301 Redirect

A forward to a new URL from an old URL with a transfer of all search authority permanently. Current inbound links and traffic will…

302 Redirect

A forward to a new URL from an old URL for temporary purposes. They differ from a 301 as they are used as temporary…

404 Error

Also called a 404 Not Found, Page Not Found, or Server Not Found error. It means a browser is not able to communicate with…

Above the Fold

Referring to newspaper publishing, above the fold refers to content that shows at the top half or front page of a website. Like headlines…

AdWords (Google Ads)

Currently known as Google Ads, it's the system where advertisers bid on keywords for their ads to show up in Google Search results above…

Agentic SEO

Ahrefs

AI

algorithm update

Every year Google and other search engines make hundreds of updates to their algorithms for serving up search results. These updates can range from…

Alt Text and Alt Tags

Also known as Alternative text, Image Alt Text, Alt Attribute, Alt Description, this is the text added to an image's HTML that describes what…

AMP

An abbreviation for Accelerated Mobile Pages, it's an online publishing format created by Google. This language is similar to HTML but optimizing a site…

anchor text

Text that is used as an "anchor" for an HTML hyperlink. Search engines view anchor text with more regard as typically they are used…

Backlink

Backlinks are hyperlinks that direct a user from one website to another. Search engines view these connections as integral to their ranking algorithms. Depending…

Backlinks

Be Found Framework

BERT

Bounce rate

A valuable term in website analytics. A "bounce" is when someone navigates away from your site without interacting with it further. Bounce rate refers…

Branded Keywords

Keywords that include a company's name or are related to a brand's identity. In our case, any keyword that includes "Boostability" is a branded…

Browser

A software application that allows users to access the internet by interpreting HTML files and display a graphical user interface in the format intended…

Business Directory

A listing of local businesses in different categories. Directories can often be found online but they may be printed as well. Consumers use business…

Canonical URL

HTML link tags that demonstrate to search engines that different URLs host the same information and that only one should be considered for indexation.…

Comments

Opinion content generated by users to comment on the subject matter of a certain page. Comments can be used on blogs or other sites…

content

Information developed by a company to inform their consumers of products, services or answers. Content can include videos, blog posts, articles, social media posts,…

conversion

An important indicator in website and business performance. A conversion occurs when a visitor to a website performs a desired action like completing a…

conversion rate

The percentage of unique visitors who complete the desired action on a website and turn into customers. In most cases the higher the conversion…

Conversion rate optimization (CRO)

The act of optimizing lead funnels and interactions to achieve a better conversion rate. This can include changing assets, media or altering content on…

Cookies

A small packet of data that is sent from a website and stored browserside. They are typically used to remember information regarding e-commerce or…

core web vitals

Cornerstone content

The most important pages and pieces of content on a website. These are pieces of content that other pages on your site link to…

crawl

The act of scraping and indexing content from the internet for the purpose of serving search results to a search engine and browser. There…

crawler

A software application that fetches, analyzes and files information from web servers. A web crawler systematically browses the internet for the purpose of indexation.…

De-indexed

The act of a website being removed from the search results page. Typically being de-indexed comes from a violation or manipulation to the rules…

Direct traffic

Direct Traffic is attributed to the portion of traffic on your site when Google Analytics cannot determine the source or channel. Typically this happens…

Do-follow link

The default value that is assigned to the rel attribute of an HTML anchor element to instruct search engines that this link should pass…

Dwell time

The amount of time a user spends on a website. The duration starts when the user lands on the site and ends when they…

E-E-A-T

E-E-A-T is a term that Google uses for the Quality Rater's Guidelines for judging how much clout the website and author has. The correlation…

External Link

Links that point towards any domain other than the one they are on. They lead to an external source domain

Facebook

Featured snippet

Special boxes found in the SERPs that provide results in a format that is dissimilar to the normal lists of links. If your domain…

Fresh Content

Typically understood as "timely" content regarding breaking news stories but can also mean the frequency at which a site posts content to add new…

Google

A technology company that was started by Larry Page and Sergey Brin that has a wide variety of products and services. The initial product…

Google Ads

Paid advertisements which appear in SERPs with the Search Network or appear on websites through the Display Network and Google's AdSense program. AdWords are…

Google Analytics

Launched in 2005, Google Analytics is a service offered by Google that tracks and reports website traffic. This website activity is displayed as different…

Google Keyword Planner

A free tool paired with Google Ads to help select which keywords to target and how to be competitive in bids for those keywords…

google my business

A free tool for businesses and organizations to manage their online presence on Google's Search and Maps. You can verify your business location, post…

Google penalty

When a Google reviewer has looked at your site and deemed that it is violation of the Quality Rater Guidelines you can receive a…

Google Quality Rater Guidelines (QRG)

