7 min read September 13,2024
If you are starting your journey in SEO and want to build a career, learning the essential SEO terms for beginners is a great first step. Search Engine Optimization involves strategies that help websites rank higher in search engines like Google, making them more visible to users.
By mastering these SEO terms for beginners, you will gain a solid foundation in understanding how search engines work and what it takes to improve website rankings.
Here's a list of 15 key SEO terms every beginner should know to kickstart their path to becoming an SEO expert.
Keywords are the words and phrases people type into search engines when looking for something online. Think of them as the "search terms" or "queries" people use.
Choosing the right keywords is important because it helps search engines understand what your webpage is about. Many free keyword research tools can help you to identify the best keywords related to your business.
The SERP is the page you see after entering a search term into a search engine like Google. It’s the list of results that match what you searched for. You want your website to appear as high as possible on the SERP. Here’s why:
Your main goal in SEO is to improve your website’s ranking so it appears at the top of the SERP. This increases your chances of getting more clicks and visitors.
Organic traffic refers to visitors who come to your website through unpaid search results. This means they found your website naturally, not because of paid advertisements.
Organic traffic is important because it’s free and often leads to more genuine interest from users. Good SEO Management practices can help increase your organic traffic over time, making your website more successful without having to rely on paid ads.
Backlinks are links from other websites that point to your website. Think of backlinks like votes of approval from other websites. The more high-quality sites that link to your content, the more search engines trust your site. Here’s why backlinks matter:
To build strong backlinks, focus on creating content that people want to share and link to. This can be blog posts, guides, or useful resources.
A Meta description is a brief summary of what your webpage is about. It appears under the title of your page in the search results. Although meta descriptions don’t directly impact your ranking, they can influence whether or not someone clicks on your link. Here’s what makes a good meta description:
A good meta description should be no more than 160 characters and give a snapshot of your content.
Alt text (alternative text) is a description used for images on your website. It helps search engines understand what the image represents.
This is also helpful for visually impaired users who rely on screen readers to understand web content. Alt text is a simple way to improve your SEO and make your website more user-friendly.
The title tag is the main title of a webpage. It appears in search results and at the top of your browser when you visit a webpage. A well-written title tag includes the primary keyword and gives a clear idea of what the page is about. Here’s why it’s important:
The title tag should be clear, concise, and around 60 characters long.
Anchor text is the clickable text in a hyperlink. For example, in the above picture you can see “Laravel" & “custom WordPress” these are the anchor texts. Choosing the right anchor text can improve both your SEO and the user experience. Here’s how:
Descriptive anchor text improves SEO because it provides more information for search engines to understand the connection between pages.
Bounce rate measures the percentage of visitors who leave your website after viewing only one page. A high bounce rate can be a sign that your content isn’t engaging or that visitors aren’t finding what they’re looking for. You can reduce your bounce rate by:
Lowering your bounce rate shows that people are interested in exploring more of your website, which is good for SEO.
Crawling is the process search engines use to discover and collect information from your website. Search engine bots, sometimes called "spiders," visit your site and scan its content. Here’s why crawling matters:
You can make your site easier to crawl by ensuring it has a simple, clear structure and that important pages are not blocked from search engines. An SEO audit can help you find and fix any issues that might be stopping search engines from accessing your key pages.
After your site is crawled, search engines store your pages in their database, a process known as indexing. Once a page is indexed, it can be shown in search results. If your page isn’t indexed, it won’t appear when users search for related content.
You can check and manage your website’s indexing using tools like Google Search Console to ensure that all your important pages are indexed and searchable.
Ranking refers to where your website appears in search results for specific keywords. Higher rankings mean your site is closer to the top of the search results, which leads to more visibility and traffic.
Several factors determine your ranking, including the quality of your content, the number of backlinks, and your use of keywords. Improving your ranking is the main goal of SEO because higher rankings lead to more organic traffic and better chances of success.
On-Page SEO involves optimizing various elements on your website’s pages to improve their search engine ranking and enhance user experience.
Here’s a simplified breakdown:
Off-page SEO includes activities that happen outside of your website but impact its ranking, such as building backlinks, social media platforms engagement, and online reputation management. While you can’t directly control these activities, they are critical for establishing authority and trustworthiness.
A strong off-page SEO strategy from a reliable seo company in Dubai can boost your rankings by showing search engines that your website is credible and widely recognized across the web.
Schema markup is a type of code you add to your website to help search engines understand your content more clearly. It can create rich snippets that stand out in search results, such as displaying star ratings, prices, or event dates.
Using schema markup can improve your site’s visibility and make your listings more appealing to users. Implementing schema is a way to give search engines extra details about your content, which can lead to higher rankings and more clicks.
Shabraiz Arshad is an experienced digital marketing strategist and web developer based in Dubai. He specializes in writing insightful blogs on SEO and tech trends in the UAE.