SEO KEY TERMS: When it comes to search engine optimization, there are many key terms that are important for you to know.
SEO search terms introduce various terms that may be unfamiliar to you. It’s a lot and it’s easy to lose track of their meanings. Presented below is an alphabetical list featuring the most crucial terms alongside short descriptions. here are major Terms of SEO :
Algorithm (of a search engine):
An element of a search engine that determines the display order of pages saved in the index within search results. The factors influencing this order regularly undergo changes.
READ MORE: How Search Engine Algorithms Work: Everything You Need to Know
AlsoAsked.com:
A tool facilitating keyword generation by revealing frequently asked questions related to a specific topic or keyword. It compiles, organizes, and displays “People Also Ask” questions found in Google’s search results.
Anchor texts:
Clickable text within a post, typically distinguished by a different color from the rest of the text.
SEE MORE INFORMATION: What Is Anchor Text? Meaning, Examples & How to Optimize – Semrush
Behavioral signals:
The online behavior of users that Google monitors to discern their preferences for businesses. This includes tracking location, the use of branded searches, click-through rates for a site, interactions with a business’s Google listing, and in-store behavior.
MORE: How User Behavior In Search Works: Everything You Need to Know
Bounce rate:
A metric gauging the percentage of visitors who land on a website and do not take any subsequent action, such as clicking on a menu item, a’read more’ link, or other internal links on the page. A user is considered to bounce when there is no engagement beyond the landing page, resulting in a single-page visit. The bounce rate serves as an indicator of a webpage’s quality.
MORE: What Is Bounce Rate? How to Interpret and Work with It – Ahrefs
Branded search:
a search query that contains the name of a brand. For example, “Leonidas chocolates.”
MORE: What Is Branded Search? (And How to Optimize Your Site for It) – Semrush
Click-through rate:
the ratio of clicks that your result gets when it appears in search results.
MORE: Click-Through Rate (CTR): What It Is & How to Improve It – Hotjar
Contact page:
a page on your site dedicated to your contact details. It should include, at least, your company name, address, phone number, email, and opening hours. A well-optimized contact page could also feature a map, contact form, social media profiles, images, and some text explaining more about the company and its way of working.
Conversion:
conversion happens every time a visitor completes a desired action on your website. That could be a click-through to the next page, a subscription to a newsletter, or a visitor buying your product.
What is conversion: An explanation for beginners • SEO for … – Yoast
Copywriting:
the act of writing text for advertising or other forms of marketing.
SEO Copywriting: the complete guide • Yoast
Cornerstone content:
cornerstone content pieces are those articles on your website you’re most proud of. These are the articles you would like to rank high in the search engines. Cornerstone articles are usually explainers; they combine insights from different blog posts, and they are exceptionally well written. Their content should also match the vision and the mission of your company. If you mark an article as cornerstone content in the Yoast SEO plugin, the content and SEO analyses become a bit more strict.
Set up cornerstone content and get it ranking in 6 steps • Yoast
Crawlability:
has to do with the possibilities Google has to crawl your site. You can block crawlers from your website. There are a few ways to do so: in the robots.txt file, in the HTTP header, or in the robots meta tag. If your website or a page on your website is blocked, you’re saying to Google’s crawler: ‘do not come here.’ Your site or the respective page won’t turn up in the search results in most of these cases.
MORE: Crawlability & Indexability: What They Are & How They Affect SEO –
Crawler (also: spider, bot, robot):
an aspect of a search engine that goes around the internet 24/7, following links from one web page to another and saving the HTML-version of all pages in a gigantic database (the index). Pages that are saved in the index could appear in the search results.
Google Crawler (User Agent) Overview | Google Search Central
What are Robot, Spider, and Crawler Bots? – Rank Ranger
Data aggregators:
companies that collect information, validate it, and spread it on to interested parties.
What Is Data Aggregation? (Examples + Tools) – Coefficient
Distance:
a local ranking factor that refers to the distance between the location used in the query (or the location of the searcher) and the location of the search result.
