🥇 SEO Glossary: ABC Of SEO Terms & Definitions 2019 [Infographic]

🥇 SEO Glossary: [A-Z] Terms & Definitions 🥇

Search Engine Optimization or SEO in Kenya is one of the major segments of Internet Marketing as it is responsible for improving search engine rankings. The traffic is referred to as organic traffic. SEO Terminology can be hard to master with the constant updates and changes going on each day so we have dived into to get a comprehensive guide to the SEO alphabets and its related SEO terms & definitions that can be useful.

After learning words, it becomes easy to figure out whole sentences and become a real SEO expert in Kenya. There’s no other way around it – even the most experienced and savvy internet marketers in Kenya started with the basics.

A-Z Glossary of SEO Terms

A

Adwords: Adwords is Google’s advertising platform where advertisers can get valuable insights about those keywords on which they want to bid.

Anchor text: A visible and clickable text in a hyperlink. Various search engines use anchor text to indicate the relevancy of the referring site.

Affiliate Marketing: An affiliate site markets products or services that are sold by another business or website in exchange for any fees or commissions.

Algorithm: These are used to rank websites appropriately. Algorithm by Google uses a system named as PageRank to help rank all the web pages that match the given search query.

Alt Tags: Alt tags are used to describe an image to let the users and search engines know what the image actually represents. These are used to optimize images.

Analytics: A program that analyses and gathers data about website usage. Google analytics is one such example of a free program.

Authority: The amount of trust that a site is credited with for a particular search query. Authority/trust is derived from related incoming links from other trusted sites.

Authority site: A website which has many incoming links from other related experts/hub sites.

Also Read – Hire Best SEO Company In Kenya – A Complete Guide

B

B2B: Business to Business.

B2C: Business to Consumer.

Bing: Bing is a web search engine owned and operated by Microsoft.

Blackhat: Black hat practices means they are against the search engine’s guidelines.

Blog: A blog is a frequently updated web page or a collection of informative posts.

Body Keywords: Body keywords are 2-3 word phrases that get a decent search volume (at least 2,000 searches per month)

Bounce Rate: It is referred to as the percentage of visitors who visit your website but exit without visiting any other page. Bounce rates should always be low for getting good results in SEO.

Bread crumbs: Web site navigation in a horizontal bar above the main content which helps the user to understand where they are on the site and how to get back to the root areas.

Backlinks: They are the incoming links to a website from another website. Its as simple as more high-quality backlinks means higher search engine rankings.

C

Content: The text, graphics, videos, etc. on the website is altogether referred to content. High-quality content yields a higher ranking. It has to be fresh, keyword-rich,  relevant, and original to deliver the most human content.

Conversion: A number of visitors who perform desired action on your website.

Crawler: These are the google bots who scan websites to offer up to date data to search engines.

CTR: Click-through rate measures the number of people who click a link against the total number of people who had the opportunity to do so.

Cloaking: A black hat tactics of delivering different content to the search engine spider than that it is actually seen by the human users.

Directory: It is a collection of websites based on various categories.

Deep linking: Deep linking is a practice of building links with inner pages/blog posts as opposed to a website’s home page.

Duplicate content: Content that appears at more than one place on the internet. It is the black hat SEO techniques that are usually build to bring rankings down.

Domain Authority: It is the power of a domain name and is one of many search engine ranking factors.

E

e-Commerce site: A website built to retail sales.

External Links: These are created to generate traffic on your website from third-party web pages. External linking is a part of the process of back linking.

F

Fresh Content: For indexing, it is necessary to get fresh, up to date and unique content. It’s needed to engage readers.

Feed: Its an automatically updated resource that lets us know about the latest content from a source/website.

Follow links: These are the links that count as points, pushing SEO link juice and boosting the page rank of the linked-to sites to help them go higher in the SERPs as a result.

Forums: One of the best practices to create back links.

FTPS: It is an extension to the commonly used File Transfer Protocol (FTP) that is used for the transfer of computer files between a client and server on a computer network.

