SEO Terms You Should Know

A 301 redirect is a perfect way to point people and search engines from an old URL to a new one. It's like having your mail forwarded to a new address. Everyone who tries to go to the old page will automatically end up at the new location instead.

Using a 301 means any SEO power from links pointing to the original URL will transfer over. The new page will soak up all that juicy link equity. That's crucial for keeping your rankings intact when you need to move or rename a page.

Whenever someone lands on a page that's been 301'd, their browser gets a message saying, "This page has moved permanently. We're sending you to the new spot." The visitor's browser makes a quick pit stop, picks up the new address, and zips off to the right destination.

You can use a 301 to combine pages, swap domains, or clean up messy URLs. It's a slick trick for sprucing up your site structure without losing any precious SEO momentum. 301 redirects are a seamless way to reroute traffic when you need to switch things around.

So, if you've renamed a page or are merging websites, break out that 301 redirect. It'll make sure your visitors and friendly neighborhood search engines always wind up in the right place—no muss, no fuss, no lost link juice. You gotta love that 301 redirect!

 

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Content marketing uses helpful and engaging material like blogs, videos, or infographics to draw attention to a brand. The goal is to attract the right audience, keep them interested, and guide them toward becoming customers over time.

 

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A conversion happens when someone takes a specific action on a website that matches a set goal, like clicking an ad, signing up, or making a purchase. Each completed action counts as progress toward the site's overall success.

 

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Core Web Vitals are a set of Google's key performance measures that show how real users experience a webpage. They focus on three things: how fast a page loads, how quickly it responds, and how stable it looks as it loads. Pages are sorted into groups based on these scores and labeled as good, need improvement, or poor.

 

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Core Web Vitals in Semrush are part of the Site Audit tool and track how well a website performs in three key areas. It checks how fast the biggest part of the page loads (LCP), how stable the layout feels while loading (CLS), and how responsive the site is when someone first tries to interact. Since First Input Delay (FID) relies on real user actions and can't be tested in a lab, Semrush uses Total Blocking Time (TBT) instead, which closely mirrors how FID works according to Google.

 

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When advertisers want to place ads for certain keywords, they need to bid money for those clicks. The cost per click shows how much money advertisers typically pay when someone clicks their ad for a specific keyword. Semrush tracks these costs across different regions in its databases. Every time you search for a keyword in Semrush, you'll see exactly what advertisers pay per click in each area where that keyword appears. This helps you understand how valuable or competitive different search terms are across various markets. The higher the CPC number, the more expensive it is to advertise using that particular keyword. This information becomes really useful when planning advertising campaigns or comparing keyword strategies between different regions.

 

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CPM stands for Cost Per Thousand Impressions in advertising. When businesses run ads online, they pay based on how many people see their advertisements. Instead of paying for each click, advertisers pay for every thousand times their ad appears on screens. The letter "M" comes from Roman numerals, where M equals 1,000. Advertisers use this number to figure out their marketing budgets because it helps them compare different websites or platforms where they might want to show their ads. For example, if a website charges $5 CPM, advertisers would pay $5 every time their ad appears 1,000 times on that site. This differs from CPC (Cost Per Click) because CPM focuses on views rather than actions. Companies track these costs carefully to make sure they're spending their advertising money effectively across different platforms. This measurement gives advertisers a clear picture of how much it costs to reach specific audiences with their messages.

 

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Google sets limits on how many pages it checks on your website. This limit is called the crawl budget. Every website gets a certain number of visits from GoogleBot, which explores your site pages. Two main things decide how much attention your site receives: first, how fast GoogleBot moves through your content, and second, how much visitors like your pages. Popular websites usually receive more attention from GoogleBot because these sites matter more to internet users. When your pages attract lots of traffic, Google notices this and sends its bot to visit more often. The crawl budget becomes very important for bigger websites with thousands of pages because Google might not look at every single page during each visit. Website owners need to make the most of their crawl budget to help search engines find their best content.

 

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Search engines send little computer programs across the internet every day. These programs - nicknamed crawlers, bots, robots, or spiders - roam websites automatically without human control. When Google or Bing want to know what exists online, they release these digital scouts to visit pages and report back what they find. The crawlers collect information about websites and help build the massive search indexes that people use when looking for information. But these automatic programs serve different masters. Good crawlers help organize the internet for everyone. Bad crawlers steal content from legitimate websites. Dishonest people program these bad crawlers to copy text, images, and data from real websites. They take this stolen content and post it elsewhere to make money through ads or scams. Website owners often struggle to protect their original work from these digital thieves that silently visit and copy everything they create.

 

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CRM stands for customer relationship management. Companies use CRM systems to keep their current customers happy and buying more products. These systems also help turn possible buyers into actual customers. The technology tracks important details about people who shop with a business. It remembers past purchases, notes from conversations, and signs that someone might want to buy something. Companies can look at this information right away to spot chances for selling extra or better products to each person. This helps businesses make smarter decisions about how to talk with customers and what to offer them. Many companies find that good CRM practices lead to higher sales because they understand exactly what different customers need. The software makes it easier to remember every detail about thousands of different shoppers without missing anything important. Big and small businesses alike depend on these systems to grow their customer base and increase profits.

 

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When you run Google Ads, you might put the same keywords in different ad groups without realizing it. This creates a problem because your ads start fighting each other for the same searches. Cross Group Negatives fixes this mess. The trick works like this: you take keywords from one ad group and mark them as "negative keywords" in your other groups. For example, if you sell sports shoes in one group and dress shoes in another, you add "sports" as a negative keyword to the dress shoes group. This way, when someone searches for sports shoes, only your sports ad shows up, not both ads. Your ads stop competing with each other, more people click on them, and Google rewards you with better quality scores. Many advertisers miss this simple step and wonder why their campaigns cost more money but bring fewer results. Setting up these cross negatives takes just a few minutes but can make a huge difference in how well your ads perform and how much money you spend.

