The Ultimate SEO Jargon Buster

Working with a web agency on your websites SEO – that’s search engine optimisation for the uninitiated – may feel more like learning a new language than working on getting new users! Luckily, the team here at Actuate are about to smash open the mystifying language of SEO with our the ultimate SEO jargon buster.

Backlink

Links from websites which point back to your website. They are also referred to as inbound links.

Black Hat

The process of using frowned upon search engine optimisation techniques that violate Google’s quality guidelines.

Bot

A piece of software written to collect data and information from websites. Also known as spiders or crawlers.

Caching / Cached

The process of saving some or all of your website or website content for quick retrieval or archival purposes.

Cloaking

Showing different content to search engines than you do to “normal”, human visitors. A black hat technique.

Crawling

The gathering of data from your website to aid a search engine in ranking your website for their index.

De-Indexing

The action of a website being removed from a search engine.

Engagement

How a user interacts with your website, what actions they take and how long they stay on your site.

Featured Snippet

A featured answer or summary based on a snippet of information taken from a website contained within a search engines index often featured in a special box at the top of search results.

Google My Business

A free tool provided by Google to help local businesses manage their online presence across Google, incorporating by Google Search and Google Maps.

Google Quality Guidelines

Guidelines set out by Google on how you should and should not optimise your site for inclusion in their search index.

Google Search Console

Formerly Google Webmaster Tools, Google’s Search Console allows website owners to monitor how their website is performing in Google search.

HTML

Hypertext markup language, the code in which web pages are written.

Index

The database of web pages and content that make up a search engines results. Indexing The action of a website being included on a search engines index.

Internal Link

A link from your website linking to another resource or page on your website.

KPI

A KPI or key performance indicator is a way of measuring the success of a business for any particular activity.

META Tags

Elements used within a web page which provide structured information about that page. Common META tags include the description, keyword and robots tags.

Organic Result

A search engine listing which has earned its place naturally in a search engines index due to good quality SEO practices, rather than being paid for.

PageRank

Google PageRank is an algorithm created by Google to rank the importance of web pages and named after Larry Page, one of the founders of Google.

Query

The words typed into a search engines search bar.

Ranking / Rank

The position of your website in a search engines results for any given query or search term.

Robots.txt

A file uploaded to your website which instructs search engines on which pages they should index and which they should ignore.

SERP

Search Engine Results Page, the page you see after searching for a query using your favourite search engine.

Sitemap

A web page containing structured data which informs search engines which pages make up your website, making it easier for search engines to discover all of the pages of your website.

Traffic

The users who visit your website.

URL

Uniform Resource Locator, the address of any given piece of content or information on a website.

White Hat

The process of using good search engine optimisation techniques that comply with Google’s quality guidelines.