We understand that many business owners are confused about the terminology often used when describing Search Engine Optimisation jargon.
We have created this SEO glossary to help Cardiff business owners understand what precisely this SEO jargon means.
Therefore you will never be left scratching your head again when reading a Seo monthly report!
If you want to move away from your current SEO agency or SEO consultant and simplify your SEO arrangement, choose us today in Cardiff.
We offer low-cost SEO packages that are fixed in price and ensure our clients stay fully informed on how their website performs.
We can carry out quality Seo from £169.99 per month in Cardiff, so if you ever need help and assistance with your Seo in South Wales, then why not call us today? 07902175110
We never therefore leave our clients in the dark about what is happening to their seo campaign
All our clients are kept fully informed each month about why we are using and adopting a specific SEO strategy.
If you like our approach to uncomplicated Seo, then why not get in contact today: 07902175110
A is for…
Anchor text
This is the small amount of text used to describe the hyperlink pointing to another website.
When you read information online, there may be a few words you can click on to go onto another website to view related information, called the “anchor text” information.
Therefore, this small amount of text that describes where the link is pointing is called “Anchor Text”.
Adwords
This is Google’s platform for paid advertising, which is within the search engine results.
Say if you were searching for a product like a “washing machine,” a few featured websites may typically appear at the top of the search results (Top of the fold) and along the right-hand side.
These are called the Ad-Words section for advertising in the SERPs.
This is where companies advertise their businesses in these prominent positions within the search engine results.
These are paid for and often called “Pay-per-click”.
Alt text
This is the text that describes an image on your website.
You can assist the search engines with understanding what your image shows on your website by labelling it with “Alt text”.
That said, Google has sophisticated algorithms and machine learning programs that now understand what is displayed within an image without you telling them! Yes, that’s right, without alt tags being attached by you to say to the search engine what the picture is about.
Why not see this article on how Google understands images through machine learning for more information? Google’s image recognition software, could this be used for Seo?
Artificial Intelligence
AI has recently been integrated into Search Engine Optimisation because of its use by the major search engines to understand how users interact with search engine results (That’s what we believe at this stage, yet we are unsure about how AI is used precisely at this time).
Artificial intelligence or AI is thought to be used to understand how long searchers spend on any particular website and how they interact with that search engine result, for example.
This helps the major search engines understand how a user interacts with the website to know if this search result fulfilled that search query (For example, if they bounced back into the search results, how many pages they viewed on a site, etc.). Of course, this is just speculation, as the major search engines will not tell you exactly how they use their algorithms!
Although it is unclear how the major search engines use artificial intelligence, many in online marketing believe that it is being used now, which is increasing in its use.
For more information on AI and how this could be used for SEO benefit, read here: AI & SEO.
Audit
You may hear some search engine optimisation companies or SEO agencies say they will conduct an “SEO audit” on your website.
This commonly means they will look at your website’s structure and look for improvement, usually overall.
I.e. its backlinks, content, and general crawl issues that may be causing a problem, such as re-directs.
A website audit typically gives a marketing consultant ideas for improving your website’s visibility for keywords.
Perhaps better navigation, site maps in place, or better content addressing your target audience may be advised, depending on your site needs.
We carry out SEO audits free of charge once our clients commit to an SEO service from us in Cardiff.
To see our seo prices, click here: seo service Cardiff price list.
Also, to learn more about what goes into an SEO audit, you can click here to see what a SEO Audit is all about.
B
Blog
You may have heard much about “the blog section of a website” being discussed in Seo because it’s an essential feature of Seo and online marketing.
The blog section is essential for generating a conversation on social media and for SEO purposes.
Usually, your website has a structure which showcases your main products or services, and these pages may rarely change (Ever Green content). This is known as Ever Green Content, the website’s content area that rarely changes.
For more information on what Ever Green Content is for SEO, click here.
Your blog section, therefore, allows you to update your website with current events within your business or issues you wish to discuss with your target audience.
