Technical SEO Glossary

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Accessibility

Accessibility refers to how easy it is for people that use screen readers and other disability aids to access a website. Deque's axe library is a set of recognized standards that website owners and SEOs can use to improve website accessibility. You can review how accessible your website is by using a website accessibility audit tool.

ALT Text

Stands for “alternative text”. When supplied with an image, ALT text tells people using screen readers what is being shown in that image. It also helps bots to understand what is in that image.

AMP

AMP is an open-source library that is designed to produce fast-loading pages that are optimized for mobile. You can learn more in our AMP Hints section.

Anchor Text

Anchor text is the text that contains a link to another web page, either internal or external. It is advised that anchor text is keyword-rich and describes the page to which it’s pointing.

Backlinks

Backlinks are links from other websites to your website. Backlinks are one of the most important ranking factors for search engines. The more high-quality backlinks you have, the higher your website will rank in search results. You can review your backlinks by using a website link crawler.

Bot/Crawler

Crawlers or “bots” are programs search engines use to crawl websites, which is the first step in the process of indexing and ranking content for search engine results pages. Google’s crawler is called “Googlebot”, while Bing’s is “Bingbot”. It’s useful to know the names of different bots in order to provide them with directives in your site’s robots.txt file.

Canonical Tag

A canonical tag ("rel canonical") is applied to the <head> of pages to show search engines that there’s another page, a specific URL, that should be considered the master version. Canonical tags need to be correctly applied, as they can cause major indexing issues if they are not. See also: Indexability

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Core Web Vitals

Core Web Vitals are a set of metrics that measure the performance of a web page related to user experience. Core Web Vitals include Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), Interaction to Next Paint (INP), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS). Google considers Core Web Vitals to be an important ranking factor. These can be checked by performing a website performance audit. See also: Performance

Cloud Crawler

A cloud crawler, or web-based crawler, is a tool that allows SEOs to run website audits online, without needing to download software to their machine.

CSS

Stands for Cascading Style Sheets. CSS is a type of code used for specifying the presentation and styling of a document written in a markup language such as HTML.

Dofollow Link

Dofollow links are links with a rel=”dofollow” HTML tag applied to them. This is an instruction to search engine crawlers and other bots to follow, i.e. crawl, that URL. Dofollow links are the most desirable and powerful in terms of transferring link equity. See also: Nofollow links

DOM

Stands for Document Object Model (DOM). The DOM is a programming interface for web pages. It represents the page so that programs can change the document structure, style, and content.

Duplicate Content

Duplicate content is an issue that can be flagged in technical SEO audits when the website audit software finds two or more pieces of content it considers to be the same. Find out more in our guide to duplicate content.

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External Links

External links are links on your website that link to other domains. External linking can help to improve the authority of your website, but it's important to only link to high-quality websites. See also: Internal Links

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Hreflang

Hreflang is an attribute that specifies the language and geographic suggestions for a web page. Hreflang attributes are used when more than one version of a page exists, to help search engines serve the right version based on users' location and language. Learn more in Sitebulb’s international Hints section or try out our Hreflang Checker.

HTML

Stands for HyperText Markup Language. HTML is the standard code for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It defines the content and structure of web content.

HTML Sitemap

HTML sitemaps are sometimes created to make website navigation easier for your visitors. Often available in the footer, it’s a file that lists every page on your website. This is different to an XML Sitemap.

HTTPS

Stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure. HTTPS is a secure version of HTTP that encrypts communication between a web server and a web browser. HTTPS is important for SEO because Google gives a ranking boost to websites that use HTTPS. See also: Security

Find out more in our Sitebulb security Hints section or go right ahead and run a Website Security Audit.

Indexability

Indexability is the term used to describe a web page’s ability to be indexed by search engines, which is essential in order to be ranked in results pages. A crawler like Sitebulb can be used to check website indexability.

