Search Engine Optimisation

Algorithms – A formula, procedure or set of instructions used in computers and science to analysis and determine outcomes. Some of Google SEO algorithms are named after animals, Panda, Penguin and Hummingbird to name a few.

Anchor Text – A link in text that is clickable and contains keywords.

Authority – The level of authority given to a site is determined by factors such as popularity, traffic, backlinks, social media shares and so forth. Our aim is to make your site have an overall high level of authority.

Automation – Automating a time consuming task such as filling in a web form, signing up to websites, submitting content, etc with a bot.

Backlink – When another website links to your website.

Black Hat SEO – A frowned upon form of search engine optimisation often using automated tools and unethical practices that can result in penalties.

Bounce Rate – % of visitors who leave your site before visiting other pages, often a signal something is ineffective in your content.

Citation – When another business mentions your name or address on their website, this can be with or without a backlink.

Content Management System (CMS) – A user friendly interface to publish and manage a range of online content including text, images & videos.

Cookie – A text file that is used by web browsers and sites to store info such as passwords or to track your activity across a website.
Also delicious dipped in hot chocolate!.

Copywriting – Creating well written and engaging text for your website or other marketing,

Disavow – The Google Disavow tool that allows you to tell Google which backlinks it should ignore when calculating your sites ranking.

Duplicate Content – This is where we come in, this is a Google Panada penalty, it’s an algorithm to identify webpages that feature either duplicate or very similar pieces of content. Unique and rich original content is key to great performing SEO.

External Link – A link on your site that will direct users to another website.

Guest Post – A great way to increase engagement with other users of the internet, increasing traffic, awareness and sometimes a backlink to your site with the added benefit of adding original content to the web page.

Hummingbird – An algorithm from Google, which enables it to better understand the users’ intent when searching, increasing the relevance of the results it brings back.

Impression – Is a simple term used to measure the amount of exposure you get within a search engine, they do not need to click your link just have it appear within the search results (SERPS)

Inbound Link – A backlink that points to your website.

Internal Link – A link on your webpage that points to another page on the same website.

Indexed – If a webpage is included in Google’s index of the web, a new website will usually takes 6-8 weeks to index.

Keyword – Important word/search term that requires optimisation to rank your website for relevant searches.

Keyword Density – Optimum Keyword density for website is 2-4%, this means no more than 2 – 4 keywords should be used for every 100 words on your site. This ensures content is rich and readable.

Keyword Spam – Who likes spam? No one! Including Google. This is where a key word is repeated excessively in an attempt to manipulate search engines. Google penalises this.

Keyword Stuffing – When a keyword phrase is used excessively throughout a webpage to falsely increase keyword density.

Landing Page – First impression page, the page people land on when hitting your site. Call to action’s are a must have on here.

Link Building – When someone creates a link from their website to yours. This practice requires a throrough understanding of which sites have high domian authority and sites that follow back giving you link juice.

Meta Description – The description of a webpage that appears in search engine results pages below the page meta title, defined with the Meta Description tag in the head section of a webpage.

Meta Keywords – Meta keywords were orignally are used to help search engines understand what information a website contains so that it could be indexed appropiately and shown in the most relevant searches. Google stopped using keywords for optimisation in 1998 because of the widespread abuse of this system. It is considered good practice to remove Meta keywords entirely in modern times.

Meta Robots – Meta Robots – A tag put in the code of a webpage to tell search engines whether to index or follow that specific page or not. This is commonly used in ecommerce sites.

Meta Tags – Including Title, Description, Keywords & Robot, tags that tell search engines about your website content and what is most important to highlight.

Meta Title –The title of a website page which can be seen in search engine result pages and helps keyword optimisation.

On page SEO – SEO done within the website, this will include site speed, image, content, structure and internal link optimisation

Off page SEO – This is SEO done off the website on other platforms like social media, or through link building.

Organic Link – A naturally occuring backlink from another site, to yours, created by their webmaster.

Panda – Targeting poor quality websites loaded with plagiarism, Panda came into place from February 2011 and is now world wide famous.

Penalty – These can be automated (done by an algorithm following set rules) or it can be applied after human review of your site.

Penguin – The Penguin is another update/penalty introduced in April 2012 & that targets unnatural back linking.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM) – Using paid methods to target a specific audience or market a campaign within a search engine like adwords (ppc)

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) – The practise of optimising your website to reach its full potential within search engines.

Search Engine Results Page (SERP) – The page of results you see after using a search engine like Google or Bing.

Site Audit – A full and comprehensive review of website SEO and its goals, ensuring all links are active and there are no SEO issues

Site Speed – The speed at which your website loads, the faster this is the better for your customers and ranking in Google.

Site links – Links between websites or internally within a website.

Sitemap – A page that shows how each page is linked on a site allowing spiders to easily find all of the pages on your website. Please also see XML Sitemap.

Social Bookmark – When someone publicly bookmarks your site on services like Reddit, a type of backlink.

Social Media – An application or website that can be used to communicate socially, examples include Facebook, Twitter, Google plus and Linkedin.

Social Media Marketing (SMM) – With the growth of Facebook and Twitter, marketing through social media should be at the forefront of any business growth strategy. We offer full ranges of social media marketing packages. Leave it to the pros!

Social Share – Share buttons and options on your site allow quick and easy likes or shares on social media. Google+ , Facebook or Twitter are the most common and effective options.

Social Signals – A SEO measurement used offsite to determine the popularity of a specific webpage based on shares and social media interaction.

Spider – A piece of software or bot that is used to crawl the internet and index data.

Traffic – Amount and flow of visitors on your site.

Webmaster – Best known as the web developer or administrator for a website.

Webmaster Tools – Google and Bing offer webmaster tools which allow you access to valuable information about your site and its performances, picking up any error messages. Google webmaster tools is now called Search Console

White Hat SEO – The opposite of black hat SEO, using good and ethical practises and SEO methods to increase your websites