Whichever the case, this guide aims to provide a detailed understanding of SEO.
So let’s get familiar with SEO terms for beginners!
What is SEO?
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a digital marketing strategy that focuses on enhancing a website's visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs).
In simple terms, SEO is the art of optimizing your online content so that a search engine prefers to show it as a top result related to specific keywords. For more detailed information, you can read our article What is SEO and How Does It Work?
The Most Vital SEO Terms You Should Know
SEO is like a new language, and like any language, it all starts with understanding the basic terms.
To help you get a firm grasp on these, here is a user-friendly SEO glossary specifically for beginners:
Alt Tags or Alt Texts: These describe the appearance and function of an image on a page. They are used within an HTML code to describe the contents of an image. Aside from accessibility reasons (allowing those with screen readers to understand the image), alt tags are essential for SEO. They provide better image context or descriptions to search engine crawlers, helping them to index an image properly.
Anchor Text: This is the visible, clickable text in a hyperlink that users see. It often stands out from the surrounding text, usually underlined or in a different color. In a perfectly optimized link, the anchor text succinctly describes the content of the page it's linking to.
Backlinks: Also known as inbound links or incoming links, these are links from one website to a page on another website. Google and other search engines consider backlinks as a type of endorsement or vote for the linked website. The more quality backlinks a site has, the higher it's likely to rank. You can use SEOmator’s Backlink Checker to discover them.
Bounce Rate: This is a metric that measures the percentage of visitors who land on your website and leave rather than continuing to view other pages. A high bounce rate often points to issues like irrelevant or poorly written content, slow page load times, or a confusing site layout. It's crucial to monitor and work on lowering your bounce rate.
Broken Link: This is a link that fails to direct to a web page. Broken links lead to poor user experience and can harm your website's SEO impact. Read our blog post to understand how to find broken links and get rid of them.
Canonical URL: This is a method of informing search engines that a specific URL is the "master" copy of a web page. Canonical URLs help to solve duplicate content issues.
Click-Through Rate (CTR): CTR is a critical metric in determining the effectiveness of your SEO strategy. It measures the percentage of people who click on your link compared to the total number of people who view the page, email, or advertisement. A higher CTR indicates that more people are clicking on your links, which in turn can contribute favorably to your website's SEO.
Content Management System (CMS): CMS is a software application or set of related programs that are used to create and manage digital content. You can read our blog post to find out the CMS of any website.
Crawling: This is the discovery process undergone by search engine bots (or spiders) to find updated content on the internet. This content can range from web pages, images, videos, to other linked pages. They crawl the web by following links, much like how we might browse content online.
Directory: This is an organized listing of websites based on category. Directories aid in link building and overall SEO strategy.
Domain Authority (DA): This is a search engine ranking score developed by Moz that predicts how likely a website is to rank on search engine result pages (SERPs).
Duplicate Content: This means identical content appearing in more than one place on the internet. Duplicate content can be harmful to your SEO strategy.
Engagement Rate: This is a metric that measures the level of interaction users have with your content. Factors that influence engagement rate include user comments, likes, shares, and time spent on the page.
Evergreen Content: This type of SEO content is continually relevant and fresh for readers. Evergreen content is prime for SEO as it can continually garner traffic.
External Links: These point from your site to a different site or vice versa. They constitute the fundamental fabric of the web.
Indexing: Once a search engine has crawled and discovered a page, it attempts to understand what the page is about. A simplified index of the page, along with its images, videos, and other content types, is stored. When a new search is made, the search engine pulls from this indexed information to find relevant results.
Internal Links: These are hyperlinks that direct to another page on the same website. In our blog post, you can find out how to find them.
Keyword Research: This is the art of finding and analyzing the search terms that people enter into search engines with the aim of using that data for a specific purpose, often for content creation or marketing.
Link Destination (URL): This is the web address to which the link directs. It's the href attribute within the link's HTML.
Link Juice: This is an informal term in the SEO world referring to the SEO value passed from one page to another through hyperlinks. Search engines see links as votes by other websites in favor of your page, and these votes help build a page's authority.
Link Title: Although not always used, a link title is an additional piece of information about the link, usually appearing as a tool-tip when a user hovers over the hyperlink.
Long-Tail Keywords: These are longer and more specific keyword phrases that visitors use when they're closer to a point of purchase or when using voice search. They often have a lower search volume but lead to a high conversion rate.
Meta Descriptions: These provide a brief summary of the webpage's content. A compelling meta description can act as a 'sales pitch', encouraging users to click through to your website.
Mobile-Friendliness: With a majority of searches being conducted on mobile devices, having a mobile-friendly website is fundamental. Use SEOmator’s Mobile Friendly Test to check your website.
Off-Page SEO: This involves practices that improve your site’s reputation and authority in the digital world. These are activities performed outside the boundaries of your website. They mainly revolve around building quality backlinks through various techniques like content marketing, influencer outreach, and guest blogging.
On-Page SEO: This refers to the optimization of elements on your website that you can control directly. These include your website's content, meta tags, images, site speed, mobile-friendliness, and more. The aim is to make your site both user-friendly and easy-to-understand for search engines.
Organic Keywords: These are the terms that lead users naturally to your site. They're typically the keywords that you rank high for, without the need for paid promotions.
Page Rank: This term might sound familiar - it's an algorithm used by Google to rank websites in their search engine results. Named after Larry Page, one of the founders of Google, Page Rank is a way of measuring the importance of website pages. It considers various factors but relies heavily on the number and quality of links to a page to determine a rough estimate of the page's importance.
Ranking: This determines which indexed pages appear in the search engine results pages (SERPs), and in what order, for a particular query. Many factors contribute to these decisions, like the searching person's location, the relevancy of the content on the page to the query, and the number and quality of other websites linking to that page. You can use SEOmator’s Google SERP Rank Checker to check your website’s ranking.
Robots.txt: This is a file webmasters create to instruct web robots (typically search engine robots) how to crawl pages on their website. The robots.txt file is part of the Robots Exclusion Protocol (REP), a group of web standards that regulate how robots crawl the web, access and index content, and serve that content to users. Essentially, a robots.txt file gives a roadmap for search engines to follow when they visit your site.
Sitemap: A sitemap is a file where you provide information about the pages, videos, and other files on your site, and the relationships between them. Search engines like Google read this file to more intelligently crawl your site. It lets search engine bots know which pages on your site are most important, amongst other things.
Site Security: Having an HTTPS site (secured site) is a confirmed Google ranking factor.
Title Tags: These are HTML tags used in the head section of each webpage to communicate your page's topic to both users and search engines. They should be descriptive, relevant, and include your focus keyword.
URL Structure: Clean and descriptive URLs are easier for search engines to crawl and index and look more appealing to users.
Website Speed:A faster loading website provides a better user experience and is favored by search engines.
Conclusion
SEO is a powerful tool to increase your online visibility and improve your rankings. It helps your website appear higher in search engine results and attracts potential customers actively searching for your products or services.
We hope you’ve found our SEO glossary helpful. Keep in mind that grasping these terms is just the beginning; understanding how they are used puts the pieces of the complex SEO puzzle together!
💡 See also:
- DIY SEO for Small Businesses [7 Easy Steps]
