SEO Glossary: ​​Know the top search engine optimization terms

Are you interested in search engine optimization, but don’t understand some terms? With that in mind, we have prepared a complete SEO glossary, with the main words and expressions you need to know. Without further ado, let’s go to him!

Algorithm

How to find exactly what you are looking for with thousands of pages published every day on the internet? This is the role of algorithms. They are programs that process different formulas to find the answer to your question, the nearest restaurant, or how to get to 1st place on Google, for example.

AMP

AMP is the acronym for Accelerated Mobile Pages, they are website pages optimized for a simplified and almost instant loading when accessed via mobile devices. The project is an initiative of companies such as Google, LinkedIn, Pinterest, and Twitter.

Alt Text

It is nothing more than the description of the image. The most important thing here is that you do not confuse the image title. Alt text has the function of describing the visual elements of the image in order to position the image better in the search ranking.

Black hat

There are several SEO techniques that do not follow the rules determined by search engines. The objective of Black Hat is to obtain the best results in a short time. But be careful! You may be at risk of being punished. Find out more in the post What is Black Hat SEO and 10 techniques you should not use.

Canonical Tag

It is a command aimed at the browser and search engines, it is the second version of the original content, pointing to it. It serves to avoid duplicate content.

Find out more in the Canonical tag post: what it is, what is its importance for SEO, and how to use it.

Click-through rate (CTR)

It is the metric for the clickthrough rate and for checking how effective your ads are. Optimizing your page will help your website rank when you are at an auction on AdWords for example. So, focus on CTR and your SEO.

Cloaking

A technique that aims to present content to the user and another to search engines. Hiding content, and duplicating content in the same URL (visitor sees one thing and searcher sees another), are some examples. But stay tuned, it is a technique considered Black Hat SEO, that is, you could be punished if you execute it on your site.

Crawler

They are responsible for indexing websites over the internet. Search engines like Google use this software to update themselves. After scanning, they classify links, content, and other aspects and rank the sites according to the search.

CSS

Cascading Style Sheets ( CSS) is a style language that defines the layout of HTML documents. In practice, it is possible to change the font, paragraphs, and colors on the website, adjust images, and other functions. Having a page with a good look and experience for the user is essential for navigation, conversion, and SEO.

Disavow links

Google works hard to make the actions on third-party sites not negatively affect one site If your site’s ranking is being harmed by possibly low-quality links that are not under your control this tool can help you.

Disavow links tells Google which links that point to your site you don’t want to gain relevance. In addition, the tool can be used in cases where dubious link sources or hacked sources link to your website.

Google Search Console

Google helps you monitor and maintain your website’s presence in the search results of the search engine itself. The tool is free and with it, you can monitor the performance of your website in relation to searches made on Google.

Gray Hat (or gray hat)

This is what we call “middle ground” These are techniques that are not on the Black Hat SEO list but are not in the indications of good White Hat techniques. When in doubt always use optimization actions approved by Google.

Headings tags

In practice, they are the headings and subtitles of the text on a page. They are represented by H1, H2, H3, H4, H5, and H6 and have a decreasing hierarchical order. Optimization tip: Try to use keywords whenever possible in your titles and subtitles.

Head Tail

These are the broadest terms, usually with 1 or 2 keywords that answer a search query. Conversion rates are generally lower compared to long tail terms (see Long Tail).

Keyword example head tail: digital marketing.

Href

In HTML language it is the tag that indicates an address to which a link refers.

HTML5

It stands for Hypertext Markup Language in version 5. In practice, it is a language for structuring and presenting content for the internet. Its fifth version brings new accessibility and semantics features.

Hummingbird

Google’s algorithm got its name for its inspiration and purpose. “Beija-Flor” will deliver faster and more accurate results to its users. It can do analyzes in a broader way, which helps a lot in performance to interpret searches with terms naturally used by its users. Learn more about it in the post about What is semantic search and how to use it in content production.

Keyword Stuffing

The meaning comes from keywords and stuffing. It is a black hat technique that consists of just that: inserting too many keywords in excess and even outside the context of the page. The goal is to better position the page in the search engine. However, as it is a black hat, what can happen is just the opposite.

Links

Link: link or link. It is the address of a document or content on the web. The link shows everything you have hosted at that location. The link can also take you to another page on the internet.

Link building

Link building is all about getting backlinks. That is, getting links on other sites pointing to your site in a natural way or not. It is important that these sites have authority, thus generating quality connections. Find out more in the bulletproof Link Building post: tips to be effective.

Internal links

In the same way as links they establish a link, however, here they point to pages within the site itself. They are connecting links within the same domain. They help with navigation and also work to optimize pages for SEO. It is mainly through internal links that search engine robots navigate the site.

Long Tail

They are long and specific terms, usually with more than 3 keywords. In searches for Long Tail or long tail, it has greater assertiveness and conversion than Head Tail terms. Example of keyword long tail: “digital marketing for small and medium-sized companies”.

LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing)

Google uses what we call semantic proximity, or LSI, in its crawl to try to understand what the content of a website is about. The role of SLI is to look for related synonyms between this content and the page title.