The Quality Rater Guidelines are a set of guidelines given to a group of people that Google contracts to check sites manually to better…

Google Search Console

A web service provided by Google that allows webmasters to check indexing status as well as test for mobile effectiveness. This product is constantly…

Google Tag Manager

A free tool that allows you to manage and deploy marketing tags, triggers and variables on your website without modifying the underlying code. This…

Google Webmaster Guidelines

Guidelines that have been published for the benefit of webmasters so they know what Google considers "good" and "bad" practices. For example: make pages…

GoogleBot

The web crawler software that Google uses to collect documents and build a searchable index. GoogleBot is characterized by two different types of web…

guest posting

The act of writing content for another business or website where you are featured as a guest author in order to attract traffic and…

Homepage

An introductory page of a website that typically serves as a "table of contents" for the overall site. They often are used to help…

HTML

A basic markup language for tagging text documents designed to display in a web browser. HTML uses tags that are character-based data types, character…

HTML Headings

The most common HTML headings or "tags" come in pairs like and , and , and . They help delineate importance from 1-6 with…

HTTP

A protocol application for distributed, collaborative, hypermedia information systems. It functions as a request-response protocol in the client-server computing model and is the foundation…

HTTPS

An extension of HTTP, HTTPS is used for secure communication over a computer network. With this type of connection the protocol is encrypted. The…

Hyperlink

A clickable reference to another source of data. The data source is typically another webpage. Hyperlinks are most commonly set to text called Hypertext…

Impression

A measurement of how many users see an ad or other type of digital media. This measurement is not action-based and simply refers to…

Inbound Link

A link coming from another website to your site. Inbound links serve to direct users from one site to your site to learn more…

Index

Where search engines store the information they have gathered and processed from across the internet. It serves as a database of all the content…

Indexability

How accessible and transparent a web page is for search engine web crawlers. The easier a site is for crawlers to download and catalog,…

Internal link

A link on a site that links to another page on the same website. Internal linking allows your web pages to share their link…

international seo

The idea of geotargeting your SEO to be either friendly with many countries or targeting a specific country with your SEO strategy. This can…

keyword

A word or concept of great significance. In SEO, keywords are used to help describe the content of specific pages best. Search engines use…

Keyword competition

How difficult it is to rank for a specific keyword or keyword phrase. The higher the competition, the higher the difficulty of ranking. Search…

keyword research

The practice that SEO professionals use to determine the right keyword to target for a particular business so as to appear higher in the…

Knowledge graph

A knowledge base or index that Google uses to enhance SERPs with information gathered from various sources. Typically seen as an Infobox on the…

Landing page

A web page that appears in response to clicking on a link in the SERPs or marketing advertisement.

link building

As part of SEO, link building is the act of increasing the number and quality of inbound links to a webpage. This is done…

Link equity

A term used to describe how much authority a link is able to pass to another site or webpage. Link equity is closely tied…

Link profile

The entirety of inbound links pointing towards your site constitutes its link profile. Having a good backlink profile means having multiple relevant and authoritative…

Local Business

A company that provides goods or services to a local population is considered a local business. Often identified as a "brick and mortar" location.…

Local pack

A group of three to five local business listings that appear in a map box relative to the searcher's location or search query that…

local seo

Optimizing a business' online presence to rank for local searches. The strategies for local SEO are very similar to traditional but involve business listing…

Meta Description

Part of a website's head section typically under 160 characters and used to describe the page's content. These descriptions are served up on SERPs…

Meta Tags

Meta Tags are similar to descriptions but are used to more distinctly tell search engines what is on a page. They are used for…

mobile optimization

Modifying a website's content to ensure that mobile visitors have a good experience. This can be achieved by optimizing videos, content, images, buttons, using…

Mobile-first indexing

The mobile version of your website is what Googlebot crawls and archives in their search index. This is different from what it was in…

Mobile-friendly website

The capability of a website to be rendered on a mobile device or the ability for a web page to render appropriately on different…

navigation

The process of navigating SERPs on a web browser. Think of web navigating as a road map that enables website visitors to explore and…

Nofollow

An HTML attribute that instructs search engines that the hyperlink should not influence the ranking of the link's target relative to the source. A…

Off-page SEO

Optimizations done on sites other than your own for the purpose of increasing your site's search engine ranking. This is done by sharing content,…

On-page SEO

Optimizations done to your own website for the purpose of increasing your search engine rankings. This can be done by optimizing keywords, content, titles,…

Organic Links

Links that are gained without explicit agreement to exchange links. They are placed in a piece of content for the purpose of enhancing the…

organic search results

On a SERP there are two types of results: organic and paid. Organic rankings are everything that is not a paid result. On the…

organic traffic

Traffic that comes to your site from a search engine results page (SERP) for free. On a SERP there are two types of results:…

Page speed

The amount of time it takes for a web page to load. There are different types of ways to measure page speed but some…

Page title

A short description of a page on a website. This is typically under 70 characters and appears on the top of the browser window…

PageRank

Google's PageRank was named after one of their founders Larry Page. It was a link analysis algorithm that assigned a numerical value of 0-10…

Paid traffic

Any traffic to your site that the webmaster has paid for. This includes advertising promotions on PPC campaigns and social media advertisements. The strategies…

Penalty

See Manual Penalty.

