70 Most Popular Basic SEO Terms Every Beginner Should Know

SEO stands out for search engine optimization, a set of techniques to improve your website ranking. Correct SEO optimization can improve the positioning in the SERPs; consequently, the traffic will grow.

This post shows important SEO terms you should know to position your brand in search engines. We have comprised a list of the SEO terms for every beginner. Use the following 70+ SEO terms to start optimizing your website. It is not everything about the entire SEO but a good start.

The most common SEO terms every beginner should know:

Anchor Text

Text used to create a link. The anchor text, or in Spanish, anchor text, identifies the main word that leads a user to a particular website. This is a ranking factor that carries considerable weight with search engines.

Alt Attribute Text (or Alt Text)

Alt text for images is one of the on-page optimizations used to help search engines identify what a particular image displays. This description also allows the reading software to count what the image shows.

Authority

In SEO, authority means how relevant a domain is compared to others. A website with authority generally has facilities to position and also tends to have better results with organic traffic.

Bot

Googlebot is the generic name for Google’s web crawlers. It is a program that performs actions autonomously in search engines. Its goal is to index the largest number of pages in a search. It is also known as a crawler, robot, or spider.

Title Tag

Along with the H1, the title tag is the most important page element for the search engine. It will be the crawler’s first contact with the pages.

Meta Description

The Meta description is the description that each page has. It is one of those in charge of improving the CTR of the pages in the search engine. It is only displayed on the SERP and intended to explain to the user the purpose of a piece of content.

Keyword

These are words or phrases that describe your product or service that you choose to help determine when and where your ad can appear. The keywords you select are used to show your ads to the public.

Users use the main SEO tool to find solutions to their problems since those are the terms that express user behavior in different searches.

Long tail keywords

Long tail keywords are content marketing gold. Unlike head tails, these keywords have a much more specific objective, so the possibility of converting users is much higher.

Despite their low search volume, long tails tend to have fewer competitors. Example: “What is Content Marketing”.

Head-tail keywords

One of the existing keywords. Head-tail keywords have a high search volume, competition, and tens of thousands of results.

Typically, these keywords are extremely difficult to rank for, but the results can be incredible when they do. Unlike the long tail, these keywords have the characteristic of being more complete and generic: E.g., marketing, t-shirt, television.

Branded Keywords

These keywords are directly linked to a brand.

Branded keywords are often searched for by prospects and people in the later stages of the customer journey.

This type of keyword is essential for a company since keyword searches like this determine a high tendency among a certain group of users willing to convert.

Keyword Stuffing

It is one of the old practices used when the Google algorithm could not catch the bad practice.

The keyword stuffing or keyword stuffing consists of writing content using the same keyword in excess. Even today, you can find some content that uses this technique, which could be nicer.

It is an easily noticeable bad practice where it appears that a robot wrote the content. Currently, pages like these no longer have good positioning and have disappeared in recent years to the happiness of users and high-level professionals.

LSI—Latent Semantic Indexing

LSI means that search engines index keywords according to their semantic usage. Although they do not identify that a piece of content has a specific keyword, the search engine can identify its main term based on all the other keywords used in it.

Page rank

An old metric used by the Google algorithm, which ranked pages between 0 and 10 to identify which provided the best results.

301 Redirect

Permanently Moved: This status dictates that a page has been permanently moved to a new location.

Also known as a 301 redirect, this indication is used when we want to redirect traffic from a specific page to a new URL.

This modification is usually used when creating a new page, and we have the objective of not losing the traffic of an old page. It can also be used for URL correction and domain changes.

Heading tags

They are elements that give the perfect structure to content for the user and search engine. Heading tags are responsible for structuring an HTML website and helping users scan the content. Among the main heading tags are H1, H2, H3, etc.

Inbound link

These are links to a website sent by another website. These links are of the utmost importance for a strategy since they are the ones that will transfer the authority and relevance from one domain to another.

Internal link

Another type of link can be found on a page. Unlike external links, internal links are those whose objective is to guide the user to other pages within their own domain.

External link

This type of links can be used on any page. In this case, external links direct the user to a domain other than yours. In a link-building strategy, these links are the most important.

Domain

The domain is the main part of a website, the main address the user accesses to consume its content.

Index

The action of having a page indexed in Google means that you have a certain URL within the archives of Google so that other people can find it through searches. The time it takes to index a page can vary due to several factors.

