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We present the SEO dictionary of La Teva Web. It is a list of concepts that SEO professionals usually use, and that if we start a conversation with other people on planet earth we may not realize that they are not understanding us. To others we say that we do not usually speak this weird to hesitate, and that if we use so many anglicisms does not mean that we have studied SEO at Oxford, simply all the nomenclature has been generated from the Anglo-Saxon world, and although the concepts often have a translation into Spanish (not always), the most common use is in its original version.
Who is this SEO dictionary for?
To anyone who might be interested. We think it can be very useful to people who are starting in this SEO world, so that they have an approach to the usual range of concepts. It may also be of interest to a client. The owner of a website, its executives or marketing technicians, that although they are not going to implement SEO actions, especially the more technical ones, it is highly recommended that they know the work of SEOs and their language to better monitor the projects. And although it is not intended to be an advanced level document (you will see the explanatory effort in the definitions), it can also be a good tool for SEO professionals as a reference tool, to refresh concepts or to explain them to their clients.
In any case, we welcome you to this dictionary - glossary of SEO concepts. It is something made for you, so we will be happy to receive your feedback to expand or modify definitions, and of course if you miss any entry you can suggest it to us, because the idea is that this content is constantly expanding and updating. We will be placing them in alphabetical order, for better accessibility.
404: signal sent by the server to the browser when it tries to access a URL of our domain that does not exist. It can be caused by a human error of the user, who has not written the URL correctly, or because we have deleted that page or modified the URL and we have not redirected it. With a good 404 page we can seduce the user to continue browsing other contents of our website. At SEO level, it is interesting to control the pages that give 404, and redirect them whenever we have similar content on our website, and thus preserve its accumulated SEO.
ALT: with this html tag we indicate to the robots what is in a photograph we have in our content. It is essential for Google to index our images and get good positions, i.e. SEO of images.
Alternate: is the other side of the hreflang tag. When we have the web in more than one language, we use the alternates to tell Google which is the equivalent version of a content in another language. This way the content is better related and ranked, and it is a powerful tool for international SEO.
Anchor text: when we place a link, the anchor text is the word or set of words on which if we click we will go to the destination URL. Normally it is marked in bold, and serves to guide the user on what type of content will be found in the destination. An anchor text like here or see more would not be very descriptive, although it may seem the most natural.
Backlinks: incoming links. They occur when a link to our domain is included on a web page that is not ours. It is not enough to put only the URL, it must be clickable. Some people say that you can position websites without backlinks. Courage with it. If you want to learn more about this aspect of Offpage SEO, see our post on what are backlinks.
BERT: Google's artificial intelligence project with a quasi-person's name. A megamonster of data from which Google aims to better understand our content and search intent, from understanding language and context, and that with the accumulation of data is learning and refining its behavior.
Black hat SEO: set of SEO practices that are outside the good practices recommended by Google. Its goal is to manipulate Google's perception of our pages that it would have naturally, in order to obtain SEO quickly. Like everything that is outside the law, it can be pleasant but it is very dangerous. And if you get caught, recovering is an odyssey.
Bounce rate: percentage of users who, once they access a URL on your website, do not perform any relevant action. They do not click on internal or external links, nor do they stay more than 30 seconds on our website (although this parameter can be altered). It is usually an indicator that the user has not found what he/she was looking for, or has encountered technical problems to consult it.
Breadcrumbs: the breadcrumbs help the user to locate the relationship and hierarchy of the contents, from bottom to top. If we are in a product listing, for example, it is useful to provide the user and Google with links to the categories and subcategories to which the content belongs. It is very relevant in terms of internal linking.
Canonical: html tag by means of which we indicate to Google which is the original URL and which must be taken into account for positioning purposes. Normally it will be the same URL where we are, but this is not always the case. It is usually used to avoid positioning URLs with variables or product configuration parameters, listings or searches, since 99% of them would be duplicate content. It is a way to concentrate SEO and take advantage of our crawl budget on good and important URLs.
CDN: content delivery networks. They are networks of servers around the world, which store copies of our website on servers, and are able to deliver it anywhere in the world at a remarkable speed. They are useful for projects that have an international vocation (a website hosted on a Spanish server that takes one second to load in Madrid, may take 10 seconds from New York), and for large websites that may have peaks of visits that can knock down a standard machine. More about what is a CDN and its impact on SEO.
