Have you ever engaged an SEO company for a project or clarity on how search engine optimization works and they keep using jargon you don’t understand?
Well, it happens. Professionals can get carried away sometimes.
The essence of this post is to take you through most of the SEO terms you’re likely going to come across.
But first, let’s understand what SEO actually means.
What is SEO?
SEO is an acronym for Search Engine Optimization. It is a process of increasing the visibility of a website on search engines like Google and improving the quality and number of visits to it.
SEO Terms and Their Meaning
- Search Engine: A search engine is a tool that enables users find information on the web. Some of the most popular search engines include: Google, Bing, Baidu, DuckDuckGo
- SERP: SERP is short for Search Engines Results page. When you make a search on Google, the page that shows up with a list of results is referred to as the SERP.
- Search Query: A search query, commonly called a keyword is a word a user types into the search bar o a search engine
- Domain Name: A domain name is simply the name of a website. Eg. ugoanums.com
- URL: A URL is the address of a webpage that exists on a domain. Eg. ugoanums.com/about-me
- Impressions: Impressions are the number of times a URL appeared on a search results page
- Click-Through-Rate (CTR): This is the ratio of users who click on a webpage to the number of the total users who saw the webpage. Let’s say a total number of 20 users saw a webpage on your website while making a search on Google and only 5 of those users clicked on it, the CTR for that webpage will be 5/20 = 0.25%
- Indexing: This is a method search engine crawlers use in archiving web pages. When a webpage begins to appear on Google, it is said to have been indexed
- Crawlers: Crawlers are internet bots that browse the World Wide Web. In the case of search engines, search engine crawlers browse the World Wide Web for the sake of indexing them
- De-indexed: This is simply an explanation for when a page is no longer indexed. A page can be de-indexed if Google thinks the quality is too low, or if the page has been deleted from the website.
- Algorithm: An algorithm is a complex system used by search engines to retrieve data from their index when searches are made.
- Crawl Budget: Crawl budget is the number of pages a search engine bot will crawl in a given period of time
- Sitemap: A sitemap is a list of pages on a website
- Featured Snippet: A featured snippet is a special box on Google search result page where the format of listing is reversed, showing a descriptive text first
- Search Intent: Search intent is the reason behind a searcher’s query on a search engine
- Organic Results: Organic results are the unpaid entities displayed on a search engine result page. They include the 10 blue links, the featured snippets, the ‘people also asked’ section, the Google My Business listings, and the knowledge graph
- Backlink: A backlink is an incoming link from one webpage to another
- Black Hat: This is a process of trying to manipulate search engine algorithms to gain higher rankings through the implementation of certain techniques that are not considered best practice. To learn more on this, you can check out this post on what is black hat SEO?
Do you think I missed out on any vital SEO terms? Please let me know in the comment section.