A/B split testing
comparing two versions of a webpage or app against each other to determine which one performs better.
Alibaba
one of the world’s biggest e-commerce sites. You can source just about any physical product you need from there.
Amazon FBA
stands for “Fulfilment by Amazon”. A service where sellers send goods to an Amazon warehouse for them be handled and distributed to buyers.
Anchor text
the clickable text in a hyperlink. For best SEO practice, make the anchor text relevant to the page you’re linking to.
Black hat SEO
aggressive SEO strategies, techniques and tactics that focus only on search engines and not humans. It often breaks search engine rules.
Blog
short for weblog. A personal website that is frequently updated and intended for general public consumption. Many businesses have adopted the format to be more personable.
Bounce rate
the percentage of visitors who navigate away from a website after viewing only one page.
Cache
temporary storage of web documents, such as HTML pages and images, used to reduce server lag. To view the latest version of your site, the cache often needs clearing.
Call to action
content intended to invite a viewer, reader, or listener to take an action (e.g. a “buy now” button, or “click here” link).
Content Management System (CMS)
a software application that manages the creation and modification of digital content. For example, WordPress.
Do-follow
links that allow search engines to follow through to the destination website, passing along what the SEO community commonly calls “link juice”. Links are do-follow by default.
E-commerce
buying or selling products over the internet.
Google algorithm
the secret formula Google uses to rank web pages.
Grey hat SEO
less ethical than white hat SEO, more ethical than black hat SEO. Grey hat techniques can be effective in some situations.
Keyword strategy
basing marketing campaigns around key words and phrases with the intention of receiving more search engine traffic to your site.
Long-tail keyword
long, specific, less-competitive keyword phrases used to target a niche audience rather than the masses.
Meta description
a concise summary of a web page, between one sentence to a short paragraph. It appears underneath the links in a search engine results page (SERP).
Meta tags
dead in terms of SEO value. Was once used as a ranking factor by the search engines. It’s outdated.
No-follow
stops search engines from following links through to the destination site. No “SEO juice” is passed on, so it doesn’t influence the ranking of the link’s target.
Off-site SEO
actions taken outside of your own website to impact your search engine rankings. It involves improving search engine and user perception of a site’s popularity, relevance, trustworthiness, and authority.
On-site SEO
tweaking elements on your website (e.g. written content, image tags, layouts etc.) so that search engines are able to crawl and understand it more easily.
Organic traffic
visitors who find your website using a search engines like Google.
Pay Per Click (PPC)
an internet marketing model where advertisers pay a fee each time one of their ads is clicked.
Plugin
adds a specific feature to an existing computer program. For example, a “contact form plugin” for your website. Here’s my favourite WordPress plugins.
Sales Funnel
a customer’s journey, from start to finish, when buying your product or service.
SEO
stands for Search Engine Optimisation. Maximising the number of visitors to a website by ensuring that it ranks high on search engine results.
SEO juice
the value that one link passes to its destination website. A reputable, well-known site passes on more “juice” than a relatively unknown site.
SERP
Stands for “Search Engine Results Page”. It’s the list of pages which show up whenever a search is made.
SSL encryption
an encrypted link between a web server and a browser. It adds the padlock to the left of your URL in the browser.
Traffic
the amount of visitors a website receives.
Traffic saturation
a term I use to describe the peak performance of a website given several marketing efforts.
Widget
an element on a web page that displays information or provides a task. This page has several widgets, such as the “popular posts” section.
WordPress
an open-source and free content management system (CMS). It’s what this site was built in.