Clickbait: optimization of attributes that appear in the snippets, especially the title, with the aim of attracting the user's attention with respect to the rest of the results, and encourage a higher rate of clicks on impressions (CTR). It must be sexy but not lie about what we will find inside, or it will end up hurting us if after the click there is a bounce or pogo sticking.
Cloaking: blackhat practice according to which we show a content to users, and deliver a different one to Google. This practice is not recommended nowadays, as spiders have greatly improved their ability to detect it.
Content cluster: this is a set of contents of a web page that revolve around a shared theme. Different contents are generated, and these are linked internally to transmit authority and fix the cluster. Generally, the aim is to position the main content for the most general keywords, and the others for longer tail searches. In a cluster each page has its own objectives, and helps to position the pillar content.
Core Web Vitals: vital web signals, vitamins for Google. It refers to Google's particular way of measuring the loading speed and user experience on your website with mobile devices. It is important not only because it affects the user experience, but also because it has an impact on SEO. More about Core Web Vitals: What are they and how to optimize them?
Crawl Budget: depending on our domain authority, age, quantity and quality of our content and other aspects, Google assigns its robots a time to crawl our content, to detect new or modified content. As in other aspects of life, the more budget we have the better, and if we have a very tight budget, we must make the most of the resources in what is important.
Crawling: process by which Google spiders and other search engines dive through the contents of our website to identify and classify them. More about what crawling is and how it affects SEO.
CRO: its acronym stands for Convertion Rate Optimization. It is no longer properly part of SEO, but it is relevant because it has an impact on it. It is a discipline that includes aspects of web analytics, web design, layout, programming, and so on. In short, they are actions to improve the conversion rate on our website. To measure its impact, the ideal is to work with A/B testing systems.
CTR: percentage that measures the ratio between impressions and clicks. Applied to SEO, of the times your web snippet has appeared in search results, how many times the user has decided to click. It is related to the position we occupy, but also to the content of our titles and descriptions, as well as the correspondence between the user's search and the content we claim to offer.
De-indexing: normally we work so that Google indexes our content, but sometimes content that does not interest us can be indexed. Because they are basically poor or duplicated, and thus concentrate the SEO strength of our website. The best way to deindex, although laborious, is through Google Search Console.
Disallow: this is the most common command you will find in robots.txt files. In this case it prohibits access to the robots indicated to the selected content. And this is directive and mandatory for them.
Disavow: hidden Google tool, because in the wrong hands it can be explosive. In any case, it allows us to disavow inbound links to our website that we want Google to disregard. Normally it is used when we have many low quality links, spam websites, automatic websites, negative SEO, etcetera. A moderate use is recommended. If you want to know more, we have a post that delves into Google Disavow.
Domain: it is our name in Internet browsers. In exchange for a small amount of money, we pay domain registrars so that we can use an Internet domain to place our website or redirect it, for a certain period of time. It is important to choose a good domain, and it has an important impact on SEO. More about how to choose a domain.
Domain authority: score obtained by a domain at SEO level with respect to other domains, and has a strong impact on SEO, not only for the current content, but also and especially on the impact of new content or changes in our website. Authority is gained with time of presence in search engines, quality content and if it can be specialized, and taking into account other aspects such as our profile of outgoing and incoming links. There is an authority of the domain as a whole, but also of each internal URL, and here interlinking (internal linking strategy) plays a fundamental role. There is no public domain authority metric recognized by Google, however numerous tools have their own, and you will generally find that they match.
Domain extension: part of the domain after the dot. It identifies the type of domain depending on whether it is general (.com, .net...), local (.es, .cat, .barcelona...) or specific (.tech, .bio...). There is an increasing variety of extensions and all of them can work, if they are coherent with the type of business and positioning strategy. More about what is a TLD and how to choose a domain extension.
Duplicated content: when Google detects that the content of a URL is suspiciously similar to the content found in another URL. Be careful, it can be another URL from the same domain, or from another one. It is a practice that Google does not like at all, so it is always better to have on each page original content written by us. Hint: if we have an e-commerce and the contents of the product sheets is the one provided by the manufacturer, you may have duplicate content on dozens of websites.
