Just like anything, anywhere, any company or to any person you speak, if you know the ‘lingo’ as they say you and in like Flynn. Knowing the right terms for which you speak is equally as important and can get you farther faster, allow for less mistakes and have much better communication with your SEO service should you employ or outsource one.
SEO Glossary Everyone Should Know
301 Redirect: A redirect which lets search engines know that the content which formerly could be found through a particular link it has been permanently moved to a different page.
404 Page: The “Not Found” error message. It’s most commonly displayed when site visitors follow a link or do a URL hack to a missing or non-existent page. It’s also an opportunity to help the visitor find what they’re looking for, by offering links to a sitemap or other pages.
Alt text: Text used with images and other non-text contexts to describe what the image/figure/etc. shows. Used because search engines can navigate only on text.
Analytics: Purchase, survey, and panel data collected through demographic studies, customer segmentation, campaign results, and other techniques. Used to understand and communicate marketing strategy, as well as to evaluate the outcomes of campaigns or efforts and to guide decisions for investment and targeting. Anchor Text: Text that’s visible to users and hyper-linked. Anchor text gives both the reader and search engines relevant descriptive information about the content of the link’s destination.
Authority: The amount of trust with which search engines credit a site for a certain search query. It’s derived from related incoming links from other trusted sites, as well as from verified online profiles.
B2B: Business-to-business.
B2C: Business-to-consumer.
Back Link: A link to a page or site, from another page or site.
Body Content: The main content of a page.
Bounce Rate: The ratio of users who enter and leave a website on the same page, without viewing any other pages.
Breadcrumbs: A list of words separated by a symbol, often the “greater than” sign (e.g., Home > Products> Inbound), that represents where the current page lies in the site’s page hierarchy. Usually found in the upper left corner of a page, below the primary navigation.
Canonical URL: The link element in a URL that webmasters use to specify the preferred version of a webpage. This helps search engines recognize which page is authoritative in the case of duplicate content.
Conversion Rate: Completion of a quantifiable website goal. Examples: Ad clicks, sign-ups, sales.
Google Authorship: Google has begun to include authorship in determining the authority and quality of a page; it uses Google+ profiles as “verified online profiles”. Content creators need to claim the content they produce, on Google+ and on the other websites to which they contribute.
H1 Headline: The main headline of a page.
H2 Headline: A subheading.
Head Word: A general key word (or phrase) intended to attract the buyer who is early in the buying process and doing broad research. An old search engine marketing adage: “Use head keywords to generate volume and long tail keywords to generate profit.”
HTML Site Map: A bulleted outline text version of a site’s navigation, displayed as a public-facing webpage. Intended to be read by people rather than search engines (see “XML sitemap”). Impression: A unique exposure of a page (or ad, etc.) to a viewer.
Index (verb): To add a webpage to a search engine index.
Keyword: The word or phrase for which you want searchers to find your page via a search engine.
Keyword Density: The ratio of keywords to content. High keyword density copy may read as awkward and unnatural.
Link: Something on a web page that when clicked on causes the browser to move to another page, or another section of the current page. Usually text or an image.
Long Tail Keyword: A keyword that contains multiple words, often five to seven or more. People looking for something very specific tend to use long tail keywords. Example: “Goldfish” is a head keyword (31+ million results); “can I make my own goldfish crackers at home” is a long-tail keyword (128,000 results).
Meta Description: The description that appears in your listing in search engine results, under the title tag. Use it to set the reader’s expectations.
Organic Results: Results retrieved by search engines and ranked purely by their relevance to the search query. There is no advertising in organic search results.
Paid Results: Pay-per-click (PPC) ads placed by advertisers or third-party advertising networks and displayed according to a formula that includes how much the advertiser pays, how relevant the ad is to the keyword, and the quality of the landing page.
Panda: A 2012 Google algorithm update designed to lower the rank of low-quality sites, advertising-heavy pages, and duplicate content.
Penguin: A 2012 Google algorithm update that looks for and devalues link spam. Search Engine Optimization (SEO): The process of making a site and its content highly relevant for search engines and searchers.
Target Audience: The people your content is written for; the ones you want to visit your site because you
believe them to have the potential to take an action you desire, such as make a purchase.
Title Tag: A title which describes a page. It is displayed when someone bookmarks your page, in search results, and at the top of a browser window.
URL Hacking: When web visitors edit your URL to access parts of the site, rather than using a site map or
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Source: Act-on