SERPs
search engine results page
Attacat SEO
Glossary
URL
uniform resource locator
“Organic”
200
404
HTTP status code indicating a particular webpage has a clean bill of health. These are the status codes SEOs love to see as they tell us that a web page is accessible to users.
When a user tries to view a page that cannot be found on the given domain’s hosting server, a 404 error page is displayed by the web browser. The appearance of 404s is high priority for SEOs as they contribute to a poor user experience and often lead people to look for solutions elsewhere.
301 301 is a number that describes the permanent redirection of one page to another. An example of when they are used is during website redesigns (e.g. directing traffic from a page on the old site to the new site’s related page).
302 If you hear someone talking about a ‘302’, this is in reference to a temporary page redirection. For SEO purposes, it is recommended that you avoid using 302 redirects (unless the redirection is indeed temporary) as they don’t transfer any page authority.
Algorithm A complex program used by search engines to determine the ordering of websites on their results pages. Google’s algorithm is constantly evolving and is closely monitored by SEOs in order to understand any related changes to best practice.
Alt tags The written description of an image placed on a web page. Alt tags are not visible to users however their use helps search engines to understand what an image relates to.
Anchor text
Bot traffic
User-visible text of a link. Search engines use anchor text to determine the relevancy of the content and referring site. For example, ‘SEO Edinburgh’ is the anchor text of the following link: SEO Edinburgh (LINK)
This refers to website usage statistics appearing as normal user interactions however actually being the result of bots visiting your site. The frequency of this occurring is difficult to estimate however some experts have identified this as an increasing trend. If not identified and dealt with properly, data gathered from robot sessions leads to inaccurate reports and misinformed decisions.
Backlink profile Your website’s backlink profile refers to the collection of links from third party websites that direct traffic to your domain. Managing your backlink profile effectively is extremely important as gaining links from websites with high domain authority that are relevant to your products and services can lead to improvements in your own authority and keyword rankings.
Black hat SEO Online marketing tactics that are considered to lead to poor user experience by search engines. Examples include link farming and keyword stuffing.
Bot Search engines use bots to monitor and identify web pages and then decide if they should be indexed or not (based on relevancy). They are also known as robots, spiders and crawlers.
Bounce rate Percentage of users that land on a website and then leave (or get time-out) without performing any actions.
Canonical issues
Conversion
These relate to issues with content that is displayed on more than one page within a domain. Duplicate content issues can be dealt with in a number of ways including the use of noindex meta tags and permanent redirects.
The term given to when a user completes a quantifiable, tracked goal on a website.
Canonicalisation This refers to an individual webpage that can be accessed from multiple URLs. When this occurs, these duplicate pages compete with one another for rankings. By using the canonical tag, we can avoid this competition for rankings and ensure a page’s authority is preserved.
Content The most valuable part of a website. The term ‘content’ includes elements such as text, copy, images and rich media. Navigation, branding and advertising are not considered to be content.
Crawl budget It’s easy to forget that Google indeed does have budget constraints. One of their most significant expenses is related to the crawling and indexing of the unfathomable number of pages that exists on the internet. In an attempt to control this expense, Google limits both the crawl frequency and number of pages it crawls per domain. They use a number of metrics when deciding a website’s crawl budget including domain authority, content age, site complexity and many more.
Deep linking Deep linking refers to the technical process of allowing apps to be crawled and indexed as if they were normal web pages. This allows users to access apps directly from SERPs even if they don’t have the app already installed on their device. It is widely assumed that Google’s promotion of the deep linking process indicates their preference of apps over traditional web pages on mobile devices.
Domain authority A metric that represents the perceived quality of a website in the eyes of search
engines. Domain authority is based on website age, popularity and size and is measured on a one hundred point scale. This metric is thought to be associated with keyword ranking positions and as such its improvement is the focus of many marketing efforts.
Duplicate content Content that is similar or identical to content found on another website or page. Sites are often penalised heavily by search engines for serving duplicate content.
Dynamic URLS These are often generated from specific queries to a site’s database such as search functions or filters. They often contain characters such as: ? & % + = $.