Exact Match Domain: EMD's are domains that consist of exactly the keyword we want to rank for. They can be very useful for niche websites and can help us to rank faster for that keyword. On the other hand, they weaken our ability to do branding in the medium term (brands will prefer a domain with their name), and are a limitation if later on we want to talk about more topics on that website, beyond what the domain defines.
Expired domain: we all have a history, and so do domains. When the license of a domain has expired, someone else can acquire it and host their website there. And Google takes into account the age of the domain (as long as it has had a website there), and what they have done with it before: what content and programming they had, what incoming and outgoing links they had, etc. When we acquire a domain it is very important to know its history, because we will assume it, for better or worse.
Featured snippet: the snippet of snippets. The King of snippets. Also known as Google position 0. Sometimes when a search is performed, Google considers that there is a content that is very good and that stands out from the competition. Then it shows it in the first position, but not in the usual format, but in a much larger and more visible way. The good thing is that there is very little chance that the user will opt for inferior content. The dangerous thing is that the user already sees the answer to his question in the snippet, and consequently has no need to click on the result and access your website.
Footprints: these are search commands from which to obtain very refined results in the search engine. The most used footprint by SEOs is site:eldominiodetuweb.com, to find out how many URLs that domain has indexed. Then there are many more advanced ones, both for White and especially for Black Hat SEO.
Google Analytics: Google analysis tool that allows us to know the visit data of a website such as the number of visits, viewing time, the most visited pages, the profile of the user browsing the website, the traffic channels through which these visits enter and much more. It also allows integration with Google Ads and Search Console.
Google algorithm: set of formulas that determine how Google evaluates web pages to rank them. It is more mysterious and secret than the formula for Coca-Cola. More about Google's main algorithms.
Google Business Profile: formerly known as MyBusiness, is Google's platform through which local business owners register their businesses, place them on the map to appear on Google Maps, and provide relevant information for Google and the user, such as business description, opening hours, contact details, photos, products and services, etc.
Google Core Update: in-depth updates to Google's algorithm. They affect fundamental parts of how Google values web pages, so they generate earthquakes in rankings. For reasons unknown to us, Google usually releases them in summer or Christmas, so that SEOs can enjoy the holidays intensely.
Google Dance: refers to processes of constant alteration of positions in Google. It often occurs when the search engine implements algorithm changes. It can last for days or weeks, causing several micro-infarcts for SEOs.
Google Hummingbird: Google's 2010 algorithm update. It was very important for the search engine to better process complex, long tail searches, and not just stick to the main keyword. This greatly improved the user experience on the search engine, and opened up the game for SEOs to be able to compete with the biggest search engines, based on a long tail strategy.
Google Search Console: the only essential SEO tool, the most reliable and the one that gives us the most valuable information. With it we verify ourselves to Google as webmasters of a website, we send the search engine our content, and it offers us a lot of information about which pages it consults, what content it interprets, and on which words and pages it positions us.
Google Search Console Insights: by merging data from Analytics and Search Console, this tool allows you to find out what content on your website attracts the most visitors. It is useful to know with which searches users discover your website, which pages are most popular and which have the best results in organic searches, as well as which media redirect to your site.
Google Merchants Center: another Google tool, in this case it is essentially for online sellers to register with Google and provide it with a list of products they sell online, so that they can appear on Google Shopping. Normally the products are not submitted manually, but a product feed is set up and updated periodically.
Google Panda: Google's algorithm update launched in 2011, focused on better analysing quality content. It was then that "Content is King" began to take root among SEOs. It implies providing extensive, well-crafted and, above all, original content.
Google Penguin: Google's 2012 algorithm update, focused on better detecting and chasing low-quality links. There was a time when the penguin was the most feared animal for webmasters. If it hit you with its flipper, it was very difficult to get up.
Google Rankbrain: Google's Core update in 2015. It was the first to incorporate artificial intelligence, and processed information to understand search patterns. With it, the SEO practice of writing like a robot began to die, and we began to write like humans.
Google Shopping: product comparator between e-commerce with the same or similar products. With a very visual format, it allows the user in the Google results to get information about product name, main image, price or shipping costs before clicking. Historically there was only a paid version through Google Ads, but now there is also a free version available for all e-commerce, so it is a great SEO tool. More on how Google Shopping works for free.
Google Tag Manager: although it is an analytical tool, it is essential for SEOs, as it allows them to simplify the code and even perform SEO actions without the need for a programmer.
