Want to know the definitions to search engine optimization terms, abbreviations, and acronyms? This seo glossary can help simplify it. Find the descriptions you need to help better understand search engine optimization.
A
Algorithm
A computer program that search engine used to extract information related to the user query from their database and show the right information in search engine results pages.
ALT Tag
To describe the image content to the user (visually impaired peoples) or the search engines, (search engines can’t read the images) in HTML ALT text used in the images.
Anchor Text
Clickable text or words used to describe the link. For example, when you click on the SEO Guide for beginners, it will redirect you to the SEO guide page. Thus (SEO Guide for beginners) is an anchor and the linked URL tells both the search engine and user what this webpage is about.
Analytics
A tool that use to collect the data about your user behaviors, and based on that data what is working or what is not, you can create future strategies.
Authority
The search engine used and take into account authority while ranking the website in search results pages.
B
Backlink
A link from another website to your website is called a backlink.
Blog
A blog is an online journal or publication where a writer or group of writers share their views or information about any particular topic.
Bot
A program or software used to crawl or index the information from the website called bots.
Bounce Rate
Percentage of website visitors, who leave the website by just visiting a single webpage. It means a single webpage visit increases the bounce rate of both the site or a webpage.
Breadcrumbs
Navigation element on the website which helps the user to understand where they are at the moment on the site.
Broken Link
A link that is not accessible by both user and search engines called a broken link.
C
CMS (Content Management System)
Software or web-based application which allows the user to create & upload digital content easily on the website.
CTR (Click through Rate)
CTR is calculate by the total number of impressions divided by the total number of clicks multiplying by 100.
Conversion
An action that is taken by the user on your website is called a conversion—for example – filling a contact form, completing a purchase, subscribing to an email newsletter, etc.
Conversion Rate
Percentage of visitors completed a desired action on the website.
The conversion rate is calculated by the total number of conversions by traffic, then multiplying by a hundred.
Crawl Budget
Within a specific period, the total numbers of URLs search engines want and can crawl on a website.
CSS
Cascading style sheets used to format the layout (text styles, colours)of Web pages on the website.
D
Dofollow
A link without the no-follow attribute is called a do-follow link.
Domain Authority
Developed by Moz to predict the domain ability to rank.
Deindexed
When a website or page completed removed from the search engine index.
Deep Link
A link pointed to any internal webpage other than the homepage.
Disavow
A Google tool that you can use to disavow or remove the links from your site which harming your website.
Dwell Time
Users search a query in the search engine, click on any search results and within few seconds bounce back to the SERP from a website.
E
Exact Match Anchor Text
An anchor text that linking to a webpage closely describes the topic of the webpage is called exact match anchor text.
EAT (Expertise-Authority-Trustworthiness)
Google page quality indicators that have an impact on ranking.
A webpage content should be written with expertise, which provides good user experience and website with have good online reputations.
Editorial Link
Links for those you have not paid or requested to get the link. Natural or organics links your website gets on the base of the trustworthiness of the site and the content.
Email Outreach
Finding the backlinks opportunities and then contacting the site to get the links to your site.
F
Featured Snippet
An answer for the search term display in the box above the listing in search result pages. A direct answer displayed of your question in SERP.
Footer Link
Links that appear in the footer or bottom section of the webpage.
G
Googlebot
Google crawling system that Google used to find new websites/webpages and add them to its index.
Google Search Console
Google search console is a google tool that allows you to monitor your website technical seo issues that your website pages are indexing or not, which queries are driving traffic. In case of any penalty, Google will notify you in the search console.
Google Trends
Google website where you can find and explore new & latest search trends & topics worldwide.
Guest Blogging
Writing and publishing the content on other sites to get the backlinks to your site.
H
Headings
H1 to H6 are called Headings or header tags. Headings tags used in the content to separate the section.
Home Page
When you enter the domain, and the first main page or the default webpage you see is a Home Page.
.htaccess file
A server file that used to rewrite and redirect the URLs.
Hreflang Attribute
Hreflang tag markup is used on the website if you have a website in multiple languages.
HTML Sitemap
A sitemap that is used on the website to help users with navigation & hierarchy of the website.
HTML Source Code
HTML Stands for Hypertext Markup Language. HTML source code is written in the form of tags, and it is readable to humans. You can check any webpage source code by pressing CTRL + U on the webpage.
HTTP Status Code
When a browser requests a webpage, and its servers return a response in status codes.
I
Impression
Each time your webpage display in the search result pages is count as an impression.
Internal Link
Links from one page to another page on your website is an internal link.
Indexed Page
A webpage that is crawl and indexed by search engines and ready to appear in the search results for relevant queries.
J
Javascript
A programming language that helps you to insert the metadata, content & links dynamically on the website. Javascript is not recommended by seo because it makes it difficult for search engine bots to crawl & index the webpages.
K
Keyword Cannibalization
Same keywords targeted on multiples pages on the same site and start competing with each other in the SERP.
Keyword Stuffing
Adding the same keywords or irrelevant keywords on the webpage to increase the ranking of that keyword. Bad practice and against the google webmaster guidelines.
Knowledge Panel
Content appears in the box at the right side of page 1 of search results pages related to your queries. Mostly in this pane contains facts and information about people & places.
KPI
A key performance indicator means objective and goals a business set to track the performance of your business or team. In seo, these KPI are Organic traffic, Total no. of conversion, the ranking of the keywords, etc.
L
Landing Page
A particular page that appears when a user clicks on the link. A landing page is based on specific keywords and optimized for promotions and conversion.