That means the information in your website’s blog section is essential yet not suitable for the website’s main navigation area.
This is because the blog information is more current and more of the moment. Although it advertises and markets your main products and services, it usually does this in a more informative, less sales-pitched, and orientated way.
Typically, blog content is news stories or articles related to that company. Still, they are of less commercial importance, so they are generally not in the website’s main navigation or pages.
It, therefore, allows you to inform the users of your website about occurrences within your company, and once carried out correctly, they can also have search engine optimisation benefits.
For more information on what blogging is for Seo, click here.
Black Hat
Black Hat Seo is the practice of carrying out online marketing in a manipulative way and looking to cheat the search engines into thinking your website is more authoritative than it is.
Black Hat SEO is usually used to increase the website’s popularity, only briefly, because of the spam fighting algorithms, such as Hummingbird, Penguin and Panda from Google.
That is, the major search engines use algorithms to find black hat and spammy techniques that are being used and penalise websites that use low-quality methods to increase their visibility.
The search engines then ensure these websites get penalised for using such unapproved techniques in SEO.
For more information, see Penguin updates and Panda updates. Click here.
Black hat SEO can take the form of keyword stuffing, cloaking, manipulation, and poor-quality backlink practices.
Bounce Rate
The bounce rate of a website can be found through your Google Analytics.
It tells you how many visitors to your website have visited it and then bounced straight back into the search engine results.
An increased or high bounce rate is not reasonable, as you want to attract targeted traffic to your website that stays there for an extended time.
A high bounce rate may suggest that people are coming to your page for information that does not answer their queries that well, so they bounce straight back into finding another website that does.
Browser
You may have heard of the term “browser” to describe the program you use to surf the Internet.
There are now varying forms of website browsers, some of which directly affect SEO.
This is because when you consider Google’s Chrome browser, it features voice search.
Some people believe that the users of such a browser may ask longer search queries (longer search terms, i.e. long-tail keywords, therefore changing how you optimise that website.)
So Seo is carried out with keywords optimised for more natural-sounding search queries- as if you are speaking to a natural person and not a search engine when searching.
For example, “Where is the nearest restaurant to me?” is completed via voice searches instead of “Restaurants in Cardiff” if you search through manual typing and not voice search.
This is changing how we view optimising for different browsers and keywords underpinning SEO campaigns.
Because of Google’s Hummingbird update and voice search, optimising websites has become very different from past techniques for optimising keywords related to your business.
It would help if you now thought of longer tail keywords and better answer a searcher’s queries and common questions. Think quality user experience and not so much Seo; think Hummingbird!
C
Citations
Citations typically describe your business listings in directory sites for local SEO.
For example, you may have registered your business with local directories, giving business information such as your address, phone number and name of your business (Nap information).
Citations have once again increased in importance since Google’s Pigeon update.
Citations can be used as a factor in helping local search engine optimisation factors, in terms of the search engine’s placing greater confidence in your business information if carried out correctly.
(If the citations are from high-quality sources and are consistent across the web (Nap information), they are accurate in the information they show.)
That said, you must use quality citations from quality websites, as listing your business on low-quality directories can potentially harm your website’s rankings. I think a Penguin update and building low-quality links from whatever source are unsuitable for your SEO campaign.
Suppose you are unsure of how to carry out business citations. In that case, you may need the help and advice of a quality SEO company or SEO agency in Cardiff to guide you on building SEO citations for local SEO benefits.
If you need advice, why not contact us in Cardiff?
Caffeine
Caffeine update via Google describes an algorithm update via Google.
This change to the search engine means they can speed up how they index and notice website changes.(Crawl and indexation)
This increased their crawl and indexation rate for the search engine.
Chrome
Chrome is Google’s website browser platform. Chrome has integrated a voice search feature within the search engine’s browser.
Content Management System
Sometimes called a CMS, content management systems are websites that allow owners or users to update them easily.
