A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Above the Fold

Refers to the webpage content that appears before a user scrolls down the page.

Algorithm

A multilayered computer program commonly used by search engines in order to understand data and deliver its results for inquiry.

AJAX

Asynchronous JavaScript and XML is a program that let's a webpage send and receive data from a specific server in order to actively change the page without reloading.

Alt Attribute

If an image can't be displayed, this form of HTML code will administer alternate information used by screen readers and search engines to decipher the contents of the image. This is also known as Alt Text.

Authority

Refers to the mixture of signals used by search engines to assess a website for ranking purposes.

Analytics

The method of compiling, assessing and understanding data in order to accurately proceed in providing a solution based on what has and has not worked in the past.

Artificial Intelligence (AI)

The practice in which computers are programmed to perform tasks as though they had human intelligence. Instead of following a set of pre-programmed scenarios, an AI system will learn, create and carry out the necessary solution without human interference.

BACKLINKS

One or more hyperlinks coded into another website or webpage that will lead users to your site.

BEHAVIOUR FLOW

A term used in Google Analytics to refer to the visualization of the route a user has travelled from page to page. This reveals what content is the most popular and what needs to be reworked.

BEHAVIOURAL TARGETING

A strategy that's fixated on the user's history, such as what pages they've visited and what advertisements they've clicked on.

BLACK HAT SEO

An forceful SEO tactic that concentrates on Google bots instead of the user experience. Businesses that use this technique are penalized by Google.

BOUNCE RATE

Refers to the percentage of users that leave your site after only viewing the homepage. Higher bounce rates indicate that your homepage is either optimized for inaccurate keywords or isn't visually appealing.

B2C

This stands for business-to-consumer, where the consumer is the audience, buying cycles as usually shorter depending on the industry and products or services are cheaper.

Baidu

Founded in January of 2000 by Robin Li and Eric Xu, this is the most popular search engine in China.

Breadcrumb

This handy navigation tool will help users figure out exactly where they are within a given website.

Black Box

This is complex computer program where its inputs and outputs are able to be viewed but not accessed thanks to its confidential status. Google’s algorithm, for example, is a black box.

Broken Link

A site link that takes users to a 404 not found error page. This occurs when a website is inactive, a webpage is taken down without the implementation of a redirect or when a URL is changed without the implementation of a redirect.

Branded Keyword

The keyword a user can input into a search engine that uses a specific company name. These keywords can also include obvious misspellings.

B2B

This stands for business-to-business, where the intended audience are other professionals, the buying cycle is longer and products or services are more expensive.

CACHE

A mechanic that stores website content, like images, on a temporary basis in order to reduce page loading times in the future.

CACHED PAGE

A quick image of a website page at the time in which the search engine last looked at it.

CANONICAL URL

HTML code that specifies a particular website URL, in the case that there are multiple URLs with the same or comparable content. This helps to reduce repeated content.

Click Bait

Refers to a text or design that will entice the user to click, before revealing misleading content. This occurs when webpage publishers want to increase their advertisement revenue earnings.

Cloaking

A tactic used to reveal different content or URLs to both site viewers and search engines. This is a violation of Google's Webmaster Guidelines.

Click-Through Rate (CTR)

A percentage rate that indicates how often users have clicked on a natural search result. This rate is determined by dividing the total number of natural clicks with the total number of impressions before the sum is multiplied by 100.

ccTLD

A country-code top-level domain. Domains set in different countries will have a unique country identifier as the end of their URL. For example, www.example.co.uk, where uk is the ccTLD.

CMS

Meaning Content Management System, refers to an application that allows users to create, upload, and manage digital content through the web.

Comment Spam

Typically refers to comments that are poorly written, off-topic, self-promotional or uploaded by a spambot in order to get a free link.

Competition

There are two types of competition:

Direct Competitors: Businesses that sell comparable services and/or products, fill the same needs and target the same audience, both on and offline.
SEO Competitors: Businesses that strive for the same search visibility and keyword usage. However, they don’t offer the same products and/or services, address different needs and target a different audience.

Content

Information, whether it’s words, images, sounds or a combination of the three, that’s distributed and consumed by an audience. This is one of Google’s most important ranking factors, as search engines are more likely to reward content that’s informative, credible, unique, engaging and valuable with higher visibility.

Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)

The process in which the number or quality of conversions done on a website are improved. Some popular tactics include testing website changes in regards to design, images, pricing and messaging.

Conversion Rate

The percentage rate that website users complete an action. This rate is determined by dividing the total conversion number by total traffic before it's multiplied by 100.

Correlation

The depth of the relationship between two or more principles. This is used in SEO to determine the relationship of variables in regards to search rankings. However, correlation doesn't equal causation.

Crawl Budget

The overall number of URLs that certain search engines want crawling on a website at a specific time.

Crawling

Using a crawler, this is the process of information being gathered from the billions of public web pages through updates and additions within a search engine's index.

Crawler

Also known as a bot, spider or web crawler. A program used by search engines to crawl through the internet. Bots will visit various websites to collect information as well as add or update their search engine index.

Crawl Error

This refers to one of two things: either a search engine is unable to crawl through that URL, or the URL itself has a status code error.

DATA

The numbers that represent real users and is needed to make more accurate decisions about how to move forward in regards to SEO strategy.

DEAD-END PAGE

A website page that doesn’t link to any other webpages. There’s nowhere to go once a user or bot lands on that page.

DE-INDEX

This refers to a Google removing, whether it's temporarily or permanently, a website or webpage from its search results. This can occur as punishment for breaching Google's Webmaster Guidelines or voluntarily as a tool to be used by the website's owner.

Directory

Also known as a web or link directory, this is a list of websites that are divided up by various categories and maintain by editors. This can include free and/or paid sites.

Do-follow

A link that refrains from using the attribute known as "nofollow".

Doorway Page

A web pages that's been created to increase its search engine rank through the use of specific keywords. The purpose of this is to redirect users to a different website once they've clicked the page.

Duplicate Content

When a large amount of content from one webpage is similar or identical to content that exists elsewhere. This could be within the same site or on a completely separate site.

DuckDuckGo

Founded on September 28, 2008, this is a search engine that’s been heavily praised for its focus on user privacy and lack of search personalization. It uses over 400 sources to run its search results. Four billion searches were made on DuckDuckGo in 2016.

Domain Authority

When the strength of a website is increased over time, it can help new web pages rank higher more quickly. This happens before links and other content are properly engaged on the website.

DMOZ

Stands for The Open Directory Project, a directory of websites edited by humans from June 5, 1998 and closed March 17, 2017.

Dwell Time

The time that elapses between a user clicking on a search result and the return of the SERP from a site. Shorter dwell times, that are less than five second for example, is an indication that the content may be of lower quality to search engine.

E-commerce

Online website that conducts online buying and selling of products.

Editorial Link

A link that is voluntarily given by one website to another website without requesting or paying for it.

Entities

Anything that comes under the category of people, places, organizations, websites, events, groups, facts, and other things.

External Link

An outbound Link which belongs to a different website.

Engagement Metrics

Methods that are used to measure users interaction with web pages 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

Featured Snippet

Snippets occupy the topmost position in a Google search result. For certain queries or usually questions (i.e., who/what/where/when/why/how), Google shows a special block with numbered list or a paragraph that answers or gives information about the query in brief. Snippets are positioned above the organic search results and can also include a publication date, page title, link to the webpage from which the answer originated, and URL.

Findability

The ease of accessing content on a website, both internally (by users) and externally (by search engines).

Footer Link

Links that appear at the bottom (or "footer") of a website.

Google

Google is the most popular search engine and has been around since 1998. This revolutionary search engine utilizes web crawling programs and complex algorithms to rank and promote keyword-specific websites.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a complimentary program that allows users to track various data including traffic, audience behaviour, website performance and more.

Google Bomb

This technique was used to rank a website first on Google for a controversial search phrase. This was done when many websites linked to a main web page with specific anchor text that helped it rank for that controversial term.

Google Dance

Google Dance originated during the unpredictable era (2002) during which Google updated its search index almost monthly.

Googlebot

The web crawling system Google uses to include new webpages and sites to its index.

Google Hummingbird

Google Hummingbird was introduced in 2013. The purpose of Hummingbird was to provide better results due to full context of queries, rather than certain keywords.

