We all are very versed with Search Engine Optimisation.
But…
… we are not very well acquainted with its various other terms!
There are times when we come across a particular term while reading about SEO and then end up Googling about SEO Glossary or SEO Definitions.
I end up finding the meaning of the same word again and again because some are so confusing that they just refuse to enter your head in the first place. Therefore, I thought, why not make a complete list of all those words under one roof!
So, let’s jump straight away to the full A-Z list of SEO terms!
NUMBERS –
1) 301: Moved Permanently – It means that a web page that you are trying to access has been redirected to another web page automatically.
So if you are visiting a link, whose URL has been changed, it will be automatically redirected to the new address by the search engine. This element is known as permanent redirection.
2) 400: Bad Request – It means that the server was unable to process the request sent by the user. The data was malformed, that is, it didn’t follow the HTTP protocol properly.
So the user should modify the data link accordingly to the correct version to be able to visit that particular link.
3) 404: Not Found – It means that the web page you were trying to visit, could not be found on the server.
It can happen due to various reasons such as:
The web page you were trying to visit was removed permanently, or,
The web page has moved its URL to a new one but forgot to change it on the server accordingly. So the web page was not able to redirect to the new link automatically, or,
You could have typed an incorrect URL.
A –
4) Algorithm – Algorithms are the programs that are used by the search engines to give you the proper solutions and answers to your queries.
5) Alt text / Alt Tag / Text Attribute – It is a short name for Alternate Text. Alt Text is a description for Search Engines and your site’s HTML. Whenever you type a keyword, the images that are displayed on the SERPs, contains those keywords.
Google cannot see the image but can read the alt tag and display the results accordingly. So, the next time you insert an image in your article – do not forget to add alt text to the picture.
6) Analytics – It is a software which makes it easy for you to analyze your website under one roof. It collects information about the traffic generated on your site, the bounce rate, the keywords, and all the other insights of your website.
Google Analytics is one brilliant tool to use to get the actual insights for your business.
7) Anchor Text – Anchor text is a clickable text of a hyperlink. Whenever you read any article, there is a line or a word in blue color with or without an underline.
And, if you click on it, you are redirected to the targeted URL.
Now, you cannot see the URL directly, but you can see the anchor text. URL is different from the Anchor text.
Anchor text in the HTML version looks like this –
<a href="https://gopbn.com/blog/" target="_blank">GoPBN</a>
You can see in the above picture that the https://gopbn.com/blog/ – is the URL which is not visible to you. But the latter part that is GoPBN (GoPBN ) is visible to you which contains the URL.
So when you click on the anchor text, you are then redirected to the URL directly.
8) Authority – Authority means trust. When people search for something and land up on your page – your website is credited with their trust. Authority can also earn when other web pages talk about you.
9) Authority Sites – Authority sites are the most trusted sites. When any website gets a lot of internal links, it may be due to the excellent quality of content or maybe due when the readers already trust you; you tend to become an authority website.
Neither does this happen overnight nor does it generates a lot of money on the earlier stages. When you get a lot of incoming links from other authority and trusted websites, even Google will trust your site more.
Matthew Woodward’s website is an amazing example of an Authority Site!
B –
10) Backlinks – Backlinks simply means earning the links back to you. It is also known as an inbound link. When other sites give links to your website on their blogs, Google tends to trust you more.
The higher, the trustworthy and relevant backlinks, the more are your chances to rank well in the SERPs. Backlinks are one of the most important factors1 for the purpose of Search Engine Optimisation.
11) Bing – Bing.com is a search engine owned and operated by Microsoft.
12) Black Hat – Black Hat SEO means the unethical practice of SEO guidelines. In this method, the website owner does not follow any proper guidelines of the search engine. It is used only to rank on SERPs and do not care about the website traffic or any income.
If Google or any other search engine, detects such websites, they can be deindexed and banned forever.
13) Blog – A blog is a part of your website where you publish various kinds of contents that may be or may not be related to your domain name.
