What Is the SEO Acronym? 90+ SEO Terms Explained
The Glorious Company Team
The acronym SEO stands for search engine optimization. With all the jargon involved in online marketing, it’s sometimes easy to get confused. If you’re new to the industry or working with a specialist to, say, start a blog, it’s crucial to have working knowledge of terms like SEO and related SEO acronyms.
Defining the SEO Acronym
Without a deeper explanation, the term search engine optimization doesn’t mean much for someone not in the industry.
SEO is one of the most effective ways businesses use to drive organic traffic from search engines to their websites. SEO is the process of increasing your website’s search rankings on search engines like Google and Bing, making the website more visible to people searching on the Internet.
It involves creating informational content that answers the target audience’s questions and pain points, which prompts them to click through to the business’ website. This inbound traffic from organic search then lands on a website and its webpages, and these site visitors look for more information that can solve their problems. If the website is well-optimized, some of these site visitors will turn into conversions, which means newsletter signups or paying customers.
In a nutshell, that’s what’s involved when we talk about the SEO acronym.
The Different Types of SEO
Businesses need to optimize their websites for numerous aspects of search. Doing so means more site visitors and conversions. Here are the different ways that searchers can find your website on the Internet, along with how to optimize for each.
Organic SEO
Organic SEO refers to organic search, when leads are actively searching for specific queries on the web. This is the process of improving a website’s visibility and search rankings for those performing organic searches on Google or Bing. This increases the chances of them finding your website and clicking through to your webpages.
On-Page SEO
On-page SEO is the series of tactics websites take to increase their search rankings and online visibility, which are limited to actions on the website itself. For example, ensuring that a website’s title tags and meta descriptions are accurate and informative, while including relevant keywords in a natural way, is an example of on-page SEO.
Off-Page SEO
Off-page SEO relates to external strategies websites use to build their online search visibility and rankings. Link-building campaigns, writing guest posts on other websites (a form of content marketing), and social media marketing are all examples of off-page SEO.
Technical SEO
Technical SEO optimizes the website's infrastructure, making it easier for search engine bots to crawl and index the site. This includes improving site speed (ensuring mobile-friendliness), fixing broken links, and optimizing URLs and meta tags. Another aspect of technical SEO is ensuring proper website structure and organization. This means creating XML sitemaps, implementing schema markup, and optimizing the website's navigation and internal linking structure. Site performance and security are also addressed. This includes optimizing server and hosting settings, implementing SSL certificates, and ensuring the website is secure from malware and hacking.
Mobile SEO
Mobile SEO is the process of making sure that a website is user-friendly for people on smartphones and tablets. Mobile-friendly means the site design, along with site structure and speed, are optimized, so mobile site visitors don’t bounce and leave.
Local SEO
Local SEO optimizes a website to rank higher in local search results, which is necessary for businesses with physical locations that customers can visit. The goal is to appear in the Google 3-pack, the top three local business results that appear above organic search results.
Local SEO involves optimizing the website's on-page elements—like title tags, meta descriptions, and content—for location-specific keywords that customers search for. Also vital is claiming and optimizing a presence on online directories and review sites like Google My Business, Yelp, and TripAdvisor.
Ecommerce SEO
Ecommerce SEO applies to online stores. It’s the site optimization of online stores, which can include long descriptions of products with the natural insertion of keywords, along with getting backlinks from related and pertinent websites.
International SEO
International SEO is making sure that search engines can clearly identify the countries a website wants to target for online traffic. This process tells search engines the languages that your website uses, so to make it easier for your website to attract leads and customers from various countries and who speak different languages.
Voice Search SEO
Voice search SEO helps a website’s content more likely to show up in voice search results. It’s a series of actions websites take to optimize keywords and keyword phrases for searches that rely on voice assistants. Depending on whom you ask, voice search SEO is necessary for websites that want to appear in results for voice search queries.
The Business Case for SEO Acronyms: How to Optimize Your Website for SEO
Optimizing your website for SEO greatly increases your chances of drawing relevant organic traffic to your website, which you can convert to paying customers. Here’s how.
Step 1: Research and Implement Keywords
Before writing content for your webpages, think hard about what keywords you want to organically rank for since people behind those searches should be your target audience. Besides brainstorming, tools like Semrush’s Keyword Manager can provide super help. We use this Semrush tool at our agency by default, and it’s helped us rank our site and our clients’ sites for choice and juicy organic keywords.
