SEO Glossary

What does it all mean?

Here are some common SEO and SEM terms you might hear and what they mean in simple language.

Anchor Text: The text used for a link.

Backlinks: Hyperlinks that point from their website to your website.

Barnacle SEO: Link building through directories. (Like a barnacle. Attaching oneself to a large fixed object and waiting for the customers to float by in the current.)

CPC: Average cost per click for this keyword.

Disavow: To remove harmful or unrelated links that are pointing to your site.

External Links (also known as Outbound Links): Links that take you away from a website.

Internal Links (also known as Inbound Links): Links that take you to other places within the website you are already viewing.

Long Tail Extensions: Specific, niche search phrases, usually more than 2 words in length, that offer a low competition, low search volume and high searcher intent.

Number of Results: Number of websites listed in a search engine (usually Google) for a particular keyword or phrase.

Search Engine Results Page (SERP): the listing of web pages given by a search engine in response to a keyword inquiry. The results normally include a list of web pages with titles, a link to the page and a short description showing where the keywords have matched content within the page. A SERP may refer to a single page of links returned, or to the set of all links returned for a search query. This is another way of saying, Number of Results.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO): The process of improving the ranking of a website on search engines.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM): A form of Internet marketing that involves the promotion of websites by increasing their visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs) through optimization as well as paid advertising.

Pay Per Click (PPC): The amount spent to for every advertisement clicked.

Volume: The average number of queries for this keyword in a month, usually based off of the last 3 months or up to 12 months of search history.

SEO Tools

MeetGeraldine’s favorite SEO research tool is SEM Rush.

SEM Rush will help you conduct your keyword strategy, competitive analysis and show you what others are doing for paid advertising.

We’ve contacted SEM Rush to give us an exclusive promo link. Through this link, you will receive a 14-Day Free Trial for SEM Rush

Discover what keywords your competitors are ranking for on SEM Rush!

Useful tool for measuring a website’s authority.

Alexa ranks all of the trillions of websites on the net based on the past 3 months of search history. If a website fits their ranking algorithm, it will be assigned with a rank globally and/or specific to their country.

We use the Alexa Website Ranking System to measure effectiveness of our SEO campaigns. Visit their website and look for “Browse Top Websites” > Search for a site then type in the website you’d like to know the ranking for.