G

Google Search: The most used search engine on the Internet to search for anything and it’s important to have a website optimized for Google Search.

Gateway Page: This is a page created to bring traffic from search engines and redirect visitors to the actual website with information.

Google Analytics: It is a free web analytics service provided by Google that tracks and reports website traffic.

Google Dance: It is basically termed as a change in SERPs caused by an update of the Google database or Google algorithm.

Googlebot: Google’s spider program.

Also Read – 60+ Best Digital Marketing Tools for Small Businesses In Kenya

H

Header Tags: It is HTML code (H1, H2, H3, etc.) used to format text, define a page’s organizational structure, and simplify page navigation. H1 (acts like a chapter title in a book) and for further subheadings, it is recommended to use H2, H3, H4 and so on.

.htaccess: configuration file in Apache that is used for protecting files with a password or redirect.

HTML: It is a programming language used to create websites.

HTTP: Hypertext Transfer Protocol. HTTP is a protocol used by the World Wide Web. It defines how messages are formatted and transmitted, also what actions do Web servers and browsers take in response to various commands.

HTTPS: Plain old HTTP is not secure because it transports information in plain text. This means that anyone who intercepts the traffic can read it. So a new encryption protocol named Secure Socket Layer (SSL) to the original HTTP came into action. This became to be known as “HTTP over SSL” or “HTTP Secure”.

I

Impressions: These are the number of times an ad is shown or a web page appears in search results are called impressions.

Inbound Links: Links coming to your website from another website.

Indexation: A site should be crawled and indexed appropriately. Search Console breaks this down into pages and images.

Internal Links: Links that point to another web page on the same website/domain.

J

Jump Link: These are the anchor links that take you to a specific part of a page, instead of the default top location.

Javascript: A language used to add dynamic features if embedded in HTML. Everyone cannot see that content so be careful.

K

Keywords: It is one of the most basic elements in SEO is a keyword. It is a word or a phrase that a user inputs into search engines. These are either the short tail or long tail keywords.

Keyword Density: The percentage of time a keyword appears on a webpage or a content piece as compared to the total number of words on that page.

Keyword Research: It is a method of researching keywords that reflect your website’s content so that your website can rank in search results.

Keyword Stuffing: A mismatched and inappropriate high keyword density.

KPI: Key Performance Indicators allows you to measure what you manage. No SEO would be complete without KPI.

L

Link Building: it is a process of creating backlinks to increase conversions and brand awareness.

Landing Page: A web page on which a visitor arrives/lands after clicking a link on a search engine optimized results or via social media.

Long tail keywords: Search phrases with 3 or more words

LSI: It is a Latent Semantic Indexing. LSI keywords are synonymous words that help to repeat a keyword multiple times and hence make the content look more natural.

Link Spam: Unwanted links such as those posted in user-generated content like blog comments.

Local SEO: Optimizing site for specific locations/cities and for maps pack. Eg: when someone searches for attic mold removal toronto the search results will be different for various locations / cities.  Similarly, when someone searches for soft story retrofitting in los angeles, the search results will be personalized for that location only. A local SEO strategy needs to be implemented in order to optimize web pages for various target locations within a specific neighborhood or country.

M

Meta Description: These are seen as search snippets in results. Meta description, an attribute of Meta tags, is a concise explanation of the content of a web page.

Metrics: SEO metrics take information out of Google Analytics to monitor all the work you’ve done.

Meta Data: All the relevant data that Search Engines grabs to rank your website. It can be in the form of titles, content, keywords, and headings.

N

Nofollow links: These instruct search engine bots to not count them. They do not help to boost ranks. The links are found in either the head section of a web page or within individual link code.

Negative SEO: A type of SEO used to lower the competitors’ websites’ credibility and ranking in search results.

Also Read – Email Marketing For Small Business In Kenya

O

Outbound Links: Links that go to another website from your website

Organic Search Results: The unpaid, relevant and organized search results

Off-Page/On-Page SEO: Th techniques used to improve the position of a web site in the search engine results page (SERPs).

Optimization: The process of improving technical and on-page content to rank higher.

