137 essential SEO terms every blogger should know! (+ free printable)
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Want to improve your SEO, but confused by all the complicated SEO jargon? I am here to help! In this SEO glossary I explain 137 essential SEO terms every blogger should know – everything from Keyword Cannibalisation to Canonicals, H tags to Panda, and a whole lot more! (Plus don’t forget to download my free printable SEO Jargon Buster.)
A
Algorithm – a programme used by a search engine to determine which pages to show for a given search query.
ALT tags (AKA ALT text) – a description of an image on a website. Search engines cannot ‘read’ images, so have to rely on ALT text to know what an image is of. ALT tags are also read to visually impaired users who use screen readers. Ensuring you complete the ALT text on every image you upload to your site will benefit your SEO.
AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) – a project, driven by Google, to help websites load faster on mobile devices.
Analytics – see Google Analytics.
Anchor text – the actual text of a link to a webpage. Anchor text helps readers and search engines understand what the destination page is about. Using relevant, keyword rich anchor text is much better for SEO than generic terms such as ‘here’ or ‘click here’.
Authority – a way of describing the credibility and popularity of a website. High authority websites perform better in search results than low authority websites. Authority is derived primarily from the quality and quantity of backlinks from other websites.
B
Backlink – a link from another website that points to any page or post on your site. Backlinks are very important for SEO. Getting lots of backlinks from high authority websites will improve your search engine rankings.
BERT (Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers) – a Google update first introduced in October 2019 to help Google better understand searcher intent. BERT allows Google to understand searches in a more nuanced way – more like a human, rather than a robot. Google BERT delivers better search results for searchers because it focuses less on keywords and more on the complete meaning of the sentence. LEARN MORE >>>
Black hat SEO – the name for all shady SEO practices that try and trick or manipulate search engine algorithms, such as keyword stuffing or buying links. Avoid all black hat practices as, even if they work in the short-term, in the long run they will hurt your rankings, and may even get your website banned from search engines!
Bot (AKA robot/spider/crawler) – search engine bots crawl the web, following links and indexing all the webpages they find.
Bounce rate – the percentage of visitors to your site who leave after only viewing one page. In an ideal world you want your bounce rate to be low, as this means your visitors are clicking on your links and viewing more than one page when they visit your blog.
Breadcrumbs – a navigation aid which is located above your main content, showing the name of the blog post plus links back to the category page(s) and homepage. Breadcrumbs help your readers understand where they are in your site and how to get back to the category page or home page.
Broken links – links which, when you click on them, do not go to a webpage. Typically, when you click on a broken link you are sent to a ‘404 not found’ error page.
Browser cache – where your browser stores information from websites you have previously visited. This means those websites will load more quickly next time you visit them, as your browser will not have to request all that information again. This does mean that sometimes when you make changes to your own website, you will not see those changes straightaway as you are seeing the cached (stored) version. To see the real version, you will need to empty the browser cache.
C
Caching plugin – a plugin which enables data to be stored/remembered (or, in tech-speak, ‘cached’) by the server so that the next time a user tries to access that same data, it will be retrieved much more quickly. LEARN MORE>>>
Canonical URL – if you have duplicate content on your website, you need to specify which one is the canonical URL (the preferred one – the one that search engines should index). You can also have a cross-domain canonical. This can be used when the same content appears on two different websites. In this case, you use a cross-domain canonical to specify which content is the original and should therefore be indexed by search engines. You can use the Yoast SEO plugin to specify a canonical URL.
CDN (Content Delivery Network) – a network of servers, spread out around the world at different locations. When a visitor visits a webpage that is part of a CDN, the CDN will redirect the request from the host’s server to a server in the CDN that is closest to the user and deliver the content from there. The closer the CDN server is to the user geographically, the faster the content will be delivered to the user. LEARN MORE>>>
Conversion – when a reader on your website does what you want them to do on the post or page they are reading. This could be that they buy your product, sign up for your newsletter or click on a particular link, for example.
Conversion rate – the percentage of readers who do what you want them to on your website. For example, if you want your readers to buy your product, your conversion rate is the percentage of your readers who buy your product.
Core Web Vitals – metrics devised by Google to evaluate specific aspects of site speed and UX. Specifically, Core Web Vitals measure: Largest Contentful Paint (How fast does the largest element appear on the screen?), First Input Delay (How fast does the page react to user interaction?) and Cumulative Layout Shift (How much do elements of a webpage move about while loading?). Core Web Vitals are part of Google’s Page Experience ranking factor.
