The world of SEO is full of acronyms and complex words that feel like gibberish at times. In a way, this course has helped us understand the language of webpage builders and content creators.
With every language, you learn the basics first. So here are your “colors” and “numbers” of the SEO language.
1. Keywords – These are words or phrases that users type into a search bar to find what they need.
Content creators must determine which keywords will draw in the most users who are looking for the content on the website.
2. SERP (Search Engine Results Page) – This is the page displayed by a search engine after a user hits “enter” in the search bar of a search engine.
While a primary goal of SEO is to attain leads, the way to get there is to ensure that the link to your site shows up “above the fold” on a SERP.
Bonus term: Above the Fold – The area visible on the page before scrolling down or moving to the next page on a SERP
3. Backlinks – Links from other websites that lead to your website
Links are the currency of SEO. The more inbound and outbound links you have, (generally) the more authority your page will show to the search engine. Be careful because greediness for inbound links can lead content creators to blackhat practices.
4. Meta Tags – These are HTML elements on a website that tell Google the overview of the content on your page. Common meta tags for SEO are title tags, meta descriptions, or meta keywords.
Bonus term: meta – Prefix meaning “about” or “beyond“. In this case, it is metadata for the website.
5. Crawling – Think of this as a search engine spider that crawls from one page to another. All the while leaving a web from page to page and site to site as it travels through and clicks on various links on your pages. This is how search engines find new pages and update their records on old pages.
6. Indexing – Remember the spider and the web it spun? Indexing is solidifying that web in a neat little file so a search engine can retrieve it when a user sends a question.
Now that you have the basics of the SEO language, you can build upon what you know. Often these terms are used as definitions for others so if you get these down, you’re bound to become fluent in no time.
4 Responses
I never really thought about the jargon associated with SEO and equivalent digital marketing techniques. As marketing majors (or minors) we take for granted the jargon we understand through classes. Having to explain to others terms we need for SEO is a huge stepping stone when working with others on building a website.
Understanding terms and jargon is so important to understanding how to implement strategies. There is a lot that goes into SEO that we don’t even realize until we break all of the terms down! Understanding these common terms is a very helpful first step to improving site visibility.
Thank you so much for making this, I had no idea how many of these terms I only had partial understanding of. Stuff like this ought to be a resource given out on the first day of Marketing classes
one of the most annoying things about so many of these tech based classes is learning all the new terms that each industry uses. having a good list of terms and definitions is definitely a good thing.