SEO Flashcards
What is a search engine?
Technology that searches the web and returns relevant, quality infomration based on a user’s search query.
Estimated size of the web according to Google:
130 trillion indiviual pages
How to optimse of a search engine
Technical - a solid technical foundation that provides an optimal search engie and user experience
Quality - High quality content designed to showcase your offering and optimised to drive conversions
Authority - Signal that the people are engaing, refrencing and recommending
Experience - boost use experience metrics and conversion rate by uncovering obstacles to conversion
Key Terms for SEO - URL’s
Uniform Resource Locater. An address for a webpage
Key Terms for SEO - Meta Data
A snippet of text in the web page’s code that describes the content on the page and is used as the website’s description in a search engine results page.
meta titles - the clickable blue links
meta descpritons - the black text, is the decription of the page
Key Terms for SEO - Headings Tags/Elements
Headings in HTML code. They are shown in order from H1 - H6.
They are what is seen on the webpage in that order.
Key Terms for SEO - Keywords
A short list of words that describe the content of a webapge. it’s what we optimise towards. they aren’t used by search engines.
Key Terms for SEO - Internal Linking
Links to other pages on your same site.
About Us to Contact Us for example.
Key Terms for SEO - Alt-Text
Words that describe an image. Mainly used for visual impaired folks but is also used by search engines to see if an image is an appropriate search result.
Key Terms for SEO - Backlinks
Links from other sites that link a totally different site. This is useful as it provides legitamacy to your site which will increase your ranking inthe SERP.
Key Terms for SEO - Algorithim
Search engines use alogrthims to determine ranking
Key Terms for SEO - Anchor Text
the words you click on that take you to a link.
ie text on a site that says photo gallery and it takes you to the site titled /images
Key Terms for SEO - Branded Link
a link which contain to company brand or similar derivative in the anchor text.
Key Terms for SEO - Bot, Crawler or Spider
a program that crawls the internet and finds webpages and indexs them, so they appear in SERPs
Key Terms for SEO - CRO
Conversion Rate Optimisation - a system to increase the percentage of vistors to a website that convert into customers.
Key Terms for SEO - CX
Customer Experience
Key Terms for SEO - Impression Share
THe number of impressions delivered divided by the number of total eligiable impressions.
Algorithm released in 2011?
Panda - This, spammy. low value content
Algorithm released in 2012?
Penguin - Back Link Spam
Algorithm released in 2013?
Hummingbird - conversational search providing answers
Algorithm released in 2014
Secure Sites HTTPS - Ranking improvements
Algorithm released in 2015
Mobile Friendly - Negative impact on non-mobile friendly website rankings
Alogrithm released in 2018
Mobile First Index
Alogrithm released in 2019
EAT - Expertise Authority Trustworthiness
Your Money, Your Life - showing acurate and true info
How often does google change it’s algorithms?
500 - 600 times a year
SEO - Ranking Factors - Technical -
basic tech foundations which make a site easier to navigate for humans and bots (which moves it’s ranking higher)
No duplicate content - this means that it’s easier to index your site and it’s cleaner for the user
Accessible sitemap - a sitemap will provide all the links on your page easily
Optimised Navigation - needs to be easy to follow and make sense, if the bots undertsand it, the faster it will be indexed
On Page - making sure everything on page makes sense
SEO - Ranking Factors - Quality
- Understand what content a person visiting your site needs
- Try and lower page bounce, which should increase engagement
- Try and become an industry leader in your topic, if the site is more legit then you will be ranked higher
- Shareability, this is for sharing on social media
- Fresh and up to date, if your site looks old, people will think it’s old information
SEO Ranking Factors - Authority
- Backlinks - if another site links to your website, then you are more likely to be higher on the SERP
- Domains - number of referring domains, the more domains, the higher you are likely to be on SERP
- Engagement - do people engage with your site for information
SEO - Ranking Factors - Experience
Page load time means less bounce rate which translates to more engagement.
You can reduce page load time by
- reducing the page file size
- compressing files sent to browsers
- allow browsers to cache files, which means the information is stored locally
SEO - Keyword Research - What is it?
It’s planning and choosing keywords, using the Google Ads Keyword Planner Tool.
If you have lots of competition with a keyword already, try and use long-tail keywords, which will be easier for you to rank.
SEO - Seach Console Analytics - What is it?
Tools to help understand how people are interacting with your page via SERP. shows you how they got there, why they got there, if they are finding what they need from your site.
SEO - Market Research - What is it?
Get a better understanding of who your customers are:
- client research/data gives you a better picture of who based on passions and past times
- social profiling, client data matched to social media
- a number of other sources are out there to give you more insights into customers
SEO - 3 Pillars to best practice
- Technical - Coding -
Assessment of a website, indexed pages, page speed and sitemaps
- On-Site - Relevancy -
content analysis, internal linking keyword insertion
- Off-Site - Advocacy -
backlink analysis, competitor analysis, penalty removal
What types of sitemaps should sites have?
HTML & XML
What websites crawler tools are out there to use and what are they used for?
Screaming Frog and Google’s own index
They are used to see how search engines are seeing your site, so you can fix any issues/optimise for higher ranking.
