SEO Glossary

Struggling with all the Search Engine Optimisation terms? This list may help:

Algorithm - the calculation the search engines use to find the most relevant information in relation to a search query.

Alt Tags - short snippets of code that allow you to tag each photo on your site with a short text title.

Anchor Text – text in your web page content that is linked to another website or web page.

Black Hat SEO – a devious approach to SEO that involves shortcuts and manipulation of a website. It is prohibited by the search engines.

Keyword Density – how often a keyword is mentioned on a page.

Headline Tags – HTML code tags denoted by “<h1>Headline</h1>” that make the text bigger than other text on the page (as seen in the Heading on this page - an H1 Tag).

Head Terms – phrases more generic in nature (usually 1-2 keywords long) that garner significant amount of search engine traffic, but provide little return.

HTML – abbreviation of Hypertext Markup Language which is a standardized code for tagging text files to format font, colour, graphic, and hyperlinks to create web pages.

Inbound Links – links to your website from external websites.

Indexing – the process used by the search engines to crawl the web, scanning web pages and storing information about them.

Link Building – the process of generating inbound links from other websites.

Link Juice – the boost given to a website’s authority by having inbound links from other authoritative websites.

Long-tail – the theory used to explain that while a majority of search traffic results from a small percentage of keywords (the head) there millions of unique keywords that make up a significant volume of search traffic in aggregate (the tail).

No-Follow – tag placed in HTML code around links that are paid to tell the search engines not to give them any link juice.

Search Engine Return Box - the return from a search engine that you get following a search query.

Search Query – term used to describe the actual keyword or phrase a search engine user typed into the search engine.

SEM (Search Engine Marketing) – refers to all aspects of search, including organic and paid listings.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) – the process of optimizing your website’s content so it’s easy for the search engines to find your content, index it, and determine how relevant it is to a specific search query.

Tail Terms – keywords phrases usually 3 or more keywords in length that garner a small volume of search traffic but are much more valuable because they provide a better qualified traffic than a general search.