SEO Terms and What They Mean in Simple Terms

If you just got started in SEO all the technical words and jargon is sure to make your head spin. That's because most explanations of SEO sound like this: “You need to optimise your meta descriptions and build backlinks to improve domain authority for better organic SERP rankings.”

If your eyes just glazed over, you are not alone. That sentence is useless if you’re just trying to grow your business.

Let’s try again. Imagine your website is a new store in a giant, endless mall. SEO is basically all the things you do to get people to find your store, walk in, and buy something, instead of going to the one next door. But I guess you already know that much, so the issue is all the technical jargon being thrown around. Let me break it down for you. First off;

The Big Picture: What Are We Even Doing Here?

1. SEO (Search Engine Optimisation): This is just a fancy name for "Making my business easy to find on Google." In our mall analogy, it's the art of getting listed on the mall directory, having a great storefront sign, and being located in the right wing so your ideal customers naturally walk past you.

2. Search Engines (Google, Bing): These are the mall's information desks. Their only job is to answer shoppers' questions. When someone says, “Where can I find a birthday cake?” the attendant (Google) consults their guide and points them to the best bakeries. Your goal is to be the recommended bakery.

3. Keywords: These are the exact phrases your customers type into Google. If you are a plumber, your keywords are things like “leaky faucet repair” or “emergency plumber near me.” If your website doesn’t contain these phrases, Google wouldn't know you offer these services, so they wouldn't recommend you. And your customers, they’ll never find you.

4. Organic Traffic: This is the holy grail. It represents all the people who walk into your store because they found you naturally in the mall directory or because a friend recommended you. You didn’t pay for a billboard (that's paid ads); you earned their visit by being easy to find and relevant.

How does Google even know you exist to recommend you?

This is basically how Google finds you, tags you, and shows you. 

5. Crawling & Indexing: Google sends out little scouts (called crawlers) to walk through every store in the mall and note down what they sell. This info goes into a giant, master directory (the index). If you’re not in the index, you don’t exist to Google, and if you don't exist, you can't be shown. 

6. Ranking: When a shopper asks a question, Google flips through its master directory and decides which stores to recommend first. The order of those recommendations is your ranking. Being on the first page of Google is like being one of the first three stores recommended by the mall attendant.

On Page SEO: How You Optimise Your Store so You Are Recommended. 

This is actually one of the only aspects of SEO that you can fully control. It's actually all about optimising your actual website (your storefront) so Google can actually understand what you offer.

7. Title Tag & Meta Description: This is what people see in Google's results. The Title Tag is the blue clickable headline. The Meta Description is the short blurb underneath. Think of it as your window display and sign combined. Its only job is to get people to click and come inside.

8. Headings (H1, H2, H3): These are the signs inside your store. Let's use a bakery as an example, the H1 is the big main sign ("The Bakery"). H2s are section signs ("Cakes," "Cookies," "Bread"). H3s are sub-section signs ("Chocolate Chip," "Oatmeal Raisin"). They help customers and Google understand what your page is all about.

9. Alt Text: This is you describing a picture to someone who can’t see it. Since Google’s scouts can’t see images, you add a line of text describing your photo: “chocolate cupcakes with vanilla frosting”. This also helps visually impaired users understand your site, which is a great practice overall.

Off-Page SEO: Building a Solid Reputation

In SEO, your reputation matters more than you think. This is about what other people say about you online, but if you are being honest, what people say doesn't matter as much as people saying anything at all.

10. Backlinks: This is the digital version of another store giving you a shout-out. When a reputable local news site or popular blog links to your website, it’s like them telling their audience, “You have to check this place out!” Google sees this as a massive vote of confidence. The more quality votes you have, the more trustworthy you seem.

11. Domain Authority: This is a metric created by MOZ. It's a score (from 1-100) that predicts how well your website will rank. A new site typically has 0, while a huge, famous site like Amazon has a 95. You build this score over time by earning those high-quality backlinks. It’s like your store’s overall reputation score in the mall.

Technical SEO: Behind-the-Scenes 

This encompasses all the technical aspects of your website. To use an analogy, it is about the design and efficiency of your store. 

12. Site Speed: As the name implies, this is how fast your website loads. If your website loads slowly, visitors will mostly click back to Google. Google knows this, and as a result, it prefers to recommend fast, efficient stores.

13. Mobile-Friendly: Can people easily use your website on their phone? Most people use their phones for Google searches; in fact, over 60% of searches occur on mobile devices. So if your site is not mobile-friendly, which basically means it doesn't render properly on mobile phones, you’re turning away the majority of your customers. Your site must work perfectly on every device.