We have put together this SEO Jargon buster because if you are new to SEO, It’s overwhelming to hear all these SEO terms to begin with, especially when you don’t know what they mean! By reading this article, we hope to give you a better understanding of what an SEO expert is talking to you about. If you want to learn what SEO actually is, then read our blog about 'what is SEO'. So let’s start off easy…

This is normally used 2 ways. If you have had a new website built and you are looking to preserve your current page rankings and keywords, you will re-direct an old page URL to the new page URL – as an example:

Old: https://www.website.com/services/webdesign/

New: http://www.website.com/webdesign/

The old URL would re-direct to the new one to keep the integrity of links coming into the page, so they can be redirected to the new page without creating a 404.

The second use of a 301 redirect is to use a domain that might have expired or is currently for sale that has good domain authority. By following the correct steps to set up a domain 301 redirect, it can be very beneficial as it will pass the domain authority onto your main website, thus in turn giving your own website a higher authority than it did before.

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.

Duplicate content refers to identical or substantially similar content that appears in more than one place, either on the same website or across different websites. Search engines aim to deliver diverse and relevant results to users, and having the same or very similar content in multiple locations can present challenges and issues.

Knowing if you have duplicate content on your web pages is very important as Google doesn’t like this.

This is a very important aspect of SEO, it involves identifying and analysing the words and phrases (keywords) that users type into search engines when looking for information, products, or services. The goal of keyword research is to understand user intent, discover relevant topics, and optimise content to align with the terms users are searching for.

This is probably one of the most important ranking factors for SEO. This helps Google decide where to put you in the rankings. It doesn’t want to put your website top for a certain search string if the end consumer ultimately gets a web page that takes so long to download they click off it. There is a certain expectation for websites to load to and you can check your own by looking at Google's page speed test.

While the world of SEO can be a minefield, we hoped that our SEO Jargon buster brief has made it easier for you to understand. We are happy to discuss and spend time with you to explain everything and the process of becoming an SEO client of Visions Design.

Book a meeting today to discuss your SEO Project!