Once you’ve settled on a list of keywords and established a keyword plan, you can create content around them as part of your content strategy.
Step 2: Write Powerful Content
Now’s the time for you to display your expertise. You’re competing with thousands of other websites for all-important real estate on the first search engine results page (SERPs). By writing content that’s better than your competitors for your keywords, you can climb up the search rankings. Write content that:
Is unique
Provides more information than your competitors
Includes video
Refers to studies and research
Is longer and more authoritative than your competitors
Writing stellar content like this also guarantees more backlinks to your content—another critical factor in search rankings.
Step 3: Ensure You Pass Core Web Vitals: Optimize for Page Speed
Your website also has to load quickly. Page speed is an important user-experience factor that’s integral to great SEO. Measure your site’s Core Web Vitals with Google’s Pagespeed Insights to figure out if your site’s performance is up to par with Google’s standards.
Image: Google
Your visual load (Largest Contentful Paint or LCP), interactivity, (First Input Delay or FID), and visual stability (Cumulative Layout Shift or CLS) should all get a passing mark from this test. Only then is your site’s UX good enough in Google’s eyes.
Step 4: Build Strong Backlinks and Perform Backlink Outreach
No SEO campaign is complete without link building. When you acquire links to your content, you’re building your site’s backlink profile, another core component of SEO. This is an example of off-page SEO and something that Google’s algorithms put quite a bit of weight on when it comes to ranking your site.
Reach out to websites for backlinks by using the Skyscraper Technique, which is you essentially telling them that you’ve authored a superior piece of content than what they’re currently linking to, and they should be linking to your content instead!
A strong backlink profile can also be built organically, when people read your content, find it very useful, and then automatically link to your content. But for that to happen, your content has to truly be second-to-none, and your content has to be findable on the web.
SEO Glossary: SEO Acronyms and Terms You Need to Know
The SEO acronym itself is accompanied by a multitude of SEO-related terms and acronyms. Together, they make up the broad body of knowledge in optimization science. Here’s your definite list of SEO terminology that will make you a better online marketer.
301 Redirect
This is a permanent redirect that also passes complete ranking power to the redirected page. A 301 redirect is typically the best way to handle redirects on websites, in most cases.
302 Redirect
A 302 redirect is used when a page’s URL is only changed temporarily, as, for example, during maintenance of a website.
307 Redirect
A 307 redirect is closely related to the 302 redirect, seeing as it’s the 302 redirect’s HTTP 1.1 successor. This is only for temporary redirects.
Meta Refresh
A meta refresh is a redirect that’s implemented on the page level instead of the server level. Because this type of redirect is slower, they aren’t recommended as an SEO tactic.
Alt Tag
Alt tag refers to the alternative text associated with an image on a website. It’s used to describe the content of the image to search engine crawlers and assistive technologies for visually impaired folks. Alt tags play a crucial role in search engine optimization (SEO) because they provide context and relevance to search engines, helping them understand the image's content.
Anchor Text
Anchor text is the clickable text in a hyperlink that links one webpage to another. It plays a crucial role in SEO, as it provides context and relevance to search engines. By using descriptive and keyword-rich anchor text, websites help search engines understand the content and topic of the linked page. This, in turn, helps improve the search engine rankings of the linked page for relevant keywords. It’s essential to choose anchor text that accurately represents the linked page and provides value to the reader.
Authority Score
Authority Score is a ranking invented by Semrush to assess the overall quality of a website or webpage. This score is best relied on to compare different domains, not necessarily to determine if a website or webpage is good or bad quality in absolute terms.
Backlinks
Backlinks are links going from one website’s page to another site’s page courtesy of an anchor text. Backlinks are also known as inbound links, one-way links, and incoming links.
Black Hat SEO
Black hat SEO refers to unethical digital marketing strategies that manipulate search engine algorithms and rankings. These practices violate search engine guidelines and can result in penalties or bans from search engine results pages. Black hat SEO techniques prioritize short-term gains over long-term organic growth. Examples include keyword stuffing, hidden text or links, cloaking (displaying different content to search engines and users), and buying links.
Bounce Rate
A website’s bounce rate is its percentage of site visitors that land on a webpage and then immediately leave, or bounce, without taking the desired action, like signing up for a newsletter or making a purchase. The lower a website’s bounce rate, the better. A good bounce rate is between 26% and 40%.
