SEO Glossary – SEO Terms & Terminology You Need to Know

SEO Glossary is the fundamental stuff before getting starting into Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Without these terms, you will find difficult and cannot focus on what you are reading about SEO.

If you are a beginner and learning SEO or Digital Marketing then you need to start with basics. You will find lots of technical difficulties while reading different blogs or watching tutorials.

Here, we have Compiled various terms, especially for a newbie. This SEO Glossary Terminology can help you in the future and furthermore it is needed in every part of Digital Marketing.

There are lots of technical terms which you may not be familiar with but after reading this SEO Glossary you can find yourself more comfortable than before.

Top SEO Glossary Terms

Numbers

200 OK: 200 OK is a response code that indicates that the request has succeeded.

301 Moved Permanently: 301 Moved Permanently is used for permanent redirection.

302 Found: 302 Found is a response code used for temporary redirection.

404 Not Found: 404 Not Found is a response code where requested resources cannot be found.

500 Internal Server Error: 500 Internal Server Error is a generic error message.

Learn more about HTTP response status codes here

Learn on How to: Start a Blog

A

Above the fold: Above the fold refers to the area of a website that is immediately visible when a page loads without scrolling. You should try to make the content up to date in these areas.

above the fold

Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP): Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) is an open-source project by Google for publishers to quickly loads the pages in mobile devices. Read more here

Ads (Formerly AdWords): Google Ads is an advertising platform by Google based on Pay Per Click (PPC) where a user can buy advertisements across Google Advertising Networks.

Affiliate Program: A Program where a seller gets a certain commission from Merchant based on sales, leads or sending traffic to their website.

Algorithm: The Algorithm is a set of rules used for problem-solving based on calculations. There is numerous algorithm used by Google. PageRank is one of them to rank websites in their search engine.

Alt-text: Alt text is a text or phrase used in image(<img>) tag as an alternative text. It is one of the ranking factors. You need to use alt text in every image used on your website.

Anchor Tag: Anchor Tag is an HTML tagIt is used to create a hyperlink using anchor text. You can call it a Link.

Archives: Archives are the collection of blog posts that have been published previously.

Aweber: Aweber is one of the popular paid email marketing tools used by bloggers to send a newsletter to their readers via e-mail.

B

Backend: Backend is the administrative area of the blog. It is usually handled by the person who has a username and password. It is the part where visitors or users don’t see.

Backlinks: Backlinks are the incoming links from other websites or web pages. Backlinks play huge roles in the ranking. It improves your page ranking and other aspects of the website.

Black Hat: Black Hat SEO is a way to go up in ranking without following search engine guidelines. It is aggressive in nature. We need to follow White Hat SEO.

Bounce rate: Bounce rate is the percentage used in Analytics where a visitor browses the landing page and leave without visiting any other pages. Higher the bounce rate percentage, bad and boring your web pages are.

Breadcrumb: Breadcrumb is a part of the ranking factor. It is a set of links that navigate the page you are viewing from the homepage.

Breadcrumbs example

Broken links: Broken Links are the hyperlinks that are no longer in existence. It is also known as a dead link. It may lead to 404 Errors.

C

Captcha: Captcha is a computer program intended to distinguish between human and a bot. It is basically used to prevent spam on websites.

Google Recaptcha: SEO Glossary

Category: Category is simply the division or a class. In blogging, we sort or group content according to respective categories to make them more meaningful. It is useful for navigation.

CMS: CMS stands for Content Management System. It is a piece of software designed for the management of websites or blogs. WordPress is one of the CMS where a large majority uses it for managing content. It is a widely used CMS around the world.

Content Delivery Network (CDN): A content delivery network or content distribution network (CDN) is a geographically distributed network of proxy servers and their data centers. Read more here

Crawl / Crawling: Crawling is the process where bots made by search engines is ready to index web pages according to meta tag you have used(Index or No Index).

D

De-index / De-indexing: De-indexing is the process of removing web pages from search results.

Domain Authority (DA): Domain Authority metric is developed by Moz. It predicts the power of the domain name. It is based on a score of 0-100.

Do-follow Link: By default, all links are Dofollow links. Dofollow is a part of the PageRank algorithm. If you get DoFollow links from higher authority sites then search engines will pass the link juice to your website.

Duplicate Content: When the same content/article or portion of the articles is published in various web pages than it is called Duplicate Content.

E

External link: External link is the hyperlink that points to other websites other than your own domain.

F

Footer: It is the bottom part of the web pages. It usually contains copyright links, contact info, etc.

Front End: This is the area where visitors see everything when they visit any web URL.

G

Google AdSense: Google AdSense is a PPC based Advertisement program by Google.

Google AdSense

Google Analytics: Google Analytics is a web program offered by Google that helps you to track, analyze and report website traffic of the website.

Google Analytics
Google Analytics

H

Heading Tags: Heading Tags are the parts of every website used in the creation of headings(title) and sub-headings. Heading tags are of hierarchy from H1 to H6.

I

Index / Indexing: Indexing is the process of adding web pages to search results.

Internal link: Internal link is the process of linking your own articles. It means linking one page to another page or article within your own domain.

J

JPG/JPEG: It is an image file format preferred for uploading and displaying in the web pages.

K

Keyword: Keyword in terms of SEO is a word or phrase used to search for different things in the search engines.

