In front of you is an SEO dictionary containing over 300 terms in the field of positioning and optimization of websites. This is probably the largest set of short definitions of terms, very often used by SEO specialists or SEO agencies, the meaning of which many website owners have had to search on the web. The Paraphrase-Online.com Team decided to bind all the concepts related directly and indirectly to website positioning and optimization and present them in the form of an SEO Dictionary.
How is this SEO Dictionary structured?
Very simple and clear! Like most dictionaries, terms are listed alphabetically. For each concept, we have added a short description explaining its meaning and application in practice. This dictionary contains the definitions of words known only to the greatest SEO specialists, and more commonly used phrases in the SEO industry. All this to make it easier for you to navigate this SEO world and make the conversation with the SEO specialist much more pleasant for both parties.
SEO Dictionary – A
Above the fold (ATF)
Part of a website that a user can see without scrolling. This is an important part, because it often makes decisions on whether to scroll down, click next or return to the search results. This is where content should be presented to encourage him to stay longer.
Some proven tips what should be in Above the fold?
– content that tells you exactly what you offer
and what to expect when you move the mouse down,
– important content and messages for the visitor,
– landing pages should have here a call to action (CTA)
Absolute URL
Also Known As: Absolute link, Absolute Path
This link is used for internal linking and designates the absolute path to a file, HTML page, image, or other form of content that you want to link to on your site.
This link is used as part of the anchor tag and consists of a protocol, a domain name, possibly a subdirectory, and the name of a file, document, HTML page, image, etc.
The absolute URL is text enclosed in quotation marks.
A / B Testing
Tests carried out, for example, on the website or in campaign settings, aimed at comparing two variants and, based on the behavior of users, deciding which of them works better.
Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)
Websites built for mobile requirements. AMP is an initiative that should be followed by companies that want to obtain high quality websites and the speed of its loading also on mobile devices.
AdSense, Google AdSense
A Google advertising system that allows you to display text ads, banners or video ads on websites.
AI – artificial intelligence
AI are systems that mimic human intelligence when performing certain tasks. Based on the collected data and processed information, they improve their activities, very often providing more optimal choices or results than a human. Systems based on AI or machine learning can make many changes in a second, working 24 hours a day, thanks to which their use allows for better optimization of advertising campaigns or improvement of the quality of data provided by SEO tools.
AJAX
Asynchronous JavaScript and XML. This is a type of programming that allows a website to send and receive information from a server to dynamically change that page without reloading.
Algorithmic Penalty
The process of extinguishing your website in search results for certain keywords. They are relatively hard to spot if you don’t use an SEO specialist. In order to deal with the algorithmic penalty, any problems that may not be compliant with Google’s guidelines must be detected and repaired.
Algorithmic filter
Penalty imposed on the website by the search engine algorithm. The type of this filter is relatively difficult to detect. It is necessary to carefully check the website statistics and on their basis it will be checked whether the website has recorded a sharp decrease in visits and the number of phrases in the TOP10 search results.
Algorithm Google
Also Known As: Google Algorithm Update, Google Updates, Search Engine Algorithm
What is an Algorithm Update? Any changes to Google’s search algorithms or ranking system include new rules or adjustments to existing regulations. Google often introduces small updates that do not leave a trace and do not have a large impact on the positioning of the site. Nevertheless, several important updates are released during the year that can have a large impact on the position of the page. The most important updates over the past few years are called Panda, Penguin, Pirate, Hummingbird, Pigeon, Mobile Friendly, RankBrain, Possum, and Fred.
Analysis of competition
Competitor Analysis is primarily about evaluating competitors who are trying to rank on the same or similar keywords as your website. Competitor analysis helps you identify the tactics that work best for your niche and the areas that should be prioritized.
Competition analysis in SEO will allow you to:
– discover keywords that you can also use,
– discover new opportunities for backlinks,
– get additional ideas for content,
– get ideas for optimizing titles and content descriptions
on the site.
Anchor text
Linked word or words that point to a specific page. This text is intended to provide people and search engines with information about what the linked web page or site is about. Anchors are placed between the <a> characters of the HTML code.
Answer Boxes
A place where you can ask a question or enter the phrase you are looking for, after which you enter the answers in the search engine.
Alt attribute
HTML code that provides information to search engines and screen readers (for the blind and visually impaired) to understand the content of the image. Also Known As: Alt Text. The alt tag is inserted into the image tag in the HTML code to specify alternative text for the image. Adding image descriptions is a good practice that allows the search engine to see what is on the image. By using keywords in the Alt Tag you can optimize your images for Google graphics.
Auditing website
Review of the website and its links made by an SEO specialist, who is the basis for creating an individual positioning strategy (optimization, linking, website reconstruction, introducing new content, etc.)
Authority Site – Authority
Also Known As: Page Authority, Site Authority
Websites trusted by users and industry experts. They publish both reliable information and link to reliable sites. The content posted on them is of high quality and contains up-to-date information.
SEO Dictionary – B
Backlink
Also known as: incoming link or external link.
This is a link from another site that points to our site. One of the activities performed by an SEO specialist is getting backlinks from good sources. Acquiring such a back link is a sign for Google robots that the website to which the link points is a valuable and relevant source of information. The SEO effect works both ways – when someone links to your site or when your site links to others. The number of backlinks to a specific website is one of the most important factors in determining its ranking. Reliable link sources and their respective profile count.
Backyard – Satellites
Websites created for the purpose of positioning a given website, containing content focused on topics that are related to those discussed on the positioned page. Thanks to the creation of dedicated facilities, we obtain reliable links leading to our website, which are perceived by web robots as positive and unobtrusive.
Baidu
The most popular search engine in China, with over 60% share in the Chinese market and approximately 1.37% in the world market. The Baidu search engine offers almost the same services as Google.
Bait and Switch
Also Known As: Code swapping
This SEO phrase refers to a Black Hat SEO technique that uses certain content on a website to get ranked high in the SERP. And then, after obtaining a satisfactory position, the given content of the page is replaced with another (usually one that would not be able to obtain a good position).
Ban
The most severe form of punishment from Google, imposed on a website that does not comply with good practices and violates webmaster guidelines. Ban removes the entire domain from Google, and the number of indexed subpages is 0.
Banner Blindness
This phenomenon describes the tendency of people to ignore elements on websites that resemble advertising content or are advertisements. This applies to an increasing number of internet users, so if you want to create a thriving banner, you should use appropriate techniques and design.
Bing
Search engine owned by Microsoft with a market share of 3.18% worldwide. A well-known but rarely used browser is Internet Explorer.
Black Hat SEO
Black Hat SEO is a practice used to improve the ranking of pages that go against search engine guidelines. They are designed to manipulate the search engine and tend to ignore the human audience and their experiences. Black Hat SEO activities include, for example, keyword stuffing, cloaking, using paid links, over-optimization, posting hidden text, and other changes that go against the guidelines.
Basic keyword
This is the keyword that has the greatest potential to attract traffic to the website, so it is the most important from the point of view of the website. When creating content for a website, it is worth optimizing it for a given keyword, which we will use in the page title, content header and in the first paragraph.
Blog
The search engine changed the rules of the game. A dozen or so years ago, we asked our friends for recommendations, and reading newspapers and consuming advertisements on radio and television generated new shopping needs in us or responded to the existing ones – today we can find answers on blogs. A blog is a type of website (often part of it) where content is posted ranging from the most recent, recently published post, to the oldest. Organized into categories, they allow readers to see a solution or story from a more informal website. A corporate blog is a great source of traffic for your website. If you are investing in SEO, the blog will probably be one of the solutions an SEO specialist suggests.
