Search engine optimization is a dynamic field that continues to evolve with the changing landscape of the internet. As new algorithmic updates are released and user behavior changes with the introduction of new devices and applications, it’s vital for SEO professionals to stay up-to-date on industry best practices. An effective SEO strategy requires constant monitoring of search engine algorithms, as well as frequent updates on keyword analysis, page structure, content management systems (CMS), crawlability, and link profile maintenance.

The abundance of search engine optimization acronyms makes it challenging for newcomers to understand this field quickly. Additionally, many definitions overlap between varying resources. Fortunately, we’ve condensed the most common terms into a single blog post that will serve as an accessible reference in your future career as an SEO specialist. Understanding these terms will help you become acquainted with what is involved in implementing an effective SEO strategy for your website or business.

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10 Blue Links: In the world of SEO, the term “10 blue links” describes the conventional method of displaying search results.

301 Redirect: 301 redirect means a redirect method where it tells Google that the original URL has permanently moved to a new place.

302 Redirect: 302 redirect means a redirect method where it tells Google that the original URL has temporarily moved to a new place.

404 Error (HTTP): An HTTP status code of 404 indicates that a website’s server could not locate the page you were attempting to access.

410 Gone Error: A 410 Gone error happens when a user attempts to access an object that no longer exists on the requested server.

5XX Status Codes: The server provided this code to indicate a problem with the server.

A

Above the Fold: Above the fold is the upper half of a newspaper or tabloid’s front page, which usually contains a critical news story or photograph.

Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP): The AMP Open Source Project created the HTML framework for the AMP (originally an abbreviation for Accelerated Mobile Pages). It’s a framework originally created by Google to make web pages and stories load faster on mobile and tablet devices.

Algorithm: The algorithm is a computer program used by search engines such as Google, Bing, and others to determine how to give ranking positions to indexed pages and websites.

Ask.com: Founded in 1996, Ask.com has been one of the most common search engines in the world.

Alt Text: A word or phrase known as alt text (alternative text) can be included as an attribute to an HTML page to describe an image’s nature or contents to website visitors. The purpose of alternative (Alt) text is to explain how a picture connects to the information in a document or webpage.

Analytics: Analytics is a tracking system used by webmasters to track, analyze, monitor, and check their website’s traffic, data, performance, and other important metrics.

Anchor Text: The visible characters and phrases hyperlinks use to point to another online page or document are known as “anchor text.”

Article Syndication: Often referred to as web syndication, article syndication is when 3rd party websites publish the same web-based content. 

Authority: How reliable and trustworthy a website is based on a search engine’s algorithm.

B

B2B: Business between firms is referred to as B2B. B2B can also be defined as purchasing or selling products or services to other businesses. Since purchase orders for B2B SEO products may be larger than those for regular customers, the products are typically more expensive, and the buyers are more invested in them.

B2C: The full form of B2C is business to consumer. It means when a business is selling to a consumer or individual. Most o

Backlinks: Simply put, a backlink is a link from one website to another. It could be a text, image, video, and more. Search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo, and others use backlinks as a ranking factor.

Bing webmaster tools: Just like Google’s search console, Bing also uses a site kit named webmaster tools that can be used to monitor traffic coming from Bing, troubleshoot indexing status, and more for Microsoft’s Bing search engine. 

Bing Bot: Bing Bot is a web crawling crawler robot used by Microsoft to collect data and index web pages. It is important you allow the bing bot to access and index your website. 

Black Hat SEO: Black hat SEO is a technique, optimization strategy, and set of malpractices designed to achieve a better search position that violates the search engines p[olicies. 

Blog: A blog is a website designed to discuss a topic or two. Back then, a blog used to be a personal web log or diary where one would share their thoughts, day-to-day life, and more. We have evolved from there, and now, Blog is used by both individuals and organizations to share their thoughts, tutorials, interests, and more.

Bot: A bot is a software or computer program/application that runs automatically to solve certain jobs like messaging, reviewing, and more.

Bounce Rate: Bounce rate refers to the percentage of visitors leaving a website without viewing other pages. If your bounce rate is high, your visitors don’t find your site exciting and tend to go. The SEO needs to ensure a low bounce rate by making the site more attractive, targeting proper keywords, targeting the right audience, and making it easier for visitors to find appropriate pages.  

Breadcrumb: Breadcrumb is a trail or set of links designed to help search engines find the page’s site hierarchy. Breadcrumb helps search engines and humans understand, navigate, and use the website by providing the linked page’s name, title, and URL.

Broken Links: Broken links are web pages that can not be accessed for different reasons. In terms of SEO, it is suggested to permanently redirect the broken links to related pages or the homepage.

C 

Cache:  A system or technology used by browsers to store data temporarily to load images, videos, and other web content to make the web page load quicker in the future. 

Cached Page: Google’s bot stores or saves the HTML data of a website when indexing a website, and that is called a cached page. 