Google Penguin Algorithm

Introduced in 2012, Penguin was reduced the ranking of overly-optimized sites, or sites that implemented "cheating" tactics (like building low-quality links or keyword stuffing). Penguin started producing real-time results in 2016.

Google Panda Algorithm

Google Panda was introduced in 2011 and it's goal was to reduce the visibility of low-value content. Panda became part of Google’s core ranking algorithm in 2016.

Google RankBrain

Google RankBrain was a significant algorithm change that was introduced in 2015. RankBrain allowed Google to add machine learning to its algorithm, and it is a top 5 ranking signal in Google's algorithm.

Google Pigeon Update

The name was coined by the SEO industry, Google Pigeon was a local search update launched 2014. Pigeon helps improve the accuracy and relevance of local searches by improving distance keyword search terms and locating better ranking parameters.

Google Sandbox

It is rumored that Google implemented a waiting period that hinders new websites from seeing the full benefit of their optimization efforts. This effect was witnessed with new sites targeting highly competitive key phrases and can only rank when the website gains enough authority.

Google Trends

A tool where you can see the latest Google search trends, stories, and topics.

Google Search Console

Google's Search Console offers many useful programs, including the ability to monitor sites for speed and indexing errors.

Guest Blogging

A great link building strategy that allows for one website to produce content for other websites in exchange for a backlink that goes to your own pages.

Gray Hat

A technique that adheres to Google’s Webmaster Guidelines, but then implements an element that pushes the rules.

Heading

Heading tags (h1-h6) are important to separate content into different sections. They can be assigned in the order of importance starting from H1-being the most important to H6 being least important. It is critical to understand that, headline tags must be used naturally and should include your target keywords where relevant. This can help you to gain a small SEO benefit.

Head Term

A popular keyword with high search volume that is usually difficult to rank for.

Hidden Text

Any text that can't be seen by a user and is intended to manipulate search rankings by loading web pages with content-rich keywords and copy is called as the hidden text. Although effective, this technique is against Google's Webmaster Guidelines and can be penalized.

HITS Algorithm

Hyperlink-Induced Topic Search is a link analysis algorithm that assesses a value based on content, inbound links (authorities) and outbound links (hubs).

Hilltop Algorithm

The Hilltop Algorithm is influenced by the HITS Algorithm and enables to assign an“expert” status to certain websites or web pages that give information on specific topics and also link to unaffiliated pages about that topic.

.htaccess File

A server configuration file that can be used to rewrite and redirect URLs.

HTTP

The Hypertext Transfer Protocol is a medium to transfer data from a computer server to a web browser.

HTML

Stands for Hypertext Markup Language. HTML tags are code elements, when used in websites and web pages help to improve the SEO efficiency.

Hub Page

An authoritative central resource (e.g., page or article), which addresses a specific topic (keyword), and is continually updated and linked to, and also links out to relevant webpages.

HTTPS

Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure uses a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) to encrypt data transferred between a website and web browser. HTTPS is not much of a Google Ranking factor.

Index

Search engines use this database to store and retrieve information gathered during the crawling process.

Inbound Link

A link to a webpage that originates from an external website i.e. if Search Engine Journal (SEJ) were to link to Google, that would count as an inbound link on Google's side; however, if Google were to link to SEJ, that would be an inbound link on SEJ's side.

Indexability

The ease of which a search engine bot can add a webpage to its index.

Information Architecture

The organization of a webpage based on where various content and navigational elements are placed.

Indexed Page

A webpage discovered by a crawler, added to a search engine index, and is eligible to appear in search results for relevant queries.

Internal Link

Type of hyperlink on a website to another resource or page, like an image or document. It can be external or internal depending on its target destination.

Information Retrieval

The process of searching for information i.e., text, images, video from a large database and presenting the most relevant information.

Internet Protocol (IP) Address

Can either be shared with numerous websites sharing an address within one server or a group of servers like virtual hosting, or dedicated where a website has its own address.

JavaScript (JS)

A type of programming language that makes it possible to dynamically insert content, links, meta data, and other elements on websites. It can make it difficult for search engine bots to crawl and index web pages and it can increase load time for web pages.

