AJAX:
Asynchronous
JavaScript and XML is a type of programming that allows a webpage to send and
receive information from a server to change that page dynamically without
reloading.
Algorithm:
A
complex computer program used by search engines to retrieve data and deliver
results for a query. Search engines use a combination of algorithms to deliver
ranked webpages via a results page based on a number of ranking factors and
signals.
Algorithm
Change: Some algorithmic changes go completely unnoticed.
However, the impact of a major algorithmic change can usually be seen quite
quickly, though the change sometimes takes a few weeks to completely roll out.
Algorithmic changes come in three forms:
Algorithm
Update: The search engine changes certain signals of an existing
algorithm.
Algorithm
Refresh: The search engine re-runs an existing algorithm
using the exact same signals as last time.
New
Algorithm: The search engine adds a new algorithm to improve
search quality. For example: Google Panda, Google Penguin.
Alt
Attribute: HTML code that provides information used
by search engines and screen readers (for blind and visually-impaired people)
to understand the contents of an image.
Also known as: Alt Text
Analytics:
The
science of collecting, analyzing, and interpreting data to take future action
based on what has (or hasn’t) worked historically.
Also see: Google Analytics
Anchor
Text: The clickable word or words of a link. This text is
intended to provide contextual information to people and search engines about
what the webpage or website being linked to is about. For instance, if you were
creating a link to send your visitors to Search Engine Journal, “Search Engine
Journal” is the anchor text.
Artificial
Intelligence (AI): The sciences of making computers perform
tasks that require human intelligence. Rather than following a set of
programmed rules (like an algorithm), an AI computer system is basically a
digital brain that learns. AI can also make and carry out decisions without
human intervention.
Authority:
The
combination of signals search engines use to assess websites and webpages for
the purposes of ranking.
B
B2B:
Short
for business-to-business. In B2B SEO, the buying cycle is longer, products and
services are more expensive, and the audience is professional decision-makers.
B2C:
Short
for business-to-consumer. In B2C SEO, the buying cycle is typically shorter
(though it still varies by industry), products and services are (mostly)
cheaper, and consumers are the audience.
Backlink
See: Inbound Link
Baidu:
The
most popular search engine in China, Baidu was founded in January 2000 by Robin
Li and Eric Xu.
Bing:
The name of Microsoft’s
search engine. Bing launched in June 2009, replacing Microsoft Live Search
(previously MSN Search and Windows Live Search). Since 2010, Bing has powered
Yahoo’s organic search results as part of a search deal Microsoft and Yahoo
struck in July 2009.
Black
Box:
A complex computer program that is poorly understood. Inputs and outputs can be
observed, but there is no access to the process itself due to its confidential
nature. For example, Google’s algorithm is a black box.
Black
Hat:
Risky tactics that go against Google’s Webmaster Guidelines.
Also see: Webspam
Blog:
A
publication of content, sorted in chronological order, with the most recent
content appearing at the top. The content reflects personal or corporate
interests, and can be written by an individual or a group of contributors.
Blogs were originally called web logs or weblogs. However, as “web log can also
mean a server’s log files, the term was confusing. To avoid this confusion, the
abbreviation “blog was coined, and became the common term.
Bounce
Rate: The percentage of website visitors who leave
without visiting another page on that website. Bounce rates range widely
depending on industry and niche. Although bounce rate can indicate potential
content or website issues, it is not a direct ranking factor, according to
Google.
Bot
See: Crawler, Googlebot
Branded
Keyword: When a user’s query includes an exact match, or
variation, of a specific company or brand name. For instance, “Search Engine
Journal”, “SEJ”, “SearchEnginejournal.com”, and “Search Engine Journal SEO 101
Guide” are a few examples of branded keywords.
Breadcrumb:
A
navigational element that helps users easily figure out where they are within a
website.
See: Website Navigation
Broken
Link: A link that leads to a 404 not found. Typically, a
link becomes broken when:
A website goes offline.
A webpage is removed without implementing a
redirect.
The destination URL is changed without implementing
a redirect.
C
Cache:
A technology that
temporarily stores web content, such as images, to reduce future page loading
times.
Cached
Page: A snapshot of a webpage as it appeared when a search
engine last crawled it.
Canonical
URL: An HTML code
element that specifies a preferred website URL, when multiple URLs have the
same or similar content, to reduce duplicate content.
ccTLD:
A country-code
top-level domain. For instance, a company based in the United Kingdom would
have a domain like this: www.example.co.uk, where uk is the ccTLD.
Click
Bait: Content that is designed to entice people to click,
typically by overpromising or being intentionally misleading in headlines, so
publishers can earn advertising revenue.
Click-Through
Rate (CTR): The rate (expressed in a percentage) at
which users click on an organic search result. This is calculated by dividing
the total number of organic clicks by the total number of impressions then
multiplying by 100.
Cloaking:
Showing different
content or URLs to people and search engines. A violation of Google’s Webmaster
Guidelines.
CMS:
Stands
for Content Management System. A web-based application that lets people create,
upload, and manage digital assets.
Co-Citation:
How
frequently two websites (or webpages) are mentioned together by a third-party
website, even if those first two items don’t link to (or reference) each other.
