transmitted when a server requests a web page. Its function is to identify the page from which the user landed on the current page. It also helps trace customers’ journeys, helping websites offer more personalised results.
Reinclusion
When a website receives a penalty through manual action, it can send a re-inclusion or reconsideration request to Google. This request will make Google take a second look at your website to ensure it complies with webmaster guidelines.
Relevance
Relevancy is an important term in SEO. It is mostly used in terms of content relevance. An example of this would be search engines finding relevant search results for a particular query. Relevancy is far more than the literal meaning of the words. It also includes user behaviour.
Rendering
Rendering is an SEO process where a search engine crawler such as Googlebot stretches your website pages, runs the code, and analyses the content to understand your website’s structure and layout. This information is essential to the search engine ranking of the content.
Responsive Website
Responsiveness is the ability of a website to provide a good user experience across all devices. It means a responsive website should be able to adapt to smaller devices such as mobile screens by shrinking and providing content adjusted to the device’s viewport.
Rich Results
Rich results are relevant and additional information that appears as organic search results. Rich results can appear in the form of images, videos, ratings, reviews, featured snippets, news, structured data, social profiles, or related searches.
Robots.txt
Robot.txt is a simple and vital text file that a server owner can use to provide instructions to the web crawler.
Rich Snippet
Rich snippet is a type of Google’s rich results. These typically show review snippets, recipe snippets, movie snippets, music snippets, or product markup snippets.
Reputation Management
The process of creating and maintaining a positive online brand or company image across all platforms is known as reputation management.
ROI
In SEO, ROI refers to Return on Investment. It is a financial metric that tells us how much return in revenue was earned on an investment – be it SEO or social media or paid ads.
S
Scraping/Scraped content
In SEO, scraping is collecting selective data from competitors or websites to understand how they function. The data obtained is used to build a better and unique version of the competitor’s website.
Search Engines
Search engines are web applications that allow users to search the internet for information such as news, informative content, images, videos, and more. A search engine uses an algorithm to rank the results that populate the search results page, trying to provide relevant information to its users.
Search Engine Robot/Spider/Crawler
A search engine robot is also known as a spider or crawler. It is a program that browses the websites on the internet to create indexes for the search engine.
Search Intent
Search intent is a reason that makes users enter a query in the search engine. A user’s search intent can be commercial, information, or transactional. They could also just want to browse the internet.
SEM
SEM, short for search engine marketing, is a digital marketing strategy that improves the website’s visibility on the search engine by promoting the website through paid advertisements.
Search Engine Optimization
Search engine optimization, also commonly known as SEO, is the process of optimising a website to ensure it ranks higher on the search engines such as Google and Bing.
Schema
Schema markup is a language used by developers to add structured data into the website’s HTML code. Search engines used this structured data to provide better results.
SEO Audit
An SEO audit is a process of running a comprehensive analysis of your website’s visibility in search engines. Running frequent audits helps you keep your website up-to-date, adhering to Google’s QDF standards.
SERPS
SERPS, short for search engine results pages, are the result pages that search engines display as a response to user queries.
Sitelinks
Sitelinks in Google search results are links to other pages or sections of pages under the same Google results. For example, a search for Capsicum MediaWorks results in the above site links: SEO Checklist and Work with Us.
Sitewide Links
Sitewide links are common outbound links that appear on all pages of the website. They are usually placed in the navigation menu, header or footer of the website.
Share of Voice
It is the ratio of the online mention of a company to the online mention of its competitor’s company. It is used to measure a company’s popularity compared to its competitors.
Social SEO
Social SEO is the SEO to improve a brand’s social media content and pages. High social engagement speaks well of a business or brand, improving its search rankings.
SSL Certificate
Secure Sockets Layer Certificate, commonly known as the SSL certificate, is used by websites to encrypt and protect their data. It tells users that the website is safe to use.
Structured Data
In simple terms, structure data is data that provides essential information about the website, company, products, and services. It includes information such as contact information, hours of operation, and reviews.
Subdomain
A subdomain is a division of your domain that goes under the main domain of the website. A subdomain allows a brand to branch out without needing to create a new domain.
Consider capsicummediaworks.com. If we wanted to create a subdomain, it would be something like this:
sub_domain_name.capsicummediaworks.com
Sitemap
A website’s sitemap is the list of website pages that is easily accessible to search engine crawlers and search engines. Sitemaps are generated in either XML or HTML format.