Blog commenting
Blog commenting has been a very popular link building tactic where we leave a comment with a link to our site on a blog article found that is relevant to our niche. Currently, this tactic is cause for debate. Since it was abused before and people were spamming blog articles en masse leaving links and irrelevant comments everywhere, comment sections now apply nofollow attributes to links. Google also put an end to this practice by imposing penalties for links from irrelevant websites and reducing the number of links transmitted by pages with large amounts of links. Even so, there are still instances where blog commenting is appropriate. Leaving a valuable comment on your blog article can help build relationships.
Bounce rate
This is an indicator that shows how many users visited your site and then immediately left it without taking any action or browsing any other pages. So, the lower your bounce rate, the better. A high bounce rate (over 70%) is a sign that something on the website is not working properly, e.g. the page is loading too slowly, the landing page is unresponsive, has poor quality content, there are too many ads on it, users cannot find After entering your website keyword, etc. It’s worth talking to an SEO specialist about how to fix the problem.
Branded keywords
Also Known As: Brand keyword, brand term
These are keywords and phrases that contain the name of the company or brand and its variations. SEO specialists usually do not advise positioning the website for phrases taking into account the brand name (e.g. Nike shoes, Apple computer), because these are extremely competitive phrases and a much better budget for website positioning should be allocated to the best converting user queries.
Breadcrumbs – Breadcrumb navigation
The type of additional navigation that helps the user determine their location on your site. Links appear horizontally, providing a link to each previous page on the site.
Example: home> rooms> bedroom> beds
This is beneficial for both user convenience and indexing as it provides an improved internal link structure for large sites.
Broken link
Also known as: Dead Link
Basically a link that doesn’t work. This could be due to a wrong URL or a linked page. Broken link often happens when a page has been moved or renamed. This can have a negative impact on SEO and lower your website ranking on search engines, stopping robots from crawling your site.
SEO Dictionary – C
Cache
A cache where data is stored so that it can be accessed as quickly as possible. Thanks to the Cache, many elements of our website can load much faster, without the need to connect to the server to download data.
Call-to-Action (CTA)
CTA usually refers to a button on which the text is placed to get an immediate response from the site visitor. When designing advertising banners or landing pages, it is worth placing a button that will convince visitors to perform a specific action, such as Buy Now, Register, Write Now, Call, Check.
Camouflage
The practice of Black Hat SEO, which is manipulation, in which the visiting robots are presented with different content than what the user sees.
Canonical – canonical url
Also known as: Tag Canonical
If you happen to have duplicate content on your website, web crawlers won’t know which one to show in search results. Therefore, you must choose which content is the root one and set the canonical URL on all other pages to point to the original.
Cataloging
This is a procedure used by SEO specialists to add a website to different directories to get backlinks. In this process, you should use unique page descriptions and titles, which most often become the anchor of our link. Of course, the website should be added to directories that are thematically related and correspond to the content that is discussed on the website.
Clickbait
Content (in various forms) intended to entice the user to click. Using Clickbait can increase traffic to your website. Nevertheless, it is worth considering the content and form of such “bait” so that it fits with the entire brand communication.
Cloaking
Cloaking is presenting to the Google crawler different content than the people who visit the site.
Content Delivery Network (CDN)
A large, distributed system that delivers content to multiple data centers and Internet traffic exchange points.
Content Marketing
Content Marketing is a process and a long-term strategy that assumes the regular delivery of attractive, valuable and closely tailored content. Content is used to build your own audience, i.e. a group of recipients who will regularly return to the source for new information. The primary goal of Content Marketing is sales, but all content tactics are considered inbound marketing, i.e., according to Hubspot, activities that allow recipients to independently find the sender of a given advertising message.
Content Management System (CMS)
A CMS is a system that allows users to edit, update and maintain content on the website without requiring any developer support. CMSs are easy to learn and easy to configure. One of the most popular CMS examples is WordPress. In terms of SEO, CMS systems are a less recommended choice, although they make it much easier to enter content on the page and modify it, it is much more difficult to make any changes to the code and page settings that would affect its position in the search engine. Nevertheless, there are currently many SEO plugins that help you optimize your content e.g. on WordPress.
Content Pruning
It is the process of analyzing and evaluating the content on the website,
as a result of which the selected content is removed. It’s content that is of
little value to your audience and website. This doesn’t always mean removing
them, but simply preventing robots from indexing them.
Content Spinning
Also Known As: Article spinning
An SEO technique of rewriting the same article using synonyms or changing the order of words in a sentence. This creates other articles on the same topic. Created in the hope that Google won’t mark them as duplicates. So it is a risky SEO practice.
Content Syndication
Also Known As: Article Syndication, Syndicated Content
A method of republishing the same content on another website, thanks to which we can reach new audiences, increase traffic and build links. The risk, however, is that another site may rank better in search results than your page (which was first posted the article) if it has more authority. It is therefore worth considering all the pros and cons before publishing.
Conversion
This is the user performing the expected action. For example, signing up for a webinar, downloading an e-book, clicking a link in an email, or interacting with any other CTA.
Conversion rate
Percentage of users who achieved the desired goal (converted) out of all users who saw your ad, visited your website, website, got an email, saw a call to action. How do I calculate my conversion rate? It is enough to divide the number of conversions by the number of clicks on the ad (or performing other activities we wanted).
Copywriting
Copywriting, simply put, involves writing texts for publication, descriptions for websites and advertising slogans. The copywriter provides texts for the needs of e.g. TV and radio spots, internet creations, descriptions for websites, advertising brochures, leaflets and blog entries, etc.
Crawling
It is a process performed by web crawlers during which all the content and code of the website are analyzed. Crawling is an activity during which robots index all internal and external links of our website.
Crawlability
Indexability refers to the process of enabling crawlers to easily navigate our site, understand it, and effectively find content and target indexing. Crawlability can be improved by creating, for example, XML and a sitemap, optimizing page speed, images and videos, and using redirects properly.
Cross-linking
It is the process of combining several domains belonging to the same company or person. It is not a problem if the websites are thematically related and don’t have many links.
CSS – Cascading Style Sheets
CSS is the language that defines the appearance of an HTML document. Each page has one or more CSS files where each element on it has a specific size, color, layout, etc.
CTR – Click Through Rate
It is an indicator showing the percentage of people who clicked on your ad / website after it was displayed in the search results. How to calculate it? Just divide the number of clicks by the number of impressions and we have our CTR!
SEO Dictionary – D
Data marker
A tool available in Google Search Console, which is used to indicate to the search engine which information on the website should be treated as structural data, thanks to which it can be distinguished in the search results as extended descriptions.
De-indexing
The process of removing a website from the search engine’s index, preventing it from appearing in search results. To do this, set the value of the robots HTML meta tag to “noindex”.
Dead-End Page
It is a website without any links, a so-called dead end for visitors and web robots, giving them no choice but to leave the site. This can be easily remedied by placing navigation links in the header, footer, navigation menu or links suggesting users to go to the next step, i.e. the next page.
Deposition
Also known as: (page deposition, negative SEO).
Any activities aimed at lowering the position in the search results of the selected domain or individual subpages. It can be negative (actions inconsistent with ethics) or positive (actions aimed at, for example, getting rid of outdated information about a company that have managed to rank high in search results and do not allow current information to jump higher).
Direct links
A link that points directly to the target site and may affect its position in search engine results (if specified with the dofollow attribute).
Direct Traffic
Direct traffic is the number of visits to your site during which a visitor has entered a detailed web address (URL) in the browser.
Disavow backlinks
These are backlinks that are not beneficial to your website, e.g. from unrelated and untrusted sources. They are considered bad and may result in a penalty or have a negative impact on the positioning of the website.
Dofollow Link
All links are dofollow links by default, which means they direct traffic to the linked page and allow robots to track them, helping to put the linked page in the SERP (search engine result).
