SEO Glossary

301 Redirect

A 301 redirect is a permanent HTTP status code that automatically forwards visitors and search engines from one URL to another, transferring most of the link equity to the new page.

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302 Redirect

A 302 redirect is a temporary HTTP status code that automatically forwards visitors from one URL to another while signaling to search engines that the original URL should remain indexed.

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404 Error

A 404 error is an HTTP status code indicating that a requested webpage cannot be found on the server, often due to broken links, deleted pages, or incorrect URLs.

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Alt Text

Alt text (alternative text) is a descriptive text attribute added to image HTML tags, providing a textual alternative for visual content on web pages.

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Anchor Text

Anchor text is the visible, clickable text in a hyperlink that users can see and click on to navigate to another webpage.

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Backlink

A backlink is a hyperlink on one website that points to another website, serving as a vote of confidence and a key factor in search engine ranking algorithms.

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Black Hat SEO

Black Hat SEO refers to unethical techniques used to manipulate search engine rankings, violating search engine guidelines and potentially resulting in penalties or bans for websites.

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Bounce Rate

Bounce rate is the percentage of single-page sessions where a user leaves a website without interacting further after viewing only one page.

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Breadcrumbs

Breadcrumbs are navigational elements on a website that show users their current location within the site’s hierarchy, typically displayed as a trail of clickable links.

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Canonical Tag

A canonical tag is an HTML element that specifies the preferred version of a web page to search engines, helping prevent duplicate content issues and consolidate ranking signals.

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Click-Through Rate

Click-Through Rate (CTR) is the percentage of users who click on a specific link or call to action out of the total number of users who view a page, email, or advertisement.

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Cloaking

Cloaking is a deceptive SEO technique where different content is presented to search engines versus human users, aiming to manipulate search rankings.

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Content Management System

A Content Management System (CMS) is a software application that allows users to create, manage, and modify digital content on a website without requiring specialized technical knowledge.

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Conversion Rate

Conversion rate is the percentage of website visitors who complete a desired action, such as making a purchase, signing up for a newsletter, or filling out a contact form.

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Crawl Budget

Crawl budget is the number of pages a search engine bot can and wants to crawl on your website within a given timeframe. It’s determined by a combination of crawl rate limit and crawl demand.

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Crawling

The process by which search engines systematically browse and catalog web pages across the internet, discovering new and updated content for inclusion in their index.

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CSS

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a style sheet language used to describe the presentation of a document written in HTML or XML, controlling layout, colors, and fonts across web pages.

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Domain Authority

Domain Authority is a search engine ranking score developed by Moz that predicts how likely a website is to rank on search engine result pages (SERPs).

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Domain Ranking

Domain Ranking is a metric that measures the overall strength and authority of a website based on its backlink profile and other SEO factors.

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