Glossary of SEO Terms

Anchor Text/Link Text
The text that appears as a clickable link to another web page. Web crawlers look at this text to determine the value the link gives to the user. Both the site hosting the link and the site within the link are rewarded SEO bonuses based on the credibility of the link and relevance of the anchor text to the content being linked.

Bot/Spider/Web Crawler
A software application that routinely indexes content on the internet to help websites appear in search results.

Bounce Rate
The percentage of visits that didn’t get a second action on the site. For example, a user clicks on your site, looks at it briefly and leaves without clicking on a link to another page. 

Content SEO
The practice of enhancing the writing and structure of the content on a web page to improve its likelihood of appearing in search results.

E-E-A-T 
Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness. These qualities are confirmed metrics by which Google (and presumably other search engines) judge and rank a page. The algorithms, as well as the real humans who manually judge work to train them, require that a page possesses each of these qualities to be deemed “high-quality.” 

• Experience is demonstrated through first-hand knowledge of a topic.

• Expertise looks at the author of the content, checking that they have the credentials to be writing on such a topic.

• Authoritativeness refers to the author, the webpage, and the content itself, looking that the content would be accepted by most authorities in the field. Since the field is repair (and iFixit is recognized as an authority on repair), the website component is already covered.

• Trustworthiness looks at the author, website, and content to see that each can be trusted. If the author has written false content in the past, the website is infamous for spreading fake news, or the content itself is shown to be false, the trust of the webpage is rendered obsolete.

External Links vs. Crosslinks vs. Backlinks

• External links are links from your page to a page with a different domain, like linking from your page on iFixit.com to a page on Wikipedia.com. 

• Crosslinks are links from your page to a different page within the same domain, like linking from an iPhone 8 page on iFixit to an iPhone 8+ page also on iFixit. 

• Backlinks are links that are directed at your page from a page on another domain, like if garysrepairblog.com linked to your page on iFixit.com. 

H1 Heading
Typically the largest text on the page, used primarily to display a web page title. On iFixit, your H1 heading will be automatically generated using the text in the Display Title field.

Informational Search
A search query in which the user is seeking information, like an answer to a question or to learn about a subject.

Keywords
A search term or phrase used to index and describe the contents of a page (also known as index terms, subject terms, subject headings, or descriptors). Keywords are just like search queries, but from the perspective of the content creator, rather than the user. You want to include keywords in your page that will align with a user’s relevant search query.

Meta Description
A component of the HTML source code for a page denoted by the <meta name=”description” /> tag. The content within this tag is commonly used by search engines or social media sites as the search summary or link summary. On iFixit, the meta description is automatically populated using the text in the Summary field.

Navigational Search
A search in which the user is seeking a specific location, like a web page or domain. For example, searching for “iFixit” on Google when you wanted to go to www.ifixit.com.

Natural Language
Any language that evolved organically through human use and repetition. This is opposed to computer language/code, which was developed specifically to be used by computers, and evolves consciously for ease of use by humans.

Nofollow tags/robots.txt 
The nofollow tag, sometimes included in a text file called ‘robots.txt’ embedded within the source code, tells web crawler bots whether or not they should include your page within their indexes. The nofollow tag can also be included as a line in the source code independent of the file, and the robots.txt file can detail more specifically how web scraping bots should behave.

Page Title/Title Tag
The title that appears as the clickable header for the page’s entry on a search engine results page. Search engines also look at this title for the most important keywords for your page. On iFixit, the title tag is automatically generated using the text in the Display Title field.

Search Algorithm
The code backend that makes a search engine run. The code can vary from dozens of lines for simple applications to entire databases that make up a web search engine. Search Algorithms are extremely proprietary and closely guarded secrets, so part of the practice of SEO is figuring out how the big web search engine’s algorithms function.

Search Engine
A bit of code which helps locate information. If you’ve ever used control+F to find a word within a document or searched Instagram to find a friend, you’ve used a search engine. For the purposes of this project, however, we will use the term search engine to refer specifically to web search engines, like Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, or SearchEncrypt. Web search engines examine the entirety of the internet, and are by far the most complex as a result.

Search Field/Search Box
The location that you type in your search query on any search engine. On Google’s front page, this is located dead center, right below the Google logo, and right above the ‘Google Search’ and ‘I’m Feeling Lucky’ buttons.

Search Query
What you type into the search field. A search query can be as simple as ‘cat pics’ or as complicated as ‘How do I replace the fuel pump relay on my 1995 BMW 525i.’

Search Summary
A brief explanation of your page content which is displayed directly underneath the page title in a search engine results page. This helps users get an idea of what your page is about before they visit.

SEO - search engine optimization
The practice of enhancing various aspects of a web page—from the readable content to the technical source code—so that it’s more likely to appear in the results of a relevant web search query.

SERP (Search Engine Results Page)
The ranked list of web pages displayed by search engines in response to a user’s query (ex: a Google results page). The order of these results is determined by various factors that the search engine’s algorithm takes into account. We can’t know exactly what all of these factors are, or how they are weighted in the algorithm, but generally speaking the search engine serves up the most helpful content to a user’s query first. SEO seeks to get your pages higher up on the SERP for relevant queries.

Source Code
The entirety of the code used to generate a webpage. Written primarily in HTML, the source code includes everything from the dimensions of the headers and footers to the text that you write to help users!

Technical SEO
The practice of enhancing the technical aspects of a web page (such as the title tag, H1 heading, meta description, and nofollow tags) to improve its likelihood of appearing in search results.

Thin Content
A flag that search engines commonly apply to pages which don't have enough text or if the text is not detected by a web crawler.

Transactional Search
A search in which the user wants to accomplish a goal, such as making a purchase.

UX - User Experience
The feelings and perceptions a person has when interacting with a product or system, such as a website or web page.