Cornerstone content – the most important articles on a website. Cornerstone articles are usually long, authoritative, high quality blog posts which cover everything that’s important on a particular topic. Cornerstone articles can help you rank for more competitive keywords. LEARN MORE>>>
Crawl (v) – the process by which search engines read the information on a website and follow links to other pages in order to index the pages on that site.
Crawler – see bot.
Crawl budget – the number of pages Google crawls on your site per day. Your crawl budget is influenced by a number of factors including the size of your site, how many crawl errors Google encounters on your site and the number of links to your site.
Crawl error – when a search engine tries to crawl a page on your website but is unable to – for example, because that page has been deleted. You can find your website’s crawl errors in Google Search Console.
CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) – The code on your website that determines how the different design elements of your site should appear (fonts, colours, layouts, H tags, etc.).
CTA (Call To Action) – a request to your readers that they take a particular action after reading your blog post. This could be that they subscribe to your newsletter, follow you on social media or leave a comment, for example.
CTR (Click Through Rate) – the percentage of people who click on a link. In SEO this usually refers to the percentage of people who click on a search result compared to the number of people who see that search result.
D
DA (Domain Authority) – a score developed by Moz that seeks to put a number on how much authority a website has. A website with a lot of high-quality backlinks will have a high DA, whilst a website with few backlinks and/or lower quality backlinks will have a low DA.
De-indexed – If a website has been de-indexed, this means it has been removed from a search engine’s database. This is most likely to be because the website has done something that is against the search engine’s guidelines. For example, the website owner may have used black hat SEO tactics.
Do-follow link – often known simply as a follow link, this is a normal link that can be followed by both your readers and search engines. This is in contrast to a no-follow link that can only be followed by readers. LEARN MORE>>>
Duplicate content – content which is very similar or identical to content found on another webpage on your site or another website. Duplicate content can have a negative impact on search engine rankings. To avoid duplicate content problems, specify a canonical URL.
E
EAT (Experience, Authority, Trustworthiness) – a term which appears in Google’s Quality Rater Guidelines. EAT are important factors which Google uses to evaluate the quality of a website. A website showing experience, authority and trustworthiness will rank better in Google’s search results. This is particularly important for websites giving health and financial advice (YMYL websites). LEARN MORE>>>
Evergreen content – website content that is not tied to a particular date/season, is always relevant and does not go out of date. To perform well in search engine results, a website needs to have plenty of evergreen content. LEARN MORE>>>
External link – a link pointing to a webpage on a different website.
F
Featured snippets – a highlighted search result which appears at the top of Google’s search results page for a specific query. Featured snippets are often (though not always) provided in response to a question, and aim to give searchers the answer to their query at a glance. LEARN MORE >>>
Follow link – see do-follow link.
Focus keyword – the main keyword you want a particular blog post to rank for in search engine results. If you optimise a blog post for more than one keyword, the other keywords are known as secondary keywords. LEARN MORE>>>
G
Google Analytics – a free tool to help website owners track and analyse their website traffic. Google Analytics gives data about a website’s readers and how those readers find and interact with the website. LEARN MORE>>>
Googlebot – a programme used by Google to crawl and index webpages. See also bot.
Google index – a huge database of everything Googlebots have found on the internet.
Google juice – authority which is derived from having high quality backlinks and which flows through outgoing links to other webpages/websites.
Google penalty – a type of punishment given to websites that have disregarded Google’s Webmaster Guidelines (e.g. by using Black hat SEO tactics). Penalties can be given via Google’s algorithm or manually by the webspam team. Depending on the severity of the infringement, a Google penalty can result in reduced rankings in Google’s results or the removal of a website from Google’s results altogether (see de-indexed).
Google Quality Rater Guidelines – a set of written guidelines used to help human ‘quality raters’ evaluate online content and provide feedback to Google. This feedback helps Google fine-tune their algorithms in order to prioritise high quality content in search results.
Google sandbox – a term used to describe a kind of probation period that new websites seem to encounter. During this probation period, it’s observed that new websites struggle to perform well in Google’s search results. Although the Google sandbox has never been officially confirmed by Google, many SEO experts are convinced that it exists, as they see sandbox‐like effects when trying to get new websites to rank.
Google Search Console (GSC) – the new version of what used to be known as Google Webmaster Tools. Google Search Console is a free tool which helps you track the performance of your website in Google search results.
