Let’s admit it!

As a budding blogger or Digital Marketer, you are always inclined to learn the basics of SEO i.e Search Engine Optimization. You know deep in your heart that the more you will grab the SEO basics, more you will get the most out of your website.

Well, it’s so true.

When it comes to growing your website traffic, SEO plays a paramount importance with no cost or low cost. It’s an important learning topic in Digital Marketing. Digital Marketing as a whole learning field is huge. You can’t learn Digital Marketing completely without learning important whereabouts of SEO i.e SEO techniques, SEO glossary and technical SEO.

Afterall, “SEO is to Water as Digital Marketing is to Ocean.”

All over internet, you will find various SEO tutorials to learn. But not all of them contains all the important terms, definitions and SEO jargons. At times, it might so happen that you need to google any SEO glossary term when you accidentally stumble upon it from any internet source. Some of the terms in SEO may also confuse you to the level that you might actually conflate these terms with each other.

Confusion is often harmless until it converts into a big mistake. But, it is more important to clear your confusion before it lead you to a problem.

That’s why, I’ve prepared a must known SEO Glossary guide for 2017 and beyond.

Let’s understand the glossary of important SEO terms with this guide and clear any confusion you might have in your mind.

301 – Moved Permanently – It is permanent redirection of server from one page to other. Useful in dealing with canonical issues.

302 Redirect – A temporary redirection of web pages.

404 error code – The error code that will be displayed when any request to a web server does not return the deserved output. SEO’s call it as “Page not found” error.

Adwords – Google Adwords is an advertising platform provided by google which involved pay per click methodology.

Affiliate – An Affiliate is a person or third party which aims to earn commission amount by selling other company’s products and services

Analytics – A software which is used to analyze the traffic present on a website or web page.

Anchor text – Anchor text is a clickable text which is present in hyperlink.

Alt text – Alt text stands for Alternative text. It is mainly used for Images. Google bots are not made to distinguish between images. Hence, an alt text is used to make images readable by these bots.

Backlink – Backlink is a link that points to a site or page from any other site or page.

Black Hat – An SEO technique which is practiced to gain fast search rankings by violating google webmasters guidelines

Bounce – A Bounce is a single page session in a site.

Bounce Rate – Bounce rate is the percentage of single page visits. In google analytics, bounce rate is calculated as:

Bounce rate = Total no. of bounces on a single page/ total no. of entrances on the same page. A high bounce rate is not good for SEO perspective and ranking.

Broken link – A broken link is a link that not redirects user to a specific page thereby showing an error. It might be due to wrong URL type or migration of one domain to other.

Canonical tags – It is an HTML tag which is used to solve the problem of duplicate content on a site. Following is syntax of this tag:

The main use of canonical tag is that search engines does not consider the tagged page as a duplicate content. Instead they will consider the link of the canonical page as the main page and transfer the ranking to that page only. This resolves the situation of duplication of pages.

Cloaking – It is a black hat practice which involves manipulating the content thereby delivering the two different version of web content to both user and search engine respectively.

Content Management System (CMS) – A Software program such as wordpress is a CMS which makes it easier for an author or website manager to manage the content of website without having to deal with unnecessary coding skills.

Conversion – A conversion is something which makes a user to take an action on a website.

Conversion rate – Conversion rate is the percentage of clicks that converts into conversions. An increase in efficiency in the case of conversion rate can be noted in terms of increased conversions on account of number of clicks.

Conversion rate = conversions/ clicks

Cost per Click (CPC) – Cost per Click (CPC) is the amount of money you’re spending on each click. You can find out the average CPC by dividing the total spend by the total number of clicks. Since, it is a cost based metric, hence you have to improve its efficiency by decreasing the number as much as possible.

Cost per Click (CPC) = Spend / Clicks

Cost per Acquisition (CPA) – Cost per Acquisition (CPA) is the amount of money you are spending on each conversion. Since, it is a cost based metric hence lower is always better.

Cost per Acquisition (CPA) = Spend / Conversions

Click through rate (CTR) – Click through rate (CTR) is the percentage of impressions that turns into clicks. The more this metric goes up, the more efficient is your campaign.

Click through rate (CTR) – Clicks / Impressions

Cost per mille or Cost per impression (CPM) – CPM stands for Cost per thousand impression. M in CPM denotes thousand impressions (Roman numeric). It is a term which is used to denote the price of 1000 impressions on single webpage. The online ads which are priced on the basis of this metric are charged per 1000 impression basis. For instance, if a banner advertisement is priced at $20/M then the CPM of that ad will be $20.

