75 SEO terms every blogger should know
The amount of blogging and SEO terms and acronyms can be overwhelming for a beginning blogger (even for experienced ones, too).
What does CTA stand for, or what is the meaning of a sandbox? What is a robots.txt file?
I've gathered over 75 SEO terms you should know about and listed them below with some explanation.
75+ SEO terms you should know about
Affiliate marketing is a marketing strategy in which a business rewards affiliates for bringing traffic or sales. Affiliates promote a business's products or services and get a commission for each sale or lead they generate.
Alt Tag
A description of an image on a website. Search engines cannot see images, so they must rely on ALT text to know what an image is of. It also helps visually impaired users understand the image's content through screen readers.
Anchor text
the actual text that is shown for a link to a webpage> For example, the anchor text in this is the anchor text, 'this is the anchor text' (even when the link points to another page).
Backlinks
are links from another website pointing to your blog. Backlinks are (still) very important for off-site SEO and help you rank higher in the search results.
Black hat SEO
is the unethical practice of trying to get a higher ranking in the search results (for example, being part of a private blog network where everyone links to each other). You might get de-indexed when being caught using black-hat SEO
Blog
is a regularly updated website or web page that features written content on various topics. A blog is the abbreviation of a weblog.
Bounce rate
the percentage of visitors to your site who leave after only viewing one page. You should aim for a very low bounce rate, which means that visitors click on your links and visit other pages, too.
Breadcrumbs
A navigational aid, mostly located at the top of a webpage, shows users where they are on your blog. They provide a clickable path back to the homepage or back to the category page.
Crawler budget
the number of pages search engines crawl onto a website within a timeframe. Search engines don't have unlimited resources (and power), so they want to crawl a website as efficiently as possible. That is why they assign a crawl budget (or time) to websites. (more about crawler budget on how do search engines work)
CSS (Cascade Style Sheets)
is a 'computer language' used to give HTML a better look. HTML is, in fact, only a 'language' for displaying text and pictures in a browser; CSS controls the layout, colors, fonts, and overall visual appearance of web pages
CTA (Call To Action)
a request to your blog visitors to take action after they read your blog post. This can be done by having them subscribe to your newsletter or schedule a call.
CTR (Click Through Rate)
the percentage of people that click a link on your blog or click on a link in a newsletter. For example, if you send out an email with a link in it, and ten people click on that link, the CTR is 10%
DA (Domain Authority)
Based on a scale from 1 to 100, your domain authority is calculated based on your blog's age, popularity, traffic, etc. It is one of the many factors search engines use to base your ranking in the search results. Do-Follow link
or better known as a link, is a normal link that can be followed by your visitors and search engines. This is the default setting for a link. Opposite is a no-follow link.
EEAT
is the acronym for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. And it is one of the ranking factors for Google's search algorithm.
You can read more about E-E-A-T on a quick guide to boost the E-E-A-T of your blog
Email marketing
involves sending marketing messages or newsletters to a list of subscribers via email. It normally tells a story and recommendations to buy (affiliate) products.
Evergreen content
is timeless and high-quality information that remains valuable to readers over a long period. Evergreen content continues to attract traffic well beyond its publication date.
Featured snippets
is a summary of an answer to a user's search query displayed on top of Google search results. It is taken from a webpage and includes the page title and URL.
Funnel
a sale funnel is the buying process or sequence your blog uses to lead visitors through and make a purchase with them or an affiliate.
Google Analytics
is an essential tool for bloggers, giving them insights into their website's traffic, user behavior, and engagement. It offers metrics such as page views, session duration, bounce rate, and traffic acquisition, helping bloggers understand their audience and traffic sources.
Google Sandbox
an SEO term that refers to a period of time when new websites don't seem to rank well in Google's search results. Google uses this period to check the site's behavior and see if it gains authority. This period can take anywhere from 3 months to one year. After this period, websites start ranking higher as Google releases 'restrictions' on the site. Note: Google never officially confirmed the existence of the 'sandbox'
Google update
are updates made to Google's search engine algorithm in order to serve better search results for its users. Several of these updates can happen during the year, and some have dramatic effects on website rankings (like the Helpful Content Update, where Google tried to penalize AI-written content).
