Best SEO Jargon Buster For Beginners

Alt text, short for alternative text, is a descriptive attribute added to HTML code that provides a textual description of an image on a web page. This text is designed to be displayed when the image cannot be loaded or when a user is utilising a screen reader. When adding alt text, it's important to keep it concise, descriptive, and relevant to the image's content or function. Avoid using generic terms like "image" or "image of" and strive to convey the essential information captured in the visual element.

This is considered a must-do part of SEO if your current website and blog post images don’t already have ALT text. Check through your website and add any relevant keywords to the images.

Anchor text is used to link between your own pages of a website or a link to another website. Anchor text is normally hyperlinked to another page or website and it is generally highlighted with a different colour than the text on the page. The purpose of anchor text is to provide context and describe the content of the linked page. Similarily to alt text, clear and meaningful anchor text is beneficial for users who rely on screen readers or other assistive technologies. It allows them to comprehend the purpose of the link without needing to view the surrounding context.

A backlink is a link from another website to yours. If you have a lot of backlinks from high authority websites, this is a good way to increase your own website’s authority.

There are 2 different versions of backlinks, one is “No follow” and the other is 'Follow'. These link attributes basically tell search engines if they should crawl your website for relevant information. The 'no follow' link means your website doesn’t get the authority link juice from that website. The other is “Follow” in which your website will benefit from having a link placed on that website.

In the context of SEO (Search Engine Optimization), "disavow" refers to the process of informing search engines that certain backlinks pointing to a website should be ignored or disregarded when assessing the site's ranking. This is typically done through the submission of a "disavow file" to the search engine.

A lot of people don’t know what this Google disavow tool does, but it’s an important part of managing backlinks to your website. While there is so many amazing websites in the world, there is also a percentage of really bad websites that might harm your website by linking to it. The goal of the disavow is to get rid of these websites from your own website backlink profile, as it can harm your website by getting a link from these often Google banned sites.

SEMrush has recently added a new tool that shows if a website has a good or bad backlink profile; helping you make smart choices about the websites you get a link from.