SEO Whatchamacallits: A Helpful Glossary of SEO Terms for Agency Owners

SEO / 13 Sep 2021

As a digital marketing professional, is there anything more annoying than talking to a client about SEO services and struggling to explain that whatchamacallit that does oojamaflip? 

Does it make you think, “wouldn’t it be great if I could just white label SEO, and not have to keep up to date on irritating industry buzzwords?”

The good news is, you can. We’re a white label SEO agency, specifically for agencies. 

And, that’s not all. While you mull that over, here’s a helpful list of technical SEO terms, translated into Plain English, just for you.

Algorithm

The all-knowing algorithm is the super-secret criteria Google uses to rank content for value, relevance, and quality. It changes frequently, making SEO a complex, changeable topic.

Alt text

A snippet of text to describe an image, that makes content accessible for the visually impaired (it’s read aloud by screen readers) and is displayed if an image fails to load.

Anchor text

The text in the main hyperlink on cluster content.

Bounce Rate vs Exit Rate

Bouncing means someone visits your website, then leaves seconds later without clicking anything. Your bounce rate is the percentage of website visits consisting of only one page.

Exit rates refer to the number of visits where a page was the last visited. 

Content Management System

A CMS allows users to build, manage, and maintain a website without needing code.

Click-through rate

A click-through is a user who uses an external link to access a website. The rate is calculated by dividing the number of users, by the number of times the link is shown. 

Crawling and Indexing

Search engines are like massive libraries. Search engines index websites, cataloguing their contents using internal and external links. Data is then added to their database for storage and reference. 

Robot.txt files tell search engines which URLs to use when indexing. This prevents server overload and avoids indexing unimportant or similar pages (see duplicate content below).

Domain authority

Every website has a domain authority score, which predicts how likely it is that a site will rank on search engines results pages (SERPs). Domain authority increases with the quality and quantity of links pointing to your site (see links below).

Duplicate content

Content that appears in more than one location is known as duplicate content, and it’s a problem. It arises from duplicate pages from URL variations, CMSs adding tags automatically and allowing multiple pathways and plagiarism.

Duplicate content confuses search engines, forcing them to choose an ‘original’ to rank highest. Using canonical content tags tells search engines which page is the original and most important version.

Keywords

Keywords associated with your services help you get found on Google. Search intent of your target audience is key. As a white label SEO service, we’d expect potential clients to search for ‘outsourced SEO’ or ‘SEO copywriting’. We use these terms as keywords, so that search engines associate us with them, making us more visible.

Thorough keyword research is a must for clients wanting to rank on Google. It’s one of our most popular white label SEO services. 

Keyword research takes into account both:

• Difficulty – popular keywords are always more difficult to rank for, and

• Search volume – ensuring people search for the keywords you choose because there’s little point being on page one of Google if no one’s looking.

Links and link building

A site’s domain authority improves with the quantity and quality of links pointing to it.

• Internal links are links between web pages. Every page should link to at least one other. Orphan pages (only accessible by their unique URL) are rarely indexed. 
• External links are links you create pointing to other websites.
• Backlinks point to your site from someone else’s (e.g. when someone cites your content). SERPs use them to assess your credibility, the more quality links pointing at you, the more trustworthy you must be. Link building increases the number of quality backlinks to your site. 

Local SEO

Local SEO allows any business serving a local area to rank highly when someone googles ‘white label SEO in Birmingham’ or ‘white label SEO near me’, using its proximity factor.

Meta-data

Metadata is a summary of content’s subject and purpose, a maximum of 160 characters. Meta-data usually appears on SERPs but sometimes Google makes its own selection – often the paragraph below your h1, so ensure it’s optimised for search.

Mobile-first indexing

Google predominantly uses the mobile version of a site in its indexing process. Making sure your site is optimised for mobile and ensuring a fast mobile site speed are fundamental for a high ranking.

Schema

Schema are data tags that improve how search engines read, interpret and represent your site. They enhance users’ experience and provide richer data, therefore improving your domain authority. 

Structured data is similar. It explains the meaning of a page by stating that certain types of content are formatted in specific ways.

SEO Copywriting

SEO copywriting means technical writing that performs well on search engines. An SEO copywriter uses keywords at an optimum density (around once every 100 words), avoiding keyword stuffing and keyword cannibalisation (when too many pages rank for the same keyword and Google chooses a random page to rank) at all costs. 

Want to get to know us better? 

At Beesting Digital, we white label our SEO services, so agencies like yours don’t need to worry about the intricate details of things like canonical and cannibalised content, or schema vs structured data. 

It’s all done for you in our exceptional outsourced SEO and SEO copywriting services.

We’d love to talk to you about how to take your clients’ websites from tragic to traffic using our specialist, industry-leading techniques.

Get in touch today.