SEO Glossary Of Terms

Ads
See Google Ads

Anchor text
This is the actual text on a website, that is hyperlinked through to another website or another page on the site. Eg. We offer amazing cakes at our shop. The word ‘cakes’ is hyperlinked so this is the anchor text. 

Algorithm update
This refers to the regular changes Google and the other search engines make when it comes to choosing where to rank each website. These tend to happen 2-3 times a year. 

Alt tag
An alt tag is added to an image, screen readers read the alt tag on the image, so it should be used to describe the image. 

Authority- your website has authority if a lot of other good quality websites link to it. Eg. smh.com.au and the bbc.com would also be considered good quality websites as they are well known and they will naturally have a lot of other websites linking to them. 

Backlinks
Also known as links, this is when another website adds a hyperlink to their website, to another website. 

Blog
A section of your website that is regularly updated normally with helpful content or news articles. Eg. https://theseoschool.com/blog

Broken link
When the link between either different pages of your website or from another website, is broken. Normally this hits an error 404 page, which commonly looks likes this http://google.com.au/404  

Category
A category is normally used on a blog to create a page that shares similar blog posts 

Citations
Otherwise known as local citations or local citation directories, these are websites that list your name, address and phone number and sometimes a business description. You typically add your website to local citation as part of the Local SEO process. 

Content Marketing
One way to build links, this is usually the creation of articles which are then posted on other websites, with a backlink through to another website, often in a bio at the bottom of the page. 

Conversions
When someone takes an action on your website such as completing a website contact form, emailing you from the website or calling you, this is known as a website conversion. 

Crawl
This is when the search engine spiders attempts to visit each page of the website

Directories
These are websites that organise information into categories. Directories are often industry-specific. 

Domain Name
This is the website address eg. bluecherry.com.au and theseoschool.com are both domain names 

Domain Authority (DA)
Is a score given to a website by an SEO Tool called Moz and predicts how likely a website is to rank on the search engine results page. Domain Authority can be increased by getting good quality websites to link to your website. 

Domain Rating (DR)
The same as Domain Authority except the Domain Rating is the score given to a website by an SEO Tools called AHRefs. 

Duplicate content
When the same content appears on two different websites or two different pages, Google will tend to only rank one version of the content. 

Footer
This is the bottom section of a website, often where the address is added, terms & condition copyright notice and sometimes links to other pages on the website. 

Google Analytics
A free tool from Google to measure website traffic on your website. This is great way to see how much traffic is coming to your website and where that traffic is coming from (eg. Social media, organic search on Google, but also based on geography and device).

Google My Business
A free tool from Google to list your business information if you have a storefront or service customers in person. This is also sometimes called a Business Profile in Google. 

Google Search Console
This is a free tool from Google which allows the website owner to check on the indexing of their website, site performance and normally be notified about any issues that might affect their results on Google. 

Google Ads
Separate to SEO, Google Ads is an advertising platform that displays Google Ads at the top of the Search Engine Results page. Google Ads also powers Google Shopping. 

Google Algorithm
This is how Google decide where to rank web pages in their Search Results. 

Google Drive
Is an online file storage system from Google, files can be accessed anywhere online and easily shared between multiple users.

Google Docs
This is Google’s version of Microsoft Word but it lives online rather than being a file you can download. 

Hyperlinks
See backlinks 

Internal Links
Hyperlinks between different pages of the same website

Internal Navigation
Internal navigation is internal links between different pages of the website, but these are normally in a navigation space. Eg. at the top of the web page or in the bottom nav. 

Keywords
These are words that we use to optimise our website

Keyword Research

This is the process of finding the keywords you would like to rank for. 

Keyword Intent
This is the motivation behind the search query, ie. what is the user actually searching for when they use this keyword. Is it an informational keyword or a product/service keyword?

Keyword Phrase
This is 2-4 keywords that go together to make a phrase. 

Link Juice
This is another way to describe the authority that is passed from one website to another via a backlink. 

Link Building
The process of finding websites to add a link to your own website to increase your search engine rankings.

Links
See backlinks

Metadata
In terms of SEO, this refers to data that sits behind a web page in the source code.

Meta Description
This is a summary of your webpage that you would need to write, and then update each page. The meta name description can only be viewed in the source code of the web page and is sometimes shown on the search engine results page underneath the main heading as a description of the page.

Online Marketing

This term is often interchangeable with terms such as internet marketing or digital marketing. It outlines the combination of a number of different methods to promote your business and website online. This would include SEO, PPC, Email marketing, online PR and article submission, directory submission and affiliate marketing.

Organic Search
These are website results that appear on the search engine results page once a user has done a search on the search engine, that aren’t paid ads. Working on your SEO helps improve your organic search results. 

Page Rank
Page rank is a formula that judges the value of a page from an SEO perspective. 

Rankings
Your position on Google and the other search engines for a specific search term

Redirects
When a web page is redirected to another page

Robots.txt
This is a small text file that is uploaded to the website to instruct Google not to crawl certain pages, often these are login pages but may also include other pages.

Search term
The keyword phrase that someone is typing into Google

Search query
These are the words that someone actually types into Google when they want to do a search

SEO
Otherwise known as search engine optimization. This is the process of making changes to your website to make it appear higher on the page when someone does a search on the search engines to generate additional traffic to the website. 

SERPs
Otherwise known as the Search Engine Results page. This is the page that is shown once a user has completed a search on Google and usually consists of Google Ads and organic results. 

Sitemaps
Websites can include both html sitemaps and xml sitemaps. The focus in this course in the xml sitemap. This is a file which includes all the pages of your website that you want indexed by Google. 

Spider
Also known as crawler or a web crawler, crawls the website to find information, and stores it in Google’s index. 

Title tag
Also known as an SEO Title, this is a type of meta data that is important for SEO, it can
be seen in the top blue bar at the very top of the web page, this is often used as the heading on the search engine results page. 

URL
The address of an individual web page, eg. both https://www.bluecherry.com.au and https://www.bluecherry.com.au can both be described as URLs.

XML Sitemap
See sitemap