Canonical Tag
A canonical tag, also known as a rel="canonical" tag, is an HTML element used to indicate the preferred or canonical version of a webpage. It’s useful when multiple versions of a webpage exist with similar or identical content. As search engines crawl and index webpages, they may encounter duplicate content issues when multiple pages have the same or very similar content. This can lead to confusion about which version of the page should be displayed in search results. The canonical tag helps to address this issue by informing search engines about the preferred URL that should be considered as the main or original version of the webpage.
Citation Flow
One of the lesser-known SEO acronyms, citation flow (CF) is a metric developed by the SEO analytics company Majestic, which indicates a website’s influence based on how many other sites link to it. This is expressed on a range of 0 to 100.
Clickthrough Rate
Clickthrough rate is a metric that looks at the number of clicks that advertisers get on their ads, per the number of impressions. Its abbreviation is CTR. Receiving a higher clickthrough rate on your ads is integral to your pay-per-click success. This directly impacts Quality Score as well as how much you’ll have to pay each time someone clicks on your ads.
Here’s the CTR formula: Clicks ÷ Impressions = CTR.
Cloaking
Cloaking is a deceptive practice in SEO. Website content is presented differently to search engine spiders and human visitors. It involves showing different versions of the same webpage, with the aim of tricking search engines into ranking the page higher for certain keywords, while displaying different content to users. Cloaking techniques can include hiding text or links within the HTML code, using CSS to position elements off-screen, or delivering different content based on IP addresses or user-agent headers. These techniques violate search engine guidelines, as they manipulate search results by presenting misleading information to search engines and users.
Core Web Vitals
A set of metrics outlined by Google, Core Web Vitals track real-world user experience for critical website factors like loading performance, interactivity, and a webpage’s visual stability.
Image: Google
Achieving a high Core Web Vitals score is critical for websites that want to rank highly in organic search.
Crawlers
Crawlers, also known as spiders or bots, are automated software programs used by search engines to systematically scan and collect information from websites. These crawlers navigate through webpages, following links and indexing their content. They help search engines understand the structure and relevance of websites, enabling them to display the most relevant results to users' search queries. Crawlers play a crucial role in SEO by gathering and analyzing data about websites, including keywords, metadata, and links. This information helps search engines determine the relevance and ranking of web pages in search results.
Deep Link
A deep link is a hyperlink that links to a specific webpage on a website, instead of the website’s homepage.
Deep Link Ratio
Deep link ratio measures the overall number of inbound links on each page on a website against the overall number of inbound links to only the homepage. It’s expressed as a percentage of the overall number of inbound links to a website.
Dofollow Link
A dofollow link is a type of hyperlink that allows search engines to pass on "link juice" or ranking authority from one website to another. When a website includes a dofollow link to another site, it is vouching for the credibility and relevance of the linked webpage. Dofollow links are important for improving a website's search engine rankings because they signal to search engines that the linked webpage is reliable and authoritative.
Domain Authority
Domain Authority, developed by the SEO company Moz, is a search engine ranking score. It predicts the probability of a website to rank in the search engine results pages.
Domain Name
A domain name is the unique address that identifies a website on the Internet. It’s the online identity and brand for a company or individual. A domain name consists of two main parts: the domain and the top-level domain (TLD). The domain is the name chosen by the website owner. The TLD is the extension that follows the domain, such as .com, .org, or .net. These TLDs can provide information about the nature, industry, or location of the website.
Domain Name System
The domain name system is a protocol found within the set of standards that computers rely on to exchange data on the web. It is a naming database where domain names are located and then translated into IP (Internet Protocol) addresses.
Domain Rating
Domain rating is a metric invented by the SEO company Ahrefs. It’s meant to display the relative strength, compared to other websites in the Ahrefs database, of a website’s backlink profile.
Duplicate Content
Duplicate content is content that’s exactly the same as, or very similar to, content that appears on another webpage. Significant amounts of duplicate content on one website can have a damaging impact on the website’s search rankings.
External Link
An external link, also known as an outbound link, is a hyperlink that directs users from one website to another. These links are created when a website references or cites information from another source, leading the user to explore additional related content. External links play a crucial role in SEO, as they influence a website's credibility and authority in the eyes of search engines. Search engines deem websites with a higher number of quality external links as more trustworthy and relevant to user queries.
Featured Snippet
A featured snippet is a distinct box that appears at the top of a search engine results page (SERP) and displays a concise summary of the information that directly answers a user's query. These snippets aim to provide users with quick and relevant answers without requiring them to click on a specific search result. Also known as position zero, featured snippets often appear in response to specific questions or long-tail keyword queries.