Split Testing
Split testing, commonly known as A/B testing, is a process of an orchestrated experiment that can help improve a website’s performance. With split testing, developers can change and experiment with one element at a time to determine if it makes a difference.
T
Taxonomy
In SEO, Taxonomy is a hierarchy used to classify or categorise different types of pages. A hierarchy or website structure help search engines better understand the content on your website.
Technical SEO
Technical SEO includes a wide range of SEO tactics required to optimise a website so that search engines can effectively crawl, index, and render a website.
Technical SEO Audit
A Technical SEO Audit consists of running a comprehensive website scan that checks for issues in the website design, speed, links, functionality, and crawl performance.
Thin Page
Thin pages are web pages that do not have enough content or have irrelevant or wrong content. These types of pages do not provide any value to the reader and are present only for the sake of it.
Top-level Domain
TLD, short for top-level domain, is the domain at the highest level of hierarchy in the domain name system. Examples of TLDs include .com, .org, and .edu.
Traffic/Visits
Traffic is a website’s search traffic. It refers to the number of visitors received by a website, webpage, or other online platforms.
Trust Rank
Trust Rank is a website and SEO metric that allows search engines such as Google to deal with spam websites.
U
Unnatural Link
Unnatural links are artificial links created to manipulate the web page’s ranking on the search engine.
Universal Search
Universal search is the search engine’s ability to search for all forms of content across several different databases through a single search box. It may include databases such as text, videos, images, news, maps, books, finance, flights, and shopping.
User-generated Content
User-generated content, also known by its abbreviation UGC, is content created by internet users and published on a website. The content may be in any form, including text, video, or audio.
URL
URL, short for Uniform Resource Locator, is a unique web address that points to a specific internet resource such as a website or webpage.
URL Parameter
URL parameters are URL values that allow search engine crawlers and users to see different versions of the same website page. They are made up of a key and a value separated by symbols such as = or &.
User Agent
A user agent is software that retrieves website content and presents it to end users with the help of web technologies. Web browsers and website crawlers are two examples of user agents.
User Experience
User experience, also known as UX, is how a user feels when interacting with a website’s design. A good user experience means the longer they stay on the website, the better for ranking.
Usability
In SEO, usability refers to creating a user-centric website design focused on offering a user a great experience.
V
Vertical Search Engine (VSE)
A vertical search engine differs from a general search engine in the aspect that a VSE focuses on a particular area, meaning a niche.
Visibility
In SEO, a website’s visibility is far more than its online presence. SEO visibility or search visibility is a metric that helps users understand the number of organic clicks received by the website for a specific keyword.
Voice SEO
Voice SEO is optimising a website to show up amongst the results for voice-based searches.
W
Web Page
A web page or website’s page is a single web document that can be displayed or read via an internet browser. It is often a part of a larger website.
Website Navigation
In a website, navigation is a way to traverse a website and move from one web page to another. For improved SEO and better user experience, developers need to build intuitive and user-friendly navigation.
Website
A website is a collection of related web pages and content located under a single unique domain name published on a web server.
White Hat SEO
White hat SEO refers to the ethical SEO approach and techniques that adhere to Google’s webmaster guidelines and are used to help a website rank better on search engines such as Google.
Word Count
Word count refers to the number of words in the content that is published on a website or other online platforms. For example, a blog post can have 1000 words, whereas a published book can have over 50,000 words.
WordPress SEO
WordPress SEO is an SEO practice that optimizes a WordPress website to achieve better rankings and visibility on search engines.
Widget
A widget is either a web page or application that can be embedded into your website to add more functionality or improve a website’s design.
Web Spam
Web spam is a black hat technique used by websites to manipulate their website’s ranking on search engines.
X
XML
XML, short for Extensible Markup Language, is a markup language used to store and transport data that can be formatted and displayed by HTML.
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Y
Yahoo
Launched in 1994, Yahoo was once a leading search engine that started as a web directory. Although it still exists, its popularity has declined over the years.
Yandex
Yandex is a Russian-based search engine and web portal that allows users to search the internet for information. It is widely used in Russia.
YouTube SEO
YouTube SEO is optimising YouTube videos to achieve better visibility and more views.
Yoast
Yoast is a highly popular WordPress SEO plugin that helps WordPress users with little to no technical knowledge optimise their website.
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