SEO Glossary

SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)

The practice of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to a website through organic search engine results.

Algorithm 

A complex system used by search engines to retrieve data and deliver results for a query.

Backlink 

A link from one website to another, which can influence the ranking of a site on search engines.

Black Hat SEO

SEO techniques that violate search engine guidelines, typically to gain higher rankings in an unethical manner.

White Hat SEO

SEO tactics that comply with search engine guidelines, focusing on a human audience as opposed to search engines.

Canonical URL

The preferred URL for a page, used to prevent duplicate content issues in SEO.

CTR (Click-Through Rate)

The percentage of users who click on a specific link out of the total users who view a page, email, or advertisement.

CMS (Content Management System)

Software that helps users create, manage, and modify content on a website without the need for specialised technical knowledge.

Domain Authority

A score that predicts how well a website will rank on search engine result pages (SERPs).

EAT (Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness)

Google’s guidelines for what it takes to create quality content that deserves a high ranking.

Featured Snippet

A summary of an answer to a user’s query, which is displayed on top of Google search results.

Google Analytics 

A web analytics service offered by Google that tracks and reports website traffic.

HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) – The standard markup language for creating web pages and web applications.

Impressions 

The number of times a webpage appears in search results viewed by a user, regardless of whether it was clicked or not.

Indexing

The process by which search engines organize information before a search to enable super-fast responses to queries.

Keyword

A word or phrase that describes the content on a page. Keywords are used by search engines to match a page to an appropriate search query.

Landing Page

A single web page that appears in response to clicking on a search engine optimised search result, marketing promotion, marketing email, or an online advertisement.

Meta Tags

Snippets of text that describe a page’s content; the meta tags don’t appear on the page itself, but only in the page’s code.

NoFollow

An attribute used in HTML to instruct search engines that a hyperlink should not influence the ranking of the link’s target in the search engine’s index.

On-Page SEO

The practice of optimising individual web pages in order to rank higher and earn more relevant traffic in search engines.

Off-Page SEO

Actions taken outside of your own website to impact your rankings within search engine results pages.

PPC (Pay Per Click)

A model of internet marketing in which advertisers pay a fee each time one of their ads is clicked.

Query

The term that users type into a search box in order to pull up a list of results.

Ranking Factor

Various elements that search engines take into account when deciding the order in which websites should appear in search results.

SERP (Search Engine Results Page)

The page displayed by a search engine in response to a query by a searcher.

Sitemap

A file where you provide information about the pages, videos, and other files on your site, and the relationships between them.

Traffic

The visitors to a website.

URL (Uniform Resource Locator)

The address of a web page on the internet.

UX (User Experience)

How a user interacts with and experiences a product, system, or service. It includes a person’s perceptions of utility, ease of use, and efficiency.

Voice Search

A technology that allows users to perform a search by verbally asking a question on a smartphone, smart device, or a computer.

XML Sitemap

A structured format that a website owner can use to tell search engines about pages on their site that are available for crawling.

301 Redirect

A permanent redirect from one URL to another, usually from an old website to a new one or from one webpage to another, helping to retain SEO value.

302 Redirect 

A temporary redirect that passes no SEO value to the redirected page.

404 Error

The HTTP standard response code indicating that the client was able to communicate with a given server, but the server could not find what was requested.

Alt Text (Alternative Text)

A description of an image in your site’s HTML. Search engines use alt text to understand what an image is about, and it’s also used for web accessibility.

Anchor Text

The clickable text in a hyperlink. SEO best practices dictate that anchor text be relevant to the page you’re linking to, rather than generic text.

Bounce Rate

The percentage of visitors to a particular website who navigate away from the site after viewing only one page.

Breadcrumbs

A secondary navigation scheme that reveals the user’s location in a website or Web application.

Conversion Rate

The percentage of users who take a desired action.

Crawl Budget

The number of pages the search engine bot crawls and indexes on a website within a given timeframe, without overwhelming the site’s resources.

Duplicate Content

Content that appears on the Internet in more than one place, which can negatively impact search engine rankings.

Engagement Rate

A metric that measures the level of engagement that a piece of created content is receiving from an audience. It shows how much people interact with the content.

Googlebot

The generic name of Google’s crawler. Googlebot crawls the web constantly.

Hreflang Tag

HTML attribute used to specify the language and geographical targeting of a webpage. This tag also helps search engines serve the correct language or regional URL in search results.

Internal Link

A hyperlink that points to another page on the same website.

Keyword Density

The percentage of times a keyword or phrase appears on a web page compared to the total number of words on the page.

Keyword Stuffing

The practice of loading a webpage with keywords or numbers in an attempt to manipulate a site’s ranking in Google search results.

Link Building 

The process of acquiring hyperlinks from other websites to your own. A hyperlink (usually just called a link) is a way for users to navigate between pages on the internet.

Link Juice

The value or equity passed from one page or site to another through links. Search engines use links to discover new web pages and to help determine how well a page should rank in their results.

Local SEO

The process of optimising your online presence to attract more business from relevant local searches. These searches take place on Google and other search engines.

Long-tail Keyword

A keyword phrase that contains at least three words. Long-tail keywords are often used to target niche demographics rather than mass audiences.

Mobile Optimisation

The process of adjusting your website content to ensure that visitors who access the site from mobile devices have an experience optimised for the device.