Domain
The location of the website usually displayed as a business name or IP address. It is an element of the Internet address that directs Internet users to the desired page.
Domain Age
It is one of the factors taken into account when evaluating a website by Google. The age of the domain is counted from the moment it is registered, and the longer it is, the more valuable it is from Google’s point of view.
Doorway page
The Black Hat SEO method consists in creating a website and positioning it for selected key phrases, using techniques that do not comply with Google’s guidelines for webmasters. The user visiting the Doorway Page is automatically redirected to the customer’s landing page.
DuckDuckGo
It is an alternative to the more popular search engines, a search engine that emphasizes user privacy and does not use personalized search results. The users using it are not profiled, therefore all users get the same results for a specific search term.
Duplicate Content
Duplicate content is content that appears on more than one website (on the same domain or on different pages). When the search engine crawler finds one, it will not be able to determine which page is more important. Duplicate content is a common occurrence on a page. For example, if we have both a mobile version of our website and a desktop version. In this case, select the page that we will identify as original and add a code snippet (rel = canonical) to all the others to clearly tell search engines which page to treat as original.
Dwell Time
Also Known As: Time on Page
This is the time a visitor spends on your website after clicking its link in search results. The longer the better, as it shows that the visitor has found relevant and engaging content.
SEO Dictionary – E
Email Outreach
Also known as: Link Outreach, Blogger Outreach
An important part of the linking process. It consists in looking for the possibility of obtaining backlinks by contacting the author of the page in order to obtain a link to your own page. Via e-mail outreach, we can obtain links from:
– pages with a link in the article that corresponds to the topic of one of your websites,
– websites that are relevant to your niche, a small number of outbound links and the possibility of including you in the content as e.g. a co-author,
– a website for which you can write a guest post,
– the website of the company or the person that you mentioned in your content,
– the page of the company or person who mentioned you on their website.
Error 200
HTTP code, which means that the query sent to the server was successful and the user was presented with the content of the requested document.
Error 202
One of the HTTP response codes that is intended to inform the user that his request has been forwarded to the server and will be served, but has not yet happened.
Error 404
This error appears when the server is connected, but the server is not able to find the subpage the user was looking for.
Error 503
This is the HTTP response code that appears when the server is overloaded. Sometimes it disappears when the page is refreshed, but if the problem persists, it probably means that the page has exceeded the load limit set by the hosting company, eg reference server CPU or memory.
Exact Match Anchor Text
Otherwise, exactly match the anchor text. It occurs when the anchor text accurately describes the subject of the web page it leads to.
Evergreen content
It’s content that is always up to date. They cover topics that are always relevant to readers, regardless of the date or season.
Exact Match Keywords
Refers to keyword matching in Google Ads. Your ad will only appear in search results if the user enters the given word or phrase in the order listed.
Exact Match Domain (EMD)
A keyword entered into a search engine that exactly matches the domain name, such as “room wallpapers”.
Extended cards
Also Known As: Rich cards, Rich results, Rich snippets
This is one type of Google search result that presents content in the form of images and text. They are displayed as single results or as a carousel that moves the results left and right. Rich cards are organic results and may include information such as:
– website name,
– title of the article, publication,
– average rating given to the website by internet users and the number of votes cast,
– cooking time (in the case of recipes)
– and more.
External Duplicate Content
Duplicate content created on different external domains, e.g. by copying:
– product descriptions from their manufacturers;
– text from competing sites;
– own content for internet directories,
– content from your own website for publication purposes, e.g. on social media or other platforms.
External linking
It is linking from external websites to our website. It aims to obtain links from subpages of websites of high quality and authority.
SEO Dictionary – F
Favicon
A favicon is a small icon, most often in the form of a logo (16 x 16 pixels) that represents your brand, company, or website, displayed in browser tabs, search history, and bookmark lists. Favicon doesn’t have a direct impact on SEO, but it does improve usability, which in turn increases user engagement rates (such as page views, returning visitor, conversion rate, etc.) which is a ranking factor.
Featured Snippet
Also Known As: featured excerpt, direct answer
After entering the search term, it takes the form of a question in the search engine, the first answer in the results may take the form of a highlighted fragment. It is displayed in a box with a summary of responses and a link to a website underneath. By using structured data, we can help Google understand our content better, and this can help us rank our content as a featured excerpt. Google’s algorithm then determines which site best answers the question and displays it as proposed.
Filter
This is a kind of penalty imposed by Google on websites that use unethical positioning techniques to manipulate their position. As a result of applying a filter, the position of the website decreases for selected key phrases or it is completely removed from the search results. There are two types of filters imposed by Google:
– manual filter,
– algorithmic filter.
Footer link
The link at the bottom of the page – the so-called “Footer”. These links may lead to specific categories on the website and to external websites.
SEO Dictionary – G
Geolocation
It consists in presenting the user with local query results, determined by the location of his IP address. Thanks to that, while being in Boston, when asked “vegetarian restaurant” in the search results, we will get only those restaurants that are in and around Boston.
Geotargeting
A method of targeting your ads to users based on their location.
Google
Also Known As: Google Search
The most popular search engine in the world with a market share of 90.91% and loads of additional services and tools. From the SEO point of view, we can use the following tools:
– Google keyword planner,
– Google Alerts,
– Google Analytics,
– Google Maps,
– Google mobile optimization test,
– Google My Business,
– Google PageSpeed Insights,
– Google Search Console,
– Google Trends,
– Google webmaster tools,
– Youtube.
Googlebot
Also Known As: Crawler, Search engine robot, bot
It is a crawler whose task is to automatically find, analyze and index websites on the Internet (both on the computer and in the mobile version). It detects both new and updated websites by following the links on the websites and thus reaching new websites.
Google Ads
Google Ads is an advertising system developed by Google that is used to build and manage advertising campaigns. Thanks to it, we can create an advertisement and direct users to our website, encouraging them to buy or use the service. As part of the Google Ads system, we may use various types of advertisements, such as:
– text ads,
– advertising on the display network,
– ads in applications and gmail,
– Google Shopping ads,
– video ads on Youtube.
Advertising on Google and website positioning are two strongly supporting channels, the use of which guarantees the best results and an increase in the company’s visibility in search results, and thus sales increases.
Google Analytics
Google’s web analytics tool that provides precise data about a website. After adding the tracking code to your website, you have the ability to track and get detailed data about the traffic on your website.
Google Autocomplete
A search function that suggests and completes the typed phrase as the user enters it into the search field.
Google Knowledge Panel
This pane contains basic information about the user’s query that most often appears on the right side of the search results.
Google Mobile-Friendly Test – Google mobile optimization test
In recent years, Google has been paying more and more attention to mobile friendly websites as so many users use mobile phones and Google is setting high standards for good user experience where mobile friendliness has become an important ranking factor.
Google PageSpeed Insights
A Google tool designed to analyze the content of the website to determine its page speed, containing tips on what should be improved to speed up its loading time.
Google Search Console
Formerly: Google Webmaster Tools
A free Google tool that allows you to check the page status in search results, analyze incoming and outgoing links, contains information about key phrases and indicates page indexing errors.
Gray Hat SEO
SEO practices that are technically allowed but ethically questionable. One of these practices is buying or selling links. While virtually impossible to detect when purchased in your niche, it could result in a penalty and is not considered ethical. The same goes for buying likes or social media shares.
Guest blogging
Posting content on blog sites that are both attractive to readers and effective in terms of SEO. Such entries posted, for example, on high-quality thematic blogs, allow you to strengthen your website in search results.
SEO Dictionary – H
H1 – H6 – HTML header
Header tags are used in HTML to create structure. They denote titles and subtitles or underlined text. There are six levels of headings in HTML – H1, H2, H3, H4, H5, and H6. The higher the level, the more important the headline. They are the easiest way to tell both our reader and web crawlers what the content hierarchy is. Assigning H1 to the title means that it is the most important element on your page, so there should only be one such heading.