Exit rate This is an often misinterpreted metric that can be found on Google Analytics. Exit rate refers to the percentage of total views of a given page that serve as the exit point for users. A high exit rate is often interpreted as negative however this isn’t always the case. When a user leaves a website, this can simply mean that they’ve found the information they’ve been searching for.
Fragmented search queries Refers to search queries that aren’t constructed in full-sentence form. They are usually 2 or 3 words in length and those who use them tend to visit a number of websites displayed on the given SERP. Recent research suggests that up to 50% of the population prefer to search with this type of query.
Full search queries Refers to search queries performed in full sentence form. In contrast to those who prefer searching with fragmented queries, people who use full queries like to visit the fewest pages possible to find the information they need.
Goal tracking Goal tracking is a business performance measurement tool within Google Analytics. These can be tailored to suit goals relating to finance, lead generation, traffic and many more.
Google Analytics A web-based program which gathers, sorts and displays session data relating to a tracked website. SEOs spend a lot of time analysing this data in order to identify potential problems as well as opportunities for website improvements.
featured domain is likely to offer highly relevant information to the user and as such tries to increase the likelihood of them clicking through. It’s important to optimise your website to be able to be featured in Knowledge Graphs in the event that a query is performed that qualifies you for one.
Headings The different HTML heading and subheading options of a webpage. They range from H1s (most important) to H6s (least important) and their use is significant in terms of keyword targeting. The effective use of heading elements also helps in the segmentation of web page copy to enhance user experience.
HTML Hypertext markup language (HTML) is known as the ‘mother tongue’ of search engines and websites alike. It refers to a set of directives that are used to add formatting and functionality to the plain text that is displayed on the internet.
Google Knowledge Graph A large section of information displayed in a Google SERP with detailed information relating to a highly relevant result from the given search query. Whenever a Knowledge Graph is displayed, Google is confident that the
Impressions An impression simply means that a user has seen (or at least been given the opportunity to see) an online advertisement. Impression statistics aren’t overly accurate as there’s no guarantee that a user has genuinely seen and interpreted an advertisement. Impression data is also prone to be skewed by robot traffic.
Influencer marketing
Landing page
A form of marketing that targets people who have influence over a wider audience. This is done in an attempt to encourage the ‘influencer’ to promote your product for you and thereby reaching a qualified audience that is receptive to your message.
The page that a user starts their session on within a domain. If you were to click on a listing within a SERP, the page that opens would be counted as the landing page for your session on the given website.
Keyword research The process of researching keyword queries to determine which ones are appropriate to target for a given website.
Link Clickable text or element of a web page which causes the browser to jump to a new page or site. When links are designed and placed strategically, they have the ability to contribute towards site authority and ranking improvements.
Link building The process of building relationships with third party websites in an attempt to accrue incoming links to a domain. Link building, when performed ethically and with a user focus, can help a website to achieve improved domain authority and rankings.
Link signals Keywords Words or phrases highly relevant to the offering of a website. SEOs carefully research, select and target keywords in an attempt to drive qualified traffic to websites.
This refers to characteristics of links that search engines use to assess link quality. Some factors that contribute to this perception of link quality include global popularity, shares on social media, recency and the consistency of anchor text.
Local optimisation The process of optimising online presence in relation to enabling local customers to find and interact with your business.
Long tail queries Long tail queries refer to highly specified search terms that are infrequently performed but have a highly defined purpose or purchase intent. It’s thought that up to 70% of all searches are made up of queries considered to be long tail. They can prove extremely valuable to websites if targeted effectively as they tend to attract highly qualified traffic.
Meta description A meta description is a brief synopsis of the contents of a web page. The meta description is displayed on search engine results pages (SERPs) under the page’s title and URL. Adhering to best practices related to meta descriptions ensures that search engines display the description you’d like users to see when clicking through to a web page.
Meta keywords An HTML coded element that allows you to state keywords that you are targeting on a given page. These are no longer used by search engines in the page ranking process. The use of meta keywords is now discouraged due to the fact that they can offer your competitors
information regarding the keywords you are targeting.
Meta tags The purposeful markup of website content that promotes information about a page. Frequently marked-up information includes business addresses, contact details and customer reviews. SEOs markup website content in an attempt to improve the visibility and click through rates of results within a SERP.
