Common SEO Terminology: What It Means and Why It Matters

Whether you’re just getting started with SEO (search engine optimization) or you just want to know more about how this specific solution benefits you, you’re likely to read and hear dozens of industry terms. To help you feel more adept in the world of SEO, we’ll discuss some of the most commonly used SEO terms below — and detail why they matter. Read on to get started.

9 Common SEO Terms

Anchor Text              

This term refers to the text on a page that holds (or anchors) a link to another webpage. This text should be specific to whatever that page leads to so users know what to expect when they click on the text link.

Why It Matters

Using quality links in your anchor text aids in your overall ranking because it adds valuable resources for users to reference.

Authority

A page’s authority is its ability to rank highly on a search engine results page, and it’s determined by a few factors such as speed, age, traffic, and content quality.

Why It Matters

The higher a page’s authority, the more likely it is to receive organic traffic as users come across it when they search online for something. The more traffic a page gets, the higher likelihood for potential customers.

Black Hat Practice

These are SEO practices that violate a search engine’s usage guidelines and policies. These approaches can be fairly egregious. Note: white hat practice (also called ethical SEO) is the opposite. It refers to SEO practices that align with a search engine’s best-practice policies for ranking well.

Why It Matters

By using black hat practices to boost your site, you could potentially incur penalties from the search engine and reduce organic rankings.

Bots

Bots go by several names, including crawlers and spiders. It’s actually a software feature that moves through a website and its subsequent pages to index (or categorize) the information and allow those pages to populate in the results of a search engine when a user enters a query.

Why It Matters

The internet is a vast wealth of information. Without bots crawling through your site and indexing the information, users wouldn’t be able to find the information they need to answer their searches, and companies like yours couldn’t reach those customers to fulfill their needs.

Conversion

A conversion refers to the instance of a user completing a desired action on a web page. For example, if a potential customer fills out the Contact Us page on your website, which is the desired action for that page, that submission is considered a conversion.

Why It Matters

The more people who complete conversions on your site, the higher your conversion rate becomes. And the higher your conversion rate, the more successful your site.

Keyword

The individual words or phrases that a user enters into a search engine are called keywords. Bots use these keywords as they crawl through the internet to find relevant pages that match that search query. They are specific words, and they can be either long or short.

Why It Matters

Without keywords present on each webpage, bots would have a difficult time indexing and crawling your site. By using keywords properly and effectively, you help each page on your site serve a unique purpose in reaching users organically.

Meta Description

A meta description is usually a short summary of around 160 characters in length listed under a title tag (the small title that often appears in blue) on a search engine results page. It concisely describes the information on that page so users know what they’ll find if they click the link to access the page.

Why It Matters

Without these short sentences, users wouldn’t know if your web page addresses their queries or if your site is worth visiting. By enhancing these small bits of content, you can increase how many times visitors click that link to access the page — which then potentially boosts conversions and rankings.

Ranking

Simply put, a ranking is the position a web page takes on a search engine results page. It’s usually based on how closely it relates to the user’s search query. Although other factors (such as those listed above) can impact ranking.

Why It Matters

The higher your page or website ranks on a search engine results page, the more visible it is to users. The more visible it is, the more likely you are to receive organic traffic (or visits) to your site. Also, the more likely you are to increase conversions. Overall, the higher your page ranks, the more opportunities you have.

For a fuller compilation of SEO terminology, check out our SEO glossary. If you have any questions regarding SEO or how to most effectively enhance your online presence, get in touch with Boostability. Your website is our investment and our priority, and we’ll gladly assist you in your endeavors to bolster your site and reach new clients. Learn more about our Partner Program today!