Congratulations, you’ve graduated from SEO university. Also, you’re standing on a huge chocolate cake. Dig in, you deserve it. Source: Flickr
We’ve already looked at paid search terminology in our Basic PPC Jargon and PPC Jargon: The Next Step blogs. Now it’s time to dig out your school uniform as we give that other digital marketing juggernaut – SEO - the jargon-busting treatment.
Every industry has its own jargon, and the SEO industry is no different. If you’re just dipping your toes into the SEO pool, and you want to learn a little more about the industry so that you can understand discussions you see online, check out this handy guide to industry jargon.
SEO
Search engine optimisation is the practice of optimising your site’s HTML code and its content, and bulding incoming links so that the major search engines can find your website, understand what it is about and – if all goes well – rank it for your desired keywords.
Keywords
Keywords are the search queries that a site is optimised for, with the intention of improving search engine rankings for these terms. Typically, long-tail keywords like “buy Nike running shoes” have lower competition and are more targeted, meaning that people looking for them may be more likely to be interested in your page. However, overuse of long-tail keywords can make for on-page content that reads awkwardly.
SERPs
SERPs stands for search engine results pages. If someone asks you where you are in the SERPs, they want to know if you are high up on page one, or buried several pages into the results.
Anchor Text
Anchor text is the text that people use when they link to your site. Anchor text is used in SEO to let search engines build up a ‘profile of relevance’, as it were. When running link building campaigns, SEOs will typically use your keywords as anchor text, so search engines know that your site is relevant to that keyword. Building links on keywords like this is a common and proven way to improve rankings.
301 Redirect
The 301 redirect is a status code that website owners can use to tell a search engine that a page has moved permanently. You should use this technique to avoid problems with broken links and ensure that old, outdated links still pass Page Rank to your website.
Organic Results
Organic results are the unpaid/non-sponsored results that appear on SERPs. When running SEO campaigns, your goal should be to rank well for your chosen keywords and get a lot of traffic from organic search.
Bounce Rate
The bounce rate indicates how many people visit your site and then leave after viewing only one page. If your bounce rate is high, this is a sign that you are not giving your visitors what they want. Google uses bounce rate as an indicator of page quality.