If you are a business owner engaging with an SEO agency or just trying to do SEO yourself, it can be quite a challenge to understand all the jargons and the thingamajig related with search engine optimisation. There are literally hundreds of SEO terms and there are always new ones coming.
When your SEO agency gives you a report, it may sound like this to you “When we look at your (&#$(*(#)#$&@*!$), we find that there is an issue with the (&#$(*(#)#$&@*!$) so we would like to (&#$(*(#)#$&@*!$). That way your (&#$(*(#)#$&@*!$) and (&#$(*(#)#$&@*!$) are optimised and your rankings and traffic will improve.
If you do a DIY SEO, you may be talking to yourself “Hmm… how do I search this problem in Google? This box here on the right next to the search, I want to modify it”. Now you are on a mission trying to find the term. By the time you realise, you’ve spent 1 hour and you haven’t even solved the SEO issue yet.
Updated SEO Terms
Worry not! In this continuously updated page, we are listing out SEO terms which are commonly used in the industry and explain them in simpler way. We may also list some sources you can check to further understand the SEO terms.
Our goal is to help business owners out there to understand more about SEO so when you get a report or when you try to fix any issues on your website yourself, at least you can use the terms here and find what you need quicker with simple Google search.
Last but not least, if you find this guide helpful, please connect with our director, Yos William on Linkedin by clicking this link. He usually shares the new terms first on Linkedin about a month before adding them here on this page. He also shares great videos and posts which help business owners like you, navigating the wild world of SEO.
Backlink: A link to a website page which comes from from an external website. For example, you read an article on news.com.au and it had a clickable image or text to choice.com.au. This would count as a backlink for Choice website.
Meta Title: It is the title which search engines grab from your webpage head section and use when displaying search listings. It has a limit around 65 characters. It is not necessarily the same as your article title. Put your target keyword in the meta title as it carries a lot of weight for ranking purpose.
Meta Description: It is a brief summary of your webpage which search engines use and display on search listings. It sits under meta title and has a limit around 160 characters. It’s best to write your own summary to attracts people to click on your listing.
Google Snack Pack/Local Pack: Three local business listings that appear on Google search when you type in keywords with local-intent (such as finding local shops, nearest clinics, etc). The listings typically show the business names, ratings, addresses, and phone numbers.
SERP: It is the abbreviation of Search Engine Results Page. It’s the page search engines display to users after conducting a search. Next time an SEO person talks about SERP, you know what it means!
Knowledge Panel: It’s an information box which shows up on page 1 of search results either on the top or on the right column (in desktop). It typically appears when you search for entities such as person names, business names, locations, etc. If you type “Star Wars” from your desktop in Google search, the info box on the right column is an example of knowledge panel.
Above the Fold: It refers to the content which is visible to user when they land on a website page without further clicking or scrolling.
Analytics: A tool which you can use to monitor the performance of your website including the number of visits, demographics, user behaviour, etc. One of the popular analytics you can use on your site is Google Analytics.
Conversion: Conversion happens when a user completes certain action(s) on a website. Some of the examples of conversions are: a user completes a purchase, a user signs up to a newsletter, a user fills out a contact form, etc. As a business owner, you should monitor the number closely as it may impact your sales.
De-index: Also known as de-listing. It refers to when search engines like Google removes a website or a page within a website, either temporarily or permanently from search results.This can be done by website owners voluntarily or it could also be a punishment for violating Google’s Webmaster Guidelines (refer to next term).
Google Webmaster Guidelines: This is a guideline created by Google for the practice of website optimisation. In general, practices such as creating valuable and engaging websites for users is encouraged. While unsolicited tricks to improve rankings calls for a violation of the guideline. When guidelines are violated, penalty may be imposed by Google such as de-indexing the website. You can check their guideline here by clicking this link.
Featured Snippet: This is also known as Position Zero within the search results. Featured snippets usually appear for search queries like questions of (how to, why, what etc). It often look like a special block of text (either in the form of list, table or paragraph) above organic search results. Below is an example.
Algorithm Change/Update: The time when search engines such as Google, change their ranking signals. Their intention is to improve the quality of the search results (reducing spam and promoting better quality sites). This may take days to weeks to roll out globally.
Anchor Text: Clickable word/words of a link. It provides contextual information to search engines and to people about what the webpage linked to is about. For example, when you read an article and it has a clickable blue link with the words “click here”. In this case, “click here” is the anchor text.
https: It’s a protocol which uses SSL certificate to encrypt data transferred between a website and a web browser. Google treated https as a ranking signal. Ensure that your website has a green padlock symbol next to the URL which shows it uses https.
Off-Page SEO: It refers to doing activities that are outside of a website to boost the ranking of a page in search engines. An example is obtaining link to your website by writing a guest post for another blog. This is also known as a link building activity, which is an essential part of SEO.
On-Page SEO: Like Off-Page SEO, On-Page SEO is also done with the aim to rank a page higher in search engines. They are however, done within a website such as posting quality and relevant content. On-Page SEO also include optimising website navigation, URL structure and HTML codes like title tags and meta tags.
Organic Search: It is the unpaid and natural listings that appear when you searched for a keyword on the search engine. These listings are analysed and ranked for giving users the most relevant result based on the keyword entered.
Bounce Rate: It is when a percentage of website visitors leave without visiting another page on the website. A higher than usual rate may indicate some issues on the website whether it may be the content or other problems. According to Google, it is however, not a direct ranking factor.
Broken Link: A link which leaads to a webpage that can’t be found or accessed by a user (eg. 404 not found error) due to various reasons.
Googlebot: It is the web crawling software used by Google to find, add, and update websites and webpages to its index.
This guide is continuously updated. Please send us an email if there is any terms you want us to cover (hello@infiniteace.com)