12. Search Engine Optimization Glossary

1. Acquisition – In online marketing, acquisition can be defined as an action that a business intended to achieve. For example, if a business provides different subscription plans, the process of registration would be defined as acquisition by that company, as that is the action the company wants to achieve through its strategy. 
2. Algorithm – An algorithm is a computer program used by search engines to look for clues or signals, which enable them to deliver relevant search results to the users.
3. Alt text – Alt text, short for alternative text, is a word or a phrase that is inserted as attribute element in HTML to describe an image. Since search engines cannot crawl images, so they use alt text to index this content and show it when relevant search is performed. Alt text is also displayed to the online users if, for some reason, the image cannot be loaded and shown on the web page.
4. Analytics – Analytics represent the collection of data related to website performance in terms of visits, page views, bounce rate, visit duration, etc. Analytics is used to understand the behavior of the visitors and the performance of your website, which allows improving those aspects.
5. Anchor text – Clickable, visible text in a hyperlink is called anchor text. The words inside the anchor text are said to be one of the factors influencing website ranking in the search engine results pages.
6. Backlink – A backlink is a link received from another website. Backlinks are also called inbound links or incoming links.
7. Bing Ads – Bing Ads is an online program enabling users to create advertising campaign on Bing search engine.
8. Branding – Branding is the process of creating a unique name and image for a product in order to establish its position on the market and among the customers. This process is mainly done through different types of advertising campaigns, both online and offline.
9. Broken link – A broken link is a link that does not work, meaning that the link leads to a nonexistent page, probably due to the fact that the page has been moved or deleted.
10. Browser – Browser or a web browser is a software application used to find and display content on the internet.
11. Cache – Cache is the component storing the data from the websites the user has visited.
12. Canonical tag – Canonical tag is used to deal with duplicate content. This tag tells search engines that a page should be treated as a copy of another URL, and that search engines should actually credit the original page when including the pages into the search results.
13. Competitiveness – Competitiveness or keyword competition is the measure of how difficult it would be to position a website for a particular keyword, based on the competitors, i.e. the websites that are using the same keyword to position their own website. Competitiveness of the keywords depends on the popularity of the keyword and the competitiveness of the sector.
14. Content – In terms of SEO, content refers to any type of information published on a website, which is created in the purpose of attracting search engine traffic. Various types of content can be used such as blog posts, articles, lists, guides, videos, images, product pages, etc. Content is said to have a great importance for website positioning nowadays, hence the saying “Content is the king”.
15. Conversion – A conversion is the specific action you want your web visitors/browsers to take, such as sale, sign up, downloading a file, etc.
16. Crawler – Crawler is a program used by search engines in order to visit the websites and fetch the information for the search engine index.
17. Cryptic text – Cryptic text is the text using a certain code.
18. CSS – This stands for Cascading Style Sheets and it presents the language used to describe the look and formatting of a document written in markup language. CSS affects the page in terms of layout, color and fonts.
19. CTR – CTR stands for click-through rate. This metric is used to measure the success of an online campaign, such as advertising campaign or email marketing campaign. You can calculate click-through rate by dividing the total number clicks by total number of impressions.
20. Domain authority – This term is used to describe a measure of domain name strength. Three major factors influence the value of domain authority and those are age, popularity and size. The values range between 0 and 100.
21. Flash – Flash is a technology used to create interactive multimedia applications, such as websites, banners, games, etc. When it comes to websites, they commonly used Flash technology to display a photo gallery or animated video. While visual effects are great to improve the visual aspect of a website, a major drawback of Flash technology is the fact that search engines are not able to index the content inside a Flash file. In addition, this technology can also prolong the load time of the website.
22. Follower – A follower is usually defined as someone who subscribes to be notified of your updates. In terms of social media, social followers are social media users who decide to start following your account, by clicking on like, follow or subscribe button.
23. GIF – GIF, short for Graphic Interchange Format, is a type of image file that is of lower quality than other types of formats, but it supports animations. The size of these files is not large which is why they are great for websites, but the color palette is much more limited than with other image types.
24. Google AdWords – Google AdWords is an advertising program provided by Google. The main purpose is allowing you to set up and run online advertising with sponsored results shown in the search engine results pages.
25. Homepage – A homepage is an introductory page of a website. It is the first page a user visits when the website domain is entered into the web browser. Homepage is also called index page or main page.
