SEO Vocabulary

All the SEO lexicon you need to know

Carol-Ann Motard avatar
Written by Carol-Ann Motard
Updated over a week ago

A - B - C - D - E - F - G - H - I - K - L - M - N - P - Q - R - S - T - U - X - W

A

Adwords

Adwords is an online advertising service developed by Google, Google Ads. It allows you to carry out advertising campaigns with ads.

Algorithms

In order to rank web pages, the search engine uses algorithms. These are computer programs that are updated regularly to ensure that users are always offered quality content and to focus on the ranking of sites and the quality of their links.

AMP

Accelerated Mobile Page (AMP) is a technology that aims to reduce the load time of mobile web pages. A badge (lightning bolt on a grey background) indicates that the content is AMP in the snippets (descriptions of search results in the SERP). It is also possible that a carousel dedicated to AMP content associated with the search will appear.

Anchor text

The anchor text is a word or text visible to the Internet user and which hides a hypertext link to a web page.

B

Backlink

A backlink is an external link pointing to a web page. Backlinks help define the popularity and relevance of a site. A link conveys authority to a site.

Black Hat SEO

A "black hat" practice is a search engine optimization (SEO) technique that is considered unethical by search engines and SEO professionals. Its opposite is White Hat.

Bounce rate

The bounce rate is the rate of visitors who enter a site and leave after viewing a single page. A high bounce rate has a negative impact on a site.

C

CPA

The cost of acquisition. This KPI will initially allow you to know how much a conversion costs you. Then, logically, you will always try to pull this amount down and determine the threshold at which you make a profit.

When your campaign has reached a certain stability and has a significant history of conversions, you can use the 'conversion optimiser' which allows you to define CPA bids in two ways. Either by max CPA (maximum amount you are willing to pay to convert) or by target CPA (average amount you want to pay per conversion).

CPC

Cost Per Click is the average amount you pay when someone clicks on your ad. It is the total cost of all clicks (which may have different costs), divided by the total number of clicks received. We are talking about an average here because the price of clicks on an ad can vary.

Example: if your ad registers 3 clicks, 0.22 / 0.29 / 0.30 the average CPC will be 0.27.

CTR

Clic Trough Rate is the number of clicks divided by the number of times an ad is displayed. This visibility indicator will reveal whether or not your ad is being clicked. Ideally, a good CTR reflects the success of your ad. The question is whether the success of your ad in terms of clicks translates into conversions.

Crawl

The crawl corresponds to the exploration of web pages by a robot in order to index them and position them in the pages of search engines (SERP).

D

Domain

The domain of a site is its address on the Web: mydomain.com

Duplicate content

Duplicate content is the exact reproduction of the content of one page on another. This means that a text has been copied from one page and pasted onto a different page without any changes.

E

Error 404

A 404 error is an error code transmitted by a web server when a requested resource (page / URL) does not exist or no longer exists. In case of a 404 error, the server provides a 404 page.

F

Featured Snippet

A Featured Snippet is a summary of an answer to a query frequently asked by users on Google. It appears in a separate block at the top of the regular search results with a link to the site in question.

G

Google

The Google search engine was created in 1998 by two Stanford students, Larry Page and Sergey Brin. It became the main competitor to Yahoo by offering an easy-to-use interface and a ranking system based on hypertext links.

In just a few years, Google has grown significantly and has become available in several languages. Today it is the most used search engine and has a market share of over 90% worldwide.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a Google tool for analysing the audience of a website.

Google commands

Google's commands allow you to filter the results and get more precise answers about a keyword or simply to check the indexing of your site. These commands are therefore important to help you improve your SEO.

Google Maps

Google Maps is an online map and charting tool

Google My Business

Launched in 2014, the Google My Business service allows local businesses to manage their online presence in Google search and on Google Maps.

The business listings contain the information usually sought by Internet users (opening hours, directions, contact information, consumer reviews, etc.).

Google Search Console (GSC)

The Search Console (formerly Webmaster Tool) is a free online tool that allows you to check a lot of information that robots have collected on your site, including the indexing status of your web pages.

Google Shopping

Google Shopping is a tool that allows merchants to promote their products and therefore allows the Internet user to compare prices.

H

Htaccess file

The htaccess file is an integral part of a website and is present on your server to make it accessible to the World Wide Web. It is a configuration file for Apache HTTP servers.