P

PageRank: It is a link analysis algorithm used to measure web page’s popularity according to the number of links directing to that page from other websites.

PPC:  A type of paid advertising where the advertisers pay only when a user clicks on their ad.

Penalty: A negative impact on a website’s rank in search engines for doing spamming or using various manipulating methods.

Page Speed: It is a measurement of how fast the content on your page loads

Q

Quality: Quality over quantity matters whether it’s about the content or a link. Content should be relevant, unique, fresh, and original.

R

Redirect: Various methods used to change landing page address when a site is moved to a new domain.

Robots.txt: A text file found in the root directory of a website; it’s used to control how search engines crawl the website.

Rich Snippets: How data is displayed with a SERP.

Ranking: Ranking is the position that a webpage has in the search engine results page (SERPs).

Ranking factors – Google uses these ranking factors to rank a website in SERPS.

Reciprocal Link: Two sites which link to each other. Search engines usually don’t see these as high-value links.

S

Spam: SEO techniques that violate the search engine’s terms are considered as spam.

Sitemap: It is a map of a website that informs search engines as to what pages are available for crawling in a website.

Social Media: The new form of link building is through social media. Thus, social media websites like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, linkedin etc. have an indirect but positive ranking impact on a website as they can provide massive traffic.

Spider: Spiders crawl websites to index them in the search engine’s database.

Search Query: It is used to find a relevant webpage on the internet via a Search Engine.

Search Console: It is a free web service by Google for webmasters. It allows webmasters to check indexing status and optimize the visibility of their websites.

Schema: A code (semantic vocabulary) that you put on your website to help the search engines return more informative results for users.

Also Read – Local SEO Kenya 2019 – Tips & Checklist For Small Business

T

Title tags: These are part of meta tags in which a title should be keyword rich and meaningful. Optimizing titles with keywords is important in improving a web page’s ranking.

Technical SEO: Technical SEO is used to tackle on-site issues that stop search engine spiders from crawling your website.

Tracking Code: A snippet of JavaScript that collects and sends data to Analytics from a website. It can be directly added to the HTML or indirectly by using a tag management system.

U

URL: A unique web address for every website.

Unique visitor: A user with a unique IP address that visits a website.

User-generated Content: The social media, wikis, and some blogs rely heavily on User Generated Content.

V

Viral Marketing: One of the best methods to promote a brand. It encourages an individual to pass a message to an enormous amount of people.

Visibility: It is the ease to find the website during a search.

Visits: Refers to as the number of users who come to a website and proceed to browse it.

Voice Search – It is a search input method using your voice. Need to call out “Google” on your handsets, say your query loudly and clearly, and wait for your results.

W

White Hat SEO: The SEO techniques used to improve a website’s position in SERPs while staying within search engines’ terms of service.

WordPress: It is an SEO-friendly open source blogging platform used worldwide.

Widget: These are small applications used on web pages to provide specific functions such as a hit counter or IP address display.

Also Read – 10 Top Web Design Trends in Kenya For 2019 You Can’t Ignore

X

XML: A language is used to improve a website’s loading speed.

Y

Yahoo: A popular search engine that has one of the biggest directories, i.e. Yahoo directory, to submit your business there.

YouTube: It is the 2nd largest search engine that can drive massive traffic by doing video SEO there. One of Google’s product for sharing videos and market your business in the best possible ways.

Yoast: It is one of the most popular SEO plugins used in WordPress.

Z

Zombie Content: Turning a piece of content into a zombie means rehashing the information again and again without better-added value.

Zopim Chat: It’s a chat widget that lets you monitor and chat with your website visitors in real time.

I hope this terminology lesson will make all digital marketers’ SEO learning easy and simple. However, many agencies claim to do SEO when in fact the result is sometimes mediocre.

But then, how can brands make sure they partner with the best SEO agency in Kenya? This margin of interpretation of SEO can be exploited in different ways, which makes it difficult to distinguish between “good” SEO and “bad” SEO.

Also Read – How To Find The Best Digital Marketing Agency in Kenya? [GUIDE]