CMS systems usually have a user-friendly interface, allowing users to update a website with little coding knowledge.
Many small businesses frequently use them because of their versatility in allowing you to make changes for search engine optimisation benefits and easy updating with new content such as blog and news posts.
D
Duplication Issues
Duplication issues are used to describe duplicate content on your website.
Many e-commerce sites use duplicate content, as they could sell hundreds, if not thousands, of products.
They sometimes use duplicated content across the product range for a specific type of item.
For example, selling shoes and having men’s shoe descriptions all the same across all pages could be potentially harmful to SEO.
That is because search engines reward high-quality, unique information and not content which has been duplicated.
Duplicated content is generally not suitable for content marketing or search engine optimisation.
This is because duplicated content can cause problems with your website and could attract the attention of the Panda updates.
Google and other major search engines prefer unique, high-quality content.
If you find the Panda Updates and carrying out content marketing confusing, then why not contact a professional SEO company or agency today?
We carry out SEO in Cardiff, which is low in cost, so why not email us today?
Disavow
You may have encountered the term “Disavow” regarding handling the incoming links to your website.
The disavow process is used when you have incoming poor-quality links that you wish to disconnect from your website.
Disavowing allows you to stop your website from being connected to these low-quality links.
However, for the work to take place properly, you have to contact Webmasters to try to get the links removed in the first instance.
The disavowing process should only be undertaken by SEO experts or professionals; if done incorrectly, it can damage or negatively impact your website’s ranking positions.
Doorway pages
Doorway pages describe a spammy and low-quality SEO of creating links on a website to other websites without offering any value to the visitor.
For example, if you were searching for “double glazing windows”, you may be presented with a website with multiple links for double glazing window offers.
This page may have been created for other websites to increase the number of incoming links pointing to a particular website.
E
Entities
Entities are a description that is used within the semantic web.
Many in search engine optimisation believe that the future of Seo is within the semantic web.
The semantic web uses its understanding of entities to build a picture or wealth of information that describes that entity so that it can present data within the search engine results directly in the SERPs. (Knowledge Vault and Knowledge Graph are displaying in the SERPs now).
Entities could be anything from a person, company or an occurrence that has happened.
Many believe that the future of SEO is in entity building and defining your business on the Internet so that search engines have an in-depth understanding of Internetiness.
F
Frames
Frames are used to describe how a website gets laid out.
That is the content and layout of the website can be contained within what is known as frames.
How a website is displayed and presented, and how information is of great importance in engaging your target audience.
This is especially important because of Google’s Hummingbird update.
Google’s Hummingbird updates present high-quality information that offers an exciting user experience.
Perhaps you would like to increase your website’s visibility to increase your the company’s website. Why not contact a professional search engine optimisation company in Cardiff today?
Freshness
Freshness has a lot to do with search engine optimisation; it is well known that if a website is regularly updated with high-quality and relevant information, this can help your search engine optimisation campaign.
This is why updating your website’s section with regular information that will interest your target audience is essential.
G
Google’s Algorithm
You may have heard a bit about Google’s algorithm changing or a change being made to the major search engine.
This is because Google constantly changes its algorithm to present search results to its users.
So if you hear about changes through, say, Hummingbird, Penguin or Panda updates, this is because Google is changing its algorithm so that it can force out spam from the search engine results and replace it with high-quality websites that will satisfy a user’s queries from the search giant.
Google My Business
You may have heard about Google My Business this is where you can register your business with Google so that it can be presented possibly within the local search engine results.
H
Hummingbird
Hummingbird is an algorithm change by Google that focuses on presenting more accurate search results based on a more in-depth understanding of the query.
Hummingbird matches more detailed search queries with websites offering a good user experience and better answers to questions.
The Google Hummingbird update significantly changed search engine results and SEO.
Before, SEO companies used to focus on optimising keywords. However, keywords are still essential in SEO; it is more critical now to offer a rich user experience that better answers a searcher’s questions.