NoIndex

A command used within the HTML of a page defines whether or not the search engine will index it. NoIndex is a code that tells Google bots whether or not to crawl a particular page.

Content

Stay encouraged when you come across the term contained in this glossary.

The content is nothing more than the text part of a page. Currently, the content plays a key role in the organic positioning of the pages, and it has become one of the main positioning factors for Google. Its purpose is to help the user understand and solve a problem.

Meta tags

They are part of the content of an HTML page, which is intended to guide the search engine crawler to find the titles, content and keywords of a page.

Algorithm

A program used by search engines to index, catalogue, and display the best pages to a user after a search.

The Google algorithm was what made this search engine different from the rest when it was created, and in the years that followed, the Google algorithm became one of the most incredible search tools ever created.

Backlinks

Backlinks are the main concern of any SEO professional. Backlinks are nothing more than links that lead from one website to another. The purpose of these links is to indicate how relevant a page is when authority is transferred from one domain to another.

Obtaining backlinks from relevant and constant web pages is one of the most decisive factors for a domain to reach the top of the Google rankings.

Bing

Search engine created by the Microsoft company.

Black Hat SEO

A set of techniques that are used to improve the positioning of a page and obtain more expressive SEO results in less time.

Normally, BlackHat’s SEO techniques go against Google’s webmaster guidelines. Black Hat SEO is considered dishonest for promoting attitudes and strategies outside of standard search engine norms.

Blog

A blog is a personal or business website or page that aims to help users find valuable information on a particular topic. Blogs have various objectives, including:

Staff

Entertainment

Business

Bounce Rate

Google Analytics metric that allows you to understand the percentage of visitors who enter a certain page of a website or blog and leave immediately.

From this metric, you can see how effective your user retention efforts are on the pages.

In addition, the Bounce Rate, also known as the bounce rate or bounce rate, is also a number that allows the professional to identify an error on their website in case there is some very absurd variation.

Clickthrough — CTR

The action of clicking on a link and reaching another page. This action can be done in a paid media ad, on one of the pages displayed in organic search, or even have an internal link that leads to another website within a specific page.

Cloaking

Cloaking is one of Google’s main penalties. In this case, a website is penalized when it shows content to the search engine and different content to the user.

When we talk about Black Hat SEO, cloaking is very common. This is one of Google’s most severe penalties, including the indefinite exclusion of a website from organic search results.

CMS—Content Management System

These systems are used for content management. Users can use them with little knowledge, and even advanced users who manage to customize the system in a more complex and advanced way.

These platforms can be used to create websites, blogs, and other pages. Among the most famous CMS, we can mention WordPress.

Conversion

Conversion is one of the main user actions on a page.

When we think about results, traffic that doesn’t convert is nothing. Therefore, when discussing SEO conversion, we refer to situations in which a user performs an action previously determined by a website or blog.

That analysis becomes even more relevant when you cover the conversions made by users who landed on the web page after a Google search.

In this case, the conversion can go from subscribing to a newsletter, downloading an ebook or even making a purchase. It is the conversions that will justify the investment in SEO.

CTA—Call to action

The CTA, or Call to Action, is one of the most used ways on websites and blogs to induce a visitor to perform a certain action.

This CTA can be used as an image or text, and its purpose is always to convert a user or encourage them to interact with some other type and format of content.

Disavow

This is a technique that is done to remove bad links that link to a domain. Disavowing bad links is extremely necessary for a site to continue to perform well with SEO.

Google Search Console is the tool to disallow these domains from linking to a website.

DNS

The Domain Name System works as a system for translating IP addresses into domain names. Without a DNS, you would need to enter the full IP of a domain to access it rather than simply using a URL.

Gizmo

The name was given to applications used on websites and blogs to improve the user experience. Among these, social network counters the number of views, among others.

Googlebot

Googlebot is the most common name used to refer to Google’s robot or crawler.

Google Analytics

One of the free tools created by Google to help website and blog administrators understand their traffic sources, traffic volume, and information generally relevant to understanding the results a website is getting.

Google Keyword Tool

Free tool used by professionals to run paid media campaigns and search for keywords for their campaigns. It can also be used to find keyword variations for other purposes, such as blogs and websites.

Google Search Console — Webmaster Tools

Google Search Console, formerly known as Webmaster Tools, is a tool that helps marketers understand traffic growth trends, variations in keyword rankings, and domain-relevant information.

