Decoding SEO Jargon – Terms You Need to Know

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Search Engine Optimisation, or SEO, can be a techie, jargon-filled topic to talk about, especially to those outside of the industry. You may have heard of SEO and optimising your website but you may be dreading talking to an expert about it, simply because it’s confusing! 

However, SEO is as simple as it sounds, optimising your website so that search engines favour it, and rank it higher than millions of other websites competing for page 1. 

Let’s talk about Google, as it has a huge part to play in SEO. Google continues to dominate search engines. Throughout 2020 Google had a market share of 70.38% – so we can say it is by far the most popular search engine. With SEO, it’s a constant game of trying to figure out Google’s very hush hush ranking factors and optimising websites based on these. 

Now you have an understanding of SEO, it’s important to know the different language or “jargon” used so you can better understand it. I’m hoping throughout the months I’ll be able to add to this list. 

Organic 

Organic simply means natural. So when website visitors, or traffic in other terms, is referred to as Organic it means people have found your website through Google search without the use of ads. Simply based on how well it is optimised. 

Keywords

Keywords are the most important words used within your website content. These are the words potential website visitors are typing into search engines. These need to be highly relevant to your business and optimised on-page for Google and other search engines to rank your website for those search terms. 

Optimised / Optimisation 

Having an optimised website means it’s following best practice for Google to favour it. Google has over 200 ranking factors (that we know of) and on-page optimisation shares a huge proportion of these.  

On-Page / Off-Page SEO

In simple terms, on-page SEO refers to factors you can control on your website whereas off-page SEO refers to external factors. For example, the amount of exposure something gets on social media, which mentions or links directly back to your website. Another example of off-page SEO is something the industry calls backlinks. 

Backlinks

A backlink is a link on an external website which directly links back to your website. Backlinks are great for SEO but can also be deadly. They help build up your website authority, lots of mentions of your website on the web, the more trustworthy Google deems it and essentially ranks it higher. However, toxic backlinks can be deadly for your website. These are usually spammy backlinks which are coming from very low authority and un-secure websites. 

User Experience

This is all about how your website works to the end-user. eCommerce websites want to focus on a smooth landing page to the checkout process and B2B websites want to focus on a smooth landing page to form fill or phone call process. 

User experience is becoming one of the biggest ranking factors, especially in 2021 with Google’s new Core Vital Update which focuses massively on User Experience. 

Algorithm 

Google’s algorithms are a complex system used to retrieve data from its search index and instantly deliver the best possible results for a query. The search engine uses a combination of algorithms and numerous ranking signals to deliver websites ranked by relevance on its search engine result. It is assumed that many other search engines such as Bing & Yahoo used a very similar algorithm. 

E.A.T 

E.A.T is an anagram for Expertise, Authority, Trust and it ties SEO altogether. Optimising your website is hugely about keywords and content, but just important is how trustworthy and relevant your website is. Search engines main goal is to provide the end-user with the best possible information for their search query, so if you’re not a trustworthy source for products or information, you simply won’t rank.