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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Quality Score shows how good Google thinks your ads are. Google looks at several things to figure this out. First, they guess how many people might click your ad when it shows up in search results. They also check if your ad matches what people search for. Then, they see if your landing page - the website people visit after clicking your ad - connects well with both your ad and the search words you picked. All these parts matter equally in your final score.

Having a high Quality Score helps you a lot. Your ads cost less money per click. They show up higher on the page where more people notice them. This means you spend less cash but get better results from your ads. Google wants to make sure people see helpful ads that match what they're looking for.

If you want to improve your Quality Score, work on these areas: Make your ads interesting so more people click them. Choose search words that really fit what you're selling. Create landing pages that give visitors exactly what your ads promise. Keep checking how your ads perform and make small changes to improve them. Good Quality Scores save you money and bring more customers to your website.

 

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A query means any words someone types into a search box. People put all kinds of things in search boxes - single words, whole questions, or groups of words. When you type something and hit enter, you're sending that query to the search engine. The search engine then looks through its huge collection of websites to find pages that match what you asked for. Different queries bring back different results. If you search "pizza," you'll see pizza places near you, recipes, and pizza information. But if you search "pizza with pineapple debate," you'll get completely different pages about whether pineapple belongs on pizza. Search engines try to figure out what you really want based on your query. They look at every word you typed and try to understand your meaning. The better your query matches what you're actually looking for, the more helpful your search results will be. Many people start with simple queries and add more specific words if they don't find what they need right away.

 

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The Readability Score measures how easy text is to read. It comes from the Flesch- Kincaid test. This score ranges from zero up to one hundred. Higher numbers mean simpler reading. A score of 100 shows very basic, clear writing. A score near zero marks difficult, complex text. Many factors affect this number: sentence length, word choice, and paragraph structure. Short sentences with common words score higher. Long sentences full of rare words score lower. Search engines care about readability because users want content they can understand quickly. When writing web pages or blog posts, aim for readable text that matches your audience. If you write for doctors, you might use harder words. If you write for everyone, keep things simple. Semrush helps by showing you the average readability of your top competitors. This gives you a target score for your content. Most popular websites stay between 60-70 on this scale - about an eighth-grade reading level. Pages with poor readability often see people leave quickly. Clear writing keeps readers on your site longer. Better readability also helps your SEO efforts because search engines notice when users find your content helpful.

 

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A redirect changes where a web page takes you. It sends visitors from one web address to another automatically. This happens when websites move to new domains or need to guide users through a gateway page. Several types of redirects exist. The 301 redirect works best for permanent changes because search engines pass most ranking power to the new address. The 302 redirect helps with temporary moves but keeps the old page as the main one in search results. The meta refresh redirect happens inside the page code rather than at the server level. JavaScript redirects use programming to send visitors elsewhere after the page loads.

Website owners use redirects for many reasons. They help after buying a new domain name, fix problems with broken links, combine similar pages into one stronger page, and guide mobile users to special mobile versions of sites. Good redirects keep both visitors and search engines happy by making sure everyone finds what they need without getting lost.

Search engines pay close attention to redirects. They follow these paths to understand how websites connect. Setting up redirects correctly helps maintain your search rankings when making website changes. Bad redirects can harm your site by confusing both people and search systems. Every redirect should lead somewhere useful rather than to error pages or endless loops.

 

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Referral traffic means visitors arrive at your site from places besides search engines and social media. If a person notices a link inside a blog post somewhere else online pointing to your website, they might click it out of curiosity. When they land on your site, it counts as referral traffic.

Why does this happen? The click started from another spot on the web—not Google, Facebook, or similar sources. The referring website sent them your way, and its hyperlink referred them to you.

Referral traffic involves people coming to your site using backlinks on other web pages. Those links act as " referrals," suggesting that your content has value. Whenever someone follows one, their visit becomes part of your referral traffic.

 

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A referrer tells you where someone came from before they visited your website. It could be a search result, another website's domain, or a social media platform.

Let's say a person looks something up on Google. In the results, they see a link to one of your web pages. They decide to click it. Google would be considered the "referrer" in that case because it's the source that referred the visitor to you.

The same idea applies if someone reaches your site from a different website or social network. Maybe they spot your link while browsing around online and choose to check it out. Wherever they were right before heading to your site - that's the referrer.

Referrers give you helpful information. They show you how people are finding your website. With those insights, you can figure out what sources send the most visitors your way. You'll know if you're getting a lot of traffic from search engines, social media, or other sites linking to yours. Pretty handy for understanding how people discover your content across the web!

 

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Relevancy measures how closely a website matches what someone searched for. Search engines use complex math to figure this out.