You can use GSC to find out how often your website appears in Google’s search results and which search queries on Google show results from your site, as well as what percentage of searchers click through to your blog for those queries.
You can also use GSC to confirm that Google can find and crawl your site, to submit your sitemap, to fix indexing problems and to request indexing of new or updated content. LEARN MORE>>>
Google update – updates made to Google’s search engine algorithm to make it produce better search results for its users. Google is, in fact, continually updating its algorithm, but big updates can have a dramatic effect on website rankings. Major updates are often given names such as Panda, Penguin, Mobilegeddon and Medic.
Google Webmaster Guidelines – a set of rules published by Google for website owners. Going against Google’s Webmaster Guidelines could result in a Google penalty.
Google Webmaster Tools – see Google Search Console.
Grey hat SEO – a term used to describe SEO tactics that are considered ‘borderline’. These tactics are usually SEO tricks that don’t technically contravene Google’s current guidelines but go against the spirit of those guidelines and will almost certainly be penalised by Google in the future. Grey hat SEO, like black hat SEO should be avoided.
Guest posting – the practice of writing content for another website. This is usually done in order to gain a backlink for your own website and/or to increase traffic and exposure for your website.
If there is no payment, or if the author of the guest post is paid, this is a perfectly acceptable, indeed good, SEO practice.
However, if the owner of the website is paid in return for accepting a guest post which includes a do-follow link, this contravenes Google’s Webmaster Guidelines and could result in a Google penalty for both parties. Buying and selling links is against Google’s rules.
H
H Tags (Heading Tags) – heading tags (known as H1, H2, H3 etc.) are used to designate the title and subtitles on a webpage. H tags usually make the text appear larger and can be bold, italicised or even in a different font. H tags help readers understand the main topics and structure of a blog post, and find what they are looking for more easily, thus improving UX. H tags also help search engines understand your text better, which can also help improve search rankings. LEARN MORE>>>
Hit – a hit happens each time that a server sends a file to a browser. Since one webpage will typically contain many files (images, JavaScript, CSS etc.), one pageview will typically generate many hits. While ‘hits’ used to be an important metric for comparing the relative popularity of a website, it is now an essentially meaningless term and has been replaced by more meaningful metrics such as ‘pageviews’, ‘visitors’ and ‘sessions’.
Homepage – the first, and usually the most important page on a website. Your homepage should help your readers to navigate your website. The homepage is usually considered to be the most powerful page on your site for SEO.
HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) – the standard language for creating webpages. HTML tells your web browser how to display (render) the webpage correctly, including correct formatting and functionality.
HTTP (Hyper Text Transfer Protocol) – the procedure by which information is exchanged between users and websites on the internet.
HTTPS (Hyper Text Transfer Protocol Secure) – a secure version of HTTP. HTTPS encrypts the information sent between users and websites on the internet. To use HTTPS, you must have an SSL certificate (your host can usually help with this). Using HTTPS is important for SEO since Google announced in 2014 that using HTTPS will be considered a positive ranking factor. Google now displays a ‘not secure’ warning for websites still using HTTP.
I
Image SEO – the practice of optimising images to improve overall SEO on a website. This includes using high quality images, reducing image file sizes to improve site speed, and using keywords correctly in alt text.
Inbound link – see backlink.
Index (n) – the database of a search engine which contains all the information its bots have found on the internet.
Index (v) – the process used by search engines to crawl webpages and add them to their index. Only indexed webpages can be shown in search results.
Indexed pages – webpages which have been crawled successfully by search bots and added to the search engine’s database (index).
Intent – see searcher intent.
Internal link – a link from one webpage to another webpage on the same website. LEARN MORE>>>
J
JavaScript – a computer programming language commonly used to create interactive elements on a website, for example a newsletter signup box.
K
Keyword – a word (or, more usually, a phrase) that you want your blog post to be found for, when a potential reader types that word or phrase into a search engine.
A blog post can (and should) be optimised for more than one keyword/keyword phrase. Your focus keyword is the main keyword you want your blog post to be found for. Secondary keywords are the other keywords you hope your blog post will be found for. LEARN MORE>>>
Keyword cannibalisation – this happens when you optimise two (or more!) blog posts for the same (or a very similar) search term. This means you are effectively competing against yourself in search engine results and could result in both blog posts ranking lower for that search term.
