SEO Terms & Definitions

The average of the top positions of a website across all search results.

Black hat link building refers to link building strategies utilized by actors who attempt to rank higher in search results by exploiting backlinks.

Hyperlinks that are brand names and direct users to the brand website are called brand anchor texts.

Developed by Majestic, Citation Flow is a metric that is calculated using the number of backlinks on a website.

Compound anchor texts are hyperlinks that possess the characteristics of different types of anchor texts.

It is a .txt file that is created to disavow spam backlinks.

When an external link from a website is marked as "dofollow", it means that the origin site passes its authority to the destination site and Google knows about it.

Hyperlinks containing the targeted keyword are called exact match anchor texts.

Hyperlinks that direct users from one page to another within a website are called internal links.

Webmasters can serve as guest bloggers on different websites operating in their field of activity.

Link Bait is the method by means of which interesting and quality content that users will willingly share with the people around them is created.

Websites that contain a large number of irrelevant links are called link farms.

Link juice is the ranking potential distributed among the relevant pages or websites through hyperlinks.

Money anchor texts are hyperlinks that contain keywords which the website getting the backlink uses to achieve sales.

Nofollow tag is the href rel tag that gives the signal to the search engine bots to disregard specific links.

Hyperlinks that contain words that are not keywords or brand names are used are called other anchor text.

Artificial, bad, or manipulative links are called spam links.

The "sponsored tag" is used for hyperlinks that are advertisements, sponsored, or paid placements.

A metric that reports the average amount of time users spend on your website.

Defined as the number of visitors to a website, who complete the desired action out of the total number of visitors.

Direct traffic, a Google Analytics metric, refers to users entering a URL into their browser to directly access the website.

Conversion rate optimization refers to the practice of increasing the percentage of users who perform a desired action on a website.

The last page viewed by a visitor during a visit.

A free tool available on Search Console.

Offers data based on Google Search, which shows how frequently a particular search term is searched by users.

Refers to how many users view a web pages on search engine results pages.

Each visitor landing on a website is identified by Google Analytics with a unique ID.

The traffic that comes from accessing the site directly from visitor queries on search engines.

The average number of pages viewed by a visitor during a session.

Paid traffic is characterized by the fact that it comes from paid promotions or advertisements.

Tools that help you keep track of all your rankings on your target keywords.

It is a free Google tool that helps monitor the performance of a website and allows users to take a number of actions related to that website.

SEO Visibility, a scoring metric, is an indicator of how visible a website is in search results.

The concept of 10x content, which was first used by Rand Fishkin in his video series called Whiteboard Friday, refers to content that is 10 times stronger than regular content.

The alt text tag helps search engine bots to make sense of a given image. Alt text tags are visible to both visitors and engine bots.

Keyword research is one of the most important search engine optimization tools. Activities concerning search volumes and user queries as a result of which a website is ranked or wants to be ranked are called keyword research.

The set of SEO-friendly content published on blogs or in the blog sections of websites are called blog content.

User queries that are made by users who intend to make a purchase but want to do research and obtain information beforehand are called queries with commercial intent.

The method of promoting a product, service, or brand of a website through content that will benefit the users is called "content marketing".

Identical or fairly similar pieces of content on the same or different websites are called duplicate content.

SEO-friendly content that is not outdated and can be continuously consumed by users is called evergreen content.

The process of optimizing images in terms of SEO and user experience is called image optimization.

User queries that are carried out to gain information about a topic, to get answers to a question, or to satisfy one's curiosity about a topic are called queries with informational intent.

SEO-friendly content that is created in order to inform website visitors and search engine bots about a category is called category content.

The words or phrases that most accurately represent the content on a page are called keywords.

Keyword cannibalization is when a given user query is targeted by multiple pages belonging to the same website.

Keyword density is the term used to express how often a targeted keyword is used on a web page.

The method of hiding keywords on the page in a way that is invisible to users is called keyword stuffing.

User comments about the content of a web page are of great value. Google gives great importance to user experience, and therefore, to users' positive or negative comments.

Keywords the user query volumes of which are lower than those of short-tail keywords and usually consist of three or more words are called long-tail keywords.

Queries of users who know what they are looking for and search for a helpful resource are called queries with navigational intent.

All actions taken to comply with Google criteria and improve the performance of a website on search engine results pages are called On-Page SEO activities.