The purpose of a featured snippet is to enhance the user experience by displaying the most relevant and helpful information right away. It is beneficial for businesses and website owners as it can drive significant organic traffic to their site, increase visibility, and establish authority in their industry.
Geotargeting
Geotargeting is a form of advertising in which location data is used to reach out to customers with communication that’s relevant to their behavior and locality. Geotargeting shows consumers content that’s based on automated and predicted knowledge of their behavior.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a web analytics tool that allows websites to track and analyze various aspects of their online presence. It provides valuable insights into website traffic, user behavior, and conversion rates, helping businesses make informed decisions to improve their digital marketing campaigns. Businesses can monitor the number of visitors their website receives, where they are coming from, and how they interact with the site. The tool also provides data on bounce rates, average session duration, and goal completions, all of which are crucial metrics to understand user engagement and website performance.
Google Business Profile
Formerly known as Google My Business, a Google Business Profile is a free service that allows businesses to set up their business listings online on Google products like Google Search and Google Maps. This profile lets businesses increase their visibility in search, appear in local search results, control their business details, and build trust through reviews.
Google Search Console
Google Search Console, often abbreviated to the SEO acronym GSC, is a free platform for anyone with a website. It allows you to monitor the keywords that are driving traffic to your website, along with the number of impressions, the click through rate, and search positions your website is ranking for. Studying this data empowers website owners to optimize their websites, so that they perform better in organic search.
Google Tag Manager
Google Tag Manager is a free tag management system, which lets website owners install, store, and also manage their marketing tags (small pieces of code that track user behavior and gather data) without having to modify their website code. To make Google Analytics work, for example, you have to install a Google tag, a form of marketing tag.
Hreflang
Hreflang is an HTML attribute used to indicate the language and regional targeting of a webpage. This attribute helps search engines understand which language versions of a page should be displayed to users in different countries or regions. The hreflang attribute is essential for websites that have multiple language versions or country-specific versions of their content. Using hreflang ensures that search engines show the most relevant version of their content to users based on their language preferences and geographical location. Hreflang is crucial for international SEO and improves a website's visibility and accessibility to users from different countries.
Hyperlink
A hyperlink, also known as a link, is a connection between two webpages that allows users to navigate from one page to another by clicking on the link. It is typically displayed as a highlighted or underlined text or as an image that users can click on to be directed to a different webpage or a specific section within the same webpage. In SEO, there are various types of hyperlinks, including internal links (links within the same website), external links (links to other websites), and backlinks (links from other websites pointing to your website). These hyperlinks help search engines understand the content and structure of a website, which impacts its organic search visibility.
Inbound Link
An inbound link is a link that’s directed to your website from another website. Other SEO terms for inbound link are inlinks, backlinks, and incoming links. Google looks at inbound links to a site as an indicator that the site has high-quality content, making the acquisition of inbound links vital to successful SEO.
Indexing
Indexing is when a webpage has been visited and crawled by one of Google’s Googlebots, analyzed for its content and meaning, and then finally stored or indexed within the search engine. In essence, indexing is the addition of webpages to Google’s complete library of websites, which the search engine uses to show search results to users.
Internal Link
An internal link is any link from one webpage on your website to any other webpage on your site. Internal linking directs users to content within the same website by connecting webpages on the same website only.
IP Address
An IP address is a unique address on the web, which identifies either a device on the Internet or a local network. The acronym IP stands for Internet Protocol. This is the collection of governing rules related to the way data is formatted as it’s sent through the Internet or a local network.
Keyword
A keyword is a specific word or phrase used to search for information on search engines like Google or Bing. These keywords are crucial in digital marketing as they help businesses target their ideal audience and boost their online brand visibility. Keywords play a significant role in SEO because they help search engines understand the relevance and context of a webpage. By incorporating relevant keywords into website content, meta tags, and headers, businesses increase their chances of ranking higher in search engine results pages and attracting customers who are actively searching for products or services related to their industry.
Keyword Density
Keyword density looks at the number of times a keyword is inserted into a webpage or inside of a piece of content, expressed as percentage or ratio of the total word count. Another SEO term for keyword density is keyword frequency.
Here’s the keyword density formula: the number of times a keyword appears on a webpage ÷ total word count = keyword density.
