SEO Glossary - List of Basic SEO Terms and Definitions

Every study has its own terminologies. These are the list of jargon words that could make you scratch your head for an hour looking for the most verifiable reference. Good thing Internet is always there to help us. It is the biggest dictionary we could ever use online. You could simply enter the word that you wish to learn in the search engine and an exact answer will show up most of the time. However, you can't just type in each and every word whenever you read or heard something new or word that is not yet written on your word index. Therefore, we tend to look for a single page that has almost all the information we need.

SEO has terms that you probably will not understand at the beginning. Of course, the more you read, the better you will learn what each word mean. Especially when you just started studying what SEO is and how does it work. But this time, you do not have to go elsewhere. I learned a lot about Search Engine Optimization for the past few months and have listed down almost every word that needs to be identified. Or at least the basic words that you need to consider learning when you are about to read something about SEO. I also make the whole vocabulary simple to understand. Here are those words and their definition.

SEO Terminology and Descriptions

1-way link – a website that linked to your web page without you linked back to it.

alt tags - html tags used to label an image where short description appears when mouse pointer hovers on it.

anchor text - an actual text within the page content that can route you to another page within the site or to other website when clicked. This text usually colour as blue or purple and is underlined.

backlinks - a way of linking back to a website that links to you or vice versa. See also "reciprocal links"

black hat SEO - unethical way of website optimization which could get you banned from search engines. E.g. link farm, hidden text, keyword stuffing, etc...

brand keyword - a keyword associated to your business name or simply mean as your personalized brand name or site name.

broad keyword match - your keyword scattered in the sentence or paragraph in any order.

canonicalization - an act of using a single preferred URL for each web page.

contextual targeting - a practice of placing ads in a specific area which is related to the page content.

crawler/web crawlers - automated program that browses the web in search of new websites or web pages to be indexed. See also "robot" and "spider"

CTR - Click-Through Rate - an estimated percentage of how many visitors click your PPC ads which made them land on your site.

exact keyword match - your keyword is exactly matched.

filter words - words that should be taken out from your keyword that could possibly be ignored by search engines. See also "stop words".

generic keywords - common keywords or terms that you could use on your website and rank high for it.

gibberish - a language that may look nonsense to humans but is readable to crawlers. Usually refer to programming languages.

goal conversion - a result where visitors converted or interacted with what you promote and expect them to do on your site.

header tags - html tags that used on your header or post titles.

heuristic - a general formula that will serve as a guild for you to build a better website.

hidden text - text that are visible to search engines but not to visitors. This text blends to the webpage background colour.

HTML - Hypertext Mark-up Language. It is a type of programming codes used for building web pages.

inbound link - a link that comes from other website to your website.

internal linking - linking one page to another within your website

keyword - words or phrases that uses to find your webpage via search engines.

keyword stuffing - unethical repetition of keywords within your page content.

link farm - unethical optimization of page that is made and consist mostly on links and for link building.

offpage optimization - page optimization outside the website such as inbound and outbound linking to and from a different website.

onpage optimization - page optimization within the website such as editing title, header, content, etc...

organic traffic - traffic came from search engines when someone enters your keyword.

outbound link - a link from your website to other website.

page rank - determines how popular the site or a specific page is. Web page can be ranked from 1 up to 10.

phrase keyword match - your keyword is used with other words but in different order.

PPC - Pay-Per-Click. A method that let you advertise your business online depending on how much you are willing to pay per click. This can also be identified as keywords you paid for in order to drive more traffic to your site.

reciprocal links - a link to link connection of your website to other website or vice versa. See also "backlinks"

robot - sort of an automated web browser that sends request to a certain web server for pages to get indexed. See also "crawler" and "spider"

ROI - Return on Investment. The total amount of your profit less the total investment put in to it.

rules of thumb - ethical rule on Search Engine Optimization.

search Engine - Web-based software used to search information on the Internet.

SEO - Search Engine Optimization. Strategy used to drive traffic to a website by simply editing your web pages without a cost.

SEM - Search Engine Marketing. Internet marketing that helps websites get visible in search engine results with the use of PPC advertising.

SERP - Search Engine Results Page. A returned list of web pages related to the keyword searched using a search engine.

SMM - Social Media Marketing. Internet marketing that helps websites rank high in search engines with the help of social networking.

Social Networking - a network where people get connected by common interests.

spider - automated software programmed to crawl all your pages including links to other websites for pages to rank high in search engines. See also "crawler" and "robot"

stop words - words that are commonly use by people and will not be useful to your keywords (e.g. a, an, the, at, in ,on, but,..). See also "filter words

tag spamming - unethical repetition of keywords on your tags such as meta tags, title tag, and alt tags.

title tags - hmtl tags that used to identify the website name.

web domain - name of the website's main URL (e.g. www.myownname.com)

web hosting - web service that provides space for your website to be accessible in the Internet.

web page - a single page inside your website

website - consist of web pages that are addressed to a common domain name.

white hat SEO - proper way of optimizing your web pages.

These are just some of the SEO terms and descriptions that you will encounter researching about Search Engine Optimization. This terminology may not have the exact meaning for each word, though it could give you some points to better understand SEO in a basic way. If there are some other vocabulary words that you wish to add, feel free to leave a message below and I will add it right away once verified.

Hope these words can help. :)