PPC

A type of Internet marketing where advertisers pay a fee each time their ads are clicked. The most popular platform for PPC advertising is…

Quality Content

Content is the method by which a website presents their audience with information. This content can be in the form of text, graphical, video…

Quality Link

A backlink to your site that fits into your content and backlink profile in a manner that enhances visitors experience, increases traffic and/or verifies…

Query

A query, in web search terms, is a question that is entered on a search engine to satisfy the informational needs of a user.…

RankBrain

A machine learning search engine algorithm update that Google released on 26 October 2015. This update was a great step forward towards Google's search…

ranking

A search result position that is displayed on a results page. There are different factors that play into positions on a results page with…

Redirect

See 301 Redirect or 302 Redirect.

Referral traffic

A traffic type that Google identifies as a visit from outside their search engine. This can include people clicking on links from another website…

Relevancy

The idea of relevance in relation to SEO and search engines is the concept of how the content corresponds to a search term or…

Reputation management

Influencing the way people think about you or your brand online. A good reputation online will help your sales and is essential in a…

Rich Result

Often used interchangeably with Featured Snippet but a rich result is more encompassing than just a featured snippet. Rich results can include People Also…

Robots.txt

A standardized way websites communicate with web crawlers about which areas of the website should be crawled and which shouldn't. Not all crawlers follow…

Schema.org

A set of vocabulary that was created collaboratively by Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and Yandex to structure metadata (microdata) on web pages. This markup can…

Search Box

A GUI element used to accept user input for queries of a database. Typically seen in search engines but a search box can be…

search engine

A software system that is designed to carry out website crawling, web searches and archiving data to be queried by a user at a…

Search engine marketing

A form of Digital Marketing that involves the promotion of websites by increasing their visibility in SERPs. SEM encompasses PPC, SEO, Social Media, website…

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

The process of increasing website traffic through improvements in visibility on a search engine results page. You can improve your visibility through various methods…

Search engine result page

The pages displayed by a search engine in response to a query. These results used to be a simple 1-10 position ranking that started…

Search History

The list of web pages a user has visited recently. Typically this data is recorded by the web browser along with page title and…

Search Query

A question that is posed to a search engine in order to search online databases for a response of web pages. Typically search queries…

Search traffic

Traffic that visits your site from a search engine.

Search volume

The number of searches that are anticipated for a specific keyword in a 30 day time period.

SEO Copywriting

A form of online writing that contains keywords, helps rankings, and increases traffic. When writing you have to take into account both the user…

seo reseller

An SEO reseller is an individual or a business that outsources an SEO strategy and deliverables to a third-party and then sells the SEO…

SEO Site Audit

A process by which a webmaster or SEO agency audits a website to see how optimized it is for search engines. This includes technical…

SEO-Friendly URL

A URL that illustrates context to users and crawlers. Understanding how search engine crawlers use URLs is essential to selecting a good URL slug…

SERP

A list of results pulled for a query or search. These results are pulled from an index that is archived by a crawler. A…

SERP features

Features that modify the typical 1-10 spot display of a search engine results page. These features constantly change but are traditionally seen as rich…

Site Age

Site Age refers to the amount of time during which a domain has existed. Site age is a factor in SEO ranking only as…

Sitemap

A sitemap is a list of pages on a website. There are two main types of sitemaps that SEO deals with. One is a…

SMM

Social media marketing is the use of social media platforms to connect with your audience to build your brand, increase sales, and drive website…

Spam

Spam, in the SEO sense of the word, is the deliberate manipulation of search engine indexes and algorithms to better your position on SERPs.…

Structured Data

Structured data is another term for microdata and describes entities and their relationships through a standardized list of attributes (aka Schema.org). This data is…

Subdomain

A subdomain is another part of a main domain that typically illustrates different parts of an organization. For example, blog.boostability.com would indicate that blog…

Thin content

Content that inadequately explains a concept or a proposed idea. Thin content may not be long enough, or lack important details. With the general…

Time on page

A metric used to determine how long a user stays on a page of a website. Longer time on page indicates that the content…

white label marketing

White label marketing is the act of providing a marketing service or product to a third-party business to brand under their own logo and…

White Label SEO Services

Similar to white label marketing mentioned above, white label SEO services is the act of providing service to a third-party business to then market…