This is a way search engines can establish subject similarity.
For instance, imagine Naukri Pakad and Search Engine
Roundtable never linked to or mentioned each other. However, other websites and
blogs would likely mention both NaukriPakad and SER on lists of popular search
engine news publications.
To see this in action, see: related:http://www.naukripakad.com/
government-jobs
Comment
Spam: Poorly written comments, often off-topic and
self-promotional, posted by spambots in the hopes of getting a free (but
ultimately worthless) link.
Competition:
There are two types of competition:
Direct
Competitors: Companies that sell similar products
and/or services, serve the same needs, and target a similar audience both
online and offline.
SEO
Competitors: Companies that vie for the same
keywords and organic search visibility, but with unalike products or services
that address different needs and/or target audiences.
Content:
Words,
images, videos, or sounds (or any combination thereof) that convey information
that is meant to be distributed to and consumed by an audience.
One of the two most important Google ranking factors
(along with links). Search engines want to reward content that is useful,
informative, valuable, credible, unique, and engaging with better traffic and
visibility.
Content is King”
A phrase often used by speakers at conferences and
writers on popular SEO (and digital marketing) publications. In this context,
“content is king” usually means that content is essential for you to have any
SEO, digital marketing, or business success.
This phrase actually dates back to a Bill Gates
essay, “Content is King”, published January 3, 1996.
Content is King (Wayback Machine)
Conversion:
When
a user completes a desired action on a website. Examples of conversions
include:
Completing a purchase.
Adding items to a shopping cart.
Completing a form (e.g., requesting a demo,
registering for a webinar/event).
Downloading premium content (e.g., ebook,
whitepaper).
Subscribing to an email newsletter.
Video views.
Conversion
Rate: The rate (expressed in a percentage) at which
website users complete a desired action. This is calculated by dividing the
total number of conversions by traffic, then multiplying by 100.
Conversion
Rate Optimization (CRO): The process of improving the number
or quality of conversions that occur on a website. Some popular CRO tactics
include testing changes to website design, copy, images, price, call-to-action,
and messaging.
Correlation:
The
extent to which a relationship exists between two or more elements. Often used
in SEO research to infer relationships of variables on search rankings due to
the black box nature of algorithms. Always remember, however, that correlation
≠ causation.
Crawl
Budget: The
total number of URLs search engines can and want to crawl on a website during a
specific time period.
What Crawl Budget Means for Googlebot (Google
Webmaster Central)
Crawl
Error: URLs that a search engine bot is unable to crawl.
URLs that return a status code error.
Crawler:
A
program search engines use to crawl the web. Bots visit webpages to collect
information and add or update a search engine’s index.
Also known as: Bot, Spider, Web Crawler
Crawling:
The
process of gathering information, using a crawler, from the billions of public
webpages to update, add, and organize webpages in a search engine’s index.
CSS:
Cascading
Style Sheets describe how HTML elements (e.g., color, fonts) should appear on
webpages and adapt when viewed on different devices.
Customer
Journey: All of the potential moments (or touchpoints) at
which a prospect is exposed to or engages with a brand. All of these
interactions are designed to eventually persuade, influence, and convert that
prospect to become a customer, client, or subscriber.
Though customer journeys can vary greatly by
business type and industry, typically it is made up of four main “stages”:
Awareness > Consideration > Decision >
Retention
Google’s Avinash Kaushik offers an alternative
framework:
See > Think > Do > Care
Also
known as: Buying Process, Consumer Decision Journey, the
Customer Journey to Online Purchase, Marketing Funnel, Path to Purchase,
Purchase Funnel.
D
Data:
All
the hard numbers that represent real customers – the who, what, where, when,
why, and how – all of which is needed to make informed decisions about SEO
strategies and tactics.
Dead-End
Page: A webpage that links to no other webpages. So called
because once a user or bot arrives on this page, there is no place to move
forward.
Deep
Link: A link pointing to
any webpage other than the homepage.
A link pointing to content within a mobile app.
De-index:
When
Google removes a website or webpage, either temporarily or permanently, from
search results, specifically its search index. Google provides a Remove URLs tool
in the Search Console for voluntary cases; however, a website may also be
de-indexed as punishment for violating Google’s Webmaster Guidelines, in the
form of a manual action.
Also known as: Delisting
Directory:
A
list of websites, usually separated by related categories and maintained by
human editors. Depending on the directory, inclusion could be free or paid. In
the past, links from directories were highly sought after (e.g., DMOZ), leading
to widespread abuse and overall devaluing of this sort of link building.
Also known as: Web Directory, Link Directory
Disavow:
If
your link profile includes a high number of spammy, artificial, or low-quality
inbound links that may be harming your rankings – and don’t have the ability to
get them removed for a legitimate reason (e.g., the link exists on a site you
have no control over) – you can use Google’s Disavow Tool tool to tell Google
to ignore those links.
DMOZ:
The Open Directory Project. This human-edited directory of websites launched
June 5, 1998 and closed March 17, 2017.
Do-follow:
A
link that doesn’t use the “nofollow” attribute. In other words, a link.