Keywords that consist of one or two words, offer the most general framework, and have the highest search volumes are called short-tail keywords.

TF measures the keyword density, while IDF measures how many different texts the keyword appears in.

Irrelevant and insufficient content that is not suitable for the target audience and does not meet the user demand is called thin content.

User queries made with the aim of purchasing a product or service are called queries with transactional intent.

User intent refers to the reasons why users perform a given query, and it is a concept of significant importance for both websites and search engines.

Refers to malicious activities for manipulating search engine results.

Proactively serves relevant content to users based on their interests.

Helps businesses to become more visible on Google searches and maps.

Any malicious and unethical practice aimed at sabotaging the search rankings of a competitor's website.

Describes the criteria applied by search engines when compiling the rankings of their search results.

One of the most popular content management systems that allows you to create and manage websites for free.

A status code indicating that the server has responded successfully.

A status code indicating that a web page has been permanently redirected.

A status code indicating that a web page has been temporarily redirected.

A status code indicating that the web page is not on the relevant server.

A status code indicating that the web page is not on the relevant server, definitively and permanently.

A status code indicating that there is a server-related problem.

A status code indicating a technical issue with the server.

Refers to the code for web pages that are to be crawled and indexed.

AMP helps mobile pages load faster by keeping them in Google's cache.

A phrase or a keyword combination users enter in search engines.

Breadcrumbs are a navigation aid that helps users easily understand the relation between their location on a page and higher-level pages.

It is a type of memory that allows users to engage with the relevant web page faster on their next visit.

Refers to the network technology that enables data to be transmitted over servers in certain locations.

Refers to the technique by which the HTML file is processed by the browser and the content is rendered by the browser.

Small text files saved on users' devices by websites are called cookies.

The term crawl depth refers to how many pages a search engine's bot will access and index on a site.

Refers to a specific set of steps that must be completed before any page content can be shown to a visitor.

A markup language that helps visually shape the elements of a web page.

Refers to the time frame from entering a web page to the loading of the content.

A command used for web pages that are not to be crawled and indexed by bots.

Index refers to the archive of web pages created for users by Google.

Addresses that allow Internet users to access websites are called domains.

Refers to the rating that represents how powerful and authoritative a domain is.

An intermediate solution developed to facilitate the crawling of bots on JavaScript-based sites.

Refers to the point at which the first pixel renders on a screen after a user navigates to a web page.

Short snippets of text that appear at the top of Google's search results in order to quickly answer a searcher's query.

Refers to the metric that represents how quickly a response is given when an action is requested after the page is loaded.

The metric representing the time it takes for a page's primary content to appear on the screen.

Refers to the process of optimizing and resizing images in order to increase the loading speed of pages.

Refers to the process of combining and compressing similar indexes, repeated texts, and spaces in a source file.

Refers to the service for enabling users to access a website.

A text markup language that enables the creation and editing of web pages and their components.

Sitemaps specially designed for users are called HTML sitemaps.

Sitemaps that list URLs containing visual content.

Indexing refers to allowing bots crawling and indexing a webpage.

Refers to unique sequences of numbers assigned by service providers for devices connected to the Internet to communicate.

Refers to the practice of delaying the load of an object on a page until the point at which it is needed.

Refers to a technique for examining the relationship between content and keywords used which user searches.

Refer to keywords in the source code that give information to the search engines about the page.

Refers to sitemaps where webpages with news content are listed.

Refers to tags for pages that are not to be indexed by bots.

A Google tool that provides information about page opening speeds and user experience metrics.

Refer to tags that allow linking between sequential pages and provide navigation.

Subfolder refers to a folder on a computer that is located within another folder while a path refers to links formed by the ordering of folders.

It occurs when a user performs a search, clicks on a result, and very quickly clicks back to the search result page.

Refers to rules and standards for how communication between the browser and the server takes place.

Refers to connecting to the Internet via a proxy server.

Refer to rich fields that contain page-related information other than title, description, and URL on result pages.

Refers to text files that contain access permissions to websites for bots.

Refers to markups used to help bots better understand the content on pages.

Refers to web pages served to users when they search for something online using a search engine.

Refers to the technique by which the request is processed by the server and the output is passed to the browser.

Refers to practices to provide faster access to websites.

Refer to hyperlinks beneath the main URL that appear under search results pages.

Refers to xml extension files that allow bots to examine the website faster and in more detail.