Guest posting: consists of publishing an article as a guest post on a website that is not of our authorship. To do it right, it should be signed by us in a transparent way, and if you have negotiated well, it will include a link to the website you want to position. It is possible that you will be asked for something in exchange, monetary or otherwise. It is undoubtedly a very good linkbuilding and PR strategy, although again it should be used with moderation.
Headings: are the h1, h2, h3, h4, etc. of the pages, and have the function of structuring the content of the web pages. Using headings in an organised way helps search engines to know what the URL they are analysing is about, and the way they are used is to put the most important content in hierarchical order, starting with the h1. The use of headings also gives us a better reading of the text, and having a better text benefits the user, so any benefit for the user is a benefit for SEO.
Hreflang: html tag by means of which we indicate to the robots in which language the content is written, and if this is the case, it also serves to indicate to Google in which country or countries we want to position this content. It is highly recommended to use it when we have a national business with a domain that does not belong to that state (.es, .fr, .it...), and it is essential if we have the website in several languages and/or if we want to work on international SEO.
htaccess: is a configuration file found on Apache servers. It is where redirects, and access or content redirection rule sets are configured. It is a very delicate file to touch, it can blow up the whole website. Every time you make changes you must test that everything works correctly.
https: URL protocol that indicates to the browser that it is consulting a secure site. It is incorporated into websites that contract an SSL secure browsing certificate. The browsing data is encrypted and protected. Google and users value very positively that you have it. When it is installed, the redirections and Search Console must be properly configured to avoid duplicate content and to ensure that the version with and without https coexist on our website.
Indexing: once Google has crawled a piece of content, the indexing process is the translation of that content into Google's results. Google first crawls, then indexes. And it does not index everything it crawls, but if it does not crawl, it will certainly not index.
Keyword: the curious thing that confuses many people is that it does not refer to a single word, but to the word or set of words that we can place in a search engine to find what we are looking for. There are keywords made up of a dozen words.
Keyword cannibalization: the concept is very descriptive. It defines situations in which we have two or more URLs on our website that aim to rank for the same keyword. As a general rule, the ideal is that each URL resolves a search intent, so that if you write 400 posts on the same topic, it is possible that only one will rank. Or none.
Keyword density: the percentage of repetition of a keyword in relation to the text as a whole. Although nowadays it is difficult to say what % of density is optimal, it is already very clear that we should not repeat our target excessively, or we will get into keyword stuffing. It is much more important to introduce contextual concepts, synonyms, long tail variations of our keyword, and so on.
Keyword stuffing: if we repeat ad nauseam the keyword we want to rank for in a piece of content, it will be unnatural and therefore annoying to read. For some time now, Google prefers that although you should obviously include the keyword at some point, you should also offer related concepts, synonyms, etcetera. And write normally: with subject, verb, predicate, verb tenses, prepositions and so on.
Keywords study: process of analysis of which keywords we want to try to position with our content. To do this, we study the website to be positioned, its content and who is the potential user, to intuit what types of search can be performed. From here, keyword research tools help us to decide by providing us with information on search volume, seasonality or difficulty of positioning, among others. More about The 7 best tools to find keywords.
Linkbuilding: a set of actions and strategies aimed at ensuring that our website has an inbound link profile that will help us to have more authority. It is not limited to just buying links, something you should not do. Be careful, we may be interested in getting new links, or removing or disavowing some that we have. The more authority the website that links to us has, as long as it has a thematic relationship, the better.
Link baiting: this consists of generating content that is so good, so extensive, so well thought out, so useful for internet users in the sector you are targeting, that it is a magnet that generates links, mentions, reputation... In short, SEO. You have to think about things that bring value to the community, something really useful for the community, and something else that no one else has shared on the net. This dictionary, without further ado, could fulfil this task.
Link juice: this concept is intended to explain that when we put a link we are transmitting SEO authority, we are giving strength to a linked content. Let's suppose we have a page with a value of 100 to transmit. If we place 1 inbound link on it, it will receive 100 points. If we place 10, 10 points each. A lot of SEO work is about adjusting and balancing those authority transmissions, according to the established priorities of which pages are most relevant to us. But hey, it doesn't seem reasonable to put 300,000 in a post, make a selection and make sure each link makes sense and helps the user.