Domain:
A
website address – typically ending in an extension like .com, .org, or .net.
For example: www.searchenginejournal.com is the domain of this website.
Domain
Authority: The overall “strength” of a website,
built up over time, which can help a new page rank well quickly, even before
that content has earned links or engagement.
A score, between 0-100, SEO software company Moz
uses to predict the ability of a website to rank in search results.
The Three Pillars of SEO: Authority, Relevance, and
Trust
Doorway
Page: Webpages that are created to rank in search engines
for specific keywords only for the purpose of redirecting users who click on
that page to a different website.
DuckDuckGo:
A
search engine that was founded September 28, 2008. It is often praised for its
heavy focus on user privacy and a lack of filter bubbles (search personalization).
DuckDuckGo relies on more than 400 sources to serve its search results,
including vertical search engines, its own crawler, DuckDuckBot, Bing, and
Yandex. In 2016, 4 billion searches were conducted on DuckDuckGo.
Duplicate
Content: When a significant amount of content contained on
one webpage matches, or is incredibly similar to, content that exists elsewhere
on the same website or a completely different website.
Dwell
Time: The amount of
time that elapses between when a user clicks on a search result and then
returns to the SERP from a website. Short dwell time (e.g., less than 5
seconds) can be an indicator of low-quality content to search engines.
E
E-commerce:
The
buying and selling of products, all conducted online.
A Step-By-Step Guide to SEO for E-Commerce Websites
Editorial
Link: A link that is given by one website to another
without the recipient asking or paying for it.
Also known as: Natural Link.
Engagement
Metrics: Methods to measure how users are interact with
webpages and content. Examples of engagement metrics include:
Click-through rate
Conversion rate
Bounce rate
Time on page/site
New vs. returning visitors
Frequency and recency
Dwell time
Entities
People, places, organizations, websites, events, groups,
facts, and other things.
Also see: Knowledge Graph
External Link
See: Outbound Link
F
Featured
Snippet: For certain queries, usually questions (i.e.,
who/what/where/when/why/how), Google sometimes shows a special block above the
organic search results. This box contains a summary (in the form of paragraph,
list, table, or video), as well as the publication date, page title, link to
the webpage from which the answer originated, and URL.
Also known as: Position Zero.
Optimize Your Site for Featured Snippets
Findability:
How
easily the content on a website can be discovered, both internally (by users)
and externally (by search engines).
Footer
Link: Links that appear in the bottom section (or “footer)
of a website.
See: Website Navigation
G
Google:
The
search engine founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin in September 1998. Google
marked a radical departure from human-edited web directories, relying on web
crawling technology and a complex algorithm to analyze hyperlinking patterns to
rank websites. Google is the most-used search engine in nearly every country in
the world.
Google
Analytics: A free web analytics program that can be used to
track audience behavior, traffic acquisition sources, content performance, and
much more.
Visit: Google Analytics
Google
Bomb: A practice intended to make a website rank number
one for a surprising or controversial search phrase. This was accomplished by
having a large number of websites link to a certain webpage with specific
anchor text to help it rank for that term.
For example, in 2003 President George W. Bush’s
White House bio ranked number one on a search for “miserable failure.”
Googlebot:
The
web crawling system Google uses to find and add new websites and webpages to
its index.
Google
Dance: A term used starting in 2002 for the volatile period
of time during which Google updated its search index, roughly every month.
Google
Hummingbird: A Google search algorithm that was
officially announced in September 2013 after it had been in use for a month.
The purpose of Hummingbird was to better understand the full context of queries
(i.e., semantic search), rather than certain keywords, in order to provide
better results.
Google
Panda Algorithm: A major Google algorithm update that
initially rolled out in February 2011, it was followed by numerous subsequent
updates. The goal of Google Panda was to reduce the visibility of low-value
content, often produced by “content farms. In 2016, Panda became part of Google’s
core ranking algorithm.
Google
Penguin Algorithm: A major Google algorithm that launched
in April 2012, it was followed by a series of updates and refreshes. The goal
of Penguin was to reduce the visibility of overly-optimized sites, or sites
that excessively abused certain spammy tactics (e.g., building low-quality
links, keyword stuffing). In 2016, Penguin started running in real-time as a
part of Google’s core algorithm.
Google
Pigeon Update: The name (given by the SEO industry, not
Google) of a significant Google local search update launched July 24, 2014. The
goal of Pigeon was to improve the accuracy and relevance of local searches by
leveraging more traditional Google ranking signals and improving distance and
locating ranking parameters.
Google
RankBrain: A major Google algorithm change
officially introduced in October 2015, although it had been in testing for
months before this. With RankBrain, Google added machine learning to its
algorithm and has been called the third most important ranking signal. In June
2016, it was revealed that RankBrain has been involved in every query and has
an impact on rankings.
Google
Sandbox: A theorized and debated (but never confirmed by
Google) “waiting period” that prevents new websites from seeing the full
benefit of their optimization efforts. Typically, this effect is witnessed most
often with new sites targeting competitive keywords and can only be overcome
when the site gains enough authority.