Canonical Link: A canonical link is the best and most original URL among a group of duplicate links. The canonical tag is used to tell search engines whether the page they are crawling is the original or a duplicate. You are strongly advised to use canonical tags on your website to help search engine spiders find the original URL.

Cloaking:  Cloaking is a black hat SEO practice that returns a different page to the SEO spider than the original content in a bid to rank falsely. Cloaking was a common practice ten years ago, but Google has caught up and can detect if a website is trying to hide links.

CMS: The complete form of CMS is a content management system. It is a software platform that helps users create, manage, and change a website’s content. WordPress, Shopify, Wix, Zen-Cart, OpenCart, and Drupal are popular content management systems. The SEO community hails WordPress and Shopify as the most SEO-friendly content management system.

D 

Deep Link: It’s a link that goes to any other page except the homepage. 

Dofollow Link: A backlink that transfers pagerank. Unlike the Nofollow link, it does not require any special rel-tag.

Domain Authority (DR): Developed by Moz, Domain Authority is a ranking score that tries to predict the likelihood of a website ranking well or outperforming similar websites. Please be advised that it has nothing to do with Google’s PageRank.

Domain Rating: Developed by Ahrefs, domain rating is a system that compares websites based on their backlink profile. Please be advised that it has nothing to do with Google’s PageRank.

Duplicate Content: Duplicate content is a term used by online marketers when the same content appears on multiple web pages that do not use a canonical link. It could be a similar copy with few changes, or it may match exact copies of the content.

E

EAT: The full abbreviation of EAT is Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. It’s a concept taken from Google’s search quality evaluator guidelines and turned into EAT. Google uses EAT to evaluate the overall quality of a web page. Most SEOs consider it a direct ranking factor that may affect the overall performance of the whole website. 

E-Commerce: E-commerce or eCommerce is an internet commerce system that allows sellers to sell and buyers to buy online. 

.Edu Links: A backlink given by an educational institution that has an EDU domain is called an EDU link. It is considered very hard to get as educational institutions won’t just hand out a link to anyone without any serious thoughts. However, SEOs abused the system to get links from EDU sites, and Google has started to ignore many of them. Another way of getting links from Edu sites was to create sponsorship and get featured on their sponsored pages. 

External Link: An external link is a link that targets a different website other than the website where it is published. If you are linking to an external website, be sure to use appropriate rel-tag like nofollow, sponsored, and UGC. 

F

Favicon: A favicon is a small 16×16 icon that appears on the left side of a URL’s tab.

Featured Snippet: Featured Snippets are short snippets of text/content that appear on the top of the search results. 

G

Google Analytics: Google analytics is a web analytics tool by Google to analyse and monitor performance of a website and mobile app. 

Google Search Console: Google Search Console is an online application developed by Google that allows web admins to examine indexing progress, search queries, and crawling issues, and improve website exposure.

Google Alert: A excellent tool created by Google that tracks changes and alerts people is called Google alert. If utilized correctly, it is free, simple to use, and provides good service. It may be used to receive notifications for blog posts, scientific research, and more, as well as online results.

Google Dance: The SEO community uses this slang term to represent the unpredictability of a new website or search algorithm update where Google determines how to rank it.

H

H1 Tag: The H1 HTML tag is used for the title of a page or post. Web developers typically use CSS to make H1 stand out on the page compared to H2, H3, etc. H1 tag is important when it comes to SEO and can make or break the performance of a webpage. It is suggested to use only one H1 title tag per page. However, Google’s John Mueller said it’s fine if you use more than one H1 per page. 

Header Tags: HTML components known as header tags specify the styling that should be applied to a paragraph of text that is displayed on a webpage. HTML tags help differentiate the headers H1 and sub-headers (H2-H6). These HTML tags break up the content and make it easy for the users to read.

HTTPS: Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure is an improvement to the Hypertext Transfer Protocol that is extensively used on the Internet for secure communication across a computer network.

I

Image Compression: Compressing images to reduce their size of it will improve the overall site speed. There are many ways to compress an image: reduce the resolution, use a lossless compressor, or use Google’s preferred WebP version.

Image Compression: Compressing images to reduce their size of it will improve the overall site speed. There are many ways to compress an image: reduce the resolution, use a lossless compressor, or use Google’s preferred WebP version.

Internal Link: When you provide a link from a website to another webpage of that same website, it is considered an internal link. Internal links are vital as it helps both users and Google to find all your pages. If used properly, internal linking can greatly affect your SEO performance.

Indexing: Indexing is a method used by search engines to examine the content of websites and catalog files.

J

Javascript: Javascript or JS is a programming language that allows web admins to implement various types of effects or changes to their websites. Javascript SEO is a type of technical SEO that is used to improve the searchability of JavaScript-heavy websites.

K

Keyword: A word searched on a search engine is called a keyword. Example: Dog

Keyword Cannibalization: Keyword Cannibalization is when a website accidentally or unintentionally targets the same keyword over many posts or pages.