HTTPS

HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure) refers to the secure version of the HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) computer language, a communication protocol that enables the connection between a user and a server for the World Wide Web (www).

I

Indexing

The indexing of a website or a web page corresponds to the exploration and referencing of the latter by search engine robots. Once a page is indexed, it can appear in the search engine results.

Index mobile first

Google algorithm update whereby sites are ranked according to their mobile version.

K

Knowledge Graph

The Knowledge Graph is a box in the Google results that contains information from various sources.

KPI

KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) are used to measure performance.

L

Landing page

A landing page is the web page that a user arrives at after clicking on a link.

Local SEO

Local SEO is the process by which companies optimise the visibility of their online establishments for search queries with local intent.

M

Mobile-Friendly

Mobile-Friendly means that a website is suitable for reading on any mobile device.

N

Nelinking

Netlinking or link buiding is a technique that consists of multiplying the number of backlinks pointing to a website to improve its visibility.

P

PageRank

PageRank is a Google index measuring from 0 to 10 the popularity of web pages according to the number and quality of links pointing to them.

Position

Position is the ranking of a website on the results pages of a search engine following a search.

Position 0

Position 0 or Featured Snippets of Google corresponds to the result considered by Google as being the most precise possible and directly answering the request of the Internet user. It is located at the top of the page in the form of an insert.

Q

Quality Score

The Quality Score (QS) is a score from Google from 1 to 10 to determine the quality of an ad in the paid results.

R

Redirection 301

A 301 redirect is a permanent redirection from one web page to another. It allows Internet users and search engine robots to be redirected to the right page/URL.

Rich Snippets

Rich Snippets is a page description that appears in Google's results pages that is enriched compared to the classic snippet, which is usually only 2 lines long.

Robots.txt

The Robot.txt is a text file used to block access to one or more pages of a site by search engine robots. It is placed at the root of a site and can therefore block the exploration of the site by the Google bot (Google's web crawler).

S

SEA

SEA (Search Engine Advertising) or PPC (Pay per Click) refers to the use of commercial or advertising links on search engines.

Search Engine

A search engine is an online service that makes it easy to find resources on the web (web pages, images, articles, videos etc.) by entering one or more phrases (keywords) in a search bar.

On the Internet, millions of sites and therefore pages are available and it can be difficult to find precise information. Search engines are therefore used to provide Internet users with the addresses of sites offering content that best corresponds to their searches.

SEM

SEM (Search Engine Marketing) covers the techniques used to optimise the presence of a site in the results of a search engine, i.e. SEO + SEA (PPC).

SEO

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) refers to all the methods and techniques used to improve the visibility and position of a website in search engine results.

Search Volume

Search volume is the monthly number of user queries made for a given keyword on a search engine.

SERP

SERP stands for 'Search Engine Results Page'. It is displayed after a user has entered a query into the search engine, showing the most relevant results.

SMO

SMO (Social Media Optimization) refers to a set of methods used to develop the visibility of a brand on social networks.

T

Tag - Meta description

The meta description tag provides an extract of the content of the page visited. It is located below the title tag in the search engine and must be well summarised to encourage clicks. It must contain keywords while remaining readable.

Tag - HTML Title

The html title tag is used to inform search engines and internet users of the subject of the page. The title should be composed of targeted keywords that summarise your content.

U

Universal Search

Universal search (US) is represented by the fact that Google displays in its results pages links coming from different sources of web pages from its "classic" index (News, Images Videos, Maps etc.), in addition to the usual "blue links".

URL

URL (Uniform Resource Locator) is the web address of the page that is used by search engines and the Internet user. The URLs of your web pages must contain your keywords describing the theme of the page. Choose short URLs with keywords separated by dashes.

Example: en.myposeo.com/seo-tools/

X

XML Sitemap

This protocol makes it possible to indicate which pages of a website should be crawled by search engine robots. Thus directions are given to Google of the pages present in the entirety of a site. It is thus necessary to think of creating and sending a sitemap file via GWT. Not having a sitemap.xml can be the cause of a bad indexation of a site by Google.

W

White Hat SEO

A "white hat" practice is an SEO technique considered compliant and ethical by search engines and SEO professionals. Its opposite is "Black Hat".

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