Keyword Cannibalization

A type of self-competition that occurs when multiple pages from one website rank for the same query on a Search Engine Results Page (SERP). This can cause the Click-through Rate (CTR), authority, and conversion rate of a web page to decrease more than if it had one consolidated webpage.

Keyword

The words or phrase an SEO professional or marketer targets for the purposes of matching and ranking website content. 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.

Keyword Research

The process of discovering 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 Density

How often a word or phrase appears within the content of a webpage. It is uncertain whether this affects SEO.

Knowledge Graph

An entity database Google uses to uncover facts and information about people, places, and things and their relation to other queries. Google displays this information as a Knowledge Panel or carousel at the top of search results pages of relevant queries.

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 negative action.

Key Performance Indicator (KPI)

A measurement used in businesses to gauge whether marketing and business objectives, targets, and goals are being reached.

Knowledge Panel

A box that appears at the top of or on the right rail (desktop only) of the first page of Google's search results of relevant queries. This panel contains facts and information on people, places, and things as well as links to related websites or Google searches.

Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI)

An information retrieval method designed to help search engines identify the correct context of a word. LSI does not play a useful role in SEO today.

Landing Page

Any web page a visitor can access. It is a standalone web page designed to capture leads or generate conversions.

Lead

A person who may or may not be interested in your products and services. They share their email address and usually other contact information in exchange for something they deem of value from the website.

Link Bait

Intentionally provocative content that is meant to grab people's attention and attract links from other websites.

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.

Link Building

A process designed to get other trusted and relevant websites to link to your website to help improve organic search ranking 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 i.e. obtaining links via sponsored content, paid reviews, or paying for a specific type of link to appear on another website
Forging partnerships.
Manually by linking together various properties you manage or own, or adding your site to online directories and review sites.

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 Equity

The value of inbound links in terms of relevance, authority, and trust.

Link Juice

Refers to the equity or value of a web page passed from another through hyperlinks.

Link Velocity

How quickly or slowly a website accumulates links. A sudden increase in link velocity could potentially be a sign of spamming, viral marketing, or doing something newsworthy either intentionally or unintentionally.

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.

Log File

A file that records users' information such as IP addresses, browser type, Internet Service Provider (ISP), date or time stamp, referring or exit pages, and number of clicks.

Long-Tail Keyword

Highly specific multiple-word terms that often demonstrate higher purchase intent. They are less popular keywords with a low search volume that are usually easier to rank for.

Log File Analysis

The process of exploring data contained in it to identify trends, administer the site, track user movements around the site, gather demographic information, and understand how search bots are crawling the website.

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 the 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 action can apply to the entire website or just some of its web pages.

Machine Learning

A subset of Artificial Intelligence where a system uses data to learn and adjust a complex process without human intervention.

Meta Description

A tag that can be added to the main section of an HTML document. It acts as the description of a webpage's content. This content is not used to rank algorithms, instead it is often displayed as a snippet that appears in search results. Accurate and engaging descriptions can increase organic the click-through rate.

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.

Meta Keywords

A tag that can be added to the head section of an HTML document. Adding several keywords here will not help with ranking. Search engine algorithms ignore this tag for ranking purposes due to spamming in the form of keyword stuffing.

Metric

A way to measure activity and performance to assess the success of an SEO initiative.

Negative SEO

A rare but malicious practice where webspam techniques are used to harm the search rankings of another website, usually a competitor.

Natural Link

When other bloggers and website publishers link to content on your web page.

Niche

A specific market or area of interest consisting of a small group of highly-passionate people.

Nofollow Attribute

A meta tag that tells search engines not to follow one specific outbound link. This is done in cases when a website does not want to give authority to another webpage or because it is a paid link. The nofollow attribute looks like this:

Anchor text goes here

Noarchive Tag

A meta tag that tells search engines not to store a cached copy of a page.

Noindex Tag

A meta tag that tells search engines not to index a specific webpage in its index.

"(not provided)"

Keyword data was removed from Google Analytics and replaced with "(not provided)" – making it impossible to know which queries are responsible for visitors finding a website.

Nosnippet Tag

A meta tag that tells search engines not to show a description with the listing.

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 i.e. title tags, meta tags, information architecture, website navigation, and URL structure.

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 marketing mediums like social media, content, email, influencer, and offline marketing channels i.e., TV, radio, billboards.