Google
Search Console: Google’s Search Console offers several
helpful features, including the ability to monitor sites for indexing errors
and site speed. These pages are also used to communicate manual action
notifications.
Google
Trends: A website where you can explore data visualizations
on the latest search trends, stories, and topics.
Visit: Google Trends
Google
Webmaster Guidelines: Google’s guidance on good website
optimization practices, as well as “illicit” practices that can result in
manual action. Simply:
Make unique, valuable, and engaging websites and
webpages for users, not search engines.
Avoid tricks and techniques that deceive users and
are intended only to improve search rankings.
Gray
Hat: A supposed “gray” area between techniques that
adhere to Google’s Webmaster Guidelines, but then add an element that bends the
rules a little.
Guest
Blogging: A popular link building tactic that involves
developing content for other websites in exchange for a backlink pointing at
your own pages.
H
Heading:
Heading
tags (H1-H6) separate content into sections, based on importance, with H1 being
the most important and H6 being the least important. Headline tags should be
used naturally and should incorporate your target keywords where relevant, as
doing so may provide a small SEO benefit.
Headline:
An
H1 tag.
Head
Term: A popular keyword with high search volume that is
usually difficult to rank for.
Also known as: Head Keyword, Short-Tail
Hidden
Text: Any text that can’t be seen by a user that is
intended to manipulate search rankings by loading webpages with content-rich
keywords and copy. This technique is against Google’s Webmaster Guidelines and
can result in a manual action. For example, adding text that is:
Too small to read.
The same color as the background.
Using CSS to push the text off-screen.
Hilltop
Algorithm: Influenced by the HITS Algorithm, and
added to Google’s algorithm in 2003, Hilltop assigned “expert” status to
certain websites or webpages published about a specific topic that also link to
unaffiliated pages about that topic.
Hilltop:
A Search Engine based on Expert Documents (Krishna Bharat & George Mihaila)
HITS
Algorithm: Hyperlink-Induced Topic Search is a link
analysis algorithm that assesses a value not just based on content and inbound
links (authorities), but also its outbound links (hubs).
Authoritative Sources in a Hyperlinked Environment
(Jon Kleinberg)
Homepage:
The
default, or introductory webpage, of a website.
.htaccess
File: A server configuration file that can be used to
rewrite and redirect URLs.
HTML:
Stands
for Hypertext Markup Language. HTML tags are specific code elements that can be
used to improve the effectiveness of SEO for webpages and websites.
HTTP:
The
Hypertext Transfer Protocol is how data is transferred from a computer server
to a web browser.
HTTPS:
Hypertext
Transfer Protocol Secure uses a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) to encrypt data
transferred between a website and web browser. HTTPS is a minor Google ranking
factor.
Hub
Page: An authoritative central resource (e.g., page or
article), dedicated to a specific topic (keyword), that is continually updated
and linked to, and also links out to topically-relevant webpages.
I
Inbound
Link: A link to a webpage that originates from an external
website. For example, if Search Engine Journal were to link to Google, that
would count as an inbound link on Google’s side; if Google were to link to
Search Engine Journal, that would be an inbound link on SEJ’s side.
Index:
The
database search engines use to store and retrieve information gathered during
the crawling process.
Indexability:
How easily a search engine bot can understand and add a webpage to its index.
Indexed
Page: A webpage that has been discovered by a crawler, has
been added to a search engine index, and is eligible to appear in search
results for relevant queries.
Information
Architecture: How a website is organized and where
various content and navigational elements are located on webpages.
Information
Retrieval: The process of searching for information
(e.g., text, images, video) from a large database and then presenting the most
relevant information to an end user.
Internal
Link:
See: Website Navigation
IP
Address: An Internet Protocol Address. IP addresses can be:
Shared:
Numerous websites share an address within one server or a group of servers
(a.k.a., virtual hosting).
Dedicated:
A website has its own address.
Neither will help you rank better; however, a
dedicated IP address can increase site speed.
J
JavaScript
(JS): A programming language that makes it possible to
dynamically insert content, links, meta data, or other elements, on websites.
JavaScript can potentially make it difficult for search engine bots to crawl
and index webpages and increase the time it takes for webpage to load for
users.
K
Keyword:
The
word, words, or phrase that an SEO professional or marketer targets for the
purpose of matching and ranking for what users are searching for. The words
used on webpages can help search engines determine which pages are the most
relevant to show in organic results when a searcher enters a query. Keywords
usually represent topics, ideas, or questions.
Also known as: Keyphrase.
Keyword
Cannibalization: A type of self-competition that occurs
when multiple pages from one website rank for the same query on a SERP. This
can result in a lower CTR, diminished authority, and lower conversion rates
than from having one consolidated webpage that ranks well.
Keyword
Density: How often a word or phrase appears within the
content of a webpage. At best, this unproven concept is outdated, if ever
really mattered to search engines. There is no ideal percentage that will help
a webpage rank better.
Keyword
Research: The process of discovering any relevant topics,
subjects, and terms searchers enter into search engines, as well as the volume
and competition level of those terms. This practice is made possible by a
variety of free and paid tools.