Meta Description

It’s all the text you find under the title when you do a search. That summary appears below the main line, which can bring extra information that motivates the user’s interaction. There is no weight or relevance in the SEO criteria, but it is very important to get your user to click on your link. It can be up to 160 characters.

Nofollow

It is an attribute added to the HTML code, in the link line, to tell the search robots not to follow the link.

Noindex

It is an attribute added to the HTML code, telling the robots not to index certain content.

PageRank

PageRank is a way created by Google co-founder Larry Page to measure the authority of a page. The metric is based on the quantity and quality of links that a website receives.

All of these criteria are analyzed and illustrated using a scale from 0 to 10. With 0 being a site with very little relevance and authority and 10 with extreme authority and relevance. The post Dude, where’s my page rank? will help you understand more!

Keywords

In Digital Marketing, keywords are more than the words or phrases used by a user when performing a certain search on the internet, they also represent the way the market thinks. This is a very important term to understand SEO, so give it a good read in the post Keywords: from concept to research, everything you need to know.

Google Panda

The purpose of Google Panda is to move high-quality sites in Google’s search results. Google Panda achieves this by placing a lower rating for sites that they consider to be “low quality”. They will then return higher-quality sites to higher search results.

Google Penguin

Google has released an update and, in essence, penalizes or removes websites or webpages, which they feel appear to be trying to manipulate Google guidelines. Penguin is essentially an expansion of Panda and was launched in April 2012. It has made the guidelines for what constitutes a high-quality website even stricter than it was before.

This new algorithm not only looks at the overall quality of a website’s content, but also looks more closely at keyword stuffing, link cloaking, content that has been spun to create different content, and web spam.

RankBrain

RankBrain is a system developed by Google that uses machine learning and artificial intelligence to improve search results and interpret new search requests, that is, terms that have not been searched before. Read more in the post Unraveling mysteries of RankBrain.

Redirect 301

If we have a single content and we want different forms of access to lead to that content, the perfect way out is Redirect 301.

Redirect 301 notifies the browser and search engines that the content on that page has been moved permanently to another address. With this, the search engines end up transferring almost all (from 90% to 99%) the authority of the page to the new address.

Rich snippet

They are small snippets of pages displayed on the results page. They can offer links to specific sections of your website, for example. See how to use them for your company in the post 5 techniques of Rich Snippets to increase the CTR of your business in searches.

Robots txt

As the name implies, robots.txt is a file in .txt (notepad) format. It works as a filter for search engine robots and makes webmasters control access permissions to certain pages or folders on sites.

SERP

Acronym in English for “search engine results page”. These are the pages that appear to the user after the search is done.

XML Sitemap

Sitemap or sitemap, as it is best known in Brazil, is basically a list of all the pages (URLs) on the site. It works as a kind of map that will help and guide the search robot, or the user, to navigate and find pages on the site.

SSL

Secure Socket Layer (SSL) is a global standard in security technology developed by Netscape in 1994. It creates an encrypted channel between a web server and a browser (browser) to ensure that all data transmitted is confidential and secure.

Subdirectory

A subdirectory is a folder or directory created from the root of the site. See this address: web2.0.com/conceito-web20/

The subdirectory always comes to the right of the domain separated by a forward slash (/). It can also have several levels like web2.0.com/categoria/ajax/. Each subdirectory or folder allows you to group several files in it, similar to the Windows file system.

Subdomain

A subdomain is a subdivision of a domain. See this address: web2.0.com

The web2.0.com part is the domain and web2 is the subdomain. The subdomain always comes to the left of the domain separated by a period (.). The most common subdomain is “www”. It is important to note that the address www.0br.com.br may have different content than the address 0br.com.br. Infinite subdomains can be created for a domain. There may also be more than a subdomain level like euquero.web2.0.com.

Anchor text

Anchor text is the clickable text that users see as a hyperlink and can click to access the content of another page. Anchor text is considered relevant to search engine algorithms, as it already contextualizes users about what they will find on the landing page. Find out more in the post Anchor text: what are + 5 tips on how to use it in favor of SEO.

Title Tag

The Title Tag is one of the items that most influences positioning on Google, if not the most important. And it is easy to understand why. The purpose of Google’s algorithm is to be able to show people the results most relevant to their searches. If we do a search on Google and none of the results appear to be related to the keyword we are searching for, we will have a terrible experience with Google. The title of the search results helps us quickly find what we are looking for. Take the test for several searches on Google and notice that 7 to 9 results usually have the keyword you searched for in the title of the search result. See for example the search for imported cars:

URL

A well-structured URL is one of the most important factors for search engines to improve the qualification of a website in terms of ranking. Sometimes a sentence ends up becoming a URL and the best, most recommended way to separate words within that URL is by using hyphens (news/sports / goals-of-the-round). There are alternatives such as underline (_) and plus (+). However, the hyphen is more widely accepted and used.

White Hat

White Hat SEOs usually follow the guidelines of search engines to improve their positioning. They work on the content of the site, they engage in the practice of exchanging links that are consistent with their content, and they do not buy links for the simple purpose of climbing Google’s positioning. The results obtained by white hat sites usually take a little longer to appear, but the risk of being penalized by Google and disappearing from it is very low.