Basic SEO Terms You Need to Know

Here on the PuTTin’ OuT blog, I tend to throw out SEO and SMM terms (see, I just did it again!!) and assume that every reader knows what I’m talking about.

Since this is a blog for helping novices, newbies, and entrepreneurs make the most of their social media presences, a lot of my readers probably haven’t been exposed to all these terms. So, if you’re something less than an SEO/SMM veteran, here’s a rundown of SEO and SMM terms!

Alt Text/Tag

This is human lingo for tagging an image on a webpage to help search engine crawlers and users who can’t load the image know what it is.

Analytics

Website metrics. This includes things like visits, bounce rate, user behavior, and tons of other great info for helping you optimize your website based on real information rather than guesswork.

Anchor Text

The actual words of a hyperlink that a reader reads on a webpage.

Blackhat SEO

Basically SEO practices Google doesn’t like. These could get your links flagged or even removed from search results!

Bounce Rate (BR)

I go more in-depth on this in my Google Analytics basic terms post – but basically it’s the rate at which people enter your website and then hit the Back button to get out of there before clicking anything else.

Call to Action (CTA)

A prompting to get a reader/user/visitor to do something – e.g. call, click, buy.

Crawler/Spider

The bots that a search engine like Google sends to do their bidding, relaying back to them any issues your site has and helping them develop your search rank.

Domain

What you’re the “master” of online… basically the root URL of your website (e.g. www.stg-puttinoutcom-staging.kinsta.cloud).

Exit Page/Rate

An exit page is a webpage a specific visitor exits your website from, and the rate is how often visitors leave via a certain page. This should tell you which pages people find the least valuable/interesting.

External Links

Links on your webpages that take visitors to a different/external website.

Header/Subheader

The big, beautiful, bold titles on your webpages that tell users what the page/paragraphs are about. Should be quick and keyword-rich.

HTML

Stands for Hypertext Markup Language – this is the coding language most websites are made of. Think meta tags and codes like “noindex” or “</b>”

Internal Links

Links on one of your webpages that direct users to another page on your website.

Inbound Links

Links from other websites that direct visitors to your website.

Keyword

An essential word or phrase that people are likely to search for in a query. This isn’t as important to SEO as it once was, but it’s still good for guiding the content you create, and doesn’t hurt for things like image titles, URL structures, and headers. Aim for longer ones!

Landing Page

The webpage on your website that visitors enter your website on (as in by clicking a link in Google search results).

Local Citation

Including your business name/address on a webpage that isn’t on your website, like on Yelp or a guest post.

Organic Traffic

Visitors who come to your site “organically” – i.e. they typed something in Google and found your website.

Search Ranking

How high (or low…) your website links appear in search results for a given search query.

Search Results/SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages)

All those pages of links that come up when someone enters a search query into a search engine.

Search Query

Nice little flow we’ve got here, huh? This is AKA a “search term” – basically anything someone searches for in a search bar like Google.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

It occurs to me you might not really know what this is, either! This is just a catchall term for tactics for improving your website’s ability for getting high ranking in search results.

SMM (Social Media Marketing)

Any tactics used to market your brand, product, services, website, etc. on social media.

URL

The actual “link” that’s attached to a webpage – e.g. http://www.SomeDudesDomain.com/whatev

That’s about the basics of it! To keep up with all things SEO/SMM, be sure to follow and subscribe to the PuTTin’ OuT social media marketing blog!

 

Got other terms you’re wondering about? Ask away in the comments!