Hidden text
Hidden text is content that is contained in your code but not visible to the user. In the past, this method was used as a way to manipulate rankings, mainly by keyword stuffing, which is why it is classified as a Black Hat SEO technique. Examples you may encounter:
– text that matches the color of the background,
– text behind the image or off-screen, placed with CSS,
– using CSS to reduce the size of the element that contains the text and hide overflow.
Hidden Semantic Indexing Keyword (LSI)
LSI keywords are words and phrases that are semantically related to the underlying keyword. These words have the same context and are often used together. An example of LSI for the word “SEO” can be, for example, an SEO audit, SEO tools, SEO phrases, etc.
Hyperlink
A hyperlink is text or an image that, when clicked, gives you direct access to another page or section of the page for easy web navigation.
Hreflang
The hreflang attribute is used to mark pages on a multilingual site. By using this attribute, you can be sure that your visitors are seeing your page in the correct language, which is the language they used for their query. Hreflangs can be used to assist with duplicating content. For example, having a site that has the same content for different locations with differences such as currency. This way you will tell Google for which localization or language a given version of the website is optimized.
Homepage
The first (main) page of a website that is displayed when a visitor enters a web address that contains only our domain name. It is also the most frequently used page, from which subsequent subpages come out.
HTTP – Hypertext Transfer Protocol
This is the main network protocol that allows us to display and receive information. From an SEO point of view, it is better to use the secure HTTPS type, especially for online stores where HTTPS is even required.
HTTPS – Secure Hypertext Transfer Protocol
An encrypted, secure version of the HTTP protocol that protects sent and received information from hackers. Google recommends this HTTPS protocol, offering some benefits to websites using it, such as better rankings and referring traffic data.
SEO Dictionary – I
Image SEO – image positioning
Image positioning refers to the optimization of all images on a website to increase content relevancy, search engine visibility, and accessibility to screen readers. You can position images by:
– choosing the right size of the graphic file so as not to slow down the loading of the website,
– using descriptive filenames,
– adding alt tags with image descriptions,
– creating sitemaps with images.
Inbound Links
These are inbound links that point to our website. These links were obtained naturally, e.g. another website recommended our product or service.
Inbound Marketing
According to Hubspot, these are all activities that enable the recipients to independently find the sender of a given advertising message, interest him and allow him to decide on the interest in a given offer.
Index
A search engine database that contains data about all websites a user can find. If a website is not included in the index, it will not be shown in search results.
Indexing
The process of adding a website to the search engine database. If you want to speed up this process, you can:
– check if you don’t use the “noindex” value in the robots HTML tag,
– submit an XML sitemap that contains the missing page,
– Get backlinks from sites with high authority as they are indexed more often.
Indexing
It’s done by network robots. The indexation process involves collecting information about the content, key phrases, links and images posted on your website and saving them in the search engine database. In this way, each time a user uses a search engine, he searches this database instead of looking for all the pages on the Internet.
Indirect links
These are links that take the user to another website, via a 301 or 302 redirect, in such a way as to lead the user and the web crawlers to the desired site, leading them first through their own domain.
Internal Duplicate Content
Duplicating content within one domain, e.g. presenting many products with the same or very similar description.
Internal linking
These are links to other parts of the text or other subpages within one domain.
International SEO
International SEO aims to increase the visibility of your website in different countries. By setting up country and language detection on the website, relevant content will be displayed automatically. Examples of international SEO tactics:
– optimization for the most used search engine in the selected country,
– hreflang, which will determine the language of your website content and help the search engine to display it to the appropriate target group,
– translation of website HTML elements, e.g. URL, meta description and title,
– translation of website content, including navigation, image names and alt tags,
– using the country detection function to adjust the price currency.
Interstitial
It is a type of aggressive advertisement displayed over the content of the entire website, covering most of it and preventing the free use of the website.
SEO Dictionary – J
JavaScript rendering
An option that allows search engines to search and understand the content on a website that is often dynamically generated using javascript code. The content of JavaScript on a page can vary from simple style changes to deeper integrations that modify the structure of the page with specific data. Google is one of the few search engines that supports JavaScript rendering, because rendering JavaScript content on a page is a difficult task. The script must first be executed and processed, and this can take up a lot of time and resources for a robot. Additionally, it often doesn’t work properly because JavaScript doesn’t work as a standard or typical HTML page.
JSON-LD
Data format, dynamically implemented in the form of JavaScript code or embedded as widgets in the content management system.
SEO Dictionary – K
Keep It Simple, Stupid (KISS)
This is a famous saying, especially in the business world, saying that it is best to describe various issues in the simplest and user-friendly way possible, so as not to complicate the message.
Keyword
A word or phrase to which the page is positioned and by which the page can be potentially found in the search engine.
Keywords
Also Known As: Keywords, Key Phrases
These are words (or whole phrases) are search queries entered by users in search engines in order to find interesting things / products / services. Appropriate knowledge of the keywords for our offer will allow you to include them in the content on the website, and thus gain a better position in the search engine.
Keyword Analysis
The process of finding all the keywords a website ranks or can rank for. When conducting keyword analysis, it is worth considering data on the number of searches, CPC, competition and current position in the SERP.
Keyword Cannibalization
It occurs when several subpages of one website appear in the search results for a given phrase or keyword. It can be problematic for the website owner when a less significant subpage obtains a relatively high position and wins over another more significant subpage from the business point of view. For example, when the home page ranks for the phrase that we want a specific product page to rank for.
Keyword Categorization
The process of classifying and grouping keywords based on the intent and context of the user at the time of the search. Keyword categorization can help you identify the keywords that users search for at different points in the shopping funnel.
Keyword Competition
Indicates the popularity of a given keyword among other ranking pages. Keyword competition is an important indicator of how easy or difficult it is to compete for a position in that word or phrase in search results.
Keyword Density
The ratio of the number of key phrases to the total text. Too many keywords in the text may cause the website to be considered spam and lower its position in the SERPs. The density and number of keywords in a given text should be determined depending on the topic of the text and the industry in which we operate.
Keyword Frequency
This is the total number of keywords used on the website. So we measure the frequency of the keyword that appears, but the amount of content on the website is irrelevant in this case.
Keyword Funnel
Search terms by a potential customer change depending on what stage they are at on the purchasing path. The customer who wants to buy a given item will therefore enter different keywords than the one who just wants to get to know and learn about the products. So we can categorize given keywords according to these stages and optimize specific landing pages for them in order to increase conversion.
Keyword Positioning
It is the distribution of key words or phrases in the text. According to good practices, we should include them in the title, meta tags, headers, as well as in the entire content of the page, taking into account the density of their use and position.
Keyword Prominence
This indicator tells us how important or noticeable a given keyword is. Of course, the most important place will be at the beginning or near the beginning, e.g. in titles, headings, meta descriptions or the opening fragment of the text.
Keyword Proximity
This determines whether certain keywords are close together throughout the phrase. For example, when you have a longer phrase such as the Content Marketing Guide, it takes into account how often the phrase appears in its entirety. The more the word structure of this phrase fits, the website is perceived as more relevant.
Keyword Rank
This is the position of your website in the search results for a given keyword.
Keyword Research
The process of properly matching key phrases to the nature of the website. Necessary when carrying out positioning, including preparing content that is friendly not only to users, but also to search engines. Keyword research can be carried out manually or using dedicated tools, such as Google Ads Keyword Planner.
Keyword Stuffing
The practice of including an excessively large number of keywords in the text in the hope that it will guarantee a better ranking in the search results. This is a practice not recommended by SEO specialists, which usually results in a decrease in the credibility of the website for web robots, and thus a decrease in the position.
