SEO Basic Terms & Terminology Definitions
- Above
the Fold: Refers to an organic search engine result that is high
enough that a user can see it without having to scroll down. Which ranks
appear above the fold depends on user hardware, and what kinds of search
results are being listed under that search phrase.
- Analytics: Typically
referring to Google Analytics specifically, though there are several
different analytics softwares. Analytics refers to tracking software that
provides statistics on your website’s usage, including how much traffic
the site is getting, where the traffic is coming from, what keywords users
are entering to reach your site, and much more.
- B2B: Business
to Business. B2B refers specifically to businesses that provide products
or services to other businesses, as opposed to providing products or
services to consumers. A company that manufactures forklifts to sell to
other companies would be a B2B business.
- B2C: Business
to Consumer. B2C refers specifically to businesses that provide products
or services to end users, or consumers, as opposed to providing them to
other businesses. A company that manufactures toys told to consumers would
be a B2C business.
- Backlink: Backlinks
refers to links from other websites that link to your website. Backlinks
specifically exclude links from your own site that point to other places
on your site. In general, the more backlinks you have, the more authority
search engines will assume your site has. It is worth noting, however,
that not all backlinks are equal and backlinks from generic directories
that are not industry-specific can give no benefit at all.
- Black
Hat SEO: Black Hat SEO refers to SEO practices that are in violation
of Google’s Webmaster Guidelines. Black Hat SEO attempts to manipulate
their search engine rankings through means specifically and implicitly
forbidden by Google. This can result in the sites being banned by Google,
and no longer showing up in the search results of Google or its partners.
Black Hat SEO marketers take this risk in hopes of getting fast results,
typically on sites where it doesn’t matter if they get banned a month or
two later. Sometimes also referred to as “algorithm chasers.
- Bounce
Rate: Bounce rate is an analytics term that refers to someone who
visits just one page of a website, and then leaves. Bounce rate does not
pay attention to how long they were on that page — it could be seconds or
hours — but if they only looked at one page before leaving, it’s
considered a bounce. While low bounce rates are desirable, a bounce is not
necessarily a bad thing; it’s entirely possible the user found the
information he or she was looking for on that page.
- Conversions: The
term Conversions can have a couple of different meanings in the internet
marketing world. Typically conversions refers to “converting” someone to
goes to your website into a customer — meaning they actually made a
purchase. Thus if 3,000 people visited your website, and 30 of them
purchased anything, you’d have had 30 conversions. Conversions are not
necessarily purchases though — often in the B2B world and the B2C services
sector, there aren’t strictly defined products that customers can purchase
from a shopping cart. In these cases conversions are often tracked as the
number of people who filled out a request for quote or contact form.
- CPA: Cost
per Acquisition. A paid search engine advertising term meaning the total
amount you’d have to pay to acquire a customer. Thus if you were paying $1
per click, and on average one out of 10 clickthroughs purchased from you,
your CPA would be $10. CPA is calculated as: CPC ÷ Conversion Rate.
- CPC: Cost
per Click. A paid search engine advertising term meaning the amount you
have to pay each time a user clicks on one of your ad links. This is
usually determined by bidding in an open market.
- CPM: Cost
per Thousand Impressions. A paid search engine advertising term meaning
how much you would pay for 1,000 impressions of an ad. Once a common way
of purchasing advertising online, now most online advertising is paid by
clicks, rather than by impressions.
- CTR: Click
Through Rate. A term usually used with paid search engine advertising, but
that can also apply to organic search engine optimization. CTR is the
percentage of users who actually click on your ad. So if your ad was
displayed 100 times, and 10 people clicked on it, you’d have a 10% click
through rate. CTR is calculated as: # of clicks ÷ # of ad impressions
- eCPM: Effective
Cost per Thousand Impressions. A paid search engine advertising term
meaning how much an ad that your site is displaying earns you, on average,
every 1,000 times it’s viewed. eCPM is calculated as: earnings (in
dollars) ÷ impressions * 1,000.
- Hits: A
measure of traffic on your website. Every time a page is viewed, that is
considered a hit. If the same person loads a page 8 times, that would
count as 8 hits. Also referred to as pageviews.
- Impressions: Similar
to hits or pageviews, impressions is most commonly used as a paid search
engine advertising term meaning the number of times that an ad appeared in
search engine results, or as affiliated website ads, but can also refer to
the number of times a webpage was viewed, making it synonymous with
pageviews or hits.
- Indexed
Pages: Also used as Indexed Content. This refers to the pages on a
website that a search engine has explored and stored. If a page, or site,
has not been indexed by a search engine, there is no chance that it can
show up in search engine results.
- Keywords: Used
throughout SEO in both organic and PPC, keywords refers to the actual
words or phrase a user enters into a search engine. Websites and PPC
campaigns are optimized around specific keywords.
- Longtail: Frequently
used as “longtail searches,” longtail refers to search phrases entered
into a search engine the include certain keywords as well as a number of
additional keywords. So if your site is optimized for “Tasty Apples” you
might also rank for a longtail search of “Tasty Apples to Bake in Pies.”
- Meta
Tags: Meta tags are website code that is invisible to users, and
in SEO specifically refers to the Keywords and Description tags, which are
designed to help search engines better understand and explain to users
what a website is about. See the article What is a
Meta Tag? for more.
- Organic
Search Results: The word “organic” refers
to search traffic that is not paid for with an advertising campaign, but
rather searches that come up normally as a result of the search engine’s
algorithm. See the Ecreative IM article
- Pageviews: A
measure of traffic on your website. Every time a page is viewed, that is
considered a pageview. If the same person loads a page 8 times, that would
count as 8 pageviews. Also referred to as hits.
- PPC: Pay
per Click. A term used in paid search engine advertising referring to
purchasing ads for certain keywords. PPC campaigns pay every time an ad is
clicked.
- PR: Google
Page Rank. Page Rank is Google’s way of assigning a number to the relative
authority of a site. Sites are assigned a Page Rank of 0 – 10 by Google,
and a high Page Rank implies that Google views that site as more
authoritative. The primary variables in how Google assigns Page Rank are
the number of relevant links pointing to a site, and the Page Rank of
those sites that are linking in — though many other variables are also
considered. Page Rank isnot, in any way, an indication of the
ability of a site to rank well in Google’s search engine results.
- Reciprocal
Link: Also known as a link exchange, a reciprocal link is a link
that is posted to another website in exchange for that website posting a
link to your site. You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.
- RFQ: Request
for Quote. A common way of tracking conversions on a B2B website is the
request for quote form. The assumption is that if a users interest has
been piqued enough by the content of the website and the call for action
succeeded in getting the user to contact the company for pricing. At this
point the website has done it’s job, and it’s now up to the sales team.
- Sandbox
or Google Sandbox: reference to the period
during which Google lowers the rankings of a brand new site. See full
details in our Google
Sandbox Effect article.
- SEO: Search Engine Optimization:
the ongoing process of changing the content and code of a website, as well
as its interaction with other websites, to increase the likelihood that it
will rank well in search engine results. See the SEO Basics article,
- SEM: Search
Engine Marketing. A broader term of gaining search engine traffic to a
website combining both SEO and PPC techniques.
- SERP: Search
Engine Results Page. When a user searches for something in a search
engine, the pages listing websites related to that search is the search
engine results page.
- Sitemap: A
file on your website primarily intended for search engines, that informs
the search engines where to find all the pages of your site that the
search engine should be aware of, so that they can show up on the search
engine results page. Sitemaps are usually a XML file.
- Social
Media: Social media refers to websites that create a
community of users who can interact and share information with each other.
The primary social media sites that impact SEO include
Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
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