SEO Key Term Definition List

Some may think that SEO terms can be confusing and at times some may not understand what they may mean. Here are some complex and basic SEO terms and what each one means.

Sitemap: A document that gives a map of all the website pages; it’s made so that users that are on the site can use it as an index of that particular website.

Conversion Form: This is a form that’s used to gather information about the person that is visiting your site. By collecting contact information on site visitors enables you to follow up with leads that you may get.

Long Tail Keyword: A keyword that’s not searched commonly… this is generally two words or more that you can often find used in a phrase. This is something that is good for small businesses… long tail keywords are not difficult and generally have searchers that are qualified.

Domain: This is the main address for the site you’re searching or want searched. What some don’t know is that you have to renew your ownership rights of the domain name; most like to do this for several years in advance. A lot of rankings like websites that have been registered for years in advance; this shows commitment to them.

Organic Search Results: These are search results that are not paid for with advertisement campaigns. They are search results that come up by the process of the search engine.

Bounce Rate: The bounce rate is a term of analytical genre that talks about a person that goes to one page of a website and then leaves the website entirely. In terms of bounce rate, the length of time that is spent on the page isn’t what is looked at and doesn’t matter… if only one page is looked at before leaving the website that is what is considered a bounce. It is very good if you have a bounce rate that is low, but if it isn’t low it doesn’t mean that’s bad.

Impressions: Impressions is a term that you’ll generally find when it is a website that utilizes advertisements by a paid search engine. An impression is the amount of times an ad showed up in the results area of a search engine. It can also be geared towards the amount of times that a webpage has been viewed.

RSS Feed: Really Simple Syndication is what RSS stands for. This is a way to receive any updated information on new material that comes from a source on the web. Having a RSS Feed set up for your website will aid your followers in being able to see new content that you have released.

Traffic Rank: This shows you the rank of how much traffic your site will get versus all of the other sites you can find on the internet. Alexa is a great place for you to find out where your rank in traffic is.

Anchor Text: This is the text that is used in a link to a web page. Generally speaking, you’ll see this text is dark blue in color and is underlined. If you have been to that website before and used the anchor text previously the color will be purple. This is something good for search engines… they are able to see what the page that you are going to is about because it describes what it is you will actually see when you click on the link that is provided.

Cascading Style Sheets: This is a part of the code you have that give a definition to the multiple elements that make up the way your site looks.

Internal Link: A link that’ll take you from one particular page to another page that is on the same website. For instance, if you are going from your homepage to your history page.

Ranking Factor: A way in which a search engine decides where to place a page at in a rank. For instance, if they want to base their ranks on the amount of inbound links that lead to a page.

Black Hat SEO: Black Hat SEO is in reference to SEO practices that are in direct harm of the Webmaster Guidelines by Google. What a Black Hat SEO does is tries to influence their ranking in a search engine in ways that have been forbidden by Google. The end result of the site doing this can be that the site being banned by Google, the site may not be able to show in the search engine on Google or those sites that partner with Google. This is a great risk that Black Hat SEOs take in the hope that they will get results faster, and they usually do this on sites they don’t care about being banned from the site that they may get banned from.

Inbound Link: This is a link that will take you from one site to another site. This link will progress your SEO.

Hits: Hits are a way in which the traffic on your website is measured. Every time someone visits or views your page you have received a hit. And even if someone reloads that same page several times, you will receive a hit for each time the page is reloaded.

Inbound Marketing: This is a marketing strategy that brings visitors in to your website. It’s a plan that’s put into place that will draw the attention of customers, it helps in making your website easily found by those that are looking for what you offer and always has content that is interesting and that will cause customers to want to come to your website.

Reciprocal Link: A reciprocal link can sometimes be referred to as a link exchange. This is a link will lead you to a different website… in exchange for having a link that leads to that website they have a link on their website that will lead to your website.

SERP: Search Engine Ranking Page (SERP) is a page that you are sent to once you have asked a question on a search engine. Usually you will find 10 results that come back from your search; it all depends on the question or inquiry you’ve made and which search engine that you utilize for this.

ROAS: ROAS stands for Return On Advertising Spending. This is a representation of the dollars that are earned per the dollars that went out on the website that you are representing. The way in which this is calculated is to divide the money that has come in from the website by the money that was spent on getting the website up and running. Anything that is less than one will show that there was less revenue has come in than was spent on the advertisement itself.

Meta Description: This is a description that is very brief, generally less than 160 characters that gives description of why someone would want to visit your website.

Conversion Rate Optimization: Conversion Rate Optimization (sometimes referred to as CRO) is a system that’s in place for rising the percentage of people that will visit your website that eventually will turn into customers, or someone that will take some form of action on your webpage.