Search Engine

Search Engine

Conscious Solutions Guide to Search Engine Jargon Busting.

Search Engine

A website or software used to search the Internet for websites and webpages related to the original query.

SERPs

Search Engine Results Pages - The results shown when searching on a search engine

Google

The most popular search engine in the world currently and one of the most accurate.

Bing

The search engine that was made by Microsoft and is also the second most popular search engine in the world.

Yandex

The most popular search engine in Russia currently.

Baidu

The most popular search engine in China currently.

SEO

Search Engine Optimisation - The art of performing better within the SERPs

PPC

Pay Per Click - Usual way to refer to paid search platforms such as Google Ads and Bings Ads

SEM

Search Engine Marketing - Used to refer to a strategy involving multiple strategies such as SEO and PPC. Also see Digital Marketing

DM

Digital Marketing - Used to refer to a strategy involving multiple strategies such as SEO and PPC.

Ads

Google's PPC Platform used to advertise in their SERPs and other websites that include AdSense

AdSense

Website owners can put adverts on their website and get paid by Google. This is also where the Display Network adverts appear from Google Ads.

crawler

A automated program that crawls the internet for various reasons. A search engine's crawlers would crawl websites to help keep their Index up to date. Also called a Bot & Spider.

Bot

A automated program that crawls the internet for various reasons. A search engine's crawlers would crawl websites to help keep their Index up to date. Also called a crawler & Spider.

Spider

A automated program that crawls the Internet for various reasons. A search engine's crawlers would crawl websites to help keep their Index up to date. Also called a Bot & crawler.

Backlinks

Links from a website pointing to the website in question. A metric used for SEO and ranking purposes.

Sessions

A metric to help define a website visitors patterns. Commonly referred to Google Analytics Sessions, which tracks a user and expires after 30 minutes before it's classed as a new session.

Users

A metric used to describe unique website visitors.

Pageviews

The number of pages viewed during a session

Unique Pageviews

The number of unique pages seen by a user.

Search Network

A network where you can show Google Ads adverts. Search Network shows adverts on Google's SERPs and also on search partners such as Ask and AOL.

Display Network

A network where you can show Google Ads adverts. Display Network shows adverts on Google AdSense.

Remarketing

A technique used in Google Ads. Remarketing allows an advertiser to show specific adverts to a user who has done specific actions on a website.

Clicks

Physical Clicks on a PPC advert.

Impressions

A metric used to show how many times an advert has been shown in a PPC platform.

CTR

Click Through Rate - Shows the percentage from Clicks versus Impressions.

CPC

Cost Per Click - The actual or averaged spend per click within PPC.

CPM

Cost Per Milli - The actual or averaged spend per thousand Impressions within PPC.

QS

Quality Score - A metric used within Google Adwords to decide CPC and also advert position.

ROI

Return on Investment - The percent return in profit versus spend on a PPC.

ROAS

Return on Actual Spend - The percent return on revenue versus spend on PPC.

Barnacle SEO

A technique used to strengthen local SEO by utilising Directories and other online services with a strong local presence to your area.

Canonical

Coming from the word Canon meaning legitimate or official. This is an issue with duplicate content, as Google will usually guess the official version of duplicate content, which can sometimes be the wrong version.

SEO Cannibalism

Referred to where pages within a website or network compete with each other driving down the value of the ideal page. Also known as having web pages eat away at each other's value.

Directory

A website which categorises websites, by either niche or location or sometimes Both.

Flux

A term used when referring to the rapid movement of ranking positions within the SERPs.

LSI

Latent Semantic Indexing - A term used to how search engines group keywords that have similar meanings for example; car, vehicle and automobile. Another example is that it helps a search engine understand the terms bat versus bat, one is a flying animal and the other is used for sport.

Link

A Link allows web pages to connect to each other or to another part of the same page.

Anchor Text

Anchor Text is the text part of a clickable Link.

NoFollow

The term used to stop any value being passed from a Link.

Link Juice

A term used to refer to the value behind a Link.

Short Head

Refers to the shorter but bigger search volume keywords. Used often for informational searches but rarely for buying or enquiring.

Long Tail

Referring to keywords consisting of 3 or more words. Usually lower in volume however they make up the majority of traffic for most websites.

Meta Tags

Used to help describe and reference specific data about the page.

Robots.txt

A file that tells the major search engines what pages to not Index.

Index

The technique used by search engines to say they have added a website/webpage to their own database.

Cache

The technique used by search engines to say they have a copy of the website/webpage to their own database.

Responsive Design

Responsive Design is a technique where a website/webpage will dynamically adapt to the browser and device type enabling the same version appear on any device.

Content Marketing

A technique in creating a content strategy to help expand the content on a website with the aim of increasing the Users to the website.

Google Maps

Google's own maps system that is able to plan out routes and tell you about local businesses.

Google Places

Currently known as Google Business Profiles. This allows local businesses to place themselves on to Google Maps.

Google My Business

Currently known as Google Business Profiles. This allows local businesses to place themselves on to Google Maps.

Google Local

Currently known as Google Business Profiles. This allows local businesses to place themselves on to Google Maps.

Google Business Profile

Google Business Profiles (GBPs) are business listings that represent your business in Google Maps.

Core Web Vitals

Core Web Vitals (CWVs) are three metrics Google uses to score a user's experience when loading a webpage. These metrics measure how long it takes for page content to load, how long it takes a browser to load a webpage, and how unstable the content is as it loads in the browser.

Schema

Schema is an agreed mark up on how search engines will categorise information quickly and easily which is easy for a person to understand but difficult for a PC. For example dates can be written in a variety of formats such as 1/1/15, 1/1/2015, 1st Jan 2015, 1st January 15, etc where Schema would tell a search engine this is a date regardless of the format.

Citations

Citations are mentions of your business' name, address and phone number (NAP) on an external website. These are usually found on directory listings such as Yell.com but could be on other sites as well.

Screaming Frog

Screaming Frog is an SEO site audit tool that crawls a website and lists various errors that could affect the SEO performance of the site.

H1

A H1 is the first HTML heading tag visible on a webpage and indicates the main topic of the page.

Meta Title

A meta title, also known as a meta tag, is the text displayed on the search engine results page (SERP) and browser tabs to indicate the title and topic of that page.

Meta Description

A meta description is the text displayed below the meta title in the search engine results page (SERP) that describes what the page is about.

Domain Authority

Domain Authority (DA) is a search engine ranking score based on the number of relevant backlinks - links to your website from an external site - your site has. This score was created by Moz to mimic the authority score Google assigns to websites but no longer makes available to the public.