Keyword
Stuffing: Adding irrelevant keywords, or repeating keywords
beyond what is natural, to a webpage in the hopes of increasing search
rankings. This spam tactic is against Google’s Webmaster Guidelines and can
result in a manual action.
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Knowledge
Graph: An entity database Google uses to surface facts and
information on people, places, and things (a.k.a., entities) – and their
connections – in a Knowledge Panel or carousel at the top of search results on
relevant queries.
Knowledge
Panel: A box that appears at the top of, or on the right
rail (desktop only), of Page 1 of Google’s search results for relevant queries.
This panel contains facts and information on people, places, and things, as
well as links to related websites or Google searches.
KPI:
Stands
for key performance indicator. A measurement method businesses use to gauge
whether marketing and business objectives, targets, and goals are being
reached.
L
Landing
Page:
Any webpage that a visitor can navigate to.
A standalone webpage that is designed to capture
leads or generate conversions.
Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI)
An information retrieval method designed to help
search engines identify the correct context of a word. LSI doesn’t play a
useful role in SEO today.
See: Google Latent Semantic Indexing
Lead:
A
person who may or may not be interested in your product(s) and/or service(s). A
lead willingly shares their email address (and usually other personal or
contact information) in exchange for something they deem of value from the
website.
Link:
A connection between two websites built using HTML code. A link enables users
to navigate to websites, social networks, and apps. Links play a critical role
in how search engines evaluate and rank websites.
Also known as: Backlink.
Link
Bait: Intentionally provocative content that is meant to
grab people’s attention and attract links from other websites.
Link
Building: A process designed to get other trusted and relevant
websites to link to your website to help improve your organic search rank and
visibility. Link building can be done by:
Conducting outreach to media outlets, bloggers, influencers, and
webmasters.
Attracting editorial links naturally, by publishing
various types of high-quality or sensational content.
Paying for them.
For example, you can obtain links via sponsored
content, paid reviews, or paying for a specific type of link to appear on
another website.
Forging partnerships.
Manually. For instance, you link together various
properties you manage or own, or add your site to online directories or review
sites.
Link
Equity:The value of inbound links, in terms of relevance,
authority, and trust.
Link
Farm: When a group of websites link to each other, usually
using automated programs, in the hopes of artificially increasing search
rankings. A spam tactic.
Also known as: Link Network, Blog Network, Private
Blog Network
Link
Juice: A term you should never use in public or online.
Did you mean…: Authority or PageRank
Link
Profile: Every type of link that points to a particular
website. The quality of a website’s link profile can vary widely, depending on
how they were acquired and the anchor text used.
Link
Velocity: How quickly (or slowly) a website accumulates links.
A sudden increase in link velocity could potentially be a sign of spamming, or
could be due to viral marketing or doing something newsworthy (either
intentionally or unintentionally).
Log
File: A file that records users’ information, such as IP
addresses, type of browser, Internet Service Provider (ISP), date/time stamp,
referring/exit pages, and number of clicks.
Log
File Analysis: The process of exploring the data
contained in a log file to identify trends, administer the site, track user’s
movement around the site, gather demographic information, and understand how
search bots are crawling the website.
Long-Tail
Keyword: Highly specific multiple-word terms that often
demonstrate higher purchase intent.
Less popular keywords that have low search volume
that are usually easier to rank for.
M
Machine
Learning: A subset of Artificial Intelligence in which a
system uses data to learn and adjust a complex process without human
intervention.
Manual
Action: Google’s term for a penalty. Google will take manual
action on a website after a human reviewer (i.e., a Google employee) manually
reviews a website to confirm whether it has failed to comply with Google’s
Webmaster guidelines. Penalized websites can either be demoted or removed
entirely from search results. Manual actions can be assessed to the entire
website or just certain webpages.
Meta
Description: A tag that can be added to the “head
section of an HTML document. It acts as a description of a webpage’s content.
This content isn’t used in ranking algorithms, but is often displayed as the
“snippet that appears in the search results. Accurate and engaging descriptions
can increase organic click-through rate.
Meta
Keywords: A tag that can be added to the “head section of an
HTML document. Adding a bunch of keywords here won’t help you rank – search
engine algorithms have ignored this tag for ranking purposes for years due to
abuse (in the form of keyword stuffing).
Meta
Tags: Information that appears in the HTML source code of
a webpage to describe its contents to search engines. The title tag and meta
description are the most commonly used types of meta tags in SEO.
Metric:
A
way to measure activity and performance in order to assess the success (or lack
thereof) of an SEO initiative.
N
Natural Link
See: Editorial Link
Negative
SEO: sA rare but malicious practice where webspam
techniques are used to harm the search rankings of another website, usually a
competitor.
Niche:
A
specific market or area of interest consisting of a small group of
highly-passionate people.
Noarchive
Tag:
A meta tag that tells search engines not to store a cached copy of your page.
Nofollow
Attribute: A meta tag that tells search engines not
to follow one specific outbound link. This is done in cases when a website
doesn’t want to pass authority to another webpage or because it’s a paid link.