Organic Search

The natural or unpaid listings that appear on a SERP. Organic search results that are analyzed and ranked by algorithms, which are designed to give users the most relevant results based on their query.

Outbound Link

A link that directs visitors to a page on a different website than the one they are currently on.

Orphan Page

Any webpage that is not linked to any other pages on that website.

PageRank

Google's measure of importance of a page based on incoming links from other pages. Each link to a page on a site from another site adds to its PageRank.

Pageview

A web page loaded in a browser.

Page Speed

The amount of time it takes for a web page to fully load. Page speed is a ranking factor.

Paid Search

Pay-per-click advertisements that appear on the organic results of search engines.

Private Blog Network (PBN)

A penalized tactic by Google where several high authority websites possessed by one entity links back to a profit making website.

Penalty

The negative impact of the search rankings of a website based on Google's search algorithms and manual review. See also Manual Action.

PDF

This type of digital document can contain text, images, links, videos, and other content.

Persona

A fictionalized representation of an ideal website visitor or customer – their demographics, behavior, needs, motivations, and goals – based on data. Also known as: Buyer Persona, Marketing Persona

Personal Home Page (PHP)

A scripting language used to create dynamic content on webpages.

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.

Piracy

Search engines aim to reduce the number of organic search results of content that infringes on copyright.

Position

A website's ranking on a search engine results page.

Pogo-sticking

Refers to a searcher who bounces back and forth between the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) and the websites listed in those results.

PPC (Pay Per Click)

A type of advertising where advertisers are charged a set amount (determined by bidding, relevance, account history, and competition) every time a user clicks on their ad. Combining PPC and SEO can result in increased SERP space, clicks, and conversions.

QDF

The abbreviation QDF stands for Query Deserves Freshness. Many a times search engine might decide to show a newer web pages or content in search results (rather than older pages) specially if a particular search term is trending, or because a particular news event has seen some development.

Quality Link

An inbound link that originates from a trusted, relevant and authoritative, relevant website.

Quality Content

The kind of 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).

Query

The word or group of words, a term or phrase that a user enters into a search engine to find more information on it.

Ranking Factor

Ranking factors are individual components that contributes to a complex series of algorithms to determine at what position web pages should appear within the organic search results for a specific query. According to Google, their algorithms "rely on more than 200 unique signals" to help users find the most relevant webpage or response.

Rank

Rank is the position where a webpage appears within the organic search results for a specific query.

Reciprocal Links

An agreement between two websites for exchanging links with one another.

Referrer

URL data that identifies the source of a user's web page request.

Redirect

Redirect is a technique by which a user(or a search engine) is sent to a different (but equally relevant) webpage, different from the original webpage that was requested. There are two types of redirects:

301: Permanent
302: Temporary

Reinclusion

The process of asking a search engine to return a website or webpage(s) to its search index after de-indexing.

Reputation Management

Creating a positive online perception of a brand or person – encompassing search results and social media – by minimizing the visibility of negative mentions.

Also known as: Online Reputation Management, Public Relations

Rich Snippet

Rich snippets are bits of carefully structured data which can be added to the HTML of a website to provide contextual information to the search engines during crawling. This information is then displayed in the SERPs, helping with enhanced listing, known as a rich snippet.

Responsive Website

A website that automatically adapts to a user's screen size,- laptop, desktop, ipad or smartphone.

Return on Investment (ROI)

ROI is a technique used to measure the performance of SEO activities. It is calculated by dividing how much revenue you earned through organic search by the cost of the total investment, then multiplying by 100.

robots.txt

The Robots Exclusion Protocol (or Standard) is a text file, accessible at the root of a website. It conveys search engine crawlers which areas of a website should be ignored.

Schema

Form of microdata which, when added to a webpage, creates an improved description (also called as a rich snippet), that appears in search results.

Search Engine

Supports users to enter a specific term or query to gain or retrieve information in various forms like website, webpage, content, video or images among other 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). Search index is built and updated using a crawler, with items being analyzed and ranked based on a series of algorithms.

Examples: Baidu, Bing, DuckDuckGo, Google, Yahoo, Yandex

Scrape

Scraping is a technique used to copy a website content or information utilizing a computer program or a script. Search engines, such as Google, scrape data to build a index of websites which can be searched.

