The SEO Vocabulary To Learn By Heart If You Want To Rank

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Key Takeaways

• SEO terminology is the shared vocabulary of search optimisation, covering how search engines crawl and index pages, how links pass authority, and how pages are measured and ranked.
• The terms fall into four groups: links (backlink, anchor text, nofollow), on-page elements (title tag, meta description, headings, alt text), technical setup (sitemap, robots.txt, SSL, redirects) and measurement (bounce rate, search volume, search intent).
• Some terms writers still meet are historical: Toolbar PageRank was withdrawn in 2016 and Alexa Traffic Rank closed in 2022.
• Meta descriptions are cut by pixel width, not a fixed character count, so around 150 to 160 characters is the practical ceiling.
• Search engines keep changing, so the vocabulary needs refreshing as often as the writing does.

The digital world changes constantly, and online marketing demands that you keep updating yourself, above all in SEO, because search engines refine and develop their systems all the time, and the SEO terminology moves with them. So if you write SEO articles, or are thinking of starting, this SEO terms glossary is a chance to review the common SEO terms that matter, and to learn the SEO vocabulary by heart.

A To C

• Outbound Link. A link from your website out to another site, usually to cite a source within an article. Outbound links help your website look credible and play a part in how search engines rank your pages. An affiliate link is a specific type of outbound link that tracks referrals for commission.
• Alt Text / Alt Attribute. A word or sentence describing an image, usually a keyword or a description of the picture that relates to the article’s topic.
• Anchor Text. A word, phrase or sentence with a link (URL) attached, relating to the destination page. It usually appears in dark blue and underlined, or in purple. Anchor text lets readers click through to study more on a subject related to the article they are reading.
• Authority. How trustworthy a website is judged to be, as assessed by the search engine’s algorithm.
• Backlink / External Link. A link to your site from another website, whether as a citation or a link placed on a page for commercial or other reasons.
• Back-end. The website management system, often called the “back of house”, where the site is controlled through code such as HTML, PHP, ASP, XML and Java, and where pages are added, removed and edited.
• Blog. A page that collects blog content, usually on topics tied to one specific field.
• Bounce Rate. The share of visits that view only one page, meaning the user lands on a page and leaves without clicking anywhere else. A high bounce rate can signal that the website is not working well. Lowering it takes a good experience, an appealing design, and content and information interesting enough that visitors want to read on or click to other pages.
• Branded Keyword. A keyword tied to a specific brand, such as “Primal services” or “Dior bag”.
• Broken Link. A link that leads to a “404 error page”, because the page was deleted or renamed without a redirect being set.
• Browser. The program used to reach web pages and communicate through them, such as Google Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Microsoft Edge.
• Cache. Data stored repeatedly in the browser for the next visit to a website, so the data loads quickly without being requested from the source again. Its weakness is that when a website is updated, the cached data may still show the old page, which is why caches should be cleared from time to time to store the new data.
• ccTLD (Country-Code Top-Level Domain). A domain name that specifies a country or region, such as .co.th (Thailand) or .co.uk (United Kingdom).
• CMS (Content Management System). A platform or ready-made program for building a website without writing code, complete with templates and tools ready to use. The best-known and most widely used CMSs include WordPress and Joomla.
• Conversion Form. A short, concise form for users to enter contact details, usually an email address or phone number. A conversion form drives conversion rate well and matters as much as a call to action.
• Crawler. The search engine’s program that gathers data from your website to process and rank it in the results.

D To I

• Dofollow Link. A link that lets search engine robots crawl through to the destination and pass ranking signals to it.
• DNS (Domain Name System / Domain Name Server). The system that manages website names such as www.yoursite.com. DNS translates the domain name into the numeric IP address used to reach other servers, such as the web host.
• Error 404. A URL that has been deleted, changed or never existed usually shows an Error 404 page. The two main causes are a mistyped URL or a problem with the page. A 404 has no direct effect on rankings, but indirectly, if a link fails often and users keep meeting the error, they are unlikely to click that link again, because they remember what happens when they do.
• Featured Snippet. The box at the very top of the results page, chosen by the search engine as the content most relevant to the query. It is often called Position 0.
• Headings. The headings within an article, labelled H1 and H2 to H6 in order of importance.
• HTTP And HTTPS Protocol. Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is the protocol for sending and receiving data online, exchanging it between the client (browser) and the server (website). Think of a customer sending a request to a shop, the shop accepting it and sending back what was asked for.
  HTTP and HTTPS differ in the SSL certificate, which secures the data sent between the client side (browser) and the server (website), and which is also one of Google’s ranking factors.
• Inbound Link. A link from another website to yours.
• Internal Link. A link connecting pages within the same website.
• Indexed Pages. The pages of your website stored in the search engine’s database.