Link gap: any self-respecting SEO work incorporates a good study of the competition. It is always good to know how to detect the good practices of the competition, and apply those that can fit us. By analyzing the backlink gap we detect inbound links that our competitors have and that we do not have. It is interesting to filter those that are not interesting to try to get those or other similar ones.
Local SEO: when we have a company with one or more territorial headquarters, through local SEO we carry out actions so that users can find information about this local business. This can be both URLs of our website, as well as results on Google Maps and other geolocation platforms. The most powerful local SEO tool is Google My Business.
Long tail: refers to long tail keywords. They are those searches in which we look for something very specific in Google, with the intention and nuance that we have clear. If we bet on long tails in an SEO strategy, we will have much more chances of positioning ourselves for them, even among large portals. Although they may have fewer searches than the more generic ones, they can bring a lot of high quality traffic, as they are users who are looking for exactly the content you have.
Log analysis: logs are the requests that machines make to our server to consult our content. Applied to SEO, log analysis allows us to identify aspects such as what type of Google spiders visit our content, how often, what content is most visited, and so on. They are very useful especially in large portals, with many URLs and an unbalanced SEO between them.
Meta Description: space of more than 200 characters to offer Google a brief summary of the content of a URL. As this will normally be the description shown in the search results, it is in your interest to capture the user's attention and interest, with your contribution of value compared to the rest of the results.
Meta robots: this is an html tag through which we give indications to the search engine spiders as to how they should crawl and index that content. Depending on what you are interested in, it allows you to tell them not to crawl a URL, to crawl it but not to index it, and what to do with the links on that page, whether to follow them or not. Juggling these combinations is fun but dangerous.
Meta title: limited space of characters by means of which we indicate to Google what content it will find in our URL. Normally it will be the content that Google selects as the title of the page in its search engine, but not always. It is essential that it includes the keyword we want to position in the initial part.
Migration: a very deep change process and very delicate in terms of SEO. There are three types: change of domain, change of website or transfer of hosting. If we make a domain change, we mean that the same website and the same contents will continue to operate the same but under another name on the Internet, another main domain. It can also be a change of website, which implies that a website with a new design and programming will be visible under a domain where there is now a current website. Finally a hosting change would involve moving a website and all its files and programming from one hosting machine to another. All three migration processes must be done under the supervision of technical SEO specialists, or you could lose all the accumulated SEO along the way. It is not advisable to tackle more than one such migration at a time, rather one at a time. More on How to switch websites without losing SEO.
Negative SEO:the black candles of SEO. Practices that aim to worsen the positioning of the competition. The most common are the generation of SPAM links to the websites that I want to damage, and the most advanced can even involve hacks that alter the code of our website detrimentally. This can occur in very competitive sectors in search engines, and where there is a lot of money at stake.
Niche websites:thematic websites, which are oriented towards a very specific market segment. At SEO level, they have a very specialised keyword orientation in the sector, and well worked, they have a great capacity to position themselves as experts in the field, in contrast to a more generic website that covers many topics. For a niche website it is advisable to use EMD domains, or at least that. There are SEOs who are specialised in niche websites that are nourished from fully or partially automated content, and that are monetised through affiliates.
No follow: do not follow. Tag in the html that we use when we have a link, internal or external, that we do not want to be followed or taken into account by Google, and therefore do not transfer authority to it. Normally it is used to tag links to pages with low authority or poor content (cookies policy, shopping cart...) or for sponsored links, although Google already has a better tag for that. You must take into account that for Google it is a signal, and it will not always be heeded.
No index: don't index it. "Google look, this page I have on my website is here for a reason, probably for the user, but don't take it into account for SEO purposes, don't index it in the search engine". It could be useful for tagging outdated pages, with poor or duplicate content.
OBL (Outbound links): a very ugly name to define the outbound links that a given page has. We must take into account what content we want to link to, how we want to tag it, and whether we want to transfer authority to it.
Off-site SEO: a range of things you can do outside your website that have an impact on SEO positioning. This includes everything you can do to get mentions, links, popularity on the Internet, social media signals, with tools such as Google My Business or Google Merchants, and so on.
On-site SEO: set of actions that we can perform within our website that have an impact on SEO. In general, it is always advisable to have your house ready and presentable before showing it to your friends, especially if they are called Google.
