So, you’ve decided to take the leap and hire an agency to handle your SEO, but things are feeling a little confusing. We get it. Search engine optimisation (SEO) can feel like a minefield at times, even for seasoned professionals. That’s why we have put together this handy SEO glossary; all the terms you need to know, in one place.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO):
SEO involves optimising your website so that it can be found on Google and other search engines, using a variety of methods to rank for high-volume keywords and improve overall user experience.
On-page SEO:
On-page SEO is a term used to describe methods that occur directly on the website, and involves optimising the website’s content with:
- Keywords
- Image alt-tags
- Meta titles and descriptions
- Internal linking
- and more
Off-page SEO:
Off-page SEO refers to activities that take place outside of your website such as link building and social media marketing. Although not directly optimising your website, these methods boost reach and awareness and can help drive traffic to your site, which is all positive for SEO results.
SERP:
SERP is an acronym for Search Engine Results Page and refers to the page of results that appear after a user performs a search on Google or another search engine.
Keywords:
Keywords are the terms that people use when searching for information, products or services. A key part of SEO is keyword research, which involves using various strategies to identify the most relevant keywords for your website.
Long-tail Keywords:
Long-tail keywords are a type of keyword that can include questions such as “what are the best coffee shops near me?”.
Blogs and articles are a great way to rank for these types of keywords, and a great way to achieve a featured snippet on Google.
Featured Snippet:
A featured snippet on Google is sometimes referred to as ‘position zero’ and appears at the top of the SERP and directly answers a user’s query with a summary from a web page.
Indexing:
Indexing refers to the process of adding your website to search engines. If a page is indexed, it can be found in SERPs by users.
You may want to ‘no index’ a page occasionally. This tells Google not to crawl this page and prevents it being shown to users in SERPs and is useful for thank you pages or login pages.
Backlink:
A backlink (sometimes referred to as an inbound link) is a link from one website to another that signals to search engines that a website is trustworthy and valuable, which can improve rankings and SEO results.
Site Speed:
Site speed refers to how quickly a website loads and becomes responsive to a user’s interactions. It is a key ranking factor for SEO, and a good site speed score is considered above 90 on PageSpeed Insights.
Understanding SEO doesn’t have to feel overwhelming. With the right knowledge you can make better informed decisions and know how your site is performing, and we hope this SEO glossary has helped.
The right agency will keep things transparent and be happy to explain things to you, and that’s what we do at AMB360. Ready to level up your SEO performance? Get in touch with us today to see how we can help.