LSI Keywords (Latent semantic indexing)
LSI keywords are those keywords that are semantically related to the main keywords. LSI keywords that share the same context, for example – weight loss terms LSI keywords would be weight loss foods weight loss diet, weight loss tips, weight loss exercises, etc.
Link Diversity
While building links when you acquire different types of links and not focus on specific types of links, link diversity means diversity links and trying to getting the links from various methods and not focusing only on one kind of link.
Link Profile
All the links that are pointing to your website are called link profile.
Local Citation
Building your profile on local sites by mentioning your Brand, Website Name Phone no. & Address. Citation building help in increasing ranking locally of your website in search results pages.
M
Manual Action
When your website does not follow google webmaster guidelines and a manual reviewer catch your site and raise a manual action in search console against your website.
Meta Data
Adding & updating the Meta Title and Meta Description on the website is called metadata. If you don’t update google algorithm automatically add it from the webpage content.
Meta Refresh
A meta tags used on the website to automatically refresh the webpage within a certain amount of time.
Mobile-first Indexing
Google latest changes in the google index database where the mobile version of the website crawled and indexed first.
N
Negative SEO
Using spam tactics & creating unnatural links to your competitor’s site to lower the rank of a competitor.
Nofollow link
Nofollow tag link we tell the search engines that do not pass the link juice or link equity to the linked website or link.
O
Off-page SEO
Off-site seo refers to the actions that we take to improve the website ranking and traffic in search engines.
On-Page SEO
Making changes in the onsite seo on individual pages of the website to make it seo/user-friendly to improve the ranking of the website.
Organics Traffic
Organic traffic is when users find your website by searching in search engines through Google searches.
Orphan Page
A page on your website which is not linked or there is no link pointing to it.
P
Page Authority
Numbers of links pointing to the particular page helps in increasing the page authority. As much high the page authority, the more it has the potential to ranks on the top in SERP.
Page Speed
How much time a page content will take to loading in the browser is measured by page speed. Page loading affects both the user experience and search ranking as well.
Paid Traffic
You are paying to drive traffic or visitors to your website by using paid ads example Google Adwords and Facebook ads.
Page Title
The clickable headline of the page appears in the SERP for a specific page on your website.
R
Reciprocal Linking
Exchanging links between each other websites are called reciprocal linking.
Referral Traffic
Traffic is coming to your site via other channels instead of search engines. For example, social media, email marketing are all examples of referral traffic.
ROI (Return on Investment)
A profitability ratio that is calculated by how much profit you make on particular spending. ROI calculated by dividing the net profit by the total investment.
Rich Snippet
Additional information about your webpage content in the search results. When you used structured data markup in the content, search engines understand the information and content quickly and in effects of it shows the additional information right in the SERP for example review ratings, additional links, a thumbnail image, etc.
Robot Meta Tag
A code that controls and instructs the search engines how bots will crawl and index the webpage.
Robots.txt
A file that is used and instructs the SE bots on which pages and on the website should crawl or which avoid.
S
SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
Online marketing which use to improve the ranking & online visibility in the organic search engine results pages to increase the organic traffic.
SE Rank
Position of your website in search engine results pages. When someone enters a query in the search engine on which position your site appears is called search engine rank for that website.
Search Query
A term, words or phrase when the user enters in the search engine to get the information.
Search Volume
The total number of searches for the particular query in a specific time gets called search volume of that keywords.
Seed Keywords
Keywords are the foundation of any successful seo campaign, so while doing keywords research your main terms a one-word term or origin of the words are called seed keywords.
Site Audit
Complete analysis of a website to find the roadblocks and errors of the site which preventing the website ranking high in SERP.
SEO Silo Structure
structuring the content into categories and subcategories within a website so that both user and search understand the relevance of it.
Sitelinks
Additional links that show under the listing in search result pages.
Social Signals
The number of social shares, likes, votes, comments & share for any website in all social media channels search engines take in to account as social signals.
T
Technical SEO
Technical seo audit is the process to fix the technical seo issues of the website, which are preventing the site from ranking and indexing in search engine results pages.
Thin Content
Content on the webpage is with little or no value to the user.
U
URL (Uniform Resource Locator)
A unique piece of text user enters into the browser to land & reach on your site.
User Experience
User experience describes how easy or user-friendly the user experience with the website & how easily a user can navigate and access your website.
UGC (User Generated Content)
A type of content that is generated by users on the website example is comments & reviews etc.
UI (User Interface)
Each & everything the user sees on a website from content, buttons, images, the layout is the UI of the website.
V
Video Optimization
Optimizing the youtube video to increase the visibility on youtube.
Viral Content
A piece of content, infographics, videos that get attention and popularity in a short period. The content that goes viral through social media and getting backlinks through internet marketing.
W
Webpage
An HTML document that connects with the world wide web & that is viewed & read by a browser.
Website
A collection of webpages, content & multimedia files are sharing in the same domain.
White Hat SEO
Strategies and guidelines that follow the rules of search engine policies.
X
XML Sitemap
An XML file that you include in the website root domain which contains all the essential URLs of the website so that search engine can crawl all the URL easily.
There are various types of sitemap – image sitemap, video sitemap, google new sitemap, etc.
Y
YMYL Pages
Your money your life is the latest google search guidelines for some finance, health & nutrition niches. Google is very strict on judging these niches and high quality & reliable content will be going to rank because bad or wrong information can ruin individual life.