Refers to the Robots.txt command that shows bots the path to the sitemap.

Refers to a digital certificate that establishes a secure connection between websites and users.

Refers to a domain that is part of another domain.

Refers to the three-digit responses that a server gives to a browser's request.

Refers to the number of time bots are willing to spend crawling a given site.

Refers to a tag that specifies the title of a web page.

Refers to the time between the browser requesting a page and when it receives the first byte of information from the server.

Refers to unique web addresses that provide access to a resource on the Internet.

Refers to shortening long and complicated links into more manageable URLs.

Refers to the robots.txt command for giving permissions to bots visiting a website.

Refers to pieces of code that allow traffic-related information to be displayed and analyzed.

Refer to external resources not originally included in a website.

Refers to a two-letter Internet top-level domain specifically designated for a particular country.

Refers to a sitemap with additional information about video hosted on pages.

Refers to an encrypted connection over the Internet from a device to a network.

Refers to a file format capable of making audio and video files considerably smaller.

Refers to the service that provides access to a lot of information about domain names.

Refers to web pages offering endless redirects to other pages.

Refers to cases where websites are redirected to other sites more than once.

Bounce rate refers to visitors that leave a web page without engaging with its contents.

A way to compare different versions of strategies to figure out which performs better.

Refers to optimization practices aimed at making mobile apps more visible in stores.

Hyperlinks on a page that do not work for one reason or another are called broken links.

A self-referencing canonical tag ensures that multiple versions of the page don't get indexed separately.

Refers to the action of a user visiting a website after doing a search on a search engine.

CMS refers to systems where content can be managed, edited or various updates can be made.

A status code indicating that the server could not process the request due to a problem with the browser.

A status code indicating that access is not allowed or the relevant web page is banned.

A status code that occurs when the server receives a negative response from a different server.

A status code indicating that the server is either too busy to respond or under maintenance.

A status code indicating that the server has reached its monthly hosting traffic limit.

Crawling refers to the process whereby bots systematically browse through a website.

Defined as the ratio of the total number of clicks to the total number of impressions.

Domain age represents how long it has been since the domain was first registered.

An Internet protocol that allows the exchange of files between two online computers.

Refer to domains formed out of words with a dictionary meaning that have no suffix.

A free performance analysis tool that provides detailed information about visitors to a website.

Refers to the tool that allows you to manage custom codes and tags on the website.

Refers to the software developed by Google to create a searchable index and crawl the web.

Refer to tags that provide information about the hierarchy of content on a web page.

Refers to tags for specifying the language and geographical targeting of a webpage.

Refers to configuration files that allow restrictions and arrangements on a server.

Title tags that help search engine bots make sense of the image are called image titles.

Infographics are files in which information or data are presented using images and graphics.

A popular software language that adds functionality, interaction, and dynamism to the page.

Links that allow users to flow through seemingly long and complex website pages.

Refers to the page a user lands on after clicking on a link in an email, ad, etc.

An open source performance analysis tool developed to improve the performance of websites.

Refers to a set of practices to improve the performance of websites in local searches.

Refers to files in which the transactions and movements of users are recorded on a daily basis.

Refers to a tag that provides information to users about the relevant web page on the results pages.

Refers to pop-up windows that users encounter when they visit a page.

The value showing the number of different domains from which a website has backlinks.

Refers to the process of converting an image file in such a way that it consumes less space.

Special characters and commands that extend the capabilities of regular text searches.

A group of user interactions with your website that take place within a given time frame.

Refers to situations when the website server sends a 200 OK status for a page, but Google thinks the page should return a 404 code.

Developed by Majestic, Trust Flow is a metric that measures the trustworthiness of websites.

The tags used in backlinks given through user-generated content are called ugc tags

Refers to how a user interacts with and experiences a product, system, or service.

Refers to an image format designed to create files that are smaller for the same quality.

Links whose font colors are the same as the background of a website are called hidden links.

Refers to the content a viewer logging into a website sees before they scroll down.

Reference links that direct users from one website to another are called backlinks.

This is a metric developed by Google to measure the importance of website pages.

Anchor text refers to the hyperlinks that are used to direct users to another page.

Refers to the technique by which search engine bots are directed to a specially prepared page.

Refers to the process of combining multiple images and retrieving over a single image file.

Naked links are hyperlinks that use the URL itself as the anchor text rather than a keyword.