A blog helps you generate more traffic to your website thus helping you rank better on the search engine result pages.
Just make sure that your content is relevant to your domain name, and you publish the content accordingly.
14) Bookmark – Bookmark is a good sign showing that the user has saved your website or any link to your site on their browser for future references.
It means that they liked the content on that particular link would like to use it sometime later in the future.
15) Bounce Rate – It is the percentage of visitors who visits your site and then leaves away quickly after sticking to just one page.
It means that they bounced away quickly. So the higher the bounce rate, the lower the chances for your website to rank.
And, the lower the bounce rate, the higher the chances for your site to rank.
So, make them stick to your website by publishing great content or by offering amazing products with amazing features at lucrative prices.
16) Broken Link – A broken link does not work at all due to many reasons such as:
Typing error in the URL or when the website has changed its domain name or when they host the target page which no longer works. This causes the 404 error, causing the web page not to work.
C –
17) Cache – Cache or ‘Web Cache’ is a copy of the web document such as HTML Tags or Images or any other document of the websites that you have visited, stored and used by the search engines. It can also be stored in your external hard drives.
So when you visit back to those pages, the search engine uses the Cache which helps to load the websites faster, reduces the bandwidth usage, and lowers the server load.
18) Canonical Link / Tag – Canonical Link helps the search engine to prevent the duplicate content, rank on the search engines.
A canonical tag is added to the duplicate content pages which make sure that it does not rank while the original page does rank. It similarly redirects like 301, the rankings of the duplicate content link to the primary link.
19) Click Bait – Click Bait is a technique used by bloggers to make users want to click on the links that they have provided.
For this, they can name their articles in a provocative or in a mysterious way where the user wants to know that what happens next or what is this buzz all about and end up clicking on the link provided.
The primary purpose is to attract attention and draw more traffic to their website to make money.
20) Cloaking – Cloaking is a practice of showing content to the search engines which is different than what is showed to the website visitors.
Cloaking is used widely in the practice of Black Hat SEO which helps to manipulate the search engine. If caught, the site can be penalized or can be banned altogether.
21) Content – It is a piece of information published on a web page for the user. It can be an art, image, document, or articles. The content can be original or curated (information collected from various websites and curated together in different words). It can be paid or unpaid depending upon the usage of that content by the users.
22) Content Management System – Content Management System, popularly known as CMS is a software application which let multiple users with or without any backend knowledge, come under one roof and publish their content.
For example, User A doesn’t know anything about the technical and backend stuff like Coding or HTML but still loves writing. So what User A can is, join in an open source CMS software or application and all he has to do is just write a beautiful piece of content and let the software do its magic of all the backend stuff, and then later he can publish it on the website.
WordPress is one of the best examples of an open source CMS software.
23) Contextual Advertising – Contextual Advertising solely means the advertisements that are based upon the content. The user will find the ad which is entirely relevant to the content published.
24) Conversion – Conversion just means converting a unique visitor into a regular user. It can be done through various options like: –
Plugins, Mail Subscriptions, Sales, or Account signups.
25) Conversion Rate – Conversion rate is the percentage of visitors converting into their users or the percentage of traffic converting into the sales leads.
26) Cookie – A web cookie or a browser cookie is a small data file which is stored on the browser. It mainly stores all the data and information about your login credentials, shopping carts, credit cards, passwords, website preferences, etc.
So whenever you visit the same server that is the same website again, you do not have to enter the details again. The web cookie will automatically do that for you.
27) Cost Per Click (CPC) – Also know as Pay Per Click, CPC means that whenever a user clicks on the ad, the advertiser has to pay an amount to the publisher that is the website owner.
It is an advertising model to draw traffic towards the websites through ads.
28) Cost Per Thousand (CPM) – CPM is a marketing term. The advertiser has to pay a certain amount to the publisher based on the 1000 ad impressions generated.The “M” in CPM represents the Roman numeral for 1,000.
29) Crawler – A web crawler, also known as bot or spider, is a program which automatically on the World Wide Web, index the data or structure it.
30) Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) – Cascading Style Sheet is a style sheet language/code used to describe the different sections of your website – how will it look, the structure and the flow of the site, etc
D –
31) Deep Link – A deep link is a link which redirects you directly to the particular page and not to the main / homepage of that website.
Deep linking is good for the SEO purpose as the search engine tend to trust such sites more and helps them to rank better.
32) Dedicated Server – A dedicated server is a server which a client leases completely for itself from the server hosting company. It is dedicated to one single client’s website(s) and does not share it with any other client or company.
33) Directory – A directory here is an online directory with classified topics and pages. The best examples are Yahoo! Directory and DMOZ
34) Disavow Backlinks – Disavow means to deny something. If you do not want any backlinks or incoming links from any specific websites, you can inform Google, and it will not take that particular link into consideration which ranking your page on the SERPs.
As backlinks are crucial for any website, certain bad backlinks can create trust issues in the eyes of Google which can stop you from ranking your page higher on the search engines.
35) Domain Name – Domain name is a unique name of your website. You can purchase it from any top domain registrars at lucrative prices.
You can check out all of these top domain registrars below –
36) Doorway – Doorway pages are the pages with the only purpose of spamming the search results and thus generating more traffic. It redirects the user to the different part of the website where ads are shown to make more money through high traffic.
Such websites once caught are then penalized.
37) Duplicate Content – A duplicate content is either completely duplicate or very similar to the material published on another internet site.
Such pages are not trusted much by Google and hence are ranking poorly in the SERPs.
E –
38) E-Commerce Site – An E-commerce website is where the retailer sells their own or affiliated products online.
39) Ethical SEO – Ethical SEO means that the site owner is using all the ethical and acceptable techniques and strategies to optimize their SEO.
40 )Editorial Links – An editorial link is a link which is earned by having good content on the website and due to the good marketing of the content or the site.
Such links are not paid for or are not directly requested but are earned because of the great work was done by the owner.
Google loves such websites and highly trusts them. Google also helps them to rank better in the search results.
41) External Link – External link is a link which takes you to a different domain link.
F –
42) FFA Directories or Pages (Free For All) – It is a directory or a page with many external or outgoing links. These links are not unique and thus hold no value on the results page.
43) Frames – Frames is a web page design where multiple pages or documents appears on a single screen. Currently, such web pages are not trusted much so are lower in the rankings.
44) Fresh Content – Fresh content is the original content and is not a curated content. Such content is not published anywhere and helps generate more traffic to the website.
Websites with fresh contents have a higher chance to rank in the search results as users do not have other sites to visit when they want the information about the keywords is mentioned only in your content.
45) FTP (File Transfer Protocol) – FTP is a commonly used protocol to exchange or transfer files over the internet. FTP uses a client – server architecture which is completely secured.
G –
46) Gateway Page – Gateway pages are the pages with the purpose of generating more traffic. It redirects the user to the different part of the website where ads are shown to make more money through high traffic, while some may genuinely redirect you to a relevant internet site.
47) Google – Google is a leading and a highly trusted Search Engine in the world.
48) Google XML Sitemaps – XML are the files which help a URL to index better on a search engine.
H –
49) Headings – Heading is a title head of a page presented as an H1 or H2 tags with larger font styles to draw attention at.
50) Hidden Texts – It is a process of hiding texts such as excessive keywords under one keyword or using white text on white background etc.
It is against Google‘s SEO guidelines and if once found, the website can be penalized and banned forever.
51) HTML – HyperText Markup Language is a coded language for Search Engines. They cannot read standard texts so keep your HTML codes to the point and relevant to your domain so that your website can rank better.
I –
52) Impressions – Impressions is the count of a user viewing the web page. One view = one impression.
And, when an ad is displayed on the search results page or a website is counted as one impression.
53) Inbound Link – An inbound link is an incoming link to your site from another site.
If a well ranked Google website is linking to your sites, there are high chances that Google will trust you and rank your page better.