I
Indexation Issues
Indexation issues our website in terms of the search engines being unable to index your website correctly.
This could be because you have information on your website in such a way that the search engines cannot crawl that information and, therefore, cannot index that particular website page.
For example, search engines have struggled to understand JavaScript in the past, which could be why it has not been correctly indexed.
J
JavaScript
JavaScript is a form of coding to present more dynamic scripts on your website.
K
Knowledge Panel
The Knowledge Panel is presented in some search engine results. Majorajornes like Google may give directly within the search engine results.
For example, if you were to ask questions about commonly known informational facts, then the search engines m. In that case, you send these directly in the search engine results instead of clicking on individual links.
Knowledge Carousel
Google may pIn, Google may present as a Knowledge Carousel in its search engine results.
Knowledge in its search engine results carousel may be presented at the top of the screen in the sliding image that runs across the screen.
For example, suppose you were searching for films that were produced with a particular actor. In that case, Google may present a list of movies that include you have searched for in a more visual format.
This is, of course, compared to the results shown in the resultsrganic search results placement.
Keyword Research
Keyword research is research that commonly occurs normally or by SEO agencies, which researchers use to find out what researchers are entering search engines to find business, say in Cardiff.
This is of vital importance; they want to appear in as many search engine results as they can related to their business or industry.
It is, therefore, up to the SEO consultant or SEO agency to find out what people are entering into the search engines and then to optimise a website to increase its prospects of being more visible for key search terms.
Knowledgecrucialaph
Google has what is called a knowledge graph, which is linked to the semantic web.
Google uses its knowledge graph to build its understanding of entities across the web and its information resources to its information on occurrences, people businesses and other entities so that it can present facts within its search engine results.
The information and what is collected in Google’s Knowledge Graph is said to be stored in what is called a Knowledge Vault.
Once he has enough confidence and is racy in the info, this information carousel and knowledge pard Stuffing is a frowned upon technique used by people participating in Black Hat Seo.
In the past, it used to be thought that in Seo, if y, you could put in as many related keywords relating to your business within website content, then this would be good for the website’s visibility, so increasing its visibility by keyword stuffing.
This is now simply an outdated technique in search engine optimisation and is no longer used. If used, it could attract the attention of the Panda updates, which could penalise your website for using poor-quality SEO methods.
Keyword Stuffing could be an example of stuffing a website’s page content with words that describe your business or geographic areas.
This has little benefit to your website visitors and a poor-quality user experience.
L
Link Building
Link building is forming strategies that allow you to build links to your website.
Because of the Penguin updates, building high-quality, relevant backlinks to your business is important.
Building other forms of backlinks, such as low-quality links with no relevance, will likely damage your website’s visibility and ranking due to the Penguin updates.
Linking out
Linking out is linking to other websites from your website.
You may want to do this when you have written quality information and wish to cite other areas on the Internet where you found exciting information that helped you build your art website—so reference where you found your information.
The same rules apply to link building in that you should only link out to high-quality resources across the web, for example, if you are linking out to a lot of websites that are low in quality. If you do this to create links to other websites, then your website could be penalised for poor quality linking practices.
This is because you could be linking to other websites to increase other websites’ websites without adding any quality information that would interest a target audience.
Load speed.
Load speeds are used in Seo to describe how fast a page or website loads. A faApeed is good because it helps create a good user experience for your website.
People do not want to wait, especially when loading pages. If you have a slow-loading website on mobile devices, why not contact your local search engine optimisation company for help? We carry out Seo, which is low in cost; contact us today. Cardiff Seo companies.
Local search engine optimisation
Local search engine optimisation is optimising your website to appear in geographic areas local to you where you wish your business to appear.
It is a common misconception of Seo that you can only get your website to appear within the area where you are physically located. This is not the case. You can get it. Your website is visible in any area where you wish to do business. For example, an SEO company could increase the visibility of your website in areas such as Cardiff, Bath and Bristol.