Keyword density – the percentage of times a keyword or phrase is used in a webpage as compared to the total number of words on that webpage. SEO experts generally consider the optimum keyword density to be between 1 and 3 percent. If a keyword is used too often (high keyword density) this is considered keyword stuffing and could result in a Google penalty.
Keyword research – the process by which you choose the keyword or keyword phrase for a particular blog post. Good keyword research involves finding keywords with high traffic, but low competition. LEARN MORE>>>
Keyword stuffing – a black hat SEO practice which involves repeating the keyword over and over again in a blog post. This technique used to be successful, but search engines have got more sophisticated, and it is now something that can harm search engine rankings and result in a Google penalty.
Knowledge graph – a tool used by Google to enhance its search results with extra information gathered from various sources. The information is presented to users in the ‘knowledge graph card’ – an information box usually displayed to the right of the main search results on desktop.
L
Link building – activities undertaken with the aim of getting more backlinks to your website in order to improve your authority and therefore search engine rankings.
Link exchange – a black hat SEO technique where two (or more) websites agree to link to each other as part of their link building strategy. Participating in a link exchange is against Google’s Webmaster Guidelines and could result in a Google penalty.
Long tail keyword – longer, more specific keyword phrases which are less competitive than shorter keywords. It is therefore easier to rank for long-tail keywords. For example, it would be very hard to rank for the keyword ‘curry’ but much easier to rank for the long-tail keyword ‘easy chicken jalfrezi’. Targeting lots of relevant long tail keywords is a good strategy to improve SEO over time.
LSI (Latent Semantic Indexing) – a way of checking whether the text on a webpage is genuine quality content or just a random collection of keywords designed to artificially improve search rankings.
Essentially, search engines look for LSI keywords – words that are usually found alongside your main keyword in natural language use. A text with plenty of LSI keywords will rank better than a text with few or no LSI keywords. This is why optimising your text with secondary keywords is so important.
M
Medic update – a Google update first introduced in August 2018 which seems to have targeted mainly health and financial (YMYL) websites deemed to be giving low quality advice which doesn’t demonstrate expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness (EAT).
Meta description – a meta tag, which describes a webpage in a way that makes it attractive for both searchers and search engines. The meta description is visible to search engines but not readers of that webpage. Typically, the meta description is displayed under the title and URL of the webpage in search results. Although search engines can, and often do, display something of their own choosing here. Writing a good meta description can improve click through rates, resulting in increased traffic and improved rankings.
Meta tag – little snippets of code, visible to search engines but not human readers, which give information about a webpage to search engines, for example the meta description, or an instruction to search engines to no-index that page.
Mobilegeddon –the nickname given to a google update which happened in April 2015. The main effect of this update was to give priority in search rankings to websites which display well on smartphones and other mobile devices.
Mobile first indexing – a major change to the way Google indexed websites, which was announced in March 2018. Essentially, Google switched to using the mobile version of a website for indexing and ranking. Previously, Google had used the desktop version to index and rank websites. This further prioritised mobile friendly websites in Google’s search results.
N
No-follow link (rel=nofollow) – this kind of link looks like a totally normal link to your readers, who can click on it and still get to the link destination. However, a no-follow link tells search engines not to count it for ranking purposes. No-follow links are commonly used where payment for a link has taken place, for example in sponsored posts or for affiliate links. Whilst buying and selling do-follow links is against Google’s Webmaster Guidelines, buying/selling no-follow links is perfectly acceptable as no-follow links do not directly affect search engine rankings. LEARN MORE>>>
No-index (v) – a meta tag that prevents search engine bots from indexing a page. If you no-index a webpage, you essentially make that page invisible to the search engines. Consequently, that webpage will not turn up in search results. The page can however still be seen completely normally by readers on that website.
O
Off page SEO – everything you do outside of your own website to improve its search engine rankings. The main element of off-page SEO is link building.
On page SEO – everything you do on your own website to improve its search engine rankings, for example: keyword research, internal linking, improvements to site speed and site structure, creation of cornerstone content etc.
Organic results – search engine results that are not paid for.
Organic traffic – visits to a website resulting from the organic results on search engines.
Orphaned content – webpages which have no internal links pointing to them. You should generally avoid having orphaned content on your website as the lack of internal links makes it difficult for search engines to find those webpages. In addition, search engines generally consider orphaned content as less important than the rest of your content and so orphaned webpages are unlikely to rank well in search engine results. LEARN MORE>>>
Outbound link – a link from your website to a different website. Including high quality, useful outbound links in blog posts can improve UX and EAT.