GSC - Google Search Console
is another free (tracking) tool that you can use to find out how often (and how high) your site appears in Google's search results and for what keywords you are ranked.
Guest posting
is writing articles or content for another website. Usually, this is done for getting backlinks to your blog, and so increasing traffic and exposure for your blog
Heading tags (H tags)
are HTML tags that 'separate' headings (H1 tags) and sub-headings (H2 to H6 tags) from the rest of the content on your blog post.
Headings create structure and provide navigation for your readers. These tags also help Google understand your content (that is why you have to try putting keywords in the H1 and H2 tags).
Hosting
is the place where your blog lives on the internet. Hosting providers have many servers (and other network infrastructure) where your blog is stored. They ensure the whole can access your blog quickly and securely.
HTML
is the abbreviation for Hypertext Markup Language, which is the standard markup language for creating web pages and web applications. HTML tells your browser how to display webpages correctly.
Indexing
is the process by which search engines find your content and then make it available to users by displaying it on their search result pages.
Internal link
is a link on your blog that connects a reader to another page on your blog. Internal links serve a double purpose: they are a good way to keep visitors on your blog by offering them more (related) content, and they make it easier for Google (or other search engines) to understand your site and its structure.
JavaScript
is a computer programming language commonly used to create interactive elements of a website. HTML is a 'static' language, where what is displayed can't change.
Keyword
is a word (or phrase) that people type in a search engine for which they seek information. If your blog's content matches that keyword (or keyword phrase), your blog might be displayed in the search engine result pages. There are millions of sites that have content about a certain topic or keyword, and you have to compete against these to get a higher ranking in the result pages. That is why SEO is so important.
Keyword cannibalisation
happens when you optimize two blog posts for the same keyword in SEO. Now, you are not only competing against 1000 other blogs to get a high ranking but also against yourself.
Keyword research
is the process where you search and choose keywords for a blog post. Most often, bloggers use online keyword finders to find keywords and then research their search volume, difficulty score, etc.
Ideally, a perfect keyword has high traffic and low competition (so it's easier to rank for).
Keyword stuffing
is a trick used in black hat SEO, which involves repeating the same keyword many times in the same article.
This used to be an effective technique, but search engines have become much smarter and recognize this repeating pattern, and they can even penalize your site for doing this.
Link building
is the process of getting other sites to link to your blog in order to gain authority.
This is very important for your off-site SEO because when many other sites or blogs link to your blog, Google thinks that your content is important and will reward you with a higher ranking.
Link juice
is an SEO term that refers to the value passed (via a link) from one page to another.
You can find much more information about links and link juice on the importance of internal linking for SEO
Long-tail keyword
are longer and more in-depth keyword phrases that are very specific to whatever a reader is searching for.
Long-tail keywords have a lower search volume than shorter keywords but an easier difficulty score and are, therefore, easier to rank for.
Meta description
is a short description of what your post is about and is displayed in the search results under the article title.
As search engines became much smarter, they make their own summary (using AI to analyze your post) to display under the title. This makes the meta description obsolete, but it's always good to have it in your HTML script; it can always be a guide for search engines.
No-Follow links
this tag tells search engines not to follow that specific link. Not-follow links are typically used for affiliate links, and they preserve the link juice on your blog instead of passing it on to another site.
Off-site SEO
is everything you do outside of your website that impacts rankings in search engine results pages.
Backlinks (link building) are the most common way to optimize for off-page SEO.
On-site SEO
refers to everything you do on your website in order to get a higher ranking and increase traffic.
The most common practices are keyword research, internal linking, site speed improvements, pillar posts, etc.
PA (Page Authority)
PageRank
Passive income
Permalink
Query (search query)
Ranking
Redirect
Robots.txt
RSS
Search intent
SEO
SERP
Sitemap
Slug
Snippets
Tag
Time on page
URL
User intent
UX (User eXperience)
White Hate SEO
Widget
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