Topic:
HubSpot,
Sales Tips
(4 Minute Read)
You are probably reading this because you are interested in SEO and how it can help your business (or because you have a penchant for Bingo). You know that by inserting certain key words into your website you can help your Google rankings improve and that by having a blog and some social media accounts, you are showing Google that you have fresh, useful content (sounds easy doesn't it?).
But sometimes you wonder what some of those weird phrases and acronyms actually mean. If you ever find yourself in one of those moments when you've completely forgotten the difference between robots.txt and alt text, then you're in luck! I’ve created this list as a quick reference guide to help you make sense of all the SEO jargon that we often need on a day to day basis.
As an added Brucie bonus, I’ve also created a little game for you! Heard of Bullshit Bingo? Well this is SEO Bingo. Download and print this card, then cross off each word as it’s used in your daily conversation, preferably in a meeting with your boss who thinks they know what they’re talking about! There are easy ones, harder ones and entire phrases which will earn extra points. Post your score in the comments below and whoever gets the most will be sent something nice from our goodies cupboard (probably the left over Christmas Chocolates but if you’re lucky you’ll get some stickers!)
10 points for these
| Word /Acronym | Meaning |
| SEO | You should know this. Search Engine Optimisation. Improving where your website appears in search results by adjusting elements of the page and outside factors such as links. |
| HTag | Heading Tags that format your text into headings. Search engines spider these to assess the meaning and relevance of your website so they should contain search terms (be careful not to over fill them though) |
| Schema | Schema is a way of marking up data so search engines can more easily identify it. We use Local schema to indicate to search engines where a company is located and hence improve local search results. |
| Meta &Meta Descriptions | Meta data provides information about your website to help search engines categorise it. There is debate about its significant effect on ranking but you should always pay attention to Meta descriptions. The meta description appears in the search results, and if it doesn't contain useful information about the page it is linking to, you are greatly reducing your chance of getting the user to click through to your site. |
| PPC | Pay per click. Relates to paid online advertising and defines the amount paid for an advert to be clicked. Also known as cost per click (CPC). |
| Authority | There are many factors that give your website authority and that authority is what helps you rank in search engines. This can be from number of links to social engagement and citations from a trusted source. |
| Alt Text | The labels that describe the images on your website. Google is blind so include these to tell Google what is on your site and increase its visibility. |
| CTR | The percentage of people who clicked through an ad or organic listing which helps establish how relevant a keyword is. |
| Robots.txt | A file which lives in the backend of a website to tell search engines which pages you don’t want Google to crawl. These could be password protected pages or old content you don’t want to be found via search. |
| HTML | Hyper Text Markup Language – language that webpages are created in. |
| 301 redirect | To permanently re-direct search engines to a different URL for web pages you have deleted or changed the name of, you need to tell Google where to redirect it to by submitting the details via Webmaster Tools. |
20 points for these
| Business Blogging | Blogging with a marketing strategy in mind. |
| Call to Action | The text, image or button encouraging a visitor to click (Subscribe here, Download now). |
| Conversion Path | Actions on a website that result in a conversion. |
| Javascript | Scripting language that ordinary people don’t understand. |
| Keywords | Topics of a website that are indexed by search engines. we prefer to call the search terms. |
| No follow link | A way of telling a search engine not to follow or pass credit to a linked website. Helps avoid association with spammy websites. |
| On page optimisation | SEO based on the content of a website. Ensuring search terms are included in specific parts of the web page will help the page rank better for that particular search term. |
| Off page optimisation | Refers to external links and content that promote your website and improve ranking. |
| Canonicals | A page which is the preferred version of a set of pages with broadly similar content. Most common where products are listed in a different order on different pages. Insert rel=”canonical” to the header of the pages you don’t want to be indexed as the most important. This reduces the risk of Google not crawling pages it thinks are duplicate. |
| QR code | What happened to these? Those funny black and white patterned boxes that no one really understood. They link to your website but never really took off. |
| Make it viral | Creating content that is shared across social media platforms by a wide audience, improving hits to your website. |
| XML Sitemap | A file with a list of links that you can submit to a search engine to encourage them to crawl your site. |
| SERP | Search Engine Results Page - that list that you want to be top of! |
| Analytics | Essential tool for analysing all your website traffic in order to establish what works and what doesn't. |
| URL | Uniform Resource Locator (a website address!) |
Image credit: Bingo Book Manwell
Any jobs Sophie hasn't done at Noisy Little Monkey aren't worth mentioning. Sophie blogs about marketing and stuff.