 

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CSS makes websites look pretty. When web designers build pages, they write the main content with HTML, but they need something else to handle the appearance. That's where Cascading Style Sheets come in. This special code tells browsers exactly how everything should look on the screen. Want red text? CSS does that. Need bigger headings? CSS handles it. Want fancy layouts that change between phones and computers? CSS takes care of it all. Think of HTML as the skeleton of a website and CSS as the skin, clothes, makeup, and accessories. Web designers create separate CSS files that control colors, spacing, fonts, backgrounds, and layouts across entire websites. When they want to change how everything looks, they just update one CSS file instead of fixing hundreds of pages. The "cascading" part means these style rules flow down through the website, with more specific instructions overriding general ones. Every modern website uses CSS to make pages look good on any screen size.

 

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CTR stands for Click-through rate. Every time people see your ads or links online, we count that as an impression. When someone actually clicks on your ad or link, we count that as a click. The CTR shows how many people clicked compared to how many people saw it, written as a percentage. It tells you if your ads or links catch attention and make people want to visit your website. A higher CTR means your ad performs better at bringing visitors to your site. Advertisers track this number closely because it helps them know if their messages connect with audiences. When you create online campaigns, improving your CTR becomes a major goal since it directly affects how much traffic comes to your pages. Most platforms that show ads will display your CTR as part of their reporting tools.

 

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Have you ever started reading something on a website, only for the page to jump because an ad or image loaded suddenly? That feeling of losing your place happens because of what experts call Cumulative Layout Shift. This measures how stable a webpage stays as it loads on your screen. Websites with good CLS scores stay put instead of jerking around when you read them. Search engines care about this because it bothers people when text shifts under their eyes. The less movement on your screen after the page appears, the better the experience for readers. Google tracks this as part of its Core Web Vitals because it affects how much people enjoy using websites. For example, if you click a button but the page jumps right as you tap, you might hit something else by mistake. Designers work hard to fix these issues by setting aside space for images before they load completely. Stable pages keep visitors happy and coming back to sites they trust.

 

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Semrush tracks keywords that slip down the search rankings for your website. These search terms fall from their previous positions but hang around somewhere in the first hundred results. The tracking system labels them as declined keywords because they performed better before. Website owners check these slipping terms to fix problems or boost them back up the rankings. Keeping an eye on these declining search terms helps you catch issues before they become serious ranking problems. Search engines change their minds about which pages deserve top spots, and these declined keywords show exactly where your site lost ground in the race for visibility. Fixing these declining terms often brings quick wins since the pages already rank - just not as high as they did previously.

 

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When people browse online, they jump from website to website. A destination site is the next place someone goes after they leave your website. Think of it as the next stop on a journey. Companies track these next stops to see where their visitors head after checking out their pages. They want to know if users stay within their network of sites or travel elsewhere on the internet. This information helps businesses understand traffic patterns and how people move between different websites. Learning about destination sites can reveal important facts about what interests your visitors. For example, if many users go straight to a competitor's page after visiting yours, you might need to improve something. Website analysts pay close attention to these digital pathways because they show exactly how people navigate the web after interacting with a particular domain.

 

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When people visit your website by typing your web address straight into their browser, we call that direct traffic. These visitors come to you without clicking links from other websites, emails, or search results. They know exactly where they want to go and head straight there. This happens when someone remembers your web address or has it bookmarked. Web analytics programs track these direct visitors separately because they show how many people seek out your site on purpose. Having high direct traffic numbers usually means your brand stays in people's minds. Companies love seeing lots of direct visitors because it proves people remember them and want to check them out again. Your direct traffic numbers help you understand how famous your website has become all by itself.

 

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If your website has a lot of bad links pointing to it, like spammy ones or fake ones that might hurt how well you rank in search results, you can take action. When you can't remove these harmful links yourself (maybe because they're on websites you don't control), Google gives you a solution. Their Disavow Tool lets you tell Google to ignore those problematic links simply. This way, those links won't affect your site's performance in search rankings anymore.

 

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When your website has lots of bad links pointing to it, you can tell Google which ones to ignore. That's what a disavow file does - it's simply a list of links you don't want Google to count when checking if your site deserves a penalty. These might be spammy links that could hurt your search rankings. The good news? If you use Semrush, making this file is pretty easy. Just start a Backlink Audit campaign, find the harmful links, mark them for disavowal, and the system creates a text file for you to send straight to Google. This helps protect your site from being punished for links you didn't ask for or can't remove.

 

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Display ads are those eye-catching online promotions you see all over the internet. They blend words, pictures, and links that take you to websites where you can learn more or buy stuff. Some stay still with just one image, but others move around with multiple pictures, videos, or text that changes. Different display ads work in different ways - certain ones teach you about products, and others grab your attention with fun little games or puzzles you can play right in the ad. If you've ever noticed rectangular ads on websites, those are usually banner ads, which count as a popular type of display ad.

 

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When the same stuff shows up in different places online, search engines get confused. They can't figure out which page they should show in their results. This happens because websites often copy text from somewhere else, or they might have several addresses that lead to the same information. Search engines hate this duplicate content problem because it makes their job harder. They don't know which version deserves credit or which one people should see first. Your website's search ranking takes a big hit when this happens. The search robots might skip over your pages completely or split ranking power between multiple copies instead of giving full strength to just one page. If you want your site to do well, make sure each page has unique content that doesn't appear anywhere else online.