Taxonomy
1: Classification. 2: Organizing and categorizing a website to maximize content findability and help users complete desired on-site tasks.
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Time on Page
1: An inexact estimation of how long a user spent looking at a particular webpage.
Title Tag
1: An HTML meta tag that acts as the title of a webpage.
Top-Level Domain (TLD)
1: The extension of a given web address.
Traffic
1: The people (and sometimes bots) who visit your website.
Trust
1: Generally applies to the history of a domain.
TrustRank
A link analysis technique used to separate good “reputable seed page” from web spam.
User-Generated Content (UGC)
1: Any form of content – videos, blog posts, comments, reviews, etc. – that is created by users or customers.
Universal Search
1: When search engines pull data from multiple specialty databases to display on the same SERP.
Unnatural Link
1: Any link Google identifies as suspicious, deceptive, or manipulative.
URL
1: The specific string of characters that lead to a resource on the web. 2: The short-hand for the letter-based web address (e.g., www.searchenginejournal.com) entered...
URL Parameter
1: The values added to a URL in order to track where traffic comes from.
Usability
1: How easy it is for people to use your website.
User Agent
Web crawling software.
Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
1: An umbrella term for increasing a website’s visibility in search engine results pages, encompassing both paid and organic activities.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
1: The process of optimizing a website so it will appear in prominent positions in the organic results of search engines. 2: The process of...
Search Engine Results Page (SERP)
1: The page search engines display to users after conducting a search. Typically, search engines show about 10 organic search results, sorted by relevance.
Search History
1: A record of every search users conduct (text and voice), every webpage visited, and every ad clicked on, tracked by search engines. 2: Data...
Share of Voice
1: The number of impressions a brand receives in the SERPs for search terms when compared to the total impressions that the brand’s competitors receive...
Sitelinks
1: Up to six algorithmically-chosen links that appear below the listing for the same website of a top-ranked organic search result.
Sitemap
1: A list of pages on a website. 2: There are two types: HTML & XML
Sitewide Links
A link that appears on every page of a website, typically in a sidebar or footer of blogs or websites that use templates.
Social Media
1: Platforms (websites and apps) where users can interact with each other, as well as create, share, and consume content.
Social Signal
1: Any factors that demonstrate authority and influence on popular social networking websites.
Spam
See: Webspam
Spider
A program search engines use to crawl the web. Bots or spiders visit webpages to collect information and add or update a search engine’s index.
Split Testing
1: A controlled experiment used to compare at least two webpages to measure the effects of a different variable on conversions.
Quality Content
Content that helps you successfully achieve business or marketing goals (e.g., driving organic traffic or social shares, earning top search rankings, generating leads/sales).
Quality Link
An inbound link that originates from an authoritative, relevant, or trusted website.
Query
The word, words, or phrase that a user enters into a search engine. Also known as: A search.