It is, therefore, possible to target any geographic region you wish. If you know of a more profitable region where you can gain contracts and services or sell products, then search engine optimisation might be the service you need to invest in. Contact us today about local search engine optimisation services in Cardiff.
M
Meta Tags
Meta tags, or meta descriptions, are the areas you fill in once you have produced a page or post for your website. Most CMS systems will have an area where you can fill in your meta description and tag.
Your meta description will tell the search engines the title of that page and briefly describe what is behind the search engine results. It is vitally important to get it right, as some website designers overlook this area. Editors to your website need the information they need to determine whether to click on your company’s website not. So why not optimise this area with special offers or incentives to get people to click on your meta description?
Machine Learning
The search engines are now moving into an era of artificial intelligence and machine learning. Many in search engine optimisation and online marketing believe machine learning is taking place to understand how people interact with the search results.
That is to say that the major search engines could be understanding which websites best answer commonly asked queries presented to the search engine. Many believe that machine learning and artificial intelligence are the future of SEO, which places more of an emphasis on designing and creating high-quality websites that answer questions and satisfy the information they want to obtain.
Mobile Optimised Website
is more critical than ever to get your website mobile optimised. This is because, in April 2015, Google is to launch a mobile optimised websites more mobile-optimised websites within the mobile search results over those which have not been mobile-enabled.
Therefore, it is essential to get your website mobile-optimised. This will also help with the user experience of your website in terms of allowing people to easily access your website’s information and your business on mobile devices. This is of vital importance because it is believed that mobile searches are increasing, so why not enable your website? You could potentially be missing out on business.
N
NAP
You may have heard of N AP regarding local search engine optimisation. This refers to the name, address and phone number of your business. This has to do with putting accurate citations of your business across the web.
It is an essential high-qualifying quality that acts accurately, dresses, and, ph, one n, um, ber across the web. This information must be consistent with what is on your website and which is up-to-date.
Inconsistent NAP details across the web could cause conflicts, impacting your local search visibility. So, it would help if you got your N AP details consistent and accurate across the web.
No follow links. No follow links are links earned from other websites that have chosen to link to you but do not pass what is called link juice.
No follow links are still crucial for diversifying your backlink profile. For a backlink profile to look natural, it should contain no follow links. It would help if you were there and looked for a mix of no-follow and do-follow links, but more important than anything, the links are high-quality and naturally built.
Organic Seo
Organic SEO is increasing your search engine rankings, by organic means so that you appear higher within the organic search results. The organic search results make up the main body of the search results.
Outreaching
Outreach contacts relevant and high-quality websites to see if they are interested in publishing your content marketing work.
Through outreach, you may find websites for your business that are high in quality and want to share your articles with their audience. In return for tent marketing, you could be rewarded with a link to your website.
Out Linking
Outlinking is referencing other websites during your content marketing work.
For example, you may find another high-quality piece of content marketing or information on the web and wish to reference this in your content marketing work.
By referencing your sources, you are therefore “out linking” to where you found this information; some say in search engine optimisation, this allows the search engines to understand and piece together where you got the information from, which can have some SEO benefit if more authority can be placed on such information.
P
Panda Updates
The panda updates will be a sequence of updates via Google that assess quality issues.
They look for low-quality content such as keyword stuffing, duplicate content or spun articles.
The Panda updates then remove low-quality content from the search engine results, aiming to increase the quality of search engine results.
Penguin
Penguin updates are a sequence of updates via Google and look to assess the quality of backlinks pointing to your website.
Penguin looks for low-quality links built to your website; a website with abundant low-quality links can be penalised through this search engine algorithm change.
Pigeon
The pigeon update was an algorithm change that changed the local search engine results. Many commented that it shook up the local business search results, and what is commonly referred to as the seven-pack significantly reduced in number to a three-pack and even a two-pack.
