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If you are new to the whole Google SEO scene and trying to learn than some of the terminology can be quite confusing. In order to get to the bottom of the information found all over forums and blogs there is some Google SEO terminology that you need to be able to understand. While this list is by no means all-inclusive, most of the popular Google SEO terminology can be found and deciphered below.
- SEO: This is, of course, the first bit of terminology you will need to understand (although I don’t know why you’d be reading this if you didn’t know already). SEO is an acronym for search engine optimization. It is the all encompassing process of ensuring that your site reaches the top of search engines’ results pages. Google SEO is basically the same thing but with a focus on the search engine Google, as it has special algorithms and dominates most of the web’s Internet searches.
- Keyword: A keyword is a very important thing to understand as it is crucial to SEO. Basically a keyword is a word that is descriptive of your site. It is something that your site provides and that your target audience will search for. In addition most people use key phrases, or a set of keywords which go together as a more natural search query.
- Keyword Density: Keyword density is a measure of how frequently your keywords or key phrases appear within the body text of your webpage. This is important in SEO as Google uses it to measure how relevant your webpage is to search engine results. A suggested number is a 3%-5% keyword density, as more may be considered spam.
- Backlinks: A backlink is a link back to your website from another website. Search engines, like Google, evaluate the importance of your website based on how many other websites link back to you, and how much authority these websites have. The general idea is that as site with many backlinks contains a lot of useful knowledge and is an important site, which is why so many people link to it. Building backlinks is an essential part of Google SEO.
- PageRank (PR): PageRank, or PR, is a measurement created by Google. It is visible with Google’s PR toolbar. Websites are assigned a value from zero to ten depending on how much authority they possess. As it only updates once every few months is not particularly helpful for your personal SEO information but is a good tool used to rate a website when deciding whether or not to buy it or attempt to build backlinks on it.
- Site Age: you may hear a lot of people talk about site age. The age of a site is considered by many to affect how much weight a backlink coming from it possesses, while there is some argument over whether or not this is a factor in Google’s algorithms you will hear people talk about it quite frequently on forums.
This is the most common Google SEO terminology that you will come across in your reading on the Internet. Hopefully, now that you have a better understanding of these SEO terms, you will be able to learn at a much quicker pace.