26. HTML – This stands for Hypertext Markup Language and it represents the standardized system for tagging text files, in order to alter the structure of the page (text, headings, tables, photos, etc.).
27. Hyperlink – Hyperlink is a link reference that allows the website user to access another document or a specific part of the document.
28. Inbound link – Inbound link, or backlink is a link posted on another website pointing to a page on your website.
29. Index – Search engine index represents the collection of information retrieved by search engine crawlers. The collection of data gathered inside the index is then used to provide answer to the search query.
30. Indexable – This term usually refers to websites, web pages or content of a website that can be indexed by search engines, due to the fact that it follows search engines guidelines. This way search engine algorithms can successfully crawl and index the content of a website, in order to show the content as organic search results.
31. Interact – In online marketing, the process of interacting refers to the process of engaging into a virtual conversation with your website visitors, social followers, etc. Rather than just having a website, modern market demands companies to be social and interact with the visitors, in order to maximize the benefits of online presence.
32. Internet marketing – Also called online marketing, this term refers to marketing that uses online media, such as a website, online advertising, social media, etc. in the purpose of promoting a business and generating leads.
33. Java – Java is a programming language used to create applications that can run on virtual machines and browsers.
34. Java applets – Java applets are small java applications that can be downloaded from the web server and run on computer by a web browser that is Java compatible.
35. JavaScript – JavaScript is scripting language used in the HTML file of a website.
36. JPG – JPG or JPEG stands for Joint Photographic Experts Group. It is the type of file used for graphics. It allows creating images of high quality, which can then be saved as smaller files, but the quality of the image is damaged after the image is resized, which is why this format is called lossy image format. This is also the reason why PNG image type is used instead.
37. Keyword – Keyword is a word or phrase that is used to describe the content of the web page. Keywords are used in SEO to optimize the web page and provide additional information to the search engine crawlers about that web page, but they are also used in paid advertising.
38. Keyword density – Keyword density is the percentage of usage of the keyword or keyword phrase on the web page.
39. Landing page – A landing page is a single page that appears after the user has clicked on the link in the search engine result, search engine ad, the link posted on social media, included in the email campaign, etc. This page is also called lead capture page or a lander.
40. Link – A link is a connection from one point to another. Most commonly, a link is inserted into a highlighted word or picture that can be clicked on in order to take the user to another object. There are different types of links.
41. Meta data – This term is used to describe the types of data about the application or content. Meta data provides information about the web page using the standardized language and tags that allow search engines to successfully interpret the data.
42. Meta tag – This is the coding system used in HTML to mark up the content of the website in order to allow search engines to understand the data. The meta tags provide the meta data about the HTML document.
43. Metrics – Metrics are measures that are used to track and monitor a specific element. When it comes to websites, you can track metrics such as the number of visits, average session duration, etc. Metrics are used to evaluate the website performance.
44. Mobile-friendly – Website content that is mobile-friendly is the content that is displayed correctly on mobile devices, such as mobile phone, tablets, etc.
45. Negative keyword – Negative keywords are used to control online advertising campaign, as they prevent an ad appearing for that particular word. This method is used for avoiding showing ads in relation to the irrelevant searches, which reduces the budget and improves the performance of the advertising campaign.
46. Off-page – This refers to the factors that affect ranking and which are not available on the actual website. Instead, these are external factors, such as links.
47. Online presence – Online presence refers to presenting and promoting a business using online media, such as a website, search engine ads, social media accounts, etc. The purpose of having online presence is to try to reach online audience by developing an online strategy in order to improve your business.
48. On-page – This refers to the factors that affect ranking and which are available on the actual website. These are internal factors, such as tags, keywords, content, etc.
49. Optimization – Optimization is the process of improving different on-site and off-site elements according to SEO guidelines, in order to improve the positioning of the website in the search engine results pages. Various aspects of a website can be optimized, such as content optimization, title optimization, image optimization, video optimization, etc.
50. Organic reach – The total number of unique people who saw your website or post through unpaid distribution.
51. Page authority – This term is used to predict the chances of web pages showing up in the search engine result pages. The values of page authority range between 0 and 100.
52. Page rank – Page rank is a metric ranging between 0 and 10 allowing Google to determine the importance of a website. Google search algorithm uses this metric to determine the relevance of the results related to the search query.
53. Paid reach – The total number of unique people who saw your website or post through paid distribution.
54. Plug-in – The purpose of plug-in, an application or a program that is installed on a website or a browser, is to offer additional software that specialize in a particular process, and thus improve or enable another functionality.
