The fundamentals of digital marketing rely upon a strategic Search Engine Optimization (SEO) plan. Over the years, SEO has become a broad term for the many functions that you can do to make your website more visible to Google and improve your rank on a Search Engine Results Page (SERP). Knowing what these functions are and how they contribute to your success will help you quickly determine what you need to do to improve your digital presence.
Common Digital Marketing SEO Terms
Some of the terms we use to describe SEO functions have become familiar and self-explanatory, like website traffic, keywords, query, and ranking. Others may need a bit more explanation:
- Crawling – The process used by search engines to discover your website pages through complex algorithms and other functions. There are many ways that you can improve the crawlability of your website, making it easier for Google or Bing to find you.
- Intent – This refers to what people are looking for when performing a search. Combinations of words improve their intent, whereas one word may be too ambiguous.
- Guidelines – A published reference by search engines for the purpose of helping website owners and administrators understand how their content is found and indexed. It also provides helpful tips on improving your search results.
- Sitemap – A list of URLs typically found in an XML form that makes it easier for crawlers to discover what’s new on your website and provides them with a helpful index.
- Engagement – How people interact with your content is a significant component of engagement. This goes beyond click-through rates and describes traffic patterns and conversion rates. Your comments section speaks volumes about your engagement with the people that matter.
- Robots Meta Directives – Specific code written into your pages instruct crawlers how to index your content. The directives include Meta Robots Tags and X-Bots-Tags. In general, the directives tell a crawler whether it should follow your page or not.
Google Specific Terms
The following are specific tools and reports from Google that help you measure and improve your search rankings.
- Search Console – Free tool that allows you to monitor your site traffic and a diagnostic of your site’s health. This is essential for all administrators to understand how to use and how to set up goals.
- Featured Snippets – The box that appears typically at the top of a SERP, the snippet is a brief description of the page beneath the link.
- Analytics – Another free tool, analytics is one of the most important tools for understanding how visitors interact with your website. This tool describes your engagement with viewers, where you engage with them the most, how much time they spend on each page, and more.
- Caffeine – Google has a name for everything. Some are bland, and others are fun, like Caffeine. It’s the name of Google’s web indexing system. Googlebot crawls websites and brings all of that information to Caffeine.
- My Business Listing – Ever find a business using Google Maps? How about a simple search? Your business should appear at the top of the page and contain the most up-to-date information on location, hours, etc.
- RankBrain – Another creative name that describes the machine learning component of Google’s core algorithm. Good SEO knows how RankBrain thinks.
Keywords and Organic Search
Finally, the following definitions are ones you’ve probably already heard, but it’s good to reacquaint yourself with them, regardless.
- Keyword Difficulty – This varies from SEO service, but it’s a reasonably accurate description of how difficult it is to outrank other websites. The higher the numerical score, the lower your chances of reaching the top of a SERP.
- Keyword Explorers – 3rd party tools that are subscription-based and provide an in-depth analysis of your page rankings and the keywords associated with them.
- Long-Tail Keyword – These are three or more words strung together to increase the chances of matching user intent. Successful content focuses on long-tail keywords to improve relevancy and engagement.
- Search Volume – Typically, search volume is estimated by keyword explorers through a monthly average. Volume is the number of times a particular keyword is searched for over any given month. Seasonal keywords and others may need to be adjusted to give a better picture.
There are more general optimization concepts that we haven’t covered because they may need some one-on-one guidance, such as organic search and responsive design. We can help you set up and learn more about these and other ways to improve your SERP through a strategic SEO plan. One opportunity to succeed with SEO is to make some little tweaks to your website. Simple updates to your website can improve the user experience and generate valuable, qualified sales leads.
Images and video also improve SEO. Whether it’s to improve SEO or the user experience in general, Pinstripe can create videos, blogs and optimize images for your website. We can also take professional photos and assist you in setting up a studio for recording vlogs. Contact us today to find out how we can help you overcome the challenges associated with SEO.