Keyword Research
Keyword research involves determining and analyzing the search queries that users type into search engines like Google, so it can be used for SEO. Keyword research can help you discover numerous, vital elements like short- and long-tail keywords, specific search phrases, questions people ask, keyword difficulty, search potential, search volume, and keyword popularity.
Keyword Stuffing
Keyword stuffing is the insertion of a specific keyword term or phrase into a webpage numerous times, without any logical or natural purpose, for the purpose of manipulating search engines to rank content. Keyword stuffing can be visible (inserting keywords irrelevantly into content) or invisible (inserting keywords repeatedly into your webpage’s code or alt text).
Landing Page
A landing page captures the attention and information of site visitors who arrive on it. It’s created with the objective of converting visitors into leads or customers by offering them valuable content or persuasive offers. A landing page normally features key elements like a compelling headline, engaging copy, and a clear call-to-action that prompts visitors to take the desired action, like signing up for a newsletter, downloading an e-book, or making a purchase. The page should be optimized for search engines by implementing relevant keywords and providing a seamless user experience.
Link Building
Link building is an off-page SEO strategy that relies on convincing other websites to link back to your website’s webpages, giving you backlinks. Email outreach, content marketing, public relations campaigns, the Skyscraper Technique, broken link building, and unlinked brand mentions are just a few examples of link building campaigns.
Link Farm
A link farm is a website or a group of sites whose sole purpose is to create links to other websites. Unlike most websites, which exist to sell a product or a service, a link farm is an illegitimate site that simply exist to add to the backlink profile of legitimate sites.
Link Juice
Link juice is an SEO acronym that indicates the value or equity passed on from one webpage or website to another through hyperlinks. Link juice isn’t created the same. Its authority differs based on the quality of each webpage or website linking to another.
Local Pack
The Google Local Pack, also known as the Google Local Map Pack, is found in a prominent part of local Google search results. It displays the highest-ranked local listings in your location or within the search location.
Location-Based SEO
A subset of SEO, location-based SEO refers to efforts to rank your website for geographic keywords that help you show up higher in local search results. This includes positioning in Google’s Map Pack or Local Pack, which is the section of organic results that displays a list of businesses alongside a map.
For example, for an SEO agency that wants to rank for SEO Hong Kong, they may want to optimize some of their pages for local-intent keywords.
Long-Tail Keyword
A long-tail keyword is a descriptive, specific keyword phrase that consists of three or more words. Unlike short-tail keywords, which are more general and broader, long-tail keywords are more targeted and home in on a particular topic or niche. They frequently have lower search volume, but higher conversion rates because they are more likely to match the intent of the user's search query.
Meta Description
A meta description is the HTML element on a webpage, which gives search engine users a short, precise summary of a webpage and how it relates to their search query.
A webpage’s meta description tag will show up as a part of the search snippet in Google results.
Meta Keywords
A special form of meta tag, meta keywords are found in a webpage’s HTML code. They are helpful in telling search engines what the page’s content is about. The key difference between meta keywords and regular keywords is that meta keywords show up only behind the scenes—within your page’s source code instead of on the publicly visible copy or text of your page.
Meta Tag
A meta tag is a snippet of text, which describes the content of a webpage. A meta tag won’t show up on the publicly visible page itself. Rather, it’s only visible within the page’s source code and are meant to inform crawlers of search engines about the page’s content and context.
Natural Link
A natural link, also known as an organic link or editorial link, refers to a link that is given to a webpage by another website without any manipulation from the owner of the linked page. It’s freely given because of the quality and relevance of the content on the linked page. Natural links are highly valued in SEO since they indicate to search engines that the linked page is trustworthy and authoritative. When a webpage receives a high number of natural links from other reputable websites, search engines interpret this as a signal that the page is valuable and should be ranked higher in search results.
Nofollow Link
Nofollow links are links that contain an attribute that tells search engines not to follow or pass on any link juice or equity from them. Nofollow links are typically used in user-generated content and advertising to prevent spam and manipulation of search engine rankings. Nofollow links are still useful because they drive traffic to a website and attract potential customers.
Organic Search
Organic search refers to users looking for specific search terms and phrases, along with answers to their questions, on search engines like Google and Bing. Organic search results are the unpaid results that show up in search engine results pages, right below Google Ads.