Keyword Difficulty: It’s a metric developed by different search tools to understand how hard it would be to rank a keyword.

Keyword Stuffing: Keyword stuffing occurs when the writer or the admin abuses the frequencies of keywords to manipulate the search engine.

Keyword Stemming: Keyword stemming relates to Google’s ability to interpret multiple word forms of a particular search query.

L

Lazy Loading: Lazy loading is a system used by content management systems to speed up website loading by deferring the loading of an object until it’s needed. It could be an image, HTML codes, videos, texts, etc.

Link Building: A technique used by the SEOs to acquire backlinks to their site. 

Link Juice: SEO jargon for calculating the amount of power an external or internal link would send to other pages.

Local Business Schema: Structured data markup is used to help local businesses boost their local SEO.

M

Meta Description: A meta description is an HTML element that briefly describes a web page. A meta description tag generally informs and engages visitors by providing a brief, relevant explanation about a particular page.

Meta Tag: Meta tags are a sort of HTML tag that contains information about your page.

Meta Redirect: A redirection system that tells the browser to go to a different page after a set amount of time.

N

Natural Link: A link that happens organically.

Nofollow: A type of rel-tag used by websites to tell Google and other search engines that they are not endorsing a link. Nofollow links are widely used by SEOs when they are promoting affiliate links.

Not Provided: Google won’t share all the keywords in their analytics. Instead, they will name it “Not provided.”

O

Off-page SEO: Off-page SEO refers to all the work, activities, and actions taken outside of your own website to improve your search engine ranking positions. A major part of it is outreach and creating backlinks.

On-Page SEO: On-page SEO is the practice of changing elements like metadata, optimizing images, writing alt texts, optimizing copies, HTML codes, and other visible content to rank higher on search engines.

Organic Traffic: Traffic coming from organic sources is called organic traffic.

Orphan Page: A page that has no internal links pointing towards it.

P

Pagerank: An algorithm used by Google to provide ranking positions to different websites. Google’s founders developed this algorithm while studying at Standford university.

People also Ask: Related questions and answers delivered by Google to the user.

Pillar Page: A pillar page, often referred to as a content pillar or power page, is a web page that extensively discusses the main topic and provides links to connected content clusters.

Q

Query: The words and phrasing used by visitors to find search results.

R

RankBrain: Google created a system and deep machine learning algorithm to recognize long-tail requests and respond to them appropriately.

Reciprocal Link: When two websites or pages link each other, it is called a reciprocal link. While Google advises against it, some beg to differ that it is inevitable that reciprocal links will occur naturally. 

Related Searches: When you use a search engine like Google, you will see a list of related queries searched by other users at the bottom of the page.

Robots.txt: When you create a website, you will want it to be as easy as possible for users to find what they are looking for when browsing. A robots.txt file is a document that allows you to control how search engine crawlers see your website. It’s like a secret code telling crawlers which files to index and which to ignore. You can use the robots.txt file to prevent crawlers from indexing certain parts of your site or accessing files such as user registration or sensitive documents. Many websites don’t have a Robots.txt file right away because they aren’t aware they need one. 

S

Schema markup: Schema markup is a structured data markup language used by search engines to make it easier for them to understand the data better.

Search Intent: The actual intent of the users when doing a search.

Search Algorithm: Algorithms used by search engines to rank webpages trying to rank for a keyword searched by a user.

Search volume: The approximate volume of a search query happening monthly or annually.

SEO Audit: Going through the website to check on-page SEO, off-page SEO, technical SEO, and more.

T

Traffic: Traffic refers to the number of people visiting your website.

Technical SEO: Technical SEO focuses on improving a website’s technical elements to improve the ranking of its pages in search engines. Technical SEO refers to optimizing your website so that the search bots can crawl, index, and handle any other technical issues linked to the website.

TLD (Top level domain): Top-level domains, or TLDs, are the last portion of a domain name that appears after the last dot. Popular TLDs: .Com, .Org, .Net

U

UGC: User-generated content.

UGC Link Attribute: Google created the attribute rel=” ugc” (user-generated content) denotes any links created purely by users, such as forum posts, blog comments, and other user-generated material.

URL Slug: The URL slug is the part that follows after the root page/homepage’s URL. 

Unnatural Links: Backlinks that are not naturally acquired. 

V

Voice Search: A speech detection technology that allows users to do searches using their voice. Once the user says something out loud, the technology tries to find the exact words and uses it as a query to search on the web.

W

Website Authority: Website Authority is a metric used to estimate a website’s or domain’s potential to rank in search engines.

X

XML Sitemap: A sitemap that consists of all the essential links of a website, like categories, products, posts, pages, media, and more.

Y

YMYL: YMYL stands for “Your money or your life.” While it may sound threatening, it is not. YMYL refers to the content that can influence a person’s wellbeing and financial status.