If you are just starting out in search engine marketing, this list of SEO terms will be an invaluable resource to mastering the vocabulary used within the industry.

1. SEO Glossary

2. 301 Redirect
a way to take a web page and redirect it to
another one. When you change the web
address of a page, just apply a 301 redirect
to make the old page point to the new one.

3. 404 Error
when the server can’t find the page you
are requesting.

4. 500 Error
typically means that the website has
crashed.

5. Alt Text
a description of an image in a site’s HTML.
This helps describe to a search engine
what the image is about.

6. Anchor Text
the text on a web page that is usually in a
different color and is linked to another
web page. Anchor text helps search
engines recognize what the destination
page is about; it describes what you’ll
see if you click on the link.

7. Authority
an arbitrary score assigned by search
engines to measure the relevance,
power, and credibility of a website.
Factors that help calculate a pages
authority include inbound links, age of
the site, and unique, quality content.

8. Back link
this is a link to your website from
another site. The quality and quantity of
back links have a big impact on search
engine rankings.

9. Black Hat SEO
spammy and manipulative link building
tactics that aim to improve placement
in the search engine rankings.

10. CSS
stands for cascading style sheets and is a
style sheet language used for describing
the feel and the look of a document
written in a markup language.

11. CMS
stands for content management
system and is a web application used to
manage web sites and web content.

12. Canonical URL
the canonical URL helps search engines
understand which address for a specific
piece of content is the best one to index.

13. Domain
the main address of a website. Search
engines are trying to preference for a
branded domain, compared to a domain
name that is stuffed with keywords.

14. Duplicate Content
refers to a blocks of content within or
across domains that completely match or
which are fairly similar. A site with
duplicate content could be penalized by
the search engines.

15. Headings
text that is placed within head tags (H1,
H2, H3, H4) that clearly define to visitor
what the page is about. A search engine
will use the text within the tags to
categorize the page.

16. HTML
hyper text markup language: the code of
a website that search engines read.

17. Indexed Pages
the websites that have been stored by a
search engine. A website that doesn’t
have any indexed pages with not appear
in the results of the search engine.

18. Internal link
a link on a website that sends a user to
another page within the same website.

19. Keyword
a word or phrase that a user enters in a
search engine query.

20. Link bait
content created on a website with the
intent of encouraging other websites to
link to that content.

21. Link Building
the process of getting more inbound links
to your website for more improved
search engine rankings.

22. Meta Data
words on a webpage stored in the HTML
and not visible to users, but are noticed
by search engine crawlers.

23. Meta description
brief description of fewer than 160
characters that summarize a webpage.
This description is intended for users and
search engines and should include
specific keywords to help your site rank.

24. Meta Title
the title of the website page which
appears in search engine results and
displays in the top of a user’s browser
window when they visit that page.

25. No follow
a way to link to a website without
passing SEO value to it.

26. PageRank
a number 0-10 assigned to a webpage by
a search engine in order to rate the
authority of that page.

27. Query
a keyword or search term entered in a
search engine

28. Rebots.txt
a file that is placed in the root of the
domain that is used to inform search
crawlers the structure of the website.

29. SEM
stands for search engine marketing and is
a form of internet marketing that
promotes website visibility in the search
engines.

30. Search Engine Optimization
the process of positively effecting the
way a website will appear organically in
the search engine result pages (SERPS).
The intent is to rank on the first page of
the search engines in order to draw more
website traffic.

31. Search Engine Results Page
a webpage presented to a user with the
results of a specific search query.

32. Sitemap
a list of several pages on a website
accessible to search engine crawlers and
users alike.

33. Spider
also known as a web crawler or a bot.
The spider crawls various websites across
the Internet in order to gather
information.

34. URL
stands for universal resource locator and
is the web address of a page on your site.

35. XML Sitemap
a file that can be submitted to search
engines and other crawlers to notify
them of the URLs to crawl on a particular
domain.