SEO Dictionary – L
Landing page
The page to which we direct the user who clicked on the link. Most often, a landing page is a subpage created for a specific purpose, e.g. signing up for a webinar, downloading an ebook or purchasing a product. However, it can be any page that we decide to direct traffic to.
Lead Magnet
This is content intended to encourage potential customers to leave an email address or other contact information. An example is offering free copies or valuable content in return for leaving an e-mail, for example. The e-mail lists collected in this way can then be used in further marketing activities.
Link Baiting
It’s a method of getting quality links without paying for them. This method is often used by Content Marketing, where valuable materials are created for their recipients, so that they are then naturally linked by Internet users.
Link Building
It is a series of activities aimed at providing our website with valuable inbound links. Thanks to such activities, we can transfer some of the power of the website from which we link to our website. It is worth taking advantage of the experience of specialists in this matter, because the method of linking and the selection of pages from which we want to obtain links is extremely important in the entire process of website positioning and can affect its position.
Link Burst
The so-called series of links. It happens when a website gets a large number of backlinks in a very short time. This is not desirable because for web robots, it is most often a sign that these links were not acquired naturally.
Link Diversity – link diversification
A link building strategy where we collect a number of links from different types of websites (blogs, news, directories, social media) and different domains and using both “nofollow” and “dofollow” attributes. Many experts believe that it is important from an SEO point of view to diversify the sources of links and thus create their natural profile.
Link to the subpage
Also known as: Deep link
It is a link on an external page that leads to a subpage, not to the home page of a given website.
Link Equity
This term describes the process of imparting authority or value to one party through the use of hyperlinks.
Link Exchange System
A system that allows you to automatically obtain a large number of links leading to a given website in a very short time, using the websites of publishers belonging to a given system. The use of these systems is not recommended and well received by Google, so it may be a potential factor in reducing the value of a website in search results.
Link Farm – link farms
A collection of websites with links to each other or to one specific page. According to the guidelines, this is not recommended and may result in a penalty imposed by Google.
Link Hoarding
A tactic used by some websites trying to collect as many inbound links as possible while keeping the number of outbound links as low as possible. This is considered an unworthy tactic.
Link Popularity
This is the total number of backlinks on your site. Each backlink is counted separately, even from the same site.
Link profile
Summary of all links to our website. We can analyze the link profile on the basis of:
– sources of obtaining links (forums, blogs, catalogs, other websites),
– types of link anchors,
– link types (text, graphic, etc.),
– type of links (dofollow, nofollow, etc.).
Link Reclamation
This is the process of recovering lost links.
Link Relevancy
It determines whether the content published on the website from which we obtain the link is consistent with the content of the website to which the link leads.
Link Rot
These are all the links that are deprecated and may not work anymore, or the pages they came from have already been removed. This can happen if the website owner does not carry out regular audits and does not check his link profile from time to time.
Link Scheme
These are all techniques and activities aimed at acquiring incoming links to the website that do not comply with Google’s guidelines, such as buying and selling links, exchanging them on a large scale, or too many sponsored articles on the website.
Link Spam (blog spam, comment spam)
It is literally spamming the number of links in the comments on various blogs or internet forums in order to get as many links as possible. Currently, most links are added this way with the nofollow attribute, so it is not a profitable practice.
Link Title
The link title attribute assigns additional information about the link. However, this title has no direct relevance to SEO.
Link Velocity
The speed at which your site obtains new backlinks. How fast or slow you develop your backlink profile matters to your website rankings. The more natural the harvesting seems to be, the better.
Linkbait
Valuable content that other websites will naturally lead to. Containing information that is uniquely high-quality the tendency of viruses to spread. Difficult to achieve, but extremely beneficial for SEO.
Local search – local search
Thanks to it, companies that are closest to the location of the user entering the search engine (usually stationary stores or service providers) are displayed in the search results.
Local SEO
This activities to rank your site on location-related queries, for example, “waffles in Los Angeles” will display restaurants and cafes offering waffles in that city.
Local traffic
These are users who found our website as a result of positioning activities based on local phrases – most often focused on the same city or province. For this purpose, geo-targeted key phrases and business cards on Google Maps can help the company.
Long click
We define this type of clicks on a link in which the user, after entering a phrase in the search engine and finding the appropriate link, goes to the page and no longer returns to the search results, because he has probably found what he was looking for.
Long tail
Long tail is a phrase of a few words (min. 3-4) that clearly indicates specific (non-general) features of the query. It is, for example, the name of a specific product or model with parameters or exact features. The so-called long tails provide more information about the needs of your potential customer and the desired features of the product or service. Moreover, such phrases often have a much higher conversion rate than more general phrases. Most often because, by entering such a specific name of the desired product, the user already knew it, was interested in it, and now wants to buy it.
SEO Dictionary – M
M-dot domain
A version of the website dedicated specifically to mobile users, the name of which starts with the letter m before the dot and the entire website address.
Machine learning
Machine learning is the ability of a system to learn certain actions based on a huge amount of data and the analysis it carries out. The system learns the given schemes and solutions, thanks to which it is able to improve the operation of a given service or product.
Manual filter
The second type of filter imposed by Google. Fortunately, we are notified about its imposition. So we can easily check in Google Webmaster Tools whether such a filter has been applied. If so, we will also find information about whether the filter has been imposed on all or only part of the site and what the reason for the penalty is.
Meta description
Description of the page content that will be displayed in Google search results. On its basis, Google assesses whether the page responds to a given user’s query and whether it should appear in search results.
Meta keywords
Keywords describing the content of the website, used to inform web crawlers about what is on the website. This has been abused relatively often, so they are currently not considered as a ranking factor in Google. It is believed that their impact on SEO may even be negative today.
Meta refresh
Meta Tag which is responsible for telling the browser to refresh the page after a certain amount of time. It is used primarily when the website contains data that, depending on e.g. availability or settings, may change, e.g. the number of products in the store.
Meta tag
Tags placed in the header of the page code so that web crawlers can understand the content of the site. They are in the HTML and XHTML code languages. The most important are the title, description and robots tags.
Microdata
Also Known As: Microformats
It is a type of structured data that allows search engines to better understand the content of websites. With their help, you can mark the different types of content that appear on the page, so that search engine robots can better define it.
Mirror site
It is a copy of the website embedded at a different www address, used when the main website generates so much traffic that the server cannot handle it.
Mobile First Index
An index created by Google, according to which websites are also assessed in terms of their adaptation to mobile devices. It is also a ranking factor for Google, so you should take care of this version of your website.
Mobile Friendly-Website
A website friendly to mobile devices, i.e. one that is optimized for browsing on a mobile device and allows users to freely use it also on small screens, for example with adapted button sizes or the appearance of the home page and navigation to various subpages.
Mobile Optimalization – optimization for mobile
Any activities aimed at improving the website for mobile devices. Very often it means a significant change of the website in order to fit the requirements and criteria allowing the users of small screens to freely perceive the website. Fast loading, responsive and always working These are the three most important features of a mobile website.
SEO Dictionary – N
NAP – Name, Address, Phone Number
Important contact details (name, address and telephone number) that should be on the website, it is most often recommended to put this data in the “Contact,” About us “tab or in the footer of the website, thus increasing credibility in the eyes of users and Google robots.
Natural links
Links obtained naturally, i.e. without the action of an SEO specialist, e.g. by recommending our website or part of the content posted on it, by the owner (blogger or company) of another website.
Negative SEO
Negative practices that are designed to lower your competitors’ position in search results to your advantage. Actions may include, for example, hacking a competitor’s website, spamming, linking from untrustworthy websites, or creating duplicate content.