Google Ads:
an online advertising service developed by Google, where advertisers pay to display brief ads within the Google ad network to web users.
How To Set Up Your First Ads Campaign – Google Ads
Google Ads Keyword Planner:
a keyword research tool within Google Ads that allows you to find the right keywords.
Find Your Campaign Keywords with Keyword Planner – Google Ads
Google Analytics:
a web analytics service offered by Google that tracks and reports website traffic.
Analytics Tools & Solutions for Your Business – Google Analytics
Google My Business:
an online platform where you can tell Google about your business – the kind of business you are, where you’re located, the hours you’re open, and more. The platform also lets you manage how your business will look and perform in the search engine.
Google Business Profile – Get Listed on Google
Google Search Console:
web service by Google for webmasters. It allows webmasters to check their site’s indexability and optimize the visibility of their websites.
Google Trends:
a tool by Google that can be used to compare the search frequency of two or more terms.
Head keyword:
your most important keywords. They form the basis of your keyword research sheet and keyword strategy. After identifying your head keywords, you can start coming up with long-tail keywords. Note: head keywords can consist of several words.
Head Keywords | How to Find Your Head Keywords for SEO –
Heading tags:
HTML tags that are used to create headings. They help users and search engines to read and understand the text on a page. The most important tag is the H1 heading tag, which is usually the title of a post. Heading tags have a top-down hierarchy from H1 to H6.
Google Explains How to Use Headings for SEO – Search Engine Jour
Holistic SEO approach:
an SEO approach where you focus on making every aspect of your site as good as possible to improve your ranking in the search results. Google’s mission is to build the perfect search engine that helps people find the best results for what they are looking for. At Yoast, we believe that making your website fit this goal is the way to go and that this can be accomplished by using a holistic SEO approach.
Holistic SEO: Improve every aspect of your website • Yoast
Hummingbird update:
a Google update that laid down the groundwork for voice-search. It pays more attention to each word in a query, ensuring that the whole search phrase is taken into account, rather than just particular words. The Hummingbird update was released in 2013.
Index:
a gigantic database where the HTML-versions of pages that the crawler has found are saved. Pages that are saved in the index could appear in the search results. Whether they do depends on how the algorithm of the search engine ranks it.
Indexability:
the search engine’s ability to add a page to its index.
Internal link:
a type of link on a webpage to another page or resource (e.g., an image or document) on the same website or domain. Internal links connect your
content and give Google an idea of the structure of your website. They can establish a hierarchy on your site, enabling you to provide the most important pages and posts more link value than other, less valuable pages.
Keyword:
a word or phrase you would like your website to rank for, so when people search for that keyword or phrase in a search engine, they should find your site.
Keyword research:
the activity you undertake to come up with an extensive list of keywords you would like to rank for.
Keyword stuffing:
Using your keyword (or keyphrase) too often on a page, in an attempt to trick the search engine into ranking you higher for that keyword.
Landing pages:
the pages you want your audience to reach when they are searching for a keyword.
Link building:
there’s white-hat link building, where you build an engaged community and promote your website to relevant people, but there also are black-hat strategies of link building. Some sites try to rank higher by buying links. This includes exchanging money for links and sending someone a free product in exchange for a link.
Local citations:
a mention of your business that includes most of the following essential information: your business name, address, phone number, and website. It’s
your digital fingerprint that lets Google know that it is about your business and not some other one.
Local Guides Program:
a community of reviewers that are trusted by Google. To be part of the program, you need to sign up, have a valid Google account, and be over 18 years old.
Meta Description:
a snippet of up to about 155 characters – a tag in HTML – which summarizes a page’s content. Search engines show the meta description in search results mostly when the searched-for phrase is within the description.
Mission:
a sentence describing a company’s function, markets, and competitive advantages; a short written statement of your business goals and philosophies.
Mobilegeddon update:
a Google update that boosts sites that have mobile-friendly pages in Google’s mobile search results. The Mobilegeddon update was introduced in 2015.
Mobile indexing first index:
Goole’s new index that determines rankings based on the quality of the mobile version of a site instead of the desktop version.