Over-optimised – when an aspect of SEO has been overdone, resulting in a poor user experience. A good example of over-optimisation is using keywords too frequently or unnaturally in a blog post.
P
PA (Page Authority) – a score developed by Moz that seeks to put a number on how much authority a webpage is. A webpage with a lot of high-quality backlinks will have a high PA, whilst a webpage with few backlinks and/or lower quality backlinks will have a low PA.
Page Experience – a Google ranking factor designed to evaluate the UX of a webpage. It measures a number of factors, including Core Web Vitals, how mobile friendly, safe and secure a website is, and whether a website uses intrusive and annoying popups.
PageRank – an algorithm used by Google to rank webpages in their search engine results based on the number and quality of links to a page. PageRank is one of many algorithms used by Google to rank webpages in their search results.
Panda update – a Google update first introduced in February 2011 which targets duplicate content and websites which create large amounts of low-quality content, in an attempt to rank for lots of keywords, without generating much value for users. If your website is flagged by Panda it could receive a Google penalty.
Penguin update – a Google update first introduced in April 2012 which targets websites which have been trying to game the system by buying or otherwise unnaturally acquiring links to their website (e.g. link exchanges). Google essentially does this by assigning a negative value to specific links. So, if you have certain types of links, your rankings become lower, not higher.
Q
Query – see search query.
R
Ranking factors – the criteria used by search engines when evaluating webpages to determine the order of their search results. Ranking factors include number and quality of backlinks, quality of content, keyword optimisation, site speed, mobile friendliness and many, many more. In fact, Google uses over 200 ranking factors in their algorithm! LEARN MORE>>>
Recipe card plugin – a type of plugin that creates structured data for recipes. Using structured data means you can get rich snippets in search engine results.
Redirect – a piece of code that automatically redirects a user to another webpage. (See also 301 redirect and 302 redirect.)
Rich snippets – search results which give extra information, for example star rating, an image, calories, cook time, price etc. To get rich snippets you need to use structured data.
Robots.txt file – a file on a website giving instructions for search bots about which pages they can and can’t crawl. This can be useful if there is a large section of your website you do not want indexed by search engines. Adding a robots.txt file can help ensure you make best use of your crawl budget.
S
Sandbox – see Google sandbox.
Schema.org – a collaboration between Google, Microsoft and Yahoo to provide a mark-up language (essentially a shared vocabulary) for structured data. Using structured data means you can get rich snippets in search engine results.
Searcher intent – the reason ‘why’ a searcher is using a specific search term. What are they actually hoping to achieve? Are they looking for information? Do they want to buy something? Or are they trying to get to a particular website? Search engines are getting better and better at understanding searcher intent and producing search results to reflect this.
Search query – the word or phrase entered into a search engine by a user.
Search term – see search query.
Secondary keywords – other keywords you wish to target in a blog post, apart from your focus keyword (AKA primary keyword). For example, if your keyword is ‘vegetable korma’, your secondary keywords might be ‘vegetarian korma’, ‘vegan korma’ and ‘vegetable curry’. Using secondary keywords helps with LSI. LEARN MORE>>>
SEM (Search Engine Marketing) – a term used to describe all the activities related to gaining increased traffic for a website or webpage from search engines. This includes both organic traffic and paid traffic.
SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) – a term used to describe all the activities related to gaining increased organic traffic for a website or webpage from search engines. LEARN MORE>>>
SERP (Search Engine Results Page) – a webpage that gives the results of a search query, i.e. the page that you see when you search for something on Google/Bing/DuckDuckGo etc.
Sitelinks – extra links which are shown immediately below a search result in Google. Sitelinks are automatically generated by Google’s algorithm and usually show the most important pages/posts on a website. Sitelinks appear for the first organic search result and Google mainly shows sitelinks for brands – for example, the name of a company or blog. LEARN MORE >>>
Sitemap – a sitemap lists all the pages on a website, making sure search engines can find and crawl them all, and helping them understand your website’s structure. Submitting your sitemap to search engines is not essential, but it can help search engines find all your posts and pages and crawl your site more efficiently. This ensures you get the most out of your crawl budget. LEARN MORE>>>
Site speed – the measure of how fast your website loads for visitors to your website. The faster your website loads, the better for it is for SEO, as fast loading websites provide a better UX than slow loading websites. LEARN MORE>>>
Site structure – the way your website is organised and how things are linked together. A good site structure helps search engines AND your readers understand your site better and navigate around it more easily. LEARN MORE>>>
Snippet – a single result on a search engine results page. A snippet generally consists of the title, URL and meta description of a webpage. The content of the snippet that matches parts of the search query will usually be highlighted in the snippet description. Snippets with extra information, such as an image or a star rating, are called rich snippets.