Noarchive
Value that can be put in the “robots” file, if we want the page not to be cached by the search engine at the next crawl by robots.
Nofollow
The value of the HTML tag’s rel attribute that indicates that web crawlers should not navigate further to the linked site.
Noindex
Responsible for blocking the search indexing of the selected subpage. Although Google crawlers can still check its content, it will not be indexed, and thus, will not appear in search results.
Noopener and Noreferrer
These are values that indicate the link between the linked website and the linked website. They are set for the rel attribute of the href tag (links).
Not provided – hiding key phrases
It consists in hiding keywords in analytical systems, such as Google Analytics. These activities are undertaken by Google in order to care for the privacy of users on the Internet.
SEO Dictionary – O
Off-page SEO
Any actions taken outside the positioned website, the purpose of which is to improve the search engine ranking. For example, inbound link acquisition, PR activities and enhancing the company’s image on social media.
On-page SEO
Activities performed on the website, which include both technical optimization, in the website code, as well as improving and adding content to the search engine.
Opera
A web browser created and developed by Opera Software ASA.
Optimization
Also Known As: SEO, Search Engine Optimization
These are all activities aimed at improving the visibility of the website on the Internet, and thus increasing sales. Website optimization aims to improve its quality both in the eyes of web robots and users, through activities related to on-page and off-page SEO.
Organic search results SERP, Search Engine Results Page- organic search results
Organic search results are lists of results that show up to users who search for certain phrases in a search engine. We divide them into paid (PPC, Google Ads) and organic (SEO, natural) results.
Organic traffic
These are the users who reached the website through free search results.
Orphan page
A page on a website that has no direct links. They can’t be found by the search bot, so they’re useless for SEO.
Outbound links
Links placed on the website that send the user and search engine robots to the page outside the website on which they were placed.
Over-optimization
It is a negatively assessed optimization practice aimed at deceiving the search engine and artificially accelerating SEO results, without taking into account the role of the user and his experience on the site.
SEO Dictionary – P
Paid links
Also Known As: Sponsored Links, Paid Traffic, Paid Links
These are text ads created in the Google Ads system. Paid links are not part of the SEO environment, which assumes organic growth of the site’s position.
Page Cloaking
Non-compliant actions, i.e. actions belonging to Black Hat SEO, consisting in presenting a version of the content on the page that differs from the one seen by the visitor. This is possible by delivering content based on the user’s IP address.
Page Footer
The lower part of the website, where we can usually find information such as the company’s address, contact details and a link to important subpages.
PageRank
This is a formula used by the Google search engine, based on the analysis of the number of links coming to the page and their quality. The PageRank for individual pages is not published.
Page Speed
Page loading speed. This is an important factor that affects the position of the website and its reception by users.
Page Title
The page title is a clickable headline that appears in the search results for a specific website. This is the most visible part of the SERP snippet and has a big impact on your CTR, SEO, and social media sharing. To set the page title yourself, you must use the title tags in your HTML source code. (Or use a plugin in your CMS.) If your title is too long, the Google algorithm will try to use a different piece of content. Therefore, a good solution for a page title is to stay below 487 pixels for mobile phones and 568 pixels for desktops.
Pageview
Occurs each time the user loads the specified page. The number of page views is tracked by the Google Analytics tracking code.
Partial match domain (PMD)
This is the domain name, some of which coincide with the entered keyword, e.g. ceramic pots for free.
People also ask
The most frequently searched phrases suggested by Google, similar to those we entered. People also ask most often appears between the search results.
Poison words
Words that lower the quality of the page in search engines and classify it as poor. These are usually words and phrases that cause distrust on the part of the user and web robots.
Posts on Google
These are short posts from the life of the company that can be created via the Google My Business panel. You can post content in the form of photos and short videos. The entries will appear in both the Google Maps listing and the search results themselves.
Positioning
Any deliberate action to improve the visibility of a website on search engine result lists.
Presell pages
So-called SEO pretzels, i.e. websites on which thematic articles are published. They contain links that lead to websites, most often we include links to the page that we want to position. SEO pretzels, however, are low-quality pages where the content is placed without value or meaningless, so they are not recommended by SEO experts.
SEO Dictionary – Q
QDD – Query Deserves Diversity
One of the Google ranking algorithms, the task of which is to adjust to the user’s intentions by displaying the results of a broader match.
QDF – Query Deserves Freshness
The assumption according to which the Google search engine should show the latest information about given events. Most commonly used for political, environmental, economic etc events that should be updated on a regular basis.
SEO Dictionary – R
RankBrain
Algorithm based on the artificial intelligence model. It evaluates new queries and the overall quality of search results.
RDFa
HTML5 extension that allows you to mark certain types of content on a website. It is one of the structured data formats allowing search engines to better interpret the content of the website.
Reciprocal linking
Agreement between two websites to share backlinks. It is worth having confidence in the company in question, as exchanging links with a company that does not act fairly can harm our website’s backlink profile and make it difficult for search engine bots to categorize our website content.
Redirect links
Also Known As: Redirects
Links leading to a subpage of our website, which is redirected to another address. There are different types of these redirects and are also covered in this SEO Glossary.
Redirect 301
Otherwise: redirect 301, 301, “Moved Permanently”
This redirects a website’s address to another website’s address and causes a permanent transfer. It is recommended to use it to redirect the website to one of the two versions – “with www” or “without www” or to redirect the positioning power from non-existent subpages to their existing versions.
Redirect 302
Otherwise: redirect 302, 302, “Found”
Redirecting the address of a website to the address of another website. It is mainly used when the original page is temporarily unavailable. You can use this redirection, for example, for a product page that is temporarily unavailable in the online store.
Referrer
This is the website from which it takes the user to another landing page. The so-called referrer. Referrer sent in the HTTP request header.
Relative URL
Link used for internal linking. This is the short path to the file, HTML page, image, or other content that we link to. This link is used as part of the anchor tag but does not include the protocol or domain name.
Responsive website
It is a type of website that adapts to the user’s device. A responsive website, depending on the device, can change its arrangement of elements, width and resolution. Thanks to this, the website remains user-friendly, both on larger and smaller screens.
Robots Meta Tag
A code snippet that allows you to control how the search engine crawler will index the content of your website. The default value is “index, follow”, which means the bot will both index your page and follow all the links pointing from it. There are other values, such as:
– noindex – stops the bot from indexing the page,
– nofollow – prevents him from following a link on the page,
– nosnippet – the description will not be displayed in the search list (only for Google),
– noimageindex – stops displaying images from a given page while searching for an image,
– noarchive – a cached copy of your page will not be stored or displayed in the SERP.
Robots noindex
Also Known As: noindex
This is one of the possible values assigned to the robots meta tag, which blocks robots from indexing a given subpage. Using “noindex” we give the robot a command not to include it in the index while analyzing the content of our website.
Robots.txt
This is a file that is placed on the website server in the main folder, which should contain all commands for web robots that visit your website. In this file, you can both allow and deny Google robots access to certain resources on the site. So you can block access to a given type of files, folders or website addresses.
SEO Dictionary – S
Safari
A web browser created and developed by Apple, available only on devices with the OS X operating system. It is the second most popular web browser in the world.
Schema.org
It is a website where markup diagrams of available structured data on the web are collected. Thanks to them, web crawlers can quickly and easily understand the content of a page and its meaning.
Scraping
Using an automated program to collect data, usually metadata, from multiple websites. The data you collect may include all page titles of your competitors along with their meta descriptions. This technique can be used in Black Hat SEO, in which we download the content to use it on our website. As part of the White Hat SEO technique, the data is used for informational purposes.
SEA – Search Engine Advertising
Literally means advertising in search engines and is one of the activities in the field of marketing that aims to increase the visibility of the website in search engines.
Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
Any activities aimed at improving the position of a website in search results, which include both paid practices (PPC) and organic (SEO).
Search Engine Reputation Management (SERM)
Any activities aimed at increasing the company’s reputation or image on the web, including e.g. moderating opinions, website optimization, etc.
Search Engine Results Page (SERP)
These are search results, i.e. a list of links pointing to websites that appeared after the user entered a given phrase.
Search Engine Spam
A practice related to Black Hat SEO, which consists in deliberately manipulating the search engine index to obtain a higher rank in SERP and thus reduce the precision of search results.
Search engine query
These are words or phrases typed by a given person into the search engine. In order to find a specific answer, you can also use search operators, for example: “OR”, “related:” “*”.
Search Quality Rater Guidelines
It is a collection of information and rules created by Google specifically for people who are responsible for manually evaluating search results and pages in order to detect spam or illegal content. These guidelines are regularly updated and have been available to the public since 2015.
Search Result Feature
Search Results Features are a common name for all the different ways Google uses to display information in its results. The search results may be influenced by both the country from which you are searching, as well as the language and the device.
Search Result Snippet
The portion of links displayed on SERPs that show content in your description meta tag. The traditional organic or natural search result consists of a title and description.
Semantic search
Its purpose is to understand the user’s search intentions, thanks to which the suggestions of websites or products in the search results are more relevant and matched to the intention with which the user enters a given phrase into the search engine.
Semantic Web
A project whose task is to recognize the context and intent of the query that the user directs to the search engine.
SEO Service
Also known as: SEO service provider, SEO agency
Paid service provided by SEO specialists to increase the position of our website in search results.
SEO Silo
Also known as: content silo, silo network structure
A method of grouping related content into distinct categories and subcategories on a website to help both people and search engines understand its importance.
SEO Site Audit – Site Audit
Full analysis of the website’s visibility in search engines. It should help you locate bugs, issues, and gaps in content that you can use in your SEO strategy. There are two types of audits you can conduct to gain insight into SEO related issues: technical SEO audit and content audit.
SEO URL
A user-friendly URL that has been optimized to get the most out of SEO.
Search engine
It is a website or program that collects and organizes data and information. It allows you to search for various types of information available on the Internet. The most popular search engines include Google, Baidu, Bing, Yahoo and Yandex.
SERP Shaker
A Black Hat SEO technique that uses content and website authoring software solely for the purpose of positioning for long-tail keywords with low competition. These sites are then used to generate revenue by adding, backlinking, collecting email addresses, etc.
Session
It occurs every time a user visits your page and continues to browse it. A session is counted regardless of whether the person visited your website earlier or not. The next session will be charged if 30 minutes elapses between visits.
Short click
Designation of an event in which the user clicked on our link found in the search results, but after temporarily viewing the content, he left the page and returned to the search results.
Site:
By entering “site: website domain” we will obtain information about all indexed subpages within a given website.
Site-wide link
The so-called link displayed on all subpages, e.g. on the home page, blog, in various tabs.
Sitelinks
These are additional links with high positions in organic or paid results. They can appear in a more extensive form, showing more information about the content of the site, or less – depending on whether they match the user’s query.
Searchbox Sitelinks
This is an additional window displayed in the search results where the user can search the content of the website for information about the company. You need to install an internal search engine on the website so that the window is displayed.
Skyscraping
Also Known As: Skyscraper technique, SEO Skyscraper
A method of finding popular websites with many backlinks, then writing content that is superior to them, and targeting websites that link to them, offering your enhanced content link instead.
Snippet Bait
A short piece of content optimized for Google to serve as a featured snippet. It is placed at the beginning of the article and usually responds to the query in 2-3 sentences, so that Google can easily retrieve this piece of content instead of downloading content from different items on the page and put it together.
Social Media Marketing (SMM)
It is the process of using social media as a channel that increases traffic, business visibility and brand awareness by creating engaging content and sharing it on social media. Currently, links from social media can also influence your ranking in Google, so using them will definitely pay off.
Spam
It is any useless content or entire websites that do not serve users and clutter the space on the Internet.
Spam blog
A method of automatically creating blogs by copying content from other websites and posting them on one blog. “Unrecognizable” content is copied from various sources, however, it is a Black Hat SEO technique.
Speed Update
Google algorithm update, in which sense the speed of loading websites has gained.
Sponsored article
A form of advertisement placed on a widely read website, most often with a link pointing to our website, for which we pay the amount agreed with the publisher. The main intention is to promote the company’s offer in a relatively subtle way – in the form of informative text, which, however, is marked as sponsored material. As part of an SEO contract, such articles can also be commissioned by an SEO specialist to increase the visibility of the positioned website.
SQT – Search Quality Team
A team specially appointed by Google to verify the quality of search results, for example by eliminating spam.
SSL – Secure Socket Layer
A protocol that is part of the HTTPS protocol, which is responsible for data security on the network and is used to encrypt data that is transferred between the web browser on the user’s computer and the website server.
STA – Searcher Task Accomplishment
This is one of the ranking factors taken into account by Google. According to him, a website that meets the needs and expectations of the user should be ranked higher.
Storytelling
It is a way of building content that is designed to draw the user in like an interesting story. In its structure, both the narrative and the impact on the imagination and emotions of the reader are important, so as to establish a certain bond with them.
Street View
Function available on Google Maps or embedded on a given website. Thanks to it, we can check the exact location we are looking for, also walking along its streets.
Structured Data
Data that helps web crawlers understand the content of a website. The schematics for these markup are publicly available on Schema.org.
Site directory
Also known as: web directory
It is a type of website where you can find links to other websites and descriptions of what they contain, so that you can quickly find the website you are interested in.
Site directories usually cover specific topics, e.g. they collect all links on
recent events or specific types of products.
Site Map
Also Known As: XML (Extensible Markup Language) sitemap
A sitemap is a list of URLs that we want to point to web bots, and XML is a universal markup language that allows you to describe data regardless of what platform or technology you use. The sitemap should contain: home pages, information pages, category pages, products pages, etc.
Site Map of the picture
An image site iMap is an XML file that contains all the images on your site that you want to index. This can be a separate file or added to an existing XML sitemap.
Site quality
The set of features that search engine bots check when ranking your site. In determining the quality of a website, the following key elements are taken into account:
– content relevance,
– content length,
– user involvement,
– spelling,
– social signals,
– backlink profile,
– legibility,
– variety of media (movies and images).
Site structure (site architecture)
Site structure is a term that refers to the form that your pages and links create. A good site structure makes it easier for visitors to find what they are looking for, increases conversion and CTR, increases dwell time, and makes it easier to index your site. Since good structure equals good UX, the structure of your website has an impact on your search engine rankings. The optimal structure of a website should:
– have a clear hierarchy: with a home page, 3-5 categories and subcategories,
– have an effective internal linking strategy,
– use navigation, etc.
Supplemental index
This is a secondary index of the Google search engine, designed for websites that web crawlers have marked as less valuable or duplicate. You can check them by repeating your searches, taking into account the missed results.
SXO – Search Experience Optimization
It is a combination of SEO activities with UX, a process designed to improve the user experience on our website. They take into account both the search engine and user friendliness of the website.
Social signal
The term SEO to describe social engaging activities such as shares, votes, pins, views, etc. It’s not entirely clear if they affect ranking, but it certainly does increase the likelihood of a site being cited by increasing backlinks and improving brand authority.
SEO Dictionary – T
Target group
It is a group created by the company to which it directs its products or services. It is consistent with demographic, psychosocial and behavioral conditions (both online and offline).
Title tag
It’s a title tag, meaning a tag that describes the title of the page. It is one of the most important tags because it first allows the web crawlers to determine what the page content is about. Therefore, it should contain keywords, after entering which we want our website to appear in the results.