Native advertising A style of online advertising that aims to seamlessly place paid content within copy in an attempt to improve user perception of the product being advertised. A keen eye can usually identify the paid message however this form of advertising feels less intrusive and often proves effective in selling to those who don’t like to be sold to.
Nofollow A code that instructs search engine crawlers to not follow a particular link so that no transference of authority occurs. Whether or not the crawlers actually respect these instructions is another story.
Noindex
Pagination
A piece of code that instructs search engine crawlers not to index a particular web page. This is often included in a website’s robot.txt file. Noindex tags are useful whenever we don’t want search engines to know the content of certain pages. This might be the case with duplicate material or pages with low quality content.
Refers to the practice of segmenting links to content on multiple pages. Used when a site has a large number of pages of content relating to a specific category. By using pagination effectively, we can avoid exceeding the recommended number of links per page. This leads to better organised content and improved internal site navigation.
Organic search results Search engine results that are not sponsored or paid for. Results that rank highest have been deemed the most naturally relevant and authoritative by search engine algorithms.
Page load time The time it takes for a web page to be fully displayed within a browser. Search engines take this metric very seriously as an indicator of user experience and thus include it as a ranking factor. This page metric has become increasingly important as internet users continue to grow impatient of long page load times.
Pagerank A website quality judging algorithm designed by one of Google’s cofounders, Larry Page. It uses a number of quality signals to contribute toward the ranking of results on Google’s SERPs.
Panda algorithm Google’s ‘Panda’ algorithm was introduced in 2011 and continues to be updated. Essentially, it was designed to combat spam. The Panda algorithm does this by penalising sites with pages that offer little value to users such as those with large numbers of ads in comparison to content.
Scraper
Penguin algorithm Google’s ‘Penguin’ algorithm was introduced in 2012 and is still being updated today. The Penguin algorithm was designed to find and penalise websites that engage in unethical link practices.
Redirect The act of redirecting traffic earned by a web page to another. There are a number of ways to do this including permanent (301) and temporary (302) redirections which are outlined in this glossary.
Robot.txt A file located on a website’s domain that suggests which content search engine robots should not crawl.
RSS Rich site summary (RSS) is a method of syndicating information into a feed reader or another type of software which allows for reader subscription.
Scraper websites are those that effectively steal content from other sites and house them on their own domain. People set up these pirate sites in an attempt to steal traffic and advertising revenue from legitimate sites. Search engines are proactive in the search for scrapers and aggressive in the battle against their existence.
SERPs Search engine ranking pages (SERPs) are the pages you are directed to after performing a search. Over 200 ranking factors currently exist that determine page positioning on SERPs. Google is rather upfront about a few of them however the struggle to become aware of them all continues.
Sitemap A page that acts as a map of a domain’s organisation. Sitemaps allow for easier indexing by search engines and are useful tools to reference when trying to understand the organisation of a website.
Title elements
White Hat SEO
Page titles (or title tags) are used to describe the content displayed on a given webpage. They appear in the window/tab heading of your browser and also act as the title of SERP snippets. Title tags are incredibly important in terms of SEO as their optimisation contributes towards the earning of qualified website traffic.
SEO marketing techniques and processes that are in compliance with search engine guidelines. Search engines constantly change their best practice guidelines which means that SEOs must keep a watchful eye over them to ensure White Hat methods are followed.
Tracking code A piece of code that allows a page’s traffic and user metrics to be analysed using Google Analytics. The version and position of the code within a page’s HTML is key to its effectiveness.
URL The unique resource locator (URL) is a description of the unique address of a website. Well designed URLs can be great brand building contributors and can also affect the successful indexing of web pages.
USP Unique selling propositions (USPs) refer to the communication of value-creating products, services and processes offered by a business that aren’t replicated by its competitors. The clear and accurate communication of USPs is vital in the world of digital marketing including their dissemination in meta data, website copy and branding.
XHTML Extensible hypertext markup language (XHTML) is a set of directives used to extend HTML language.
XML An extensible markup language (XML) is a set of text directives used to alter how information is displayed on web pages.