Our helpful SEO glossary outlines industry-used language and definitions that help inform an individual interested in search engine optimization.
Backlinks – Links that point towards a website destination. Backlinks can be follow or no-follow. Backlinks act as a vote of confidence from one website to another and help establish trust.
Black Hat SEO – SEO techniques that are against Google’s guidelines.
Bots – Commonly also called spiders or crawlers, search the internet to understand the information of a given site/page. Google Search Console requests a Bot to crawl a web page to understand recent updates and information.
Content Cannibalization – Websites with numerous pieces of content addressing the same concept can be impacted by content cannibalization. Search engines can have difficulties understanding which page should rank and frequently will downrank all impacted pages. An audit for duplicate content and content trim can improve the organic rankings of a site.
Crawl – The action search engines use to understand the purpose of a website and page. Google bots and other search engines will crawl a website and page to understand its purpose.
Domain Authority (DA) – Domain authority, also referred to as domain rating, is a score between 0-100. The DA score reflects important ranking factors like content quality and backlinks. Generally, the higher the DA of a website, the higher it will rank relative to a website with a lower DA.
EEAT – Expertise, Experience, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness (EEAT). EEAT is a driving force in Google’s people-first content. Websites need to demonstrate and illustrate EEAT to inform and educate visitors.
Google Analytics (GA) – Google Analytics provides detailed information to marketers, including locations, queries, traffic, CTR, conversions, and more.
Google Search Console (GSC) – Allows webmasters to monitor a website. Code is embedded on a website to connect the site to GSC, helping monitor queries, traffic, impressions, and various other data.
Index – Search engines’ process of organizing content and including it in SERPs during a crawl.
Local Pack – The map listing that appears at the top of SERPs. The Local Pack generally includes three business listings that Google believes are appropriately equipped to solve the query.
Organic SEO – Results listed in SERPs that are not paid. Organic SEO is earned over time with SEO services that demonstrate EEAT.
PPC – Pay Per Click (PPC) are paid SERP result listings in search engines. These generally appear at the top and bottom of a SERP page, with costs varying based on industry competitiveness.
Search Engine Result Page (SERP) – The SERP is the landing page for any query in a search engine.
Search Intent – What the searcher intends to find in a SERP. Search intent is generally categorized as commercial, informational, transactional, or navigational.
Sitemap – A list of pages, posts, products, and other URLs that help a crawler understand and index the content of a website. Sitemaps are commonly generated via Yoast.
Structured Data – Script, generally in JSON, that helps “spoon feed” search engines regarding pieces of a web page. Structured data may appear in SERPs.
White Hat SEO – SEO techniques that align with Google’s guidelines.
For a more comprehensive and robust list of definitions please see the SEO glossary from Moz.