Technical SEO
This is the part of SEO that deals with making it as easy as possible for the search engine crawler to crawl your site and focuses on improving the rendering phase. Technical SEO is the basis of all other SEO activities and is absolutely essential if you want your website to perform optimally. Technical SEO activities include:
– improving site performance,
– content and image optimization,
– improving the site structure, etc.
TF-IDF – Term Frequency – Inverse Document Frequency
It is a technique that can be used when creating content on a page where phrase weights are calculated based on the number of their occurrences in a given text.
The Open Graph protocol
HTML tag, thanks to which, after posting a link in social media, the indicated fragment of content (i.e. text and graphics) from a given website is displayed.
Thin content
It is a type of content that is very scarce, so its amount is insufficient for web robots and thus is classified as of little value to the user.
Tiny text
This is a Black Hat SEO practice in which some content on a website is made very small, so small that it is almost invisible to the user, and yet has been indexed by web robots.
TLS – Transport Layer Security
Part of the HTTPS protocol, responsible for encrypting data and monitoring its integrity during its transfer between the browser and the website server. Thus, it protects data against extortion attempts, e.g. by unauthorized persons or bots.
Traffic
Also Known As: Site Traffic.
One of the most famous SEO terms that describes the total number of visitors to a given website. We distinguish movement:
– direct,
– organic,
– paid,
– referral.
Traffic potential
Data on the number of potential visits to your website that you can get if it is in the first place in Google search results.
TrustRank
This is an alternative created by Yahoo for Google PageRank, on the basis of which the degree of trust in a given website is determined.
Twin website
A so-called twin website, or a website that is very similar to another website – in terms of its content. Such a page has a negative impact on the positioning of the first – main page.
SEO Dictionary – U
Unique visit
This is literally the first visit of a given user (with a given IP) to our website. Their number, e.g. per month, can be determined using e.g. Google Analytics.
Universal Search
Also Known As: Mixed Search, Extended Search
Google results, which are placed among traditional organic results, but include additional media such as images, videos, maps, locations, etc. This is Google’s attempt to create dynamic search results where the user is dealing with various forms of search results.
Unnatural link
Links that were not created with good intentions and in order to lower the position of the site.
URL – Uniform Resource Locator
Also known as: web address
URL address is an addressing format, i.e. specifying the location of a given resource, which consists of the part data: protocol, server address (domain name) and resource path.
URL parameter (link parameter)
Values set dynamically in the page URL during the query. In page addresses, anything after “?” are the parameters of the link containing data about the content on the page.
User-Agent
It is an identification header, sent with the HTTP protocol by the program (browser or bot) that connects to the web server.
User Engagement – user engagement indicator
This indicator determines the extent to which users engage with the content of the website.
User Experience (UX)
User experience is a search engine ranking factor that describes how easy it is to use a given product or service (or website). Factors that influence UX include:
– simplicity and usability of the user interface,
– site structure,
– website loading speed on various devices,
– responsiveness and friendliness for mobile devices.
UX takes into account users’ feelings in particular, but as they are equally important to Google, they are important for the SEO of our website.
User-Friendly
It is a term for devices or services that are easy to understand and use for any user.
User-Generated Content (UGC)
This is all content (blog entries, graphics, videos, mentions in social media) published by internet users that relates to our brand. They can have a positive impact on SEO, because thanks to them we gain links and publicity on the web.
User interface (UI)
Anything displayed on your website that the user can interact with.
The user interface must be:
– simple (avoid unnecessary elements),
– transparent (use colors, sizes and layout to create a hierarchy),
– coherent (different elements should come together),
– intuitive (the website should be easy to understand and the content should clearly communicate what the user should do).
The purpose of the user interface is to create a positive impression for the visitors. Since these are the factors that influence user residence time and engagement, they are crucial to SEO.
User Intent
When creating content for the website and developing your services, it is worth taking into account the user’s intention – that is, his need and the intention with which he enters the search terms into the search engine depending on the stage on the shopping path.
SEO Dictionary – V
Vanity URL
It is a friendly form of our company’s website address, which occurs, for example, when we include it in posts on social media. It is usually a shortened version of the address that leads to a subpage with a longer URL link.
Vertical search engine
It is a type of search engine that, through its specialized functions, focuses on a specific segment of online content (usually by topic or type of media).
Video optimization – vSEO, Video Search Engine Optimization, Video SEO
Actions taken on video websites (YouTube is the most popular of them) aimed at improving the visibility of a given video in search results. You can optimize the entire channel as well as a single video contained in it, e.g. by:
– identifying and using keywords in descriptions,
– creating a description that will be helpful both for viewers and network robots,
– adding tags to each of the uploaded videos to define their subject,
– creating thumbnails that will stand out from other videos in the search results.
Viral Content
Content that becomes very popular in a short time (e.g. content, photo, video). Most often it concerns recent events or situations that are easily picked up by users on the Internet. They are good for SEO, for getting links to our website and for publicity.
Vlog
Also Known As: videoblog, video blog
It is a form of presenting blog content in the form of a video. The most popular platform where you can meet vlogs is Youtube.
Voice search
A function that allows you to search for a given query in a search engine through a voice command.
SEO Dictionary – W
Website
An HTML document that can connect to the World Wide Web and be read by a browser. A website can only consist of one or more websites.
Webmaster
This is a person who deals with the technical aspects related to the creation and optimization of a website. It is responsible for updating it or introducing changes that are necessary for website positioning.
Webmaster Guidelines
Specially created guidelines by Google dedicated to webmasters, with the help of which they can improve websites to the requirements of web robots and users.
White Hat SEO
These are all activities that position a website in search results that are consistent with Google’s guidelines as well as ethical and fair to competition and network users.
White paper
This is official content, for example on specific areas of the company’s activity, which are designed to provide up-to-date information about it. They are primarily used for PR activities aimed at strengthening the company’s image on the web and building brand awareness.
WordPress
One of the most famous and popular content management systems, created in PHP. It has many website templates and allows even laymen to create them from scratch.
SEO Dictionary – Y
Yahoo
Formerly the leader of email, online messaging, and search, now used as an internet search engine by a small percentage of users.
Yandex
The most popular Internet search engine in Russia with over 50% share in this market. In the world, however, it is relatively unpopular with less than 1% share.
Yoast SEO
One of the most popular SEO plugins for WordPress. Thanks to it, maybe, among others:
– set the title and description of a fragment of the search results,
– check the readability of the content on our website,
– set a keyword for a given content,
– manage links and meta tags, etc.
SEO Dictionary – Z
Zero-Click
Search query getting no clicks. Occurs when the user does not click on any result for some specific reason. One of the common reasons why your query doesn’t get any clicks is because it’s a top-tier informational search where Google answers your question with some form of rich results. For example, the query “how old is Brad Pitt?”, To which we get the answer already in the search results.
Zero-match anchor text
This is an anchor link, the phrase of which does not contain any content saying what we will find exactly after clicking on the link. Most often, these are links containing CTAs like “click here” or “check here”, etc., which direct to a specific subpage or landing page.
Zero Moment of Truth (ZMOT)
A marketing concept created by Google, according to which consumers, when making a purchase decision, also pay attention to opinions, comments and information about the product or service that are available on the Internet. That is why it is so important to take care of these aspects in the context of your company, as they can affect the purchasing decision.
Summary of the powerful SEO Dictionary
That’s it! Over 300 terms in the field of website positioning and optimization is a huge dose of knowledge! The Paraphrase-Online.com Team hopes you’ve found the word you were looking for and that the SEO Dictionary has done its job.
If you found a phrase that is not included here, feel free to let me know, we will be happy to add it so that other users have a full knowledge base.