Keyword Planner: Keyword Planner is a tool used to search various keywords related to a part of AdWords.

L

Landing Page: Landing Page is also known as a lead capture page. It is a standalone page for especially focusing on conversion.

Link Bait: Link Bait is the process of attracting users with enticing content so that they can provide backlinks to your article.

Local SEO: Local SEO basically is the process of listing your business locally. Read more about Local SEO

M

MailChimp: MailChimp is also one of the Popular freemium email marketing tools where bloggers can send newsletters like product updates, breaking articles, latest articles to the reader’s email.

Meta Description: It is the summary or snippets of your page or post. It consists of 320 characters. You always should optimize your meta description as it is one of the ranking factors.

Related: Best Blogging Resources

N

Navigation: Navigation is the part of a website where you create a clickable link generally in Header, Footer or sidebar. Navigation is an essential element of the website.

NoFollow: NoFollow is a link attribute used as a part of anchor tag (rel=”nofollow”) to prevent search engines not to pass link juice to another website.

NoIndex: If you don’t want to index a webpage in the search engine then you need to use NoIndex. It is the meta tag where it tells bots(GoogleBot, BingBot) not to include any of its page, blog post to search results.

O

Open Graph Protocol: Open Graph Protocol(OGP) was developed by Facebook. It is designated to assign properties like title, description, image, URL
og:titleog:descriptionog:imageog:url while sharing pages, posts to Facebook.

Organic Traffic: Organic Traffic is the traffic which your website gets from search engine without paying. Webmaster always focuses on Organic Traffic.

Outbound Link: Outbound Link is also known as an External link.

P

Page Authority (PA): Page Authority metric is developed by Moz that foretells how well is a specific page is ranked in SERP. It is based on a score of 0-100. Higher the score better the ranking is.

Permalink: A Permalink or Permanent link is a URL assigned uniquely to each post and pages.

Plugin: It is a piece of software you can add to your website that adds extra functionality. With the help of plugins, you can enhance the user experience.

Post: A Post can be anything including the combination of text, images, videos. It may be a piece of information about a certain topic.

Post Slug: Post Slug is a part of URL including the root domain. For example https://www.wplogout.com/2018/03/22/this-is-post-slug-example Here 2018/03/22/this-is-post-slug-exampleis a post slug.

Q

Query: Query refers to the question. It is commonly fetched from the database.

R

RankBrain: RankBrain is one of the most important ranking factors. It is a machine learning algorithm developed by Google to improve search results. Get a full insight about RainBrainHere

Reciprocal Link: Reciprocal Link is the process of exchanging the website link between two bloggers or webmasters.

Rich Cards: After the success of Rich Snippets, Rich Cards are the improved search results especially for Mobile Devices

Rich Snippets: Rich Snippets are structured data that improve the result in Google Search.

Rich Cards

Robots.txt: Robots.txt is a simple text file used to communicate with web crawlers. It instructs the web bot like GoogleBot, BingBot, etc., how to crawl or index the pages in the search engine.

Root Domain: Root Domain is the main website name. For example, https://wplogout.com is a root domain.

RSS: RSS refers to Really Short Syndication basically used in Email Marketing where visitors subscribe to the newsletter and read it in their mailbox. Also, they can get blog updates in the feed reader app or software.

S

Search Console: Search Console is a free service offered by Google to enhance your web presence. It is also known as Webmaster Tools. It helps you to optimize your website/blog to make it optimal, to check your indexing, to submit your sitemap and many more.

Sitemap: There are actually two kinds of sitemap: HTML Sitemap and XML Sitemap. Normally, we use the XML sitemap on our daily basis.

T

Theme: Theme is usually based on CSS. It is the process of converting your templates to visual elements using CSS. It is referred to as your blog design.

Title Tag: The title tag is an HTML element(<title>) used to symbolize the title of any blog post. It is displayed in the Search Engine Results Page (SERP). It is one of the primary ranking factors.

U

Unique Content: Unique Content generally means that your posts shouldn’t be copied from any other blog or website, which is one of the ranking factors. It should be novel and original.

V

Vlog: Vlog means Video Blogging. The primary purpose of the vlog is that you will see mostly videos as blog posts.

W

Website Speed: It is one of the ranking factors in SEO. It is the process of loading your website as quickly as fast as possible. Faster the website, good the ranking will be.

White Hat: In terms of SEO, White Hat SEO simply means optimizing your website following the Official Guidelines and not violating the rules.

Widget: Widget generally are placed in sidebar or footer is a place where you put your code, content just like images, posts, etc.

WordPress: WordPress is an open-source software used to create a stunning website or blog. It is one of the simple and easiest Content Management System(CMS) developed mostly by Automattic, the company founded by Matt Mullenweg.

WordPress

X

XML Sitemap: XML Sitemap is a .xml file that contains lists of website URLs intended to submit to webmasters and get index.

Y

Yoast: Yoast SEO is a WordPress SEO Plugin with lots of features developed by Joost de Valk. It is one of the most popular plugins with millions of installations. It is a freemium plugin.

Z

ZIP File: Most of you know about the Zip file. It is known as compression software. Usually, Windows user sees this term.

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I am obsessed with WordPress and write articles about WordPress Speed Optimization, SEO, and Blogging. I mostly publish tutorials on GeneratePress, Astra, Kadence, and GenerateBlocks.

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