K To P

• Keyword. A word or short phrase used to search on a search engine. Keywords matter enormously in SEO writing, because they let the search engine’s systems find and assess how relevant an article is to a search.
• Long-Tail Keyword. A keyword longer than usual, normally with a specific detail added, such as “modern detached house near the BTS” or “cheap second-hand clothes shop”.
• Meta Description. The text describing a website’s link on the search results page. When users search and your website appears, this is the text that tells them what the content is about. Google cuts descriptions by pixel width rather than by a fixed character count, which in practice means around 150 to 160 characters before the text is truncated.
• Nofollow Link. A link that tells search engine robots not to follow it or pass credit through it, used to deter repeated self-promotional links (spam) or to signal that the link has no endorsement from the source site. When the search engine’s bot arrives, it gives the link no weight, so it does not affect rankings.
• Organic. Any activity that produces results naturally, without buying advertising. In this context it means SEO, the process of lifting a website onto a search engine’s first page effectively, because it involves no advertising cost.
• Page Speed. How fast a page loads for display. The faster it loads, the better.
• Page Title. The short text that describes what the content on a page is.
• PageRank. Google’s original algorithm for scoring a page’s importance by the links pointing at it. For years a public 0 to 10 PageRank score was visible in the Google Toolbar; Google withdrew that public score in 2016, but PageRank remains one of the signals in its ranking systems.
• PPC (Pay-Per-Click). The cost charged per click when someone reaches your website through an advertisement on a search engine, often also called CPC (Cost-Per-Click).

R To Z

• Redirect. The process that sends users and robots from one page to another page you have specified.
• Referral Traffic. Visits that reach your website without going through a search engine, such as clicks from a link on another website or from a link shared on social media.
• Responsive. A design approach in which a website is built once and displays correctly on every screen size, whether desktop, laptop, tablet or smartphone. The layout differs by screen, but the structure and key information stay the same. With so many screen sizes in use, responsive design matters a great deal and affects SEO too.
• Robots.txt. A text file telling the search engine which parts of your website it should crawl and which it should ignore.
• Search Intent. The purpose behind a user’s search.
• Search Engine. A program or tool for finding information online by typing keywords. It returns website links, images and videos, and now supports voice and image search too. The best-known search engines include Google, Yahoo and Bing.
• SEO (Search Engine Optimisation). The process of improving a website to meet the search engine’s rules and requirements, so it climbs naturally to the first page. It takes time and continuous refinement to stop a hard-won ranking falling back.
• Search Query. The word or phrase people type into a search engine, also called a search term.
• Search Volume. The number of times a keyword is searched within a set period.
• Sitemap. A map of the website that shows an overview of everything on it, collecting the links to every page in one place.
  Read more: Sitemaps, the website map that makes SEO work better
• SSL Certificate. A certificate confirming that the data sent over the website’s connection is secured. A website with an SSL certificate encrypts its data so that anyone who intercepts it cannot use it. You can spot it by “https” instead of “http” in the address, or by the locked padlock that browsers such as Google Chrome show to confirm the site holds a security certificate.
• Traffic. The number of visits to your website.
• Title Tag. The heading shown on the search results page, sometimes called the meta title.
• Traffic Rank. A website’s ranking by visits compared with other sites, once measured by Alexa Traffic Rank.
• UI (User Interface). The look of the website we use. Looks alone are not enough, because a good UI responds well in use: quick access to information, a design, colours and type that are easy on the eye, and simple operation. It works together with UX to give the website’s users the best experience.
• Unnatural Links. Links the search engine detects as placed inappropriately, or unrelated to the content of the article.
• UX (User Experience). The user’s experience of the website. Good UX lets users reach products, services and information conveniently, without confusion between pages, with links in and out that work properly, and it keeps users on the site for a long time.
• URL (Uniform Resource Locator). The identifier for a website’s location online, or in plain terms, the website’s “address”.

To Every SEO Writer, And Everyone Learning To Be One

The terms above are not every piece of SEO terminology in the world, but we have selected the ones that matter most and turn up most often, so that anyone interested can build a stronger understanding of SEO. Treat it as an SEO glossary for beginners to return to, and keep this SEO terms glossary open while you write. Your SEO vocabulary will keep growing, because the common SEO terms change as search does, and we firmly believe that writing SEO articles is not hard. If you commit enough care and effort, your website can climb high on the results page. When you want an SEO agency alongside you, Primal’s team is ready.

Frequently Asked Questions About SEO Terms (FAQs)

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