Indexing

Indexing refers to the process a search engine crawler/bot performs to process and organize web pages. Search engines must crawl web pages before they can put them in the queue to be indexed, and only indexed pages can be ranked to appear in search engine results pages.

Internal Links

Internal links are links going from one web page to another web page on the same domain. Internal linking helps search engines to understand the structure of your website and to find all of your important pages. Find out how to do a link audit here. See also: External Links

JavaScript

JavaScript is a type of code used to bring web pages to life. It allows developers to create dynamically updating content, use animations, pop-up menus, clickable buttons, control multimedia, and more for interactivity.

While JavaScript can be beneficial for creating engaging content, it can cause issues for SEO. Google does process and render JS as part of its indexing process. However, ensuring that key page content and information is part of your HTML response is essential for SEO. Learn more: JavaScript SEO Resources

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Link Equity

Link equity is the term used to describe the value or authority passed via a link from one page to another.

Metadata

Metadata is data about data. In the context of SEO, metadata about a web page includes the title tag, meta description, meta robots tags, structured data, header, and image tags. Metadata helps search engines understand the content and structure of the web page.

Mobile-Friendly

In technical SEO, mobile-friendly refers to the need for websites to align with Google’s mobile-first indexing strategy in response to the enormous growth of mobile traffic (in comparison to desktop). Learn more in Sitebulb’s mobile-friendly Hints section.

Nofollow Link

Nofollow links are links with a rel=”nofollow” HTML tag applied to them. The nofollow tag tells search engines to ignore that link. While they do not transfer link equity, they can still drive traffic and therefore have some SEO value. See also: Dofollow Links

On-page Optimization

On-page optimization is the process of applying SEO best practices to web page content and metadata to improve its chances of ranking for specific search terms. Check out Sitebulb’s on-page SEO analysis functionality here.

Page Speed/Page Load

The speed at which a web page loads. Page speed is an important ranking factor for search engines. There are a number of things you can do to improve your page speed, such as optimizing your images, compressing your files, and using a content delivery network (CDN).

Redirect

A redirect is when users and bots are sent immediately from one URL to another URL. There are two main types of redirects: permanent (301 status) or temporary (302 status). You can find out how to find and fix 301 redirects here as well as more general information in Sitebulb’s redirects Hints section.

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Redirect Loop

A redirect loop is when a page redirects to another page that immediately or eventually redirects back to the original URL. Learn more in Sitebulb’s redirects Hints section.

Rendering (client side and browser side)

Rendering is the process through which the page code and resources like Java Script are processed and executed to build the final, visual version of the page content. There is “client side” or browser rendering (performed by the browser being used to access the web page) and there is “server side” rendering (performed by the server that stores the web page data).

Google is doing more and more client side rendering, and there can be unintended consequences for JavaScript-heavy websites. You can read all about how Google processes and indexes JavaScript here.

Rich Results

Search results that display additional information about a web page, such as reviews, ratings, or recipes. Rich results, such as a “featured answer” can help your website to stand out in search results and to attract more clicks.

Robots.txt

This is a website file that tells search engine crawlers/bots which pages on the website they should crawl and which they should not crawl. You can use a robots.txt file to prevent search engines from crawling pages that you don't want to be included in search results, such as login pages or private pages.

Schema

Schema is a type of code that you can add to your website to provide search engines with standardized information about your content. Schema markup according to schema.org conventions can help search engines to understand the meaning of your content and to display it as a rich result in the SERP. See also: Structured Data and Rich Results

Structured Data

A standardized format for providing search engines with information about your content. Schema markup is one type of structured data. Learn how to run a structured data audit here. Find out about Sitebulb’s structured data testing tool.

XML Sitemap

An XML sitemap allows you to unambiguously declare exactly which URLs you wish to be indexed on a website. In essence, an XML sitemap file is a list of only the URLs you actually want indexed. You can find out more in Sitebulb’s XML sitemaps section or conduct a sitemap audit using Sitebulb.

Technical SEO Glossary for Team Members & Clients

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