Social signals – likes and shares etc. from social media channels such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Social signals can affect a website’s organic search rankings as they are seen as one measure of a website’s expertise, authority and trustworthiness (EAT).
Spider – see bot.
Structured data – special code which gives search engines extra information about a blog post in a way they can understand it. Search engines read this code and use it to display rich snippets in search results. For example, if you add structured data to a recipe post, your result in the search engines will show extra information about that recipe, such as an image, star rating, calories and cook time.
T
Text link – a plain HTML link that does not involve graphics or special code such as JavaScript.
Thin content – content on a website that gives little or no value to the user. This includes low-quality content and pages with very little or no content, such as tag and category archives with no text.
Time on page – the amount of time that a user spends on one webpage before clicking away. Time on page sends user signals to search engines about the quality and relevance of a webpage for a given search result.
Target audience – the specific group of people you want your website to attract. Knowing your target audience is hugely important for conducting keyword research and effectively implementing SEO. LEARN MORE>>>
U
URL (Uniform Resource Locator) – the address of a specific webpage – e.g. www.productiveblogging.com/beginners-guide-seo/
User intent – see searcher intent.
User signals – behavioural patterns which search engines use to understand UX. For example, if a user clicks on a particular search result and almost immediately comes back to the search engine results page, this is a user signal which suggests the website in question is not a good fit for that particular search term. Search engines use user signals to work out which results to show for a particular search query.
UX (User eXperience) – the experience users have on a particular webpage or website. Search engines want to ensure they send their users to websites which provide a good UX. Search engines use a variety of factors to determine UX, such as user signals, site speed and site structure. LEARN MORE>>>
Unique content – for a website to rank well in search engine results, it’s important that the content is original and not copied from another source. Content which is copied from another source is known as duplicate content.
V
Voice search – a way of searching on a search engine using your voice, rather than typing in your query. Voice search is becoming an increasingly popular way for users to get information from the internet. Because voice search is changing the way we search for things on the web, voice search is also affecting SEO. In particular there is an increased focus on answering natural language questions and providing short discreet answers to such questions, usually within the context of a longer blog post.
W
White hat SEO – the opposite of black hat SEO. White hat SEO describes all the SEO practices that search engines want you to use and which comply with their guidelines (e.g. practices which comply with Google Webmaster Guidelines). Examples of white hat SEO include improving your site speed and writing high-quality content.
Webmaster – the person responsible for the administration of a website. For example, for a website owned by a blogger, who does not outsource this, the webmaster is the blogger.
Webmaster Tools – see Google Search Console.
Webpage – any kind of page or post on a website.
X
XML Sitemap – see sitemap.
Y
Yoast SEO plugin – one of the most popular WordPress plugins, Yoast is a powerful tool that can help you improve your SEO. Yoast makes it easy for you to do things like control titles and meta descriptions, set your focus keywords, manage sitemaps, and assess your blog posts’ readability. LEARN MORE>>>
Yoast SEO Premium plugin – the premium version of Yoast’s highly popular SEO plugin. Yoast Premium gives you extra functionality such as help optimising for secondary keywords and synonyms, 24/7 support, an orphaned content filter and redirects tool. LEARN MORE>>>
YMYL (Your Money or Your Life) – a term used to describe health and financial websites that give advice which could affect a user’s money or life. These websites were hit particularly hard by Google’s Medic update, which sought to downgrade YMYL websites which did not show sufficient experience, authority and trustworthiness (EAT). This was done to help ensure Google did not send users to YMYL websites giving low quality advice which could negatively affect their health or financial situation.
#
301 redirect – a permanent redirect that informs search engines that a webpage has moved to another location.
302 redirect – a temporary redirect that informs search engines that a webpage has moved to another location, but only temporarily.
404 error – this occurs when a webpage cannot be found, for example because that page has been deleted. A 404 tells search engines a page does not currently exist but does not explain whether it will come back or not.
410 – a status code which tells search engines a webpage has been permanently deleted.
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