54) Index – Index means adding a web page to the search engine results page.
55) Indexed Pages – The Search Engines already index the indexed pages.
56) Internal Link – An Internal link is a link where a hyperlink is added to the content which redirects to another page under the same domain.
57) Internet Promotion – Marketing promotion done through the Internet via web page ads, videos, emails, etc.
J –
58) Javascript – Javascript is a computer programming scripting language used to create interactive actions within web browsers. It is also used to validate data entered by the user on client’s side without making a call to server thereby reducing server load.
K –
59) Keyword – A keyword is a short word or a long sentence that user types in the search engine bar to derive precise results.
The search engine optimizer should carefully choose a keyword to target and use in their content accordingly. A right keyword can generate a lot of traffic on the web page.
60) Keyword Density – Keyword Density is expressed in percentage of how many times does a keyword appears on that web page. It should be too high or too low. Good density of keywords helps the web page to rank better in the search results.
61) Keyword Research – There is an in-depth research done of short term and long tail keywords which are supposed to be used in the next content which would be published.
A proper keyword would attract a broad audience and hence increase the website’s traffic.
62) Keyword Spam – Spamming a content or a web page with an unnecessarily high amount of the same keyword.
63) Keyword Stuffing – Stuffing a content or a web page with an unnecessarily large number of keywords.
But stuffing too many keywords may even cause a problem for you. If found, Google may penalize your website which would affect your rankings.
L –
64) Landing Page – Whenever you click on a link in the search result pages – the page you are landing is known as a landing page.
65) Link – A link is a text that can be clicked. Once when the user clicks on a link, the current page will redirect to another web page which could contain a content or an image.
66) Link Bait – A provocative or a mysterious content specifically published for targeting a large audience to increase the website’s traffic and to attract more incoming links.
67) Link Building – It is a process of obtaining quality incoming links and backlinks to help your website to rank better in the SERPs.
It is tough to cumulate quality links because to get them because, for that, you should publish an amazing content.
68) Link Farm – It means that a group of websites which interlinks to each other to manipulate the search results and to rank high in the SERPs.
69) Link Juice – Link juice is a higher ranking factor that happens when one quality website passes few links to another site.
70) Link Popularity – A measure of the number of backlinks or incoming links a website has.
71) Long Tail Keyword – A long tail keyword is larger than 1-2 words. Websites target short keywords, but there are times when users enter a complete sentence or a long tail keyword in the search bar.
For example, the site might target the keyword Writing blogs or blog writing due to the high search but forgets that sometimes long tail keywords are searched even more like How to write a blog
M –
72) Meta Description – Meta Description is a short text (up to 160 characters) which appears below the title of a blog on the search engine. A user when search about a keyword(s), search engine reads up to that meta description and shows the results to the user accordingly.
So, it is vital that the blog writer writes a perfect description for the On-page SEO purpose.
73) Meta Keywords – Meta Keywords are the specific tags/keywords used to describe specifically about that particular post. Search Engine reads those keywords and ranks them accordingly.
74) Meta Tags – Meta Tags includes Meta Description and Meta Keywords. It is the part of the HTML tags, which search engine, uses to get better information about the website.
75) MFA (Made For Advertisements) – There are certain websites which are designed specifically for commercials.
76) Mirror Site – A site which has the same copied content of another website but with a different URL.
77) Money Site – A money site is an original site from where the owner makes money. He might have some other websites too, but it will all link somewhere to his core site which will help him generate the final income.
N –
78) Natural Links / Natural Listings – Also known as Organic Search Results, are not paid in any forms. Such websites appear on the top pages of the search results which is not manipulated or dominated by any users. It is a simple organic listing.
79) Nofollow – Nofollow tag is a form of an order given to Google or any other search engine that specific links should not be taken into consideration for ranking the page.
It can be added to the HTML version of the link by adding rel=”nofollow” after the URL tag.
