301 REDIRECT - Permanent redirect that informs search engines the page they are trying to access has permanently changed its address. Rankings from the previous page should be transferred to the new address.

404 SERVER CODE - Not Found or 404 error message is a standard response code indicating that the client was able to communicate with a given server, but the server could not find what was requested. Message is most frequently seen when pages are moved/removed but redirects are not put in place.

ALT TAG - Part of the HTML attribute of the IMG tag. The alt tag/attribute is the text displayed if an image does not load (e.g. file missing). Google can’t see what the actual image presents, but it can read the alt tag. Alt tags are the best way to tell Google what your images are “saying”.

ANCHOR TEXT - Every link consists of two main elements: the web address and the anchor text. The anchor text works as the link to the web address.

BACKLINKS - Link placed on another website that points to your site. Backlinks are a very important SEO factor. Acquiring backlinks with relevant anchor texts is one of the best ways to improving your search engine rankings.

BOUNCE RATE – Percentage of people who visit any one page of your website, and leave without visiting another page.

CANONICAL TAG - HTML link element that lets webmasters inform search engines they have used the same content as another page, but are doing so to share the information and not to influence ranking. When a search engine sees this tag, it does not penalize the site for duplicate content.

DUPLICATE CONTENT – Penalty assessed by search engines when separate pages within your website contain the same or very similar content; or if you have copied content from another website.

INTERNAL LINK - Link from one page to another on the same website (i.e. link from your homepage to your products page). Best Practice: intuitive internal links help Google understand your navigation and improve the user experience.

INDEXED PAGES - Pages of your website that are stored by search engines.

KEYWORDS - Single words or phrases of importance for a given page or website.

KEYWORD DENSITY - Score, expressed as a percentage, representing the frequency a specific phrase appears in a piece of text. To calculate: divide the number of times your keyword appears by the total number of words in a piece of text, multiplied by 100.

KEYWORD STUFFING - Practice of taking a word or a phrase and frequently repeating it, to the point where the text no longer looks natural, to increase the keyword density of your desired phrase. Keyword stuffing has a negative SEO effect.

LATENT SEMANTIC INDEXING (LSI) - Keywords that are similar to your primary keyword and often found near your primary keyword in the natural language.

LINK BUILDING - Process of getting backlinks to your page and one of the most important ranking factors.

LINK FARM - Network of websites that link to each other for the sole purpose of increasing rankings. An old tactic that is penalized.

©2017 Sikich LLP. All Rights Reserved.

SEO TERMS

MARKETING AND DESIGN

SIKICH.COM877.279.1900 | info@sikich.com

©2017 Sikich LLP. All Rights Reserved. SIKICH.COM877.279.1900 | info@sikich.com

SEO TERMSMARKETING AND DESIGN

LINK JUICE - SEO term referring to the equity passed to a site via internal or external links. High authority, high traffic sites provide more link juice and positively affect your rankings more, than low authority, low traffic sites. The more link juice your site has, the more positively search engines will value it.

LOCAL BUSINESS LISTINGS - Search engine results that appear next to maps at the top of the page on locally targeted searches. Business may submit requests or claim existing local business listings if a search engine has already added the company to its results.

LONG TAIL KEYWORD - Uncommon or infrequently searched keyword, typically with three or more words in the phrase. It’s important to target long tail keywords, as they are lower difficulty and often have more qualified searchers.

META DESCRIPTION - Short page description displayed in a search engine’s results page. Meta descriptions are not direct ranking factors, but can improve your click-thru rate because they act as an advertisement for your search result.

NATURAL LINKS - Links your page has naturally acquired. Example: a post that goes viral on Twitter and the shares, re-tweets, and links are natural links.

OFF-PAGE SEO – Strategy to improve your search rankings that are not done directly on your page. The main element of off-page SEO is link building.

ON-PAGE SEO - Activities you do on your page to improve its rankings. Includes: tuning the HTML structure, improving title tags and descriptions, improving site load times, checking keyword usage and density, improving internal linking structure.

ORGANIC SEARCH RESULTS (NATURAL SEARCH RESULTS) - Search engine results below the paid advertisements. These results are displayed based on the relevance to the search performed.

ROBOTS.TXT - File that notifies search engines which areas your site are restricted and should not be crawled, and which areas should be.

SERP (SEARCH ENGINE RESULTS PAGE) - Page displayed when you search for a keyword on Google or another search engine.

SPIDER (CRAWLER, BOT, ROBOT) - Special piece of software that browses the web, looking for new sites, sending the data back to the search engine to be indexed and ranked.

TITLE TAG - Title that appears in search engine results pages and the first piece of information search engines analyze - a very important SEO factor.

XML SITEMAP - Usually seen as a file (sitemap.xml), it provides search engines a map of the different URLs in your site, and helps Google index your site.