Also known as: Web scraping.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Defined as the process of optimizing a website. It involves rewriting website content with relevant keywords so that the website appears at prominent positions in the organic results of search engines. For optimal SEO it is important to have knowledge of how search engines work, what are the terms people search for (i.e., keywords and keyphrases), and why people search for those particular terms(intent). SEO helps to make your website appealing to users and search engines and is usually a combination of technical (on-page SEO) and marketing (off-page SEO).

Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

SEM is a broad term which helps to increase a website’s visibility in search engine results pages, including paid as well as organic activities.

Search Engine Results Page (SERP)

A page that search engines displays to users after conducting a search. It contains about 10 organic search results sorted by relevance. Depending on the query, other search features are also shown at times like:

AdWords Ads (above and below the organic search results)
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.

Share of Voice

Refers to the number of impressions that a brand receives in the SERPs for search terms as compared to the total impressions that the brand’s competitors receive for the same search terms.

Search History

Search engines track and store every search term, web page and clicks that user clicked on. Often this data can be used to personalize the search results for users browsing through their personal logins.

Also known as: Web Browsing History.

Sitelinks

The six algorithmically-chosen links which appear below the website link result and form a part of top-ranked organic search result. Generally, one can block pages from appearing as sitelinks within the Search Console or Bing Webmaster Tools.

Also known as: Deep Links (Bing).

Sitewide Links

It is a link that appears on every page of a website and is mostly located in a sidebar or footer of blogs or websites that use templates.

Sitemap

Sitemap refers to a list of pages on a website. There are two types of sitemaps:

XML: This type of sitemap provides crawlers with a list of webpages on a website.
HTML: This type of sitemap, typically organized by topics, helps site users navigate a website.

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).

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 Signal

Factors that show the authority and influence of an individual or business on a social networking websites. For instance, the social authority of a user on Twitter.

Though correlation studies claim that socials signals impact rankings (e.g., number of Likes/shares a piece of content receives), Google has publicly denied the same and says that social signals are not a direct ranking factor. However sites that have a lot of social media engagement have been observed to rank well for other reasons.

Social Media

Are the platforms (websites and apps) where users can interact with each other, as well as create, share, and consume content.

Spam

Webspam

Split Testing

A controlled experiment that helps to compare at least two or more web pages and measures the effects of different variable on conversions. After site visitors are exposed to the web-pages for a long enough period, performance data is gathered and a "winner" can be declared.

Also known as: A/B Testing.

Spider

Bot

SSL Certificate

A digital security certificate which confirms the website’s identity, authentication and encryption information which is then sent to the server using Secure Sockets Layer technology.

Status Codes

Are the response codes sent by a server whenever a link is clicked, a webpage or file is requested, or a form is submitted. Some common types of HTTP status codes relevant to SEO are:

200 (OK)
404 (Not Found)
410 (Gone)
500 (Internal Service Error)
503 (Service Unavailable)

Subdomain

A separate section that exists within a main domain.

Stop Word

Stop words are words which are frequently used in content. Articles like a, an the etc., for instance. Historically though they have been ignored by the Search engines to save time/resources when indexing, the evolution of Search engines have resulted them into regarding the useful and important stop words, although it is not something one needs to worry from an SEO perspective.

Time on Page

An approximate estimation of time a user spent looking at a particular webpage. Pages that have high exit rates can greatly skew this finding.

Taxonomy

Organizing and categorizing a website to help find content and help users complete desired on-site tasks.

Title Tag

Refers to an HTML meta tag which functions as the title of a webpage. It is used by the search engines use to display search listings. Hence, it is crucial to include strategic and relevant keywords for that specific page so that it attracts clicks and makes sense. Make sure to keep their length less than 65 characters.

Traffic

People or bots who visit your website to find information.

Top-Level Domain (TLD)

Refers to the extension of a web address. Examples:

.com
.org
.net
.info

There are also many more industry and country-specific options.

Also known as: gTLD (Generic Top-Level Domain); Domain Extension.

TrustRank

Is a link analysis technique which separates good "reputable seed pages" from spam.

Trust

Generally refers to the history of a domain (e.g., whether it cites or features expert sources, builds a positive reputation, adheres to Webmaster Guidelines).