The nofollow attribute looks like this:
<a href=”http://www.example.com/” rel=”nofollow”>Anchor
text goes here</a>
Noindex
Tag: A meta tag that tells search engines not to index a
specific webpage in its index.
Nosnippet
Tag: A meta tag that tells search engines not to show a
description with your listing.
“(not provided)”
After search engines moved to secure search in 2011,
keyword data was removed from Google Analytics, replaced with “(not provided)”
– thus making it impossible to know which queries were responsible for visitors
finding a website.
O
Off-Page
SEO
Demand generation and brand awareness activities
that take place outside of a website. In addition to link building, promotion
tactics can include social media marketing, content marketing, email marketing,
influencer marketing, and even offline marketing channels (e.g., TV, radio,
billboards).s
On-Page
SEO
These activities all take place within a website. In
addition to publishing relevant, high-quality content, on-page SEO includes
optimizing HTML code (e.g., title tags, meta tags), information architecture,
website navigation, and URL structure.
Organic
Search
The natural, or unpaid, listings that appear on a SERP.
Organic search results, which are analyzed and ranked by algorithms, are
designed to give users the most relevant result based on their query.
Orphan
Page: Any webpage that is not linked to by any other pages
on that website.
Outbound
Link: A link that directs visitors to a page on a
different website than the one they are currently on.
P
PageRank:
According
to Google: “PageRank is the measure of the importance of a page based on the
incoming links from other pages. In simple terms, each link to a page on your
site from another site adds to your site’s PageRank. Not all links are equal.”
The algorithm was named after Google co-founder Larry Page.
The PageRank Citation Ranking: Bringing Order to the
Web by Larry Page
The Anatomy of a Search Engine by Sergey Brin and
Larry Page
Page
Speed: The amount of time it takes for a webpage to
completely load. Page speed is ranking factor.
Pageview:
A
webpage is loaded in a browser.
Paid
Search: Pay-per-click advertisements that appear above (and
often below) the organic results on search engines.
PBN:
Stands
for Private Blog Network.
See: Link Farm.
PDF:
Stands
for Portable Document Format file. PDFs can contain text, images, links,
videos, and other elements.
Penalty
See: Manual Action
Persona:
A
fictionalized representation of an ideal website visitor or customer – their
demographics, behavior, needs, motivations, and goals – all based on actual
data.
Also known as: Buyer Persona, Marketing Persona
Personalization:
When
search engines use search history, web browsing history, location, and
relationships to create a set of search results tailored to a specific user.
PHP:
Hypertext
Preprocessor is a scripting language used to create dynamic content on
webpages.
Piracy:
Search engines aim to reduce the organic search rankings of content that
infringes on copyright. Google introduced a filter in 2012 that reduces the
visibility of sites reported for numerous DMCA-related takedown requests.
Pogo-sticking:
When,
after entering a query, a searcher bounces back and forth between a SERP and
the pages listed in those search results.
Also see: Dwell time
Position
See: Rank
PPC
(Pay Per Click): A type of advertising where advertisers
are charged a certain amount (usually determined by bid, relevance, account
history, and competition) every time a user clicks on the ad. Combining PPC and
SEO can result in more SERP real estate, clicks, and conversions. Also, PPC
data can inform your SEO strategy, and the reverse is also true.
Q
QDF:
Stands for query deserves freshness, where a search engine might decide to show
newer webpages in search results (rather than older pages) if a particular
search term is trending, perhaps because a news event has resulted in a surge
in searches on that topic.
Quality
Content: Content that helps you successfully achieve business
or marketing goals (e.g., driving organic traffic or social shares, earning top
search rankings, generating leads/sales).
Quality
Link: An inbound link that originates from an
authoritative, relevant, or trusted website.
Query:
The
word, words, or phrase that a user enters into a search engine.
Also known as: A search.
R
Rank:
Where
a webpage appears within the organic search results for a specific query.
Ranking
Factor: An individual component which contributes to a
complex series of algorithms that determine where webpages should appear with
the organic search results for a specific query. For years, Google has said
that its algorithms “rely on more than 200 unique signals” to help users find
the most relevant webpage or answer.
Also known as: Ranking Signal.
Reciprocal
Links: When two websites agree to exchange links to one
another.
Redirect:
A
technique that sends a user (or search engine) who requested one webpage to a
different (but equally relevant) webpage. There are two types of redirects:
301: Permanent
302: Temporary
Referrer:
URL
data that identifies the source of a user’s webpage request.
Reinclusion:
The process of asking a search engine to return a website or webpage(s) to its
search index after de-indexing.
Relevance:
A
way search engines measure how closely connected the content of a webpage is
aligned to match the context of a search query.
Reputation
Management: The practice of crafting a positive
online perception of a brand or person – including in search results and on
social media – by minimizing the visibility of negative mentions.
Responsive
Website: A website designed to automatically adapt to a
user’s screen size, whether it’s being viewed on a desktop or mobile device.
Rich
Snippet: Structured data can be added to the HTML of a
website to provide contextual information to the search engines during
crawling. This information can then be displayed in the SERPs, resulting in an
enhanced listing, known as a rich snippet.