In addition, with this tool, you can identify the links a site receives, Google penalties, notifications within the tool, and any other problem a website has.

Google Trends

A tool that allows the user to understand the search volume for a given keyword and its growth and decline trends over a given period.

HTML—Hyper Text Markup Language

It is the main structure of a website seen from the inside. Removing all the visual or HTML parts can be considered the skeleton of any website on the Internet. The search engine crawler reads any site through HTML.

Hummingbird update

One of the last major updates from Google aimed at making search more semantic.

Users can now perform searches more easily and find more precise results depending on the keyword. Instead of only caring about the terms used in the search, Google’s algorithm begins to consider search intent when displaying results.

Links

It is an element on a page that directs the user to another URL or domain. The link or link is the element with the greatest authority for SEO.

Link bait

The page has a unique feature: acquire as many links as possible. Like click baits content to attract traffic, Link baits are pages that aim to receive a large flow of links.

Link building

The main strategy of off-page SEO aims to acquire new links to gain authority in the search engine.

The link-building plan should always focus on obtaining high-quality links from references and reliable domains that add value to your domain.

Link farm

They are a group of websites that are connected through a network of links. Most of the time, this network of links could be valued better by the search engine since it deviates from the conventional practices of acquiring links naturally.

Search Engine

As their name says, they are tools created with the aim of helping users search to solve their problems. Currently, there are a multitude of search engines for the most varied purposes: Google, iTunes, YouTube, Google Play, etc.

NoFollow

An attribute used on external links determines that a link does not transfer authority to the destination domain.

Off-Page SEO

Optimizations are made with an external approach. Off-page techniques aim to increase the relevance of a domain.

On-Page SEO

Optimizations made within a page, whose objective is to make them more suitable for users to find them.

Page title

The title of any page that is displayed to users once they are inside the domain.

Pageviews

A number of visitors visit your given page.

Panda update

 Google updates have penalized millions of websites with low-quality, superficial content that did not help the user.

Seeker Penalty

As the name implies, these are actions performed manually and algorithmically, where search engines penalize pages that deviate from their best practice guidelines.

Penguin Update

Google updates have penalized many sites that violate Google’s guidelines regarding the acquisition of links naturally.

Query

Action taken by the user when using a keyword to start a search.

Rank brain

Google’s algorithm updates in 2016, which made user behaviour on the search engine even more relevant.

RankBrain is an artificial intelligence that learns over time and tracks user behaviour to provide the best results based on clickthroughs, page dwell, bounce rates, and other metrics.

Redirect

Same definition as 301 — also called a 301 redirect.

Robots.txt

A file that contains all the information of a website for the search engine. The objective of the robots.txt document is to identify and guide the crawler, indicating what to analyze and what to ignore.

SEO

Search Engine Optimization is a series of techniques to optimize pages, websites and blogs, focused on obtaining the best possible organic traffic results.

SEM

Search Engine Marketing, also known as Search Marketing, is a series of techniques that aim to optimize pages and ads for the most diverse search engines.

SERPs

The search engine results page (SERPs) is nothing more and nothing less than the page itself where the search results are displayed. Be it Google, YouTube, iTunes or any other search engine.

Site map

A document that shows the search engine a navigation guide for a site. The search engine uses them to see the correct navigation order on the pages.

Spider

As mentioned above, it is also known as a Bot, Crawler, Crawler, or Spider and is a robot used by search engines to index the pages of a website.

Tag

These are elements present within the HTML of any page. They can be a title tag, a Heading Tag or other possible elements.

White Hat SEO

Search engine optimization techniques approved by search engines.

We have reached the end of our SEO Glossary. Did you enjoy learning about these concepts?

This post was built to be a definitive guide to the terms and concepts of the field, and we will update it whenever necessary. So feel free to bookmark this page so you can always come back.

Now that you know all the SEO terms, how about building an entire SEO strategy that helps you bring more results? To achieve this, download the Complete Guide to SEO!

200

Status OK: The number 200 dictates that the file was found or a page was loaded. Upon further analysis, we know that this number represents that a website performs well with respect to the links, images, and pages that are indexed.

302

Found: The file was found, but it is at a different URL.

Typically, 302 redirects should be avoided, as some search engines have difficulty dealing with this redirect.

404

Not Found: The server could not find the URL that was wanted.

This error usually appears when we try to find a page with the wrong URL. Some companies use the 404 page to create jokes or help users find the page they want.