Search Engine Optimization

Glossary Terms for Search Engine Optimization

Core Concepts

• SEO: The process of optimizing a website to improve its visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs).
• Search Engines: Websites like Google, Bing, and Yahoo that index and rank web pages.
• Search Engine Algorithms: The rules and criteria that search engines use to rank web pages.

On-Page SEO

• Keywords: Words or phrases that people search for.
• Meta Tags: HTML tags that provide information about a webpage to search engines.
• Title Tags: The title of a webpage that appears in search results.
• Meta Descriptions: A brief summary of a webpage that appears in search results.
• Header Tags: HTML tags that indicate the importance of different sections of a page (e.g., H1, H2, H3).
• Content Quality: Creating valuable, relevant, and engaging content.
• Image Optimization: Optimizing images for size and file format.
• URL Structure: Creating clean and descriptive URLs.

Off-Page SEO

• Backlinks: Links to a website from other websites.
• Link Building: The process of acquiring high-quality backlinks.
• Authority: The perceived credibility and trustworthiness of a website.
• Citation Flow: The number and quality of links pointing to a website.
• Trust Flow: The perceived trustworthiness of a website's linking partners.

Technical SEO

• Website Speed: How quickly a website loads.
• Mobile-Friendliness: Ensuring a website is accessible and usable on mobile devices.
• XML Sitemap: A file that provides information about a website's structure to search engines.
• Robots.txt: A file that instructs search engines which pages to crawl and index.
• HTTPS: A secure protocol for transmitting data over the internet.

Related Terms

• Search Engine Marketing (SEM): Paid advertising on search engines.
• Local SEO: Optimizing a website for local searches.
• Black Hat SEO: Unethical practices used to manipulate search engine rankings.