Getting Started With Schema Markup for SEO
robots.txt:
The
Robots Exclusion Protocol (or Standard) is a text file, accessible at the root
of a website, that tells search engine crawlers which areas of a website should
be ignored.
Return
on Investment (ROI): A way to measure the performance of SEO
activities. This is calculated by dividing how much revenue you earned via
organic search by the cost of the total investment, then multiplying by 100.
S
Schema:
A
form of microdata which, once added to a webpage, creates an enhanced
description (commonly known as a rich snippet), which appears in search
results.
Scrape:
A
technique used to copy website content or information using a computer program
or script. Search engines, such as Google, scrape data in order to build a
searchable index of websites.
Also known as: Web scraping.
Search
Engine: A computer program that enables users to enter a
query in order to retrieve information (e.g., files, websites, webpages) from
that program’s index (i.e., a web search engine, such as Google, indexes
websites, webpages, and files found on the World Wide Web). A search index is
built and updated using a crawler, with items being analyzed and ranked by a
series of algorithms.
Also see: Baidu, Bing, DuckDuckGo, Google, Yahoo, Yandex
Search
Engine Marketing (SEM): An umbrella term for increasing a
website’s visibility in search engine results pages, encompassing both paid and
organic activities.
Search
Engine Optimization (SEO): The process of optimizing a website
– as well as all the content on that website – so it will appear in prominent
positions in the organic results of search engines. SEO requires an
understanding of how search engines work, what people search for (i.e.,
keywords and keyphrases), and why people search (intent). Successful SEO makes
a site appealing to users and search engines. It is a combination of technical
(on-page SEO) and marketing (off-page SEO).
See: On-Page SEO, Off-Page SEO
Search
Engine Results Page (SERP): The page search engines
display to users after conducting a search. Typically, search engines show
about 10 organic search results, sorted by relevance. Depending on the query,
other search features may be shown, including:
Featured snippets (a.k.a., Position Zero)
Images
Knowledge panels
Local Pack (with map)
News
Related questions
Related searches
Shopping results
Sitelinks
Tweets
Videos
Also known as: SERPs, when referring to multiple
search engine results pages.
Search
History: Search engines track every search users conduct
(text and voice), every webpage visited, and every ad clicked on. Search
engines may use this data to personalize the results for signed in users.
Also known as: Web Browsing History.
Share
of Voice: How many impressions a brand receives in the SERPs
for search terms when compared to the total impressions that the brand’s
competitors receive for those same search terms.
Sitelinks:
Up
to six algorithmically-chosen links that appear below the listing for the same
website of a top-ranked organic search result. Pages can be blocked from
appearing as sitelinks within the Search Console or Bing Webmaster Tools.
Also known as: Deep Links (Bing).
Sitemap:
A
list of pages on a website. There are two types of sitemaps:
HTML:
This type of sitemap, typically organized by topics, helps site users navigate
a website.
XML:
This type of sitemap provides crawlers with a list of webpages on a website.
Sitewide
Links: A link that appears on every page of a website,
typically in a sidebar or footer of blogs or websites that use templates.
Social
Media: Platforms (websites and apps) where users can
interact with each other, as well as create, share, and consume content.
Social
Signal: Any factors that demonstrate authority and influence
on popular social networking websites. For example, the social authority of a
user on Twitter.
Although many correlation studies have indicated
that socials signals impact rankings (e.g., number of Likes/shares a piece of
content receives), Google has publicly stated that social signals are not a
direct ranking factor. Popular sites that have a lot of social media engagement
tend to rank well for other reasons.
Spam
See: Webspam
Spider
See: Bot
Split
Testing: A controlled experiment used to compare at least two
webpages to measure the effects of a different variable on conversions. After
the pages are shown for a long enough period of time to site visitors to gather
an adequate amount of performance data, a “winner” can be declared.
Also known as: A/B Testing.
SSL
Certificate: A digital certificate used for website
identity authentication and to encrypt information sent to the server using
Secure Sockets Layer technology.
Status
Codes: The response codes sent by a server whenever a link
is clicked, a webpage or file is requested, or a form is submitted. Common HTTP
status codes important to SEO:
200 (OK)
404 (Not Found)
410 (Gone)
500 (Internal Service Error)
503 (Service Unavailable)
Stop
Word: A frequently used word. For example: a, at, for,
is, of, on, the. Search engines have, in the past, ignored these words to save
time/resources when indexing. Search engines have evolved greatly since the
early days, and stop words sometimes are meaningful, so this isn’t something to
worry much about for SEO purposes.
New Google Approach to Indexing and Stopwords by
Bill Slawski
Subdomain:
A
separate section that exists within a main domain. For example:
http://jobs.searchenginejournal.com/ is a subdomain that exists within the main
domain of https://www.searchenginejournal.com/
T
Taxonomy:
Organizing
and categorizing a website to maximize content findability and help users
complete desired on-site tasks.
Time
on Page: An inexact estimation of how long a user spent
looking at a particular webpage. Pages with high exit rates can greatly skew
this data.
Title
Tag: An HTML meta tag that acts as the title of a webpage.
