SEO Lingo 101
If you’re new to SEO, there can be lots of lingo and jargon to wrap your head around. I want to make sure that you feel educated and informed every step of the way, so below is an outline of common SEO terms, and how they relate to your site.
Click: This is when someone selects your site from their search to access your website. This is a measure of how much traffic that organic searches, and individual keywords, are driving to your site.
Queries: This is Google’s name for the search terms, keywords, and phrases that real users type into Google to search for your website. This gives an excellent insight into the language your potential clients use and gives unbiased information on the words you should be using on your site.
Impressions: This is the number of times that your website was viewed by a user in search results. If you have a page or search term where you have high impressions but low clicks, then this is an opportunity to develop better search intent matching for your content.
Click-through Rate: This is the ratio of impressions to clicks. Did lots of people see your site on their search result, but not clicks through? Then you’ll see a low click-through rate. The more people that see your website on their search result and click, the higher your click-through rate will be.
Position/Ranking: This is how high your website ranks for a given keyword in the Google search results. When we report on this metric, we are looking at an average ranking, as each search result is custom for each search being made depending on a user’s past behaviour and location.
Bounce Rate: A bounce rate is a measure of how many people came to your site, but did not take any action - they didn’t click a button, or go to another page, or make a purchase.
Average Session Duration: This is how long, on average, a user spends on your site when they visit. Generally speaking, it is a goal to increase a user’s time on-site to ensure they are visiting sufficient pages and consuming the content on your site, moving them forward in the customer journey.
Pages per Session: This is how many pages, on average, a user visits on your site. This is an indication of how easy your site is to navigate, and if there are sufficient calls to action and internal linking that allows
Google My Business: This is the custom profile that shows up on search results, Maps searches, and the right-hand side Knowledge Panel. Images, posts, and custom information for your business can be added here and optimized for increased search visibility.
Google Search Console: This is the window between your website and Google. You can review your performance directly from Google, see which keywords are driving impressions and clicks to your site, and monitor any penalties, coverage issues, or errors on your site.
Google Analytics: Google Analytics provides data tracking, reporting, and insight into your website’s traffic. This includes which marketing channels are driving users, purchases, and other on-site behaviour metrics.
Anatomy of a Search Result
Below, we can see what a common search result looks like. This shows the common components that we optimize for during our initial updates on site.
(Top) URL: This is your website domain. Having optimized URL’s allows Google to better understand the content on your page, and organize search results.
(Middle) Page Title: This is where you can name your pages based on the content of that page. This is a prime location to include your target keywords, business name, service, or product.
(Bottom) Meta Description: This is where you have more space to describe your page’s content and entice users to click through. As you can see, the phrase user’s search for is highlighted in the meta description, so including keywords here is important. This is a great opportunity to improve your click-through rate, which impacts your overall rankings.
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