Out-Ranking
Out-ranking occurs when content meets the criteria established by Google’s algorithms and ranks higher in the search engine results pages than competing content. Factors for out-ranking include the age of the website where content it published, its trustworthiness, its authoritativeness, its proper use of keywords, and its adherence to Core Web Vitals.
Over-Optimization
Over-optimization refers to the practice of implementing excessive or manipulative techniques in SEO efforts. When website owners or digital marketers go too far in their attempts to rank higher in search engine results pages, they risk being penalized by search engines like Google.
PageRank
PageRank is a Google algorithm that analyzes the significance of webpages, based on the links that are pointing at them. This algorithm works on the premise that more authoritative pages receive more links. That’s why pages that have more links should rank higher in the search engine results pages.
PageSpeed Insights
PageSpeed Insight is a tool created by Google to provide data about the user experience of a webpage on desktop and mobile devices.
Image: Google
This tool also offers suggestions about how websites can improve their site performance.
Page Authority
Page Authority is a website analytics score created by Moz. It tries to predict how successfully a specific page can rank on the search engine results pages. This score is based on a scale of 0 to 100, with higher scores corresponding to a probability of achieving higher rankings.
People Also Ask
People Also Ask, also known by the SEO acronym PAA, is a feature on Google's search engine results page (SERP) that provides users with answers to questions related to their initial search query. When users search for a specific term or topic, the PAA feature displays a box with a series of related questions. Each question can be expanded to reveal a concise answer, which can then be expanded further to provide more in-depth information. PAA aims to help users find the information they are looking for quickly and easily by providing relevant questions and answers directly on the search results page.
Position
Position refers to the search ranking that a particular webpage has on the search engine results pages, for specific keywords or keyword phrases. This position is affected by numerous factors, such as the quality of content, on and off-page keyword optimization, and the user experience of the webpage.
Protocol
A protocol is the established framework of rules set up to manage any requests between clients and servers on the web. A protocol normally has three, distinct parts: the header, payload, and footer. The header has details about the source, destination address, type, and size information about a page. The payload refers to the actual information that’s sent. The footer then routes the request to a recipient and makes sure the data is accurate.
Quality Score
Quality Score is a Google rating that refers to the quality and relevance of pay-per-click (PPC) ads and keywords. This score is used to calculate the cost-per-click (CPC) and then multiplied by the maximum bid to come up with your ad rank within the ad auction procedure.
Query
A query is a particular search term or phrase that users type into search engines to find relevant information. It is the basic unit of information retrieval on the web and is fundamental to SEO. Understanding search queries is integral to developing effective digital marketing strategies.
Ranking Factor
Ranking factor is the criteria that search engines apply to webpages when they’re evaluating them as part of their process to organize the rankings of their search results. Numerous factors affect the ranking factor, such as user signals, technical implementation, the content of the website, and the site’s backlink profile.
Redirect
A redirect is a technique used in website development to send users and search engines to a different URL than the one they originally requested. This can be done for various reasons, such as when a webpage has been permanently moved to a new location or when multiple URLs lead to the same content and need to be consolidated.
Referring Domain
A referring domain is a website that points a backlink to the target website. For example, if your website got a backlink from Twitter, then Twitter would be your referring domain.
Responsive Design
Responsive design is a technique to web design that prioritizes the user experience, no matter what size device your site visitors are viewing your website. Responsive design ensures that all webpages display properly and functionally across all devices and screen sizes.
Robots.txt
Robots.txt is a text file that has instructions for search engine crawlers or robots. These instructions tell crawlers which webpages they’re supposed to crawl and which they’re supposed to avoid. These instructions contain commands like “allow” and “disallow” to specify which pages to crawl and which not to.
Schema
Schema is a structured data markup language used by search engines to understand and classify a website’s content. It provides additional information about the data on a webpage, helping search engines better understand the context and meaning of content. Schema markup can include various types of data, such as product details, ratings and reviews, event information, and business contact details. By adding schema markup to your website, you can enhance the visibility and relevance of your content in search engine results pages.
Search Engine
A search engine is a software system or program that discovers webpages that match a user’s search query, which is based on keywords, phrases, and questions. It’s meant to help users find information online very quickly. The most popular search engine is Google, with Bing trailing behind at a very distant second.
Search Engine Marketing
Search engine marketing, known by the SEO acronym of SEM, is the practice of using pay-per-click ads like Google Ads to increase a business’ visibility on the search engine results pages. Advertisers bid on specific keywords that their target audience may be interested in when they search Google or Bing for products or services. These paid ads appear above organic or non-paid search results. This contrasts sharply with SEO, which relies on organic results to market businesses and websites on search engines.