Typically, the title tag is the title search engines use when displaying search
listings, so it should include strategic and relevant keywords for that
specific page. The title tag should also be written so it makes sense to people
and attracts the most clicks. Typically, title tags should be less than 65
characters.
Top-Level
Domain (TLD)
The extension of a given web address. These include:
.com
.org
.net
.info
There are also many more industry and
country-specific options.
Also known as: gTLD (Generic Top-Level Domain);
Domain Extension.
Traffic:
The
people (and sometimes bots) who visit your website.
Trust:
Generally
applies to the history of a domain (e.g., whether it cites or features expert
sources, builds a positive reputation, adheres to Webmaster Guidelines).
TrustRank:
A
link analysis technique used to separate good “reputable seed pages” from web
spam.
Combating Web Spam with TrustRank by Zoltan Gyongyi,
Hector Garcia-Molina, and Jan Pedersen
U
User-Generated
Content (UGC): Any form of content – videos, blog
posts, comments, reviews, etc. – that is created by users or customers.
Universal
Search: When search engines pull data from multiple
speciality databases to display on the same SERP. Results can include images,
videos, news, shopping, and other types of results.
Also known as: Blended Search.
Unnatural
Link: Any links Google identifies as suspicious,
deceptive, or manipulative. An unnatural link can result in Google taking
manual action on your website.
URL:
A
uniform resource locator is the specific string of characters that lead to a
resource on the web. The term URL is usually short-hand for the letter-based
web address (e.g., www.searchenginejournal.com) entered into a browser to
access a webpage.
URL
Parameter: The values added to a URL in order to
track where traffic comes from (i.e., which link someone clicked on to discover
your website or webpage). Here’s an example of a URL parameter (bolded):
https://www.searchenginejournal.com/example-article-url/999999/?utm_source=share-back-traffic&utm_medium=desktop-share-button&utm_campaign=twitter
Also known as: Query String.
Usability:
How
easy it is for people to use your website. Site design, browser compatibility,
disability enhancements, and other factors all play a role in improving
usability and making your site accessible for as many people as possible.
User
Agent:
Web crawling software.
User
Experience (UX): sThe overall feeling users are left with
after interacting with a brand, its online presence, and its product/services.
V
Vertical
Search: A specialized type of search where the focus is only
on a specific topic, type of content, or media. For example, YouTube (video),
Amazon (shopping), Kayak (travel), Yelp (business reviews).
Virtual
Assistant: A bot that uses natural language
processing to perform tasks, such as conducting web searches. For instance,
Apple’s Siri or Microsoft’s Cortana.
Visibility:
The
prominence and positions a website occupies within the organic search results.
Voice
Search: A type of voice-activated technology that allows
users to speak into a device (usually a smartphone) to ask questions or conduct
an online search.
W
Webpage:
A
document that exists on the World Wide Web and can be viewed by web browsers.
Website:
A collection of webpages hosted together on the World Wide Web.
Website
Navigation: How a website connects its webpages to
help visitors navigate that site. Website navigation comes in a few different
forms, including:
Main
Navigation: The major topics or subjects your website is
focused on. For instance, on SEJ our Main Navigation consists of SEO, News,
PPC, Content, and Social.
Secondary
Navigation: Topics related to the main navigation.
For instance, on SEJ secondary navigation includes links to webinars, podcasts,
guides, SEJ Summit, and other topics.
Footer
Navigation: Typically this includes links to pages
that contain important informational resources about a brand or business. These
pages usually aren’t important for ranking purposes. For example, SEJ’s footer
navigation links to our About Us page, privacy policy, and our various social
profiles.
Related
Links: This area usually appears in the right rail or
beneath content. It might be called “Most Popular,” “Most Read,” or “Trending
Now.”
Content
Links: Links that appear within your main content (e.g.,
articles, landing pages).
Breadcrumb
Navigation: This type is less popular than it once
was. Essentially, each webpage shows a “trail” to help quickly tell visitors
where they are on your site. For example: Home > SEO > Link Building >
What Is Website Navigation?
Also known as: Internal Links (or Internal Linking),
Site Architecture
Webspam:
Any
methods that exist solely to deceive or manipulate search engine algorithms
and/or users.
Also known as: Black Hat SEO, Spam, Spamdexing,
Search Spam
White
Hat: Tactics that comply with Google’s Webmaster
Guidelines.
Word
Count: The total number of words that appear within the
copy of content. Too little (or thin) content can be a signal of low-quality to
search engines.
WordPress:
A popular blogging and content management system.
X
XML:
Extensible
Markup Language is a markup language search engines use to understand website
data.
XML
Sitemap: A list of all the pages on a website that search engines
need to know.
Y
Yahoo:
Yahoo
was born in April 1994 and was an incredibly popular search engine and portal
in the ’90s. Yahoo search was mostly human-powered, at least until June 2000
when a then-unknown search engine called Google began powering Yahoo’s organic
search results. That deal continued until 2004, when Yahoo started using its
own search technology. Since 2010, Yahoo’s organic search results have been
powered by Microsoft’s search engine, Bing.
Yandex:
The
most popular search engine in Russia, Yandex was founded September 23, 1997 by
Arkady Volozh and Ilya Segalovich.
