New to the digital marketing world? Finding it hard to understand SEO and its fundamental terms? Don’t worry, we are presenting all the basic information that you are looking for. But before we begin let us understand what is SEO?
What Is SEO?
You might already know that SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. But what exactly is Search Engine Optimization? It is the process of optimizing your website so that Google prefers to show it as a top result for the certain search terms.
25 Fundamental SEO Terms
Understanding basic SEO terms is essential to grasp the basics of SEO. Here are the basic SEO terms and definition you are looking for.
1. Title tag: Title tag, also known as the page title, is a .html tag. It tells both Google and the net surfers what your web page is about. One can see title tag on the tab of his or her Internet browser or in the headline of search results.
2. Meta Description: Similar to the title tag, a meta description is also a .html tag but has a different purpose. As the name indicates, a meta description is a description of a web page which appears in the search results.
3. Backlink: Backlink, or simply link, is a hyperlink on somebody else’s website pointing to your website. These links play an important part in SEO.
4. SERP: The full form of SERP is Search Engine Results Page. Whenever you enter a query, the search engine comes up with a page loaded with search results, which is known as SERP.
5. PageRank: Named after Larry Page, is an algorithm which Google uses to rank a website for specific search terms. Today, there are more than 200 factors that Google uses to rank a website.
6. Keyword: Keyword is one of the most-used SEO terms. It is nothing but the set of words that searchers use to find particular information, product or service on the Internet. For example, “Restaurants in London” is a keyword which users use to find a restaurant in London.
7. Anchor Text: A clickable text on a web page is called as anchor text. Keyword rich anchor text is used to improve search engine ranking. It basically tells the search engines what your website does.
8. Indexing: Indexing is a process where search engines like Google, Bing, etc. collect and store your data through their bots. In other words, indexing is the process of saving a copy of your web page in the database of a search engine.
9. NoFollow: Basically, NoFollow is a link attribute. It is used by the webmasters to tell Google that a link doesn’t have to be counted as a vote.
10. Keyword Density: Keyword Density is nothing but the number of times a keyword used in a page divided by the total number of words. Keeping a healthy keyword density is one of the best practices in SEO.
11. Sandbox: Google adds the newly indexed web pages in the sandbox. These web pages are not displayed in Search Engine Results Page until the website is thoroughly verified.
12. Cloaking: Cloaking is a black hat technique. Here a webmaster shows different content to the Google and the Internet surfers, which is against webmaster guidelines. Therefore, Google penalizes for this activity aggressively.
13. Robot.txt: It is a file, which is located in the root of a domain. Robot.txt instructs the Google bots about the structure of the site. This file prevents a search spider from crawling any specific section of a site.
14. Keyword Stuffing: Keyword Stuffing is a practice of adding a large number of keywords into a content to gain higher search engine ranking. Obviously, this is a black hat practice. Google penalizes websites that do keyword stuffing.
15. 301 Redirect: Deleting pages or changing URL is a common practice in the digital world. As the name indicates, 301 redirects will redirect your users from an old URL to the new or active one.
16. SEM: SEM stands for Search Engine Marketing, it is nothing but the marketing of products or services through search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing. SEM is further divided into SEO and PPC.
17. PPC: Stands for Pay Per Click, it is an online advertising model, where an advertiser needs to pay only when someone clicks on their ad. PPC is also known as Cost Per Click (CPC).
18. Indexed Pages: Indexed pages are basically the pages of your website that are stored by search engines like Google, Yahoo or Bing in their database. The process of storing is called indexing.
19. Inbound Link: A link in one site pointing to another site is called in the bound link. An inbound link enhances the SEO of a website and plays a major role in improving search engine ranking. It is also referred to as external link or backlink.
20. Internal Link: A link from one page of a site pointing to another page of the same site is called as an internal link. For instance, a link on your homepage pointing to your blog is an internal link.
21. Link Building: A process of gaining more inbound links to your site to obtain a higher position in Search Engine Results Page. From guest posting to blog commenting, Link Building can be done in many ways.
22. RSS Feed: Stands for Really Simple Syndication, it gives an option for your viewers to subscribe for getting notified whenever a new content is added.
23. Sitemap: A file that provides a map of all the pages on a site to the search engine for easy indexing. It can be created using various online tools available.
24. Traffic: In search engine optimization, traffic refers to the Internet surfers who visit your site. When someone says, “your site is getting a lot of traffic,” he or she actually means many people are visiting your site.
25. Ranking Factors: The factors that are used by search engine to determine the rank of a website for a particular keyword are called as ranking factors. Google uses more than 200 ranking factors to position a web page in SERP.