Do-follow Link – There is nothing such as Dofollow tag. In fact, just absence of a nofollow tag within a link makes it dofollow. A Dofollow link makes it easier for search engines to parse and follow a link on website. By making a link dofollow, you are ensuring that you are allowing passing of link juice from one site to another.

Doorway page – A webpage which is specially designed to attract more traffic is a doorway page. This kind of page usually redirects users to another page with an intention of earning money through ads.

Disavow backlinks – As it is widely known about the value of links in terms of SEO perspective. However, those links when are mistakenly made on low quality websites or spam sites can hurt your site ranking. Disavow backlink tool serve as a solution provider for the same. As the name implies, Disavow means to remove completely. Google has provided this facility to bloggers and webmasters with the google webmaster tool to remove any such type of link. When any link is being disavowed then google will not consider it in ranking.

External link – A link which points from a site to another domain or site is named as External link.

FTP (File Transfer Protocol) – FTP is commonly a protocol which use client server architecture to transfer files over the web.

Google Bot – Google bot is the widely known google’s web crawler

Google XML sitemap – XML sitemap is a file which allows search engines to crawl the site in a more efficient way. It consists of different URL with information such as frequency of URL update and relation of these URL’s with that of other URL.

Header tags – Header tags are HTML tags which serves as the subheadings of the webpage. Hierarchy of header tags follows from H1 to H6 usually in SEO.

HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) – HTML is a language or code which is usually designed for the understanding of search engines.

Impressions – Impression is defined as the number of times a webpage or an ad is being viewed. It is a count metric which means if a web page is being viewed one time then it will be counted as 1 impression.

Inbound link – A link which is pointing out from a specific website to your site is an inbound link. High Quality and Highly relevant inbound links have a greater number of importance in terms of SEO perspective.

Internal link – An internal link is a link which redirects user to another page of the same website. For example, a link which points from home page of a website named www.xyz.com to another page of that website (say www.xyz.com/abc is an internal link. An internal link spread link juice within a website which is of greater value in terms of SEO.

Keyword – A keyword is a specific word for which a user generally searches in a search engine for result. For example; car is a keyword. Keyword is highly important in terms of SEO. It is used to drive organic traffic to a website.

Key phrase – A key phrase or keyword phrase is a string of two or more keywords. For example; maruti suzuki car is a keyword phrase.

Keyword Cannibalization – Keyword Cannibalization is an excessive usage of a keyword in multiple pages for a site which tend to confuse search engines as such which page to be ranked for.

Keyword Density – Keyword Density is calculated on an account of how many times a keyword appears on a website or webpage. It can be low or too high. However, for good SEO point of view it is recommended to keep it low.

Keyword Density = (no. of times a keyword is used/ total no. of words) x 100

Keyword Research or Keyword Digging – Keyword research is the art of finding appropriate keywords for a website.

Keyword Prominence – Keyword Prominence means how prominent is a specific keyword on a webpage i.e how well your keywords are placed on a webpage or a website. A good keyword prominence can be placement of a keyword in the beginning of Title, Meta Title, Meta description and first para of content.

Keyword Proximity – Keyword Proximity is the distance between your widely used keywords in a specific phrase. For example: for triggering a search for keyword phrase “Dentist Boston Implants” can be a webpage with heading such as “Your professional dentist in Boston; dental practice for minimally invasive implants “. In the given example, distance between all the three keywords named as Dentist, Boston and Implants respectively is good in terms of SEO.

Keyword Stemming – Keyword stemming is a process of creating new words from the same root word. For example; In keyword stemming for the keywords “Search Engine Optimization in India”, “SEO in India” and “SEO in India” will reduce the word to “India SEO”.

Keyword Effectiveness Index (KEI) – Keyword Effectiveness Index or KEI is a metric which tells about the effectiveness of keywords in the search engines. It is calculated by dividing the total number of webpages with the total number of searches for a particular keyword.

KEI = No. of Results / No. of Searches

Keyword stuffing – A relatively high keyword density for a webpage is referred to as Keyword stuffing.

Knowledge Graph – The Knowledge graph is a knowledge base used by google to enhance its search results by gathering semantic information from different types of resources across web. It was added by google in 2012.

Landing Page – A Landing Page is a page in which a user is redirected by clicking a specific URL in SERP.

Landing Page Optimization – Landing Page Optimization is optimizing landing page for good SEO. It means optimizing it in means of site load time, title, meta title, design, call to action etc.

Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) – An LSI keyword (Latent Semantic Indexing) is a keyword that is semantically related to your primary keyword.