User-Generated Content (UGC)

Content in the form of videos, blog posts, comments, reviews, etc which is created by users or customers.

Unnatural Link

Links that are identified by Google as suspicious, deceptive, or manipulative. Google is likely to initiate manual action against your website if unnatural linking is observed.

Universal Search

Refers to search engines pulling data from multiple speciality databases to display on the same SERP. The results can be in a variety of forms such as images, videos, news, shopping, and other types of results.

Synonyms: Blended Search.

URL Parameter

Refers to the the values that are added to a URL to track the origin of web traffic (i.e., which link someone clicked on to discover your website or webpage).

URL

URL is an abbreviation for Uniform Resource Locator and refers to a specific string of characters that lead to a web resource. It is used to denote letter-based web address (e.g., www.searchenginejournal.com) which is entered into a browser to access a webpage.

Usability

Usability refers to how convenient it is for people to use your website. Many factors like Site design, browser compatibility, disability enhancements, etc., play a crucial role in improving your website’s usability and making your site accessible for as many people as possible.

User Experience (UX)

The first hand personal experience that users are left with, after interacting with a brand, its web presence, and the physical product/services.

User Agent

Web crawling software.

Vertical Search

Vertical search is a special kind of search with a focus on a particular topic, kind of content, or a specific media. For instance, YouTube (video), Amazon (shopping), Kayak (travel), Yelp (business reviews).

Visibility

The position and prominence held by a website on the organic search results page.

Voice Search

Technology that enables users to search a term by speaking into a device, usually a smartphone. It can also be used to ask questions or conduct an online search.

Virtual Assistant

A bot that employs use of natural language processing to perform tasks, answer questions or conduct web searches. For instance, Apple's Siri or Microsoft's Cortana.

Website

Is a collection of many web pages that are hosted together on the World Wide Web.

Webpage

Is a individual unit of a website like a document that exists on the World Wide Web. It is available for viewing.

Website Navigation

Relates to how a website connects its web page and helps visitors to navigate that site. Website navigation has different forms, like:

Main Navigation: The main topics and subjects that you are dealing with on your website. For example, on SEJ our Main Navigation includes SEO, News, PPC, Content, and Social.
Secondary Navigation: It includes topics related to the main navigation. For example, the SEJ secondary navigation includes links to webinars, podcasts, guides, SEJ Summit, and other topics.
Footer Navigation: Typically a footer navigation contains links to web pages which have important information about a brand or a business. Usually these pages aren't important for ranking purposes. For instance, SEJ's footer navigation links to our ‘About Us’ page, privacy policy, and our various social profiles.
Related Links: Usually this area appears in the right rail or beneath content. It can alternatively be referred to as "Most Popular", "Most Read," or "Trending Now". It contains links that has relevant information related to the web page topic.
Content Links: Website links that appear within the main content (e.g., articles, landing pages).
Breadcrumb Navigation: Although not so popular anymore, breadcrumb navigation helps web page visitors to show a "trail" of where they are on your site. For example: Home > SEO > Link Building > What Is Website Navigation?

Synonyms: Internal Links (or Internal Linking), Site Architecture

White Hat

White Hat Practices are tactics that are in accordance with Google's Webmaster Guidelines.

Webspam

Methods that exclusively cheat or manipulate search engine algorithms and/or users.

Synonyms: Black Hat SEO, Spam, Spamdexing, Search Spam

WordPress

A well known content management system for blogging and content.

Word Count

It is the total number of words in a content. Search engines tend to regard content with lower word count to be a low-quality.

XML Sitemap

A list of all the pages on a website that search engines need to know.

XML

Extensible Markup Language is a markup language search engines use to understand website data.

Yandex

The most popular search engine in Russia, Yandex was founded September 23, 1997 by Arkady Volozh and Ilya Segalovich.

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.

\ SEO DICTIONARY \

01.ENQUIRY

02.ANALYSIS

03.STRATEGY

04.AGREEMENT

05.PROJECT LAUNCH

06.BUSINESS GROWTH

HEADQUARTERS

OTHER LINKS

LOCAL GOOGLE ADVERTISING

HEADQUARTERS

CONTACT US

Support Ticket