Nofollow Link 

A tag added to a link that tells search engines to ignore that link. They don’t pass any value from one site to another. Hence, they typically do not contribute to SEO.

Organic Search

Listings on search engine results pages that appear because of their relevance to the search terms, as opposed to their being advertisements.

PageRank

An algorithm used by Google Search to rank web pages in their search engine results.

Panda Update

A change to Google’s search results ranking algorithm that first appeared in 2011. The change aimed to lower the rank of “low-quality sites” and return higher-quality sites near the top of the search results.

Penguin Update

A Google algorithm update aimed at decreasing search engine rankings of websites that violate Google’s Webmaster Guidelines by using now declared black hat SEO techniques involved in increasing artificially the ranking of a webpage by manipulating the number of links pointing to the page.

Penalty

A sanction applied by Google against a website whose content contradicts or violates the marketing best practices outlined by Google.

Permalink

The permanent static hyperlink to a particular web page or entry in a blog.

Responsive Design

An approach to web design that makes web pages render well on a variety of devices and window or screen sizes.

Robots.txt

A text file webmasters create to instruct web robots (typically search engine robots) how to crawl pages on their website.

Schema Markup

Code (semantic vocabulary) that you put on your website to help the search engines return more informative results for users.

Search Engine

A service that allows Internet users to search for content via the World Wide Web (WWW).

Search Volume

The number of searches that are expected for a keyword within a certain period.

SEM (Search Engine Marketing)

A form of Internet marketing that involves the promotion of websites by increasing their visibility in search engine results pages primarily through paid advertising.

SEO Audit

An examination of a website with the purpose of understanding its current positioning in the search engine results pages, and what improvements can be made.

SEO Copywriting

The technique of writing viewable text on a web page in such a way that it reads well for the surfer, and also targets specific search terms. Its purpose is to rank highly in the search engines for the targeted search terms.

SEO Strategy

A detailed plan to improve a website’s search engine rankings in order to capture more organic traffic.

SERP Features

Any result on a Google Search Engine Results Page (SERP) that is not a traditional organic result. The most common SERP Features are rich snippets, which include featured snippets, knowledge graphs, and video results.

Site Audit

A complete analysis of all the factors that affect a website’s visibility in search engines.

Sitelinks

The links shown below some of Google’s search results, called sitelinks, are meant to help users navigate your site.

Slug

The part of a URL which identifies a particular page on a website in an easy to read form.

Social Media Marketing (SMM)

A form of Internet marketing that utilises social networking websites as a marketing tool.

Spam

Irrelevant or unsolicited messages sent over the Internet, typically to a large number of users, for the purposes of advertising, phishing, spreading malware, etc.

SSL Certificate

A type of digital certificate that provides authentication for a website and enables an encrypted connection. Commonly used for security purposes.

Structured Data 

Data that is organised and formatted in a way that is universally understandable by search engines, helping them to better understand the content of your site.

Subdomain

A prefix to the main domain name that allows organisations to separate different parts of their websites logically.

Title Tag

An HTML element that specifies the title of a web page. Title tags are displayed on search engine results pages as the clickable headline for a given result.

Top-Level Domain (TLD)

The last segment of the domain name, following the final dot, e.g. “.com”, “.org”.

Traffic Acquisition

The process of attracting visitors often referred to as traffic to websites, mobile apps, and other digital assets.

User Intent

The goal or intention that a user has when entering a query into a search engine.

Visibility

How prominent a website is within the search engine results. Higher visibility means the website appears more frequently in search results.

Webmaster Tools

A no-charge web service by Google for webmasters. It allows webmasters to check indexing status and optimise visibility of their websites.

Widget

A small application with limited functionality that can be installed and executed within a web page by an end user.

XML (eXtensible Markup Language)

A flexible, structured markup language that is used to create common information formats and share both the format and the data on the World Wide Web, intranets, and elsewhere.

YMYL (Your Money or Your Life)

Pages or sites that could potentially impact a person’s future happiness, health, financial stability, or safety.

301 Redirect

A method of sending website visitors to a different URL than the one they initially requested.

302 Found

An HTTP status code indicating that the requested resource has been temporarily moved to a different URI.

404 Not Found

An HTTP status code indicating that the server could not find the requested webpage.

500 Internal Server Error

An HTTP status code indicating that the server encountered an unexpected condition that prevented it from fulfilling the request.

Href

An attribute in HTML that specifies the URL of a page that a link goes to.

Robots Meta Tag – An element in the head section of an HTML document that instructs robots how to index the page content.

Search Algorithm

The mathematical equation that search engines use to determine the relevance of a webpage to a specific query.

SEO Metrics

Quantifiable data used to measure the performance of SEO marketing efforts.

SERP Ranking

The position a website holds on the search engine results page in response to a user query.

Traffic Sources

The origin through which visitors come to a website, typically categorized into direct, referral, organic, and paid traffic.

User-generated Content (UGC) 

Content created and shared by end users, including reviews, comments, media, etc.

Viral Marketing

Marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networks to produce increases in brand awareness or to achieve other marketing objectives (such as product sales) through self-replicating viral processes.

Web Analytics

The measurement, collection, analysis, and reporting of web data for purposes of understanding and optimizing web usage.

Web Crawler

A program that automatically traverses the Web’s hyperlink structure to retrieve and index pages.