Our team of SEO experts in Adelaide use industry-standard terms in our SEO reports, which is essential for accuracy, but it can sometimes feel overwhelming without context. This glossary serves as a guide to help you confidently interpret the terms used in our reports and help you understand the strategies behind our work.
Why? Because transparency is at the heart of everything we do at Quisk. We want you to understand the results of our efforts and see the progressive journey we’re taking to get there.
Numerical
301 Redirect: The 301 redirect takes users to the new URL and tells search engines that the page has moved permanently.
302 Redirect: The 302 redirect indicates that the web page or resource was moved from one location to another temporarily.
4xx status codes: The 404 Not Found HTTP status code indicates that the server couldn’t find the requested page or resource.
A
Algorithms: A process or formula by which stored information is retrieved and ordered meaningfully.
Alt Text: Alt text (alternative text) is the text description of an image on a web page. Screen readers and search engines use it.
Anchor Text: Anchor text is the visible, clickable text of a hyperlink. Google uses anchor texts to help it understand the linked page's content.
Average Ranking: The average position value is the rank in the Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs) for the given period selected in Google Search Console.
B
Backlinks: Backlinks are links from a page on one website to another. Search engines analyse the quality of a backlink to estimate a page's importance.
Broken Link: A broken link on a web page points to a non-existent (or "dead") resource. They can be internal or external links.
C
Citations: Also known as a “business listing,” a citation is a web-based reference to a local business name, address, and phone number (NAP).
Content Relevance: Content relevance is the extent to which the content is relevant to the reader's needs, interests, and preferences.
Conversion Rate: The ratio of visits to conversions. Conversion rate answers: “How many website visitors are filling out my forms, calling, signing up for my newsletter, etc.?”
D
De-indexed: Refers to a page or group of pages being removed from Google’s index.
E
Engaged Sessions: An engaged session lasts longer than 10 seconds, has critical events, or has at least two page views or screen views.
Engagement: Data that represents how searchers interact with your site from search results.
Engagement Rate: An engagement rate is the percentage of sessions on a single page that are considered engaged sessions.
Engagement Time: Average engagement time, previously known as session duration, is a measurement in Google Analytics 4 that shows how long visitors spend on your website.
G
Google GA4: Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is the latest version of Google's web analytics platform, designed to provide more comprehensive insights into user behaviour across websites and apps.
Google Index: Google's inventory of websites that it draws from to provide search results to users. The index contains copies of web pages that Google's crawler (Googlebot) has discovered and deemed worthy of inclusion. Only indexed pages can appear in Google search results
H
H1 tag: HTML heading that’s most commonly used to mark up a web page title.
HTTPS: Encrypted version of HTTP that protects the communications between your browser and server from being intercepted and tampered with by attackers.
K
Keyword Ranking: A keyword ranking is a website's organic ranking position in the search results for a particular keyword.
Keywords: Words and phrases that the web page is associated with.
L
Landing Page: A landing page is a web page where a visitor "lands" after clicking on a link in a specific marketing campaign.
Link Text: Link text, often known as "anchor text," is the visible, clickable text in a hyperlink on a web page.
Long-tail Keyword: A low-volume search query on a specific topic.
M
Meta Description: HTML elements that describe the contents of the page that they’re on. Google sometimes uses these as the description line in search result snippets.
Meta Keywords: Meta tags that give some search engines (not Google) more information about a page’s content.
O
Organic Search Results: Non-paid search results from a search engine that can’t be bought or influenced by advertisers.
Organic Sessions: A user’s visit to a website that occurs naturally, without any paid advertisements or direct promotions. It is a term used to describe the traffic that comes from search engine results pages (SERPs) when users click on a website’s organic listing.
Organic Traffic: Traffic from a search engine’s organic results.
Organic Users: The visitors who come to a website naturally through search engine results, without being directed by paid advertisements.
P
Page Speed: The amount of time it takes for a web page to load.
R
Ranking: Ordering search results by relevance to the query.
Redirection: When a URL is moved from one location to another. Most often, redirection is permanent (301 redirect).
Referral Traffic: Traffic sent to a website from another website. For example, if your website is receiving visits from people clicking on your site from a link on Facebook, Google Analytics will attribute that traffic as “facebook.com / referral” in the Source/Medium report.
Related Searches: Related searches are search queries related to the keyword you type into a search engine. After you type in your search query, scroll to the bottom of the SERP. There, you’ll find a list of related searches.
Rich Snippet: A snippet is the title and description preview that Google and other search engines show of URLs on its results page. A “rich” snippet, therefore, is an enhanced version of the standard snippet. Some rich snippets can be encouraged by the use of structured data markup, like review markup displaying as rating stars next to those URLs in the search results.
S
Search Algorithm: List of rules used by search engines to rank matching results when a user performs a search.
Search Engine: An information retrieval program that searches for items in a database that match the request input by the user. Examples: Google, Bing, and Yahoo.
Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs): Pages that search engines show in response to a user’s search query.
Search Intent: The reason behind a search.
Search Results: Search results are a list of web pages from a search engine that appear in response to a particular search query.
Search Term: A search term (or search query) is a word or set of words that a person enters on a search engine like Google to generate specific results.
Search traffic: Visits sent to your websites from search engines like Google.
Search Visibility: Search visibility is the estimated percentage of clicks a website gets from its organic rankings for one or more keywords.
Search Volume: Search volume is the average number of times that users enter a particular search query into a search engine each month.
SEO: The practice of optimising a website or webpage to get more high-quality traffic from a search engine’s organic results.
SEO Audit: The process of evaluating and assessing your website to see how well it’s performing in search engines.
Site Visibility: Refers to how easily and frequently a website appears in search engine results pages (SERPs) for relevant queries.
T
Time on page: The amount of time someone spent on your page before clicking to the next page. Because Google Analytics tracks time on page by when someone clicks your next page, bounced sessions will clock a time on page of 0.
Traffic Sources: Refers to the various channels through which visitors arrive at a website. These sources are critical in understanding how users find and engage with your content, influencing SEO strategies. The main traffic sources include:
- Organic Search: Visitors who find the website through unpaid search results on search engines like Google or Bing. This is a key focus of SEO efforts as it reflects the effectiveness of keyword optimisation, content relevance, and website authority.
- Direct Traffic: Users who visit the site by typing the URL directly into the browser, often indicating strong brand awareness or a loyal audience base.
- Referral Traffic: Traffic that comes from other websites through backlinks or mentions. High-quality referral links can improve SEO rankings by signalling trust and authority to search engines.
- Social Media Traffic: Visitors who arrive from social media platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, or Instagram. Although not a direct ranking factor, social media engagement can indirectly influence SEO by driving traffic and increasing content visibility.
- Paid Search Traffic: Traffic that comes from paid advertising, such as Google Ads. While this doesn’t directly affect organic SEO rankings, it can complement SEO efforts by increasing immediate visibility and traffic.