Query
Commonly referred to as a search query, this describes what is entered into the search engines to find information. Search engine optimisation companies will optimise a website for search query phrases and keywords.
Responsive
Responsive describes a mobile-enabled website or one optimised for smaller screens such as tablets or smartphones.
Semantic Web
The semantic web is the search engine gaining knowledge on what is known as entities. Entities could be anything from an occurrence, people, or a company. Search engines build up knowledge of this information to get a better understanding to place within their knowledge grafts.
Many in search engine optimisation believe that the semantic web allows search engines to understand information and data better and check from multiple sources. Once the search engines have confidence in a specific data assessment, they can then present such information directly within the search engine results, such as the search engine knowledge panel or what is also known as the knowledge graph carousel.
Social Media Optimisation
Social media optimisation is using social media to increase your company’s visibility and brand awareness. This can help people finding your websites content so that it is shared and opens the possibility of generating back links.
Seo
Seo stands for search engine optimisation, the process of optimising a website. This can be done through content marketing, keyword research, or on-site optimisation techniques to increase the visibility of a website.
Spam
Spam is used to describe a technique that is used to manipulate the search engine results. You may have heard of spammy techniques being used to manipulate the search engine results in terms of generating spammy back links or generating spammy content marketing.
The ambition is to gain quick results through manipulating the search engine results, these techniques are often frowned upon by the search engines and can mean that a website gets penalised, which can damage a websites ranking ability.
Spiders
Search engines use spiders to crawl a website’s websites. The spiders will look for changes or amendments to your website to determine where your website should be in the search engine rankings.
SERPs
SERPs stand for search engine results pages, that are presented once you ask the search engines a question or query. They are therefore the search engine results.
Trust flow
Trust flow is used to describe the amount of trust that flows from a particular back link. A back link that is high in trust flow or high authority can be considered in some cases to be a back link that might be worth generating. Remember, you must be very careful about the backlinks you generate for your website; they must be high in quality and relevant to your website.
Low quality back links can be deemed and versed to your website performance, this is because low quality links can be found through the Google Penguin update. This means that your website rankings can potentially be damaged if you have low quality back links pointing to your website.
Title Tags
Title tags are an essential part of Seo; they are part of your content marketing that you mark up as titles. These are normally numbered from H1 right through to hate six, allowing the IMF each head attack.
U
User Experience
User experience is used to describe creating a positive user experience for your users of your website. Many search engine optimisers consider it paramount to develop a good user experience when visiting your website to keep users on-site for as long as possible.
Some in search engine optimisation believe that is important create a good user experience so that users interact with your website in a positive way and spend a long period of time on site which many believe contributes to ranking signals.
That is by creating a positive user experience, you are more likely to be linked to in this also sends positive signals about your website as it is accurately answering the information that users have wanted to obtain from the search engine results.
URL Friendly
Search engine optimisation URL-friendly URLs mean a few words within the URL describe that page. This means you added awards with Sewith within the URL. You can most commonly be entered into content management systems by adding a few words to the URL extension describing the keyword you are trying to rank for.
You cannot keyword-stuff or over-optimise URLs, as this is considered poor practice in search engine optimisation.
Voice Search
Voice search is becoming a more common form of searching for information online, primarily through browsers such as Google’s Chrome browser.
Many believe Internet search is the future of search engine optimisation, in terms that you must optimise your keywords and information on your page for longer search terms. It is thought that by using voice search, people enter longer search terms that are more detailed; before this, you must adapt to this and ensure that your website is optimised for these more complicated search strings.
White hat. White hat refers to an undertaking search engine optimisation in a way that is considered best practices at any one time, which is likely to float the rulebook in terms of best practice standards set by the major search engines.
What is considered a white hat is constantly changing, and the rulebook of search engines is continually adapting. To stay on top of what is regarded as white and black hats, you should refer to your search engine Webmaster guidelines.