Link Farm – Link Farm is a term which is used to represent group of websites that use cross linking to each other in order to gain proper ranking.

Link Building – Link Building is considered as a renowned SEO practice since its inception. It is a process of building links through various off page techniques.

Link Juice – Link Juice is a quite renowned SEO jargon or SEO term which denotes trust factor and authority of a link. It is believed in the world of SEO that a backlink through a high quality website will pass the higher link juice which is quite beneficial in terms of SEO. Some SEO’s also named it as a link vote.

Link Diversity – Link Diversity means usage or presence of both dofollow and nofollow link on a website. Google now consider link diversity as an important part of ranking.

Meta tags – Meta tags are the HTML tags placed within the header section of the webpage which contains specific information about the page. Search engines crawl a page’s meta tags to know about the site and to provide the relevant information which a user is searching for. Meta tags such as Meta Title and Description are very important in terms of SEO.

Nofollow – A Nofollow tag is placed within the link of a webpage or its header. The main aim of using a nofollow tag is to tell search engines to not consider the link for ranking.the page on which link points within. You can make your link nofollow by adding rel=”nofollow” after URL.

Noindex – Noindex is a HTML code placed within link or web page’s header which tells search engine to not index the webpage or link.

Off Page SEO – Off page is a technique in SEO where SEO is done outside the website’s webpage or you can say on third party’s website. Some off page techniques are promotional in nature which means you are promoting your website on other websites by building links, etc.

Organic Search – Organic search is also known as natural search which is not definitely paid one. Organic search traffic is highly important for SEO perspective.

Outbound link – A link which points to another domain or website is an outbound link. It is also known as external link.

Page Rank – Page rank is a metric or value used by google to rank a specific website.It is measured from 0 to 10.

Page view – Page view is defined as the number of times a user has visited a website or webpage.

Panda – Google’s Panda is an algorithm which was released back in 2012 to target websites which boast low quality content.

Parasite SEO – Parasite SEO is where you use high quality site to build pages and then rank it using link building. Google just love parasite SEO.

Penguin – Penguin was an important update in google algorithm updates history which punished websites that violates google’s webmaster guidelines. The sites that suffered used to practice number of black hat and spam techniques to rank better in SERP.

Pay Per Action (PPA) – Pay per Action is an advertising model in which publisher will pay only when clicks on their ads resulted in conversion.

Pay Per Click (PPC) – Another name to Cost Per Click (See CPC above)

Reciprocal link – When two sites link to each other then it is known as Reciprocal link. A reciprocal link is not valid after the release of penguin algorithm.

Reputation Management – Your website reputation is very important. Reputation management is the act of managing the reputation of a website or company. Reputation can be in the form of good word of mouth, correct information or business listing and good feedback from users on web.

Robots.txt – Robots.txt is a text file which can restrict or allow search engines at the same time to index or deindex a site pages.

ROI (Return on Investment) – As the name implies ROI stands for return in form of cost or money after you spend or invest on something. It is a cost based metric, hence higher is always good.

RSS Feed – RSS stands for Really simple syndication. It is a website’s feed in which a user will subscribe and get daily updates done on website in inbox.

Sandbox – It is virtually believed that google sandbox is a box in which google puts all sites to prevent them from ranking. The same thing is not confirmed by google as such.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) – Search engine marketing is the process of promoting any website or product by paid means.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – SEO is the process of increasing website’s visibility in search engines in order to attract more traffic and exposure. It is generally free and organic.

Search Engine Saturation – Search engine saturation is the best way to check your website’s presence in SERP. According to the definition quoted by SEMRUSH, “Search engine saturation is the amount of space that search results occupy on a single search engine result page (SERP). This includes everything from images and advertisements to organic results.”

Silo structure – Silo structure is an internal website structure grouped together to generate a proper keyword based website or theme which is generally good for ranking.

Social Media Marketing (SEM) – Social Media Marketing requires promotion of website or product on social media. It can be done to attract organic (social media) traffic or paid traffic.

Spam – Spam is irrelevant or unwanted message which is usually spread by spammers in order to promote their product. Google treat spammers in a very strict manner nowadays.

Title tag – Title tag is a HTML tag placed between website’s header. It should be correctly optimized by relevant keywords as search engine’s use it to fetch relevant results in search.

Uniform Resource Locator (URL) – The address of a webpage.

User Generated Content (UGC) – The type of content which is usually generated by user of a product or website is UGC.

Web 2.0 – Web 2.0 is a system which consists of sites which provides interaction from users.

White Hat SEO – SEO technique which is practiced by following search engine guidelines is considered as white hat.