80) Noindex – Noindex is an HTML version in the form of an order given to the search engine bots to not index the page or the specific link
O –
81) Off-page SEO – Off-page SEO is a technique where the website owner relies on the third parties to let your web page rank in the search results. It is by gaining relevant backlinks, incoming links, references, etc.
82) On-page SEO – On-page SEO is a technique where the website owner optimizes his website and web pages all by himself. There is no third party included in this. It is by optimizing the meta descriptions, adding relevant keywords, promoting it well on other platforms such as social media or via emails, etc.
83) Optimization – Optimization is done by the web page owners where they follow the guidelines of the search engines and strategize and optimize their content accordingly in the hope that they rank better in the search results.
84) Organic Link – An organic link is a link which is not paid or authorized for and is displayed to the users only because the search engine bots trusts them to be natural.
85) Organic Search – Users do an organic search by asking a query or stating a phrase into the search bar to obtain the desired results/
86) Organic Search Results – Also known as Natural Search Results
87) Outbound link – Outbound links are the links which are redirected to the URL of another domain name or a website.
P –
88) PageRank – PageRank is a value which estimates the importance of the web page. SEO is a major factor in this, and it is measured between 0 and 1.
It is an algorithm used by Google Search to rank the websites in their search results accordingly.
89) Page Views – The number of times a user visits the page on a website.
90) Panda – Google Panda helps Google to lower down the rank of low-quality and poor sites with thin content and increase the rank of the high-quality websites.
91) Penalties – Google penalizes websites which do not follow their webmaster’s guidelines and try to manipulate the search results by lowering down their rank in the SERPs or by banning the forever.
92) Penguin – Google Penguin is their another update which helps them to catch the sites that are spamming the search results by buying links or obtaining them through link networks designed primarily to boost Google’s search rankings, and such sites would remain penalized even if they try to alter or improvise it.
But, with its latest 4.0 update, the data refreshes in Real-Time and will catch spam link profiles as quickly as possible and keep away the low-quality sites from ranking well in the search results.
93) PPA (Pay Per Action) –
94) PPC (Pay Per Click) – Also known as Cost per Click, it simply means that the advertiser will pay the website owner or publisher whenever any user clicks on the ad.
It is an advertising model to attract traffic to the website (for the website owner and advertiser) and to generate sales leads (for the advertiser).
95) Private Blog Network (PBN) – PBN is when you build a bunch of websites & blogs on domain names that are owned by you.
And now, even you can start your own private blog network in just 3 easy steps by using our latest software. Join the waiting list now at – www.GoPBN.com
Q –
96) Query – A query is a text entered into the search page in order to get back an answer.
R –
97) Ranking Factor – There are various numbers of ranking factors that a search engine considers to rank a website in the SERPs.
It takes into consideration the following factors such a:
- The quality inbound links and backlinks
- Meta Tags which includes Meta Keywords and Meta Description
- Quality content
- Following White Hat SEO …
… along with several others factors.
98) Reciprocal Link – Two websites which mutually decides and interlinks each other to gain some rankings in the search results.
99) Redirect – When a user enters a URL or clicks on a URL, he is automatically redirected to the website.
100) Reputation Management – It is done by the companies in order have maintained an excellent reputation in the market. Website owners ensure that a good result is displayed to the user when they search for their company or website.
101) Robots.txt – It is a file of your website which let search engine bots to understand that which part of your site should be indexed and which part should be kept hidden with the admin.
102) RSS Feed – It is a short name for Really Simple Syndication. A user can subscribe to this option in order to get the latest updates and notices from the website.
S –
103) Sandbox – Sandbox is another index created by Google where they rank your link as a standby. It happens when Google does not rank your website or web page directly without any optimization.
104) Search Engine (SE) – Search Engines are the programs which search the entire internet whenever a user puts a query, phrase, texts, or pictures in the search bar in order to obtain desired and relevant results. Google, Yahoo, and Bing are some of the leading Search Engines in the world.
105) Search Engine Marketing (SEM) – SEM means promoting your website on the search engines results page through a paid form to rank on the first page and to generate more traffic and money.
106) Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – SEO is a method, technique or a strategy to rank your website better in the search results page. It a way to attract more traffic to towards your website. A good SEO helps to increase the visibility of your site everywhere in the search engines.
107) Search Engine Results Page (SERP) – SERPs is a page which is displayed when a user enters a query or a phrase into the search bar of the Search Engine.
108) Search Engine Ranking – It is the ranking of a website on the search engine results page depending upon is various ranking factors.
109) Search Engine Spam There are certain websites which spam the search results by buying the links or by using the various Black Hat SEO techniques.
if caught, Google can penalize such websites or links and can even ban them permanently.
110) Sitemap – A Sitemap is a structured page or document which helps the search engine or webmasters to know about the proper flow and structure of the website to help them to index and rank better in the SERPs.
111) Social Media – A social/online platform created for users to share their views and thoughts, to interact with other people, to participate in the social gatherings and events and to entertain the user by various means.
112) Social Media Marketing (SMM) – Marketing done using various Social Media platforms. Currently, it is one of the best platforms to advertise your product or service to generate more traffic, viewers, and sales leads.
113) Spam – It is an unwanted and irrelevant messages or links sent to a large group of audience in order to advertise their product or service.
114) Spammer – Spammers are people who keep spamming the web.
115) Spider (Crawler, Bot, Robot) – Google spider is a special software which crawls on a website, analyze it and sends the data back to Google which helps them to index the page and rank them accordingly.
T –
116) Text Link – It is simple HTML text link. When you click them, it redirected you to the specific page mentioned in the link.
117) Text Link Ads – A text link as is an advertisement in a textual link form.
118) Title – The Title describes the meaning of the content or picture. A title should be relevant to the context because based on a Title, a user decides whether or click on that link or not.
119) Title Tag – Title tag is an HTML element used to describe the title in the browser and the search results. It should be precise and relevant to the content so that it ranks better in the search results if the user searches for the keyword mentioned in your title.
120) Toolbar Pagerank – Toolbar Pagerank is a value which estimates the importance of the web page and is updated only a few times in a year and is not same as the PageRank. SEO is a major factor in this, and it is measured from 0 and 10.
It is an algorithm used by Google Search to rank the websites in their search results accordingly.
121) Traffic – Traffic is the visitors active on your website or your web page. The higher the traffic, the better are the chances to rank high on the search results page.
122) Traffic Rank It is a traffic ranking and estimates of your website. You can compare your traffic with other sites too.
One of the best tools you can use for this is Alexa
123) Trust Rank – It is an analysis technique which separates good quality and valuable pages and spam pages by evaluation linking relationships.
U –
124) URL – It is a short name for Uniform Resource Locator. It is a web address of a website on the World Wide Web.
For example – www.ahrefs.com
125) User Generated Content (UGC) – As the name says a content which is generated by users.
For example, various blogs, vlogs, Wikipedia, forums, social media, etc. – Other users also heavily rely on such content. The users can also earn money through advertisements placed o such contents.
V –
126) Vlogs – A Vlog is a blog in a video form.
W –
127) Web 2.0 – Web 2.0 are the profiles built on free sub-domains with a bunch of quality blog posts.
128) White Hat SEO – White Hat SEO is the complete opposite of Black Hat SEO. It means the ethical practice of SEO guidelines. In this method, the website owner follows all the guidelines of the search engine and does not try to manipulate the search results.
Google also help such pages to rank better in the SERPs.
129) Widget – Extra applications on the web pages which allows users to perform a specific action and provides various functions.
X –
130) XML sitemap – It is a file, and its function is to collect all the URL mentioned in your blog under one roof. It collectively helps Google to let your website get indexed and rank better in the search results.
Y –
131) Yahoo – Yahoo is also one of the top Search Engines.
Z –
132) Zip – Zip is a compressed file format in which contents are compressed for storage or transmission.
Hope this complete list of SEO Glossary from A-Z was helpful to you.
Do you still have doubts about some specific terms?
… Ask us in the comment section below!
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