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SEO definitions are confusing, but there are some general definitions that it would really help you to know!

Search engine optimization is a vast and detailed topic, and the terms used to describe things can get very confusing. We are ALWAYS asked – “But what do all the terms mean?!”

Understand these SEO definitions and learn about SEO

SEO is critically important if you want your website to rank on search engines like Google. However, the hundreds of definitions and explanations is overwhelming, and can be very difficult to remember.

We hope these general definitions of SEO terms help you to understand what everyone is talking about when they discuss SEO.

What is an SEO Audit?

An SEO audit is the process of evaluating your website for potential SEO issues. We audit your website both manually, and by using specialised software, to determine where there might be problems.

Once we find them, we can put a strategy in place to fix them.

SEO issues that might be affecting your search rankings could include (but aren’t limited to):

  • Google penalties
  • Crawlability or indexing issues
  • Website security
  • URL errors
  • Website structure
  • Mobile responsiveness
  • Poor quality content
  • Slow page load speeds
  • Incorrect or missing meta data

What is Technical SEO?

Technical SEO is the process of checking and fixing any technical issues on your site that could be negatively impacting your search rankings. These problems are often best tackled by a professional website designer. The can get very technical, and small mistakes can cause major damage.

Example: If you change a website’s domain name or permalinks on an active site, without following the correct process, you’ll destroy your SEO.

Technical SEO definitions could include (but isn’t limited to):

  • Website structure
  • Menu structure
  • The structure of URLs and permalinks
  • Redirects
  • Website security
  • Website speed
  • Mobile responsiveness and accessibility

What is On-Page SEO?

On-Page SEO is all the optimization that takes place on a page on your website (eg: a blog post) that you are using to target a specific keyword.

On-page SEO mostly refers to meta data, and could include (but isn’t limited to):

  • The page’s target keyphrase
  • The page URL
  • The page title
  • The SEO title
  • The H1, H2, H3 tags etc.
  • The layout of the text
  • Image or video content and their alt tags
  • The page load time

What is Off-Page SEO?

Off-Page SEO include all the things that you might do OFF your website, to drive more traffic to your site.

Off-page SEO definitions could include (but isn’t limited to):

  • An email marketing campaign
  • A social media campaign
  • Guest posting on other sites in exchange for backlinks
  • Social media posts
  • A Google Business Page
  • Ad campaigns on social media platforms or Google Ads
  • Offline ad campaigns

Please use these links to learn more about SEO definitions like:

If anything here is unclear, or if you have any questions, we’d love to answer them for you. Please contact us and we’ll help you out.

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