Picture someone typing a question into Google. The search engine quickly scans countless web pages, trying to find the best answers. It's looking for sites that cover the topic really well.

Relevancy is like a score the search engine gives each page. A high score means the page is super relevant and probably has the info the person wants. A low score means the page doesn't have much to do with what they searched for.

To determine relevancy, search engines analyze tons of factors. They look at the words on the page, the page's overall topic, and how popular and trusted the website seems to be. All these clues help the search engine decide which pages to show at the top of the results.

As a website owner, relevancy is a big deal. You want search engines to see your site as highly relevant for certain topics. That way, your pages have a better shot at ranking high when people search for those topics. The more relevant your site looks, the more likely you are to get free search traffic.

 

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The search results number indicates how many websites might have the information you need. If you search for "funny cat videos," the search engine checks billions of pages all over the Internet, looking for anything related to cute kitty clips.

In just a second, you'll see page after page of results. We're talking a million or more, based on what you searched for. All those results are websites the search engine guesses you'll wanna check out.

The results number says a bunch. Tons of results? That means your topic is crazy popular online. Loads of pages are fighting for those search terms. Not many results? Your topic could be super specific or not well-known.

As you browse, remember that the results are ranked. The top ones are what the search engine thinks are the most relevant and helpful. It puts the best fits right up front to make things easy for you.

Next time you search, look at that results number. It's a hint about how much info is out there on your topic. A bigger number equals more thoughts from the internet!

 

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Google Search shows a review feature next to website listings that shares customer opinions about companies, products, books, or movies. People leave feedback and assign star ratings, and the number of reviews appears right under the link. This tool offers clear cues that help visitors decide what to explore when they search online.

 

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Semrush made a Local tool called Review Management that monitors what customers say about you online. With all the numbers, you can see exactly how your rivals stack up against you. This dashboard puts all your reviews in one place. The system creates smart AI replies that you might want to use, plus it can answer Google Business Profile reviews all by itself without you having to do anything.

 

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Rich snippets show extra stuff with your link on search engines. You might see stars from reviews, opening times, pictures, or types of business next to regular search results. These helpful details appear because someone added special code to their website that tells search engines what information they should display. The code is called structured data markup, and it helps label all the important facts about your site. Search experts sometimes call these rich snippets by another name - SERP features.

 

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Robots.txt helps website owners tell search bots what they can visit on a site. Before crawling any page, these bots check this public file first. Website managers use "disallow" commands in robots.txt to block bots from certain parts of their websites. The file also points bots toward all the sitemaps if a website has many of them. Finding a robots.txt file is easy - just add "/robots.txt" after the main domain name. If you want to see an example, try typing "goldmidi.com/community/robots.txt" into your browser.

 

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ROI means Return On Investment. It's a simple way to see if your money made you a profit. You figure it out by comparing what you earned against what you spent. This helps you decide which business ideas work best. People use ROI to pick between different options for spending their cash.

 

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A root domain sits at the very top of a website's structure. It contains every subdomain and subfolder that belongs to the site. You'll always find the root domain right before a period and the ending part (.com, .org, or others). If we look at example.com, that's the root domain itself. But something called blog.example.com would just be a subdomain living inside the main root domain.

 

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SaaS stands for Software as a Service. It's a way companies give you programs through the internet instead of making you install them on your computer. You pay a subscription fee - just the same as many other services. Semrush works this way. Other examples include Gmail for emails, Netflix for watching shows, and Salesforce for business tasks. All these programs run from servers elsewhere, not on your machine.

 

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SAB means Service Area Business. These companies might have a store you can visit, but they mostly come to help customers at their homes or offices. Think about people who deliver things, fix your pipes, or take care of your yard - they all count as SABs. If you run this kind of business, you need to tell Google exactly where you work through your Google Business Profile (they used to call it Google My Business). This step matters a lot if you want people nearby to find you online.

 

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Schema.org is a website that shows you how to use structured data markup. The site gives you all the rules and guides for doing it right.

 

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Scraping means pulling lots of data from websites. People call it many things - web scraping, screen scraping, web data extraction, or web harvesting. With this method, you grab information from websites and save it on your computer as a file or put it into a database that looks a bit like a spreadsheet.

 

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SE Traffic Price shows you how much money you'd spend each month on ads if you wanted the same number of visitors that come from organic search. You can find this number in the Domain report.

 

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A search engine is a computer program that hunts through files or groups of files for matches to what you typed in. It gives you back a list of all the best matches it found. Big internet search engines such as Google and Yahoo look through every page on the entire internet to find what matches your search words.