Orphan page: a page within our website that does not have any internal link from any other space of our domain, will feel sad and lonely. Without internal links it is possible that neither the user nor Google will be able to access it, and you will be indicating to Google that this content is not relevant. If it were, you would have already linked to it, wouldn't you?
Pagerank: it's something very old that no longer exists, so it's not worth explaining it anymore, let's look forward. It is important not to mention it, or it will be said that we are a bit outdated in this SEO stuff.
PBN: private blog network. A practice explicitly forbidden by Google, although it continues to bring a lot of joy and some displeasure to SEOs on the dark side. Its acronym stands for Private Blog Network. It involves building a network of several websites, the aim of which is to generate links to the website that we really want to rank. It is about making Google think that many websites point to mine and that therefore mine is the bomb, and that you don't get caught.
Penalty: punishment applied by Google for having failed to comply with some of its recommended practices. They involve a sudden and usually drastic drop in our results and positions in the rankings. There are two types: manual penalties mean that a Google technician has detected violations and has notified them. You can see them in the Google Search Console panel. Algorithmic penalties, on the other hand, happen when there has been an update to Google's algorithm that emphasises an aspect you were working on wrong, especially if you are doing Black Hat.
Pogo sticking: this phenomenon occurs when a user performs a search on the engine, clicks on a result to access content, and then decides to return to the search results. Logic tells us that the user has not found what he was looking for in that content, and if this happens often, we will be penalised. More about Pogo sticking and SEO.
Query: in SEO we say query to what are actually search queries. They are search patterns in real search engines, as they are carried out. With spelling mistakes, absence of connectors or any grammatical coherence, etc. It differs from the keyword because the keyword is the ideal concept for which we can position, while the query is the real search, which often differs. Depending on the moment and phase of decision in which the user is, we speak of informational, navigational or transactional queries.
Ranking: process by which Google alters the positions of a piece of content in the search results for a keyword. Most ranking changes are due to algorithmic changes, but they can also be due to manual actions (penalties), to changes that you have applied to your code or content, or to good or bad practices of other players, which also play a role.
Redirection: action by which we indicate to a browser, when it wants to consult a web page, that it is no longer available, and we take it to a new URL where we will find the updated content or a very similar one. Through redirection we aim to preserve and transfer the accumulated SEO of a URL.
Rich Snippet: every time different results appear in the SERPs, so-called rich results. These correspond to elements of our website that, if we tag them correctly using structured data, Google can understand what type of content is being offered and display it as such. More about what Rich Snippets are and how to use them.
Robots.txt: simple file through which we indicate to the robots which content they can access and which they cannot. Its most common use is to block access to web administration folders and files or to limit access to certain robots that give us performance problems, although there is the option to do some ingenious things with it, always with a good sense of judgement.
Sandbox: SEO limbo. From the moment we publish a website until it is indexed by Google, our content is in a parallel universe where it is being processed and analysed. Part of the job of SEOs is to reduce the transit time through the Sandbox as much as possible, although SEO inevitably requires some patience, especially for new projects.
Schema.org: NGO dedicated to establishing guidelines on how the contents of web pages should be labelled, so that robots can identify and classify each type in the correct way. For some time now recognised by Google as an authority, following their guidelines is a guarantee of being able to place our rich snippets in the search results.
SEM: stands for Search Engine Marketing. It is the set of actions and tools through which we make the results of our business appear in the paid results of a SERP. The most powerful SEM tool is Google Ads. We also have a SEM dictionary if you want to learn more about its key concepts.
Semrush: although it is called SEM, it is actually the best known and most popular external tool to Google. It is a good tool, quite complete in most of the aspects that affect SEO, although it works better with some than others. To be taken into account: the free version is very limited, and the advanced plans are very expensive.
SEO: stands for Search Engine Optimisation. It could be defined as the set of actions carried out to obtain the highest possible visibility of our content in the organic results of search engines.
SEO Consultant: a professional who is supposed to have a deep knowledge and background in the SEO world. It is important that he/she has had practical experience, otherwise he/she will be a bad consultant. It is a person with great analytical skills, who will analyze the SEO status of your website and will propose actions and strategies to improve it. In principle, his work is limited to consulting, not to the implementation of actions. Unfortunately there has been a lot of smoke under this name, but we always recommend to put an SEO consultant in your project, to avoid unpleasantness and work in vain.