Moz:
a paid tool that gauges how competitive your keyword is. Keywords that are very difficult to rank for are probably not the ones you want to go after (unless you have a very authoritative, high-ranking website already). The Moz tool will likely help you speed up your keyword research.
NAP:
stands for: name, address, and phone number.
Niche:
a smaller part of a market with specific needs. Defined by the online dictionary Merriam Webster as “the situation in which a business’s products or services can succeed by being sold to a particular kind or group of people.”
Off-page ranking factors
include links from other websites, social media attention, client reviews, and other marketing activities outside your site.
On-page ranking factors
include technical issues (e.g., the quality of your code, mobile-friendliness) and content issues (e.g., the structure of your site and texts, the quality of your contact page, etc.).
Organic search results:
the non-paid search results. Google’s search engine results page (SERP) shows seven to ten organic links which fit your search the best.
Paid search results:
the paid search results, which are shown above the organic (non-paid) links. These links are ads; people have paid Google to put these links at the top of the site when people search for a specific term.
Panda update:
a Google update that tries to diminish those websites which are purely created to rank in the search engines. The first Panda update was released in 2011, and Google has re-run this update periodically.
Penguin update:
a Google update that judges the links websites got from other sites. If the links turn out to be artificial (e.g., created by buying or exchanging), Google no longer assigns link value. The first Penguin update was rolled out in 2012. Google has re-run this update several times, and it is now said to be run continuously.
Place-related result:
when you make a location-dependent query, for example, [hairdresser].
Pogo-sticking:
when people click on your website in the search results, then quickly go back to the search results, and click on another link.
Possum update:
a Google update that was released in 2016. After Possum, Google has shown more varied results depending on the searcher’s physical location and the phrasing of the query.
Prominence:
a local ranking factor that indicates how well-known a business is.
Ranking:
getting your website in a high position in the search results of a search engine like Google. The algorithm of a search engine determines the position your site gets in the search engine.
Relevance:
a local ranking factor that indicates how well a local listing matches what someone is searching for.
Rich results:
results that show more than just the title, slug, and meta description. They could show an image, a rating, and whether or not a product is in stock. Rich results stand out from other snippets, and thus they have a higher
click-through rate.
Robots.txt file:
contains site-wide instructions that tell a search engine where it can and can’t go on your website.
Robots meta tag:
gives crawling instructions for the single specific page the crawler is on.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO):
the practice of optimizing websites to make them reach a high position in Google’s – or another search engine’s – organic search results.
Search Engine Results Page (SERP):
page of the search engine that shows the (organic and paid) search results that fit your search the best.
Service-area business:
a business that provides services at the customer’s location.
SEO title:
the HTML title tag. This tag is the first thing a user sees in the search results. It’s also one of the most important factors for Google to decide what the topic of a page is. If you looked at the source of a page, you’d find the HTML tag in the <head>-section, and it would look like this:
<title>This is an example page title – Example.com</title>
Slug:
the piece of the URL that comes after the domain name.
Snippet:
a result Google shows to the user in the search results. A snippet consists of an SEO title (in blue), the slug (in green), and the meta description (in black).
Structured data:
the code you add to your website to help search engines understand its content.
Unique selling points (USPs):
factors that set you apart from your competition that make your company stand out from other companies.
User experience (UX):
how a person experiences using a product, such as a website, a mobile phone, or an app, especially in terms of how easy or pleasing it is to use. It’s all about how someone feels when using a particular product: does the product make you feel excited or happy, is it a joy to use it, does it help you effortlessly achieve what you’ve been aiming for? UX is essential for SEO because search engines want to provide people with the best result for their query.
Voice search:
a search method that allows a user to use a voice command to search the internet.
Webpage-related result:
when you search for something independent of your location
XML sitemap:
acts as a roadmap of your website that leads Google to all your important pages. XML sitemaps can be good for SEO, as they allow Google to find your essential website pages quickly.
Yelp Elite Squad:
Yelp’s way of honoring its most active and trusted reviewers. Members can nominate themselves or be nominated by others.
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE ….
