SEO MDN Web Docs Glossary: Definitions of Web-related terms MDN

It serves as a guideline for both newcomers and experienced users, helping them monitor and update their content regularly, ensuring it aligns with evolving SEO algorithms and trends. In a few words, the search engine tries to understand what the user’s search intent is and what kind of information they need. Based on these evaluations, it analyzes the different web pages on the topic to find the most relevant one. The goal of search engines like Google is to provide a selection of the hundreds (if not thousands or millions) of content on the web. The goal is precisely to provide the results that may be most useful and most relevant to the user who is performing a search. You’ll provide your audience with relevant information to their search query.

Getting Google to send you traffic is an ongoing process, not a one-time thing. Sometimes, Google chooses not to display your meta description and will generate its own for you. Getting a few SEO fundamentals in place can make a BIG difference to your site’s ranking.

seo meaning

Specify Canonical Tags For All Pages

Using Google analytics software to keep up with your page rank, or even writing content with the help of SEO crawlers, can help you ensure long-term success. Search engine optimization is especially important for small businesses that want to compete in the online marketplace. And when you combine other social media marketing strategies, like influencer marketing, into the mix, then you can take this exposure even further. There are a few different ways that your social media activity can impact your SEO and SERP ranking. This is basically when you put lots of relevant keywords into your content, but without reason. You can improve your click-through rate by creating compelling content that visitors will want to stay and read.

  • Getting a few SEO fundamentals in place can make a BIG difference to your site’s ranking.
  • Ensuring your site is properly indexed is crucial, and unfortunately, indexing issues can be easy to miss.
  • Search engines look for content relevant to the keyword that satisfies searcher intent, is well-structured and easy to navigate, and offers authoritative information within an industry.
  • You may find it helpful to make a list of the pages on your website and rank them by priority, either based on traffic or importance to your website goals.
  • Additionally, content must be created with search engines in mind, meeting the criteria for ranking high in search results.

Google Hummingbird (

And Google has confirmed that backlinks remain one of their three most important search engine ranking factors. All in One SEO (AIOSEO) is the best WordPress SEO plugin on the market. Used by over 3+ million users, it is the most comprehensive SEO toolkit that helps you improve search rankings without learning any complicated SEO jargon. In fact, 93 percent of all online experiences start with a search engine. When people start their online session, the majority of them are typing a search query on Google or Bing. Did you know over 50% of website traffic is driven by organic search?

A robots.txt file can prevent your site from getting crawled and indexed, so check your setup with Google’s free robots.txt tester tool. Practice outreach to connect with publishers in your industry, from news sites to bloggers to industry influencers. Offer value by providing an alternative to a broken link on their site or suggesting a compelling content idea (that you’re willing to write). When using different SEO tools like SEMRush, Ahrefs, and Google Search Console, pay attention to new features or updates to existing features that you can use to improve your SEO marketing efforts. For example, SEMRush offers a Google Chrome extension called PageImprove, allowing you to make quick SEO improvements from your browser. As of November 2022, you can sign up to use PageImprove as a beta tester.

seo meaning

The percentage of website visitors who leave without visiting another page on that website. Although bounce rate can indicate potential content or website issues, it is not a direct ranking factor, according to Google. Bing launched in June 2009, replacing Microsoft Live Search (previously MSN Search and Windows Live Search). Since 2010, Bing has powered Yahoo’s organic search results as part of a search deal Microsoft and Yahoo struck in July 2009. Authority is a concept of using the reputation and credentials of a person who writes content online as a ranking factor. Originally, Google tested this in combination with Google+ but despite several patents filed, no evidence supports author SEO Anomaly authority as a ranking factor.

seo meaning

You can see our beginner’s guide on how to optimize images for search engines. It is a series of techniques that will help your website to rank higher on search engine results pages. We then saw what kind of resources are considered best by search engines and therefore they get top positions in SERPs. Understanding what SEO is, involves understanding what kind of strategies it includes, so we did an overview of on-page and off-page SEO techniques. SEO meaning and explanation, we have talked about what SEO is, its meaning and its importance in improving organic traffic to your website. To properly understand the meaning of SEO, we started with the basics of indexing and ranking.

seo meaning

SEO, also known as search engine optimization, improves your visibility in relevant search engine results pages (SERPs) on search engines like Google, Yahoo! It uses an umbrella of strategies and techniques to boost your visibility, which can result in increased website traffic. This can boost brand reputation and encourage visitors to trust and engage with the brand. The word, words, or phrase that an SEO professional or marketer targets for the purpose of matching and ranking for what users are searching for.

Google will also include into direct traffic any traffic sources it doesn’t recognize. When Google removes a website or webpage, either temporarily or permanently, from search results, specifically its search index. The process of gathering information, using a crawler, from the billions of public webpages to update, add, and organize webpages in a search engine’s index. The rate (expressed in a percentage) at which website users complete a desired action.

But there’s one strategy that works perfectly – creating content that is 10x better than your competitors, also known as the “10x content” strategy. Nowadays, ranking for almost any keyword is much harder than it was in the past – most niches are oversaturated. What they mean is that you should find synonyms and related keywords and “sprinkle them” across the page to make sure Google knows what it’s about. It is best practice to use your focus keyword in the H1 heading of the page.