SEO audit: in-depth analysis of the positioning status of a website at a given time. Generally it should include aspects of domain authority, internal and external linking, on-page SEO optimization. They can be very useful or a tremendous waste of time if they are limited to presenting data provided by the tools and do not take into account aspects such as business objectives, target and competition, or if their conclusions are left in a drawer. More about what a SEO audit is.
SERP: list of results that we see on a results page after performing a search. Its acronym stands for Search Engine Results Page, descriptive. In a SERP we initially only saw web results, but over time there are more and more types of resources: images, videos, Google Ads results, local businesses on Google Maps, etcetera.
Sitemap: online searchable file through which we offer robots a list of URLs of our website. We can have one or more sitemaps by type of content (corporate pages, blog posts, products...), and also sitemaps of resources such as images, videos or PDFs.
Slug: this is the part of the url of a piece of content that refers to the content that the user will find. There are more things in the url, such as the protocol, domain or folders. The slug should ideally include the keyword, avoid extraneous characters, omit irrelevant words, and separate words with hyphens in the middle, not underscores.
Snippet: this concept refers to each of the results that appear in a search result (SERP). They are the summaries that Google offers us of the content that we are going to find on the websites. It is important to pay attention to the title and summary offered by the search engine, and to detect if it is related to what we offer and what we want to position.
Spinning: this refers to the practice of generating similar content from one piece of content and crossing your fingers that Google does not detect it as duplicate content. It is a way of generating "new" content while saving time. There is software that allows us, from a base text and a series of patterns, to generate different variables of the text with a percentage of divergence. This can be useful in contexts where we have many products with the same description, and we want them to differ to a certain degree. You may be left with texts that, when read, make no sense at all.
Structured data: code tags through which we indicate to Google when we have content of a specific type, which will allow us to stand out in the results through Rich Snippets. Some examples are the authors of a post, videos, recipes or events, and the list is constantly expanding. Google recognizes the tags and ways of working with them available on the Schema.org portal.
Subdomain: you've probably seen URLs like blog.mydomain.com or shop.mydomain.com. They are commonly used to host web sections that do not correspond to the main website, and are often made with another technology and CMS. To all intents and purposes they are a separate website. They can be useful for hosting an intranet, a Wordpress blog to complement a corporate website or an online shop, and so on.
Technical SEO: sub-discipline within SEO that deals with the more technical aspects of web programming that have an impact on SEO positioning.
Title: not only a page has a title, but also other resources, such as links or images. With titles we tell search engines what they are going to find in the resource we are referencing, and it should be descriptive and different from the anchor text or ALT. See also: Google changes the way you choose the titles of your pages.
Thin content: poor content. In principle, it refers to URLs that have hardly any content. The manual says that less than 200 words would be considered thin content, although it is best to write in a natural way, and whatever comes out comes out. In any case, there is a consensus that a page with 20 words is thin content, no matter how good and original it is.
UGC: User Generated Content. With this tag we can indicate to Google that certain content has not been written and/or supervised by the webmasters of a website, it is not owned by the page, but it is content that has been contributed by the user in spaces such as forums or blog comments. You help Google to understand this content and you are not responsible for the comments or links that they may upload.
URL: a web page consists of a domain, but it can then have hundreds or thousands of URLs to consult each of our internal pages and resources, which can be consulted by means of the URL address. It must include protocol (http, https), and should normally include the 3 www, although it is not mandatory.
W3C: the World Wide Web Consortium is an organisation that provides best practices on how we should deliver our html code, clean, tagged and crawlable. There are numerous validators of our html and CSS that you should run on your website and look to correct errors.
Web hosting: is the storage space on a server that a website needs. In it we store all the files and resources of a web page, and the machine makes the web available to devices that want to access it. It influences SEO to the extent that choosing a good server and configuring it correctly affects aspects such as the loading speed of a website, security and possible infections, or server failures that disable the website or part of it. In this aspect, cheap is usually expensive. If you want to know more, see our post on Types of web hosting.
White hat SEO: these are web positioning practices that are carried out in compliance with Google's guidelines on what the search engine takes into account, and what kind of practices it values and what kind of practices it penalises.
WPO: Web Performance Optimization. Set of things we can do to improve the performance of our website. In essence, it is the loading speed of a website and the processes carried out on it. This includes aspects of server configuration, web programming, front-end and much more.
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