55. PNG – PNG, short for Portable Network Graphics, is a type of image file that supports lossless data compressions. This means that the image quality is not affected if the image size changes. This is the most commonly used lossless image type format on the internet.
56. PPC – PPC is short for pay-per-click and it refers to a type of paid advertising used in online marketing, where advertisers pay each time a user clicks on the ads, that are shown in the search engine results pages as sponsored results, or on social networks.
57. Ranking – Search engine ranking refers to the position in which a website appears as a result of a search query. Since the website ranked at the top of search results get more visits, ranking is an important part of search engine optimization.
58. Redirect – Redirects are used for allowing a web page or a domain to be available under more than one address. This means that even if the users try to access a certain page, if the page is redirected, also called forwarded, a different page is going to be shown to the user.
59. Referral – This refers to the page that links to another page.
60. Responsive design – Responsive design is a web design that provides optimal user experience, with both viewing and interacting, on different devices, including desktop computers, as well as mobile devices.
61. Result page – The page presented by the search engines containing the results, which are related to the search query.
62. RSS – This is short for Rich Site Summary, sometimes even called Really Simple Syndication. The purpose of RSS is to use web feed formats to publish information that is frequently updated. Online users can subscribe via RSS, so that they can keep up with the updates.
63. Search engine protocol – Search engine protocol is an application that allows search engines to search and retrieve information from the internet in order to present the search engine results. Search engine protocol uses the language and the techniques that are recognized and understood by the search engines, such as a sitemap, tags, etc.
64. Search engine saturation – The number of pages from one website that are indexed by search engines is called search engine saturation.
65. Search engine update – Search engines algorithms are regularly updated in order to make sure that search engines provide best user experience. These updates sometimes affect the search engine best practices, which is why you should be aware of these updates and make sure you follow the current best practices.
66. Search query – Search query is a query entered into a search engines when searching for information. There are different types of search queries, depending on what kind of information users search for using search engines.
67. Search volume – The amount of searches that occur related to a specific search query represents search volume.
68. SEM – Search engine marketing is a type of internet marketing where the website is promoted through search engines, using both unpaid (SEO) and paid (PPC) methods.
69. SEO – Search engine optimization is a type of internet marketing where the ranking of the website is improved using unpaid methods.
70. SERP – SERP stands for search engine results page, and it is the page that is shown to the users after they type a search query into the search engine. The search engine results page shows the results that are related to the query, including both sponsored or paid results, as well as organic results.
71. Sitemap – A sitemap is a list of pages of a website, allowing search engine crawlers and users to access any page of the website from the sitemap. This list enables search engine crawlers to easily discover pages, which is why a sitemap is one of the important parts of search engine optimization.
72. SMM – Social media marketing is a type of online marketing that uses social media websites to promote a business, increase traffic and generate leads.
73. Spam – Spam is irrelevant or unsolicited content, that can be posted on websites, shared via email or social media.
74. Sponsored results – Sponsored results are search engine ads which are the results shown in the search results as highlighted. Businesses have to use an online advertising program, such as Google AdWords, to create sponsored results.
75. Traffic – In the online world, traffic refers to the flow of data. When it comes to websites, traffic represents the amount of data sent and received by the visitors of that website, regardless if the paid or unpaid method was used.
76. TXT – It is a file format used for text with little formatting options.
77. URL – This stands for Uniform Resource Locator and it refers to the location of the file on the internet. It is the address of the website, which you type into the browser in order to find a particular website.
78. User experience – This term refers to the experience a person gets while using a website or a computer program. User experience represents whether the person is satisfied using the product, which influences reputation the product has.
79. Visibility – This term refers to the chance of search engines showing your website in the search engine results pages. SEO tasks are conducted in order to increase website visibility in search engine results and thus improve the performance of the website.
80. W3C code standard – W3C stand for the World Wide Web Consortium and it represents the community working together to develop and improve web standards. W3C code standards are applied to enable developers to build online platforms that are available on any device, using different technologies, such as HTML5, CSS, XML, etc.
81. Web directory – Web directory or link directory is a directory that links to other website pages, which are sorted inside different categories.
82. XHTML – Extensible Markup Language is a variant of HTML that uses the XML syntax, which is different from HTML.
83. XML – XML (short for Extensible Markup Language) is a markup language. It is used as a format for RSS and it is compatible with many different programs and devices.