SEO-Friendly
SEO-friendly means that your content has been optimized to increase its chances of ranking higher in the search engine results pages. Being SEO-friendly includes factors like on- and off-page keyword optimization, fast page load times, and answering questions that People Also Ask.
Search Engine Results Page
A search engine results page, often abbreviated by the popular SEO acronym SERP, is the page that is displayed by a search engine in response to a user's search query. It is the outcome of a search engine's algorithm analyzing and ranking web pages based on their relevance and authority. A typical search engine results page includes a combination of organic search results, paid advertisements, featured snippets, images, videos, and additional search features like local packs or knowledge graphs. The top portion of the page showcases paid advertisements, followed by organic search results that are considered to be more relevant and trustworthy.
Short-Tail Keyword
A short-tail keyword is a keyword that’s used for broad search queries on organic search. A short-tail keyword normally features a considerably high search volume due to its broader search scope. Another SEO term for short-tail keyword is head term.
Sitemap
A sitemap is a file on a website that features details about various aspects of the website. It’s essentially a list of the webpages on the site. These include webpages, videos, and additional kinds of files, as well as the relationship between them. Sitemaps are crucial to SEO since search engine crawlers or robots read them to crawl and index a website more effectively.
Skyscraper Technique
The Skyscraper Technique is a strategy within SEO, based on the premise that people are more interested in the best quality of content. It’s characterized by first determining what content is popular for a specific keyword or phrase. Then, creating content that’s superior to one’s competitors in the search engine results pages. Finally, you promote your superior content to various websites, hoping to get them to link to your content instead of the most popular content.
Sponsored Attribute
A sponsored attribute, represented by the rel=“sponsored” code, is an attribute developed by Google, which stands for links that come from paid promotions or ads. This attribute covers sponsored blog posts, affiliate links, and any other links that stem from paid compensation.
Status Code
An HTTP response status code is the message that the server of a website transmits to a browser to communicate whether or not a specific request can actually be satisfied. A status code will be embedded in a webpage’s HTTP header to communicate the result of the request to the browser.
Structured Data
Structured data refers to data that’s been organized and structured in a particular way on a website. When it comes to SEO, structured data gets organized and tagged with certain bits of text. This helps the search engines understand the context of this data and ensures that they can show accurate results to users performing search queries.
Thin Content
Thin content is found webpages that offer little to no value to site visitors. These pages contain minimal or low-quality content, often lacking depth, relevance, or originality. Thin content can include pages with little text, duplicated content from other sources, or just a brief presentation of information without providing any substantial insights or useful details. Creating thin content can negatively impact a website's visibility and rankings in search engines because search engines strive to deliver the best user experience by providing high-quality content in search results. Thin content not only doesn’t satisfy user intent, but also undermines the search engine's ability to trust and rank a website.
Trust Flow
Trust Flow, abbreviated to TF, is an SEO metric that’s developed by the analytics company Majestic. Trust Flow analyzes the perceived credibility of a website based on the strength of its backlink profile.
TrustRank
TrustRank is an algorithm developed to tell the difference between good and bad websites across the web, with good websites being high-quality sites and spammy websites being labeled as bad. The idea behind TrustRank is to determine which websites are trustworthy. TrustRank was first mentioned in a 2004 paper titled “Combating Web Spam With TrustRank.”
User-Generated Content
User-generated content is content that’s original and on-brand material generated by customers and then published and shared on social media and other channels on the Internet. There are many forms of user-generated content, such as videos, images, podcasts, testimonials, and reviews. Other SEO terms for this form of content are USG and consumer-generated content.
URL
As it relates to SEO acronyms and related terms, URL is unavoidable. URL, or uniform resource locator, is the specific address that identifies a webpage on the internet. It is composed of different elements, including the protocol (such as "http" or "https"), the domain name (the unique name that identifies the website), and the path (the specific location of the webpage within the website's structure). The URL plays a crucial role in SEO as search engines use it to index, rank, and display webpages in search results. Optimizing URLs can help improve a website's visibility and increase organic traffic.
White Hat SEO
White hat SEO is an above-board SEO practice that successfully increases a website’s rankings in the search engine results pages through legitimate means. These strategies used in white hat SEO maintain the trustworthiness and integrity of a website because they stay within the bounds of Google’s guidelines for website optimization.
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