Glossary of terms

A low-volume search query is a Google status code that appears whenever a user's search query includes a keyword with very little search traffic on the browser properties. 

Whilst using low-volume keywords may be cheaper for your marketing strategy at first, it will definitely affect your strategy effectiveness in the long term. Buying low-volume keywords will probably make fewer people see your ad, click on it, or even affect how many people will buy your product or service. 
This status code forces, somehow, online businesses to bid on more competitive keywords, rather than less expensive phrases that, in the end, make no use for Google's online traffic statistics.

Accelerated Mobile Pages (known worldwide as AMP) are an HTML open source framework designed by the AMP Open Source Project to improve mobile devices web pages performance. It was formerly created by Google as a competitive strategy against Instagram and Apple.

Since the use of smartphones and tablets has considerably increased and even overtaken PC desktop devices, a new framework as AMP was needed. Specifically, what AMP does is to use a stripped-down version of HTML that enables it to create websites that load as quickly as possible on these types of devices.

There are three elements that are characteristic of the AMP framework, being these the AMP HTML, AMP JavaScript and, last but not least, the AMP CDN.

However, all servers can read AMP Source Code as its code is based on well-known scripts. 

An Advanced Search Operator (sometimes also known as search parameters) is a character or a range of characters and commands used in a search engine query to narrow the regular text searches in order to amplify it to get to a more specific result. Whenever a user searches for something on the search engine, these advanced search operators work as special commands that modify and change the original query so as the search engines drill deeper and serve with a better result. 

Here are some examples of Advanced Search Operators:

• intitle: "fleming vs penicillin". Search only in the page's title for a word or phrase. Use exact-match (quotes) for phrases.
• allintitle: fleming vs penicillin. Search the page title for every individual term following "allintitle:". Same as multiple intitle:'s.
• inurl: porsche announcements inurl:2024. Look for a word or phrase (in quotes) in the document URL. Can combine with other terms.
• allinurl: tripadvisor field-keywords belgium. Search the URL for every individual term following "allinurl”. Same as multiple inurl:'s.
• intext: "google chrome vs mozilla firefox vs safari search engine". Search for a word or phrase (in quotes), but only in the body/document text.
• allintext: google chrome mozilla firefox safari search engine. Search the body text for every individual term following "allintext:". Same as multiple intexts.
• "Porsche announcements''filetype:pdf. Match only a specific file type. Some examples include PDF, DOC, XLS, PPT, and TXT.
• related:theguardian.com. Return sites that are related to a target domain. Only works for larger domains.
• Fleming AROUND(3) penicillin. Returns results where the two terms/phrases are within (X) words of each other."

Algorithms are a set of instructions used for solving a problem or accomplishing a task in a computerised device. These algorithms allow a computer to perform its functions manually in a short amount of time and by using a finite number of steps as a form of a hardware or also as a range of software-based routines. 

The main types of algorithms known in computing are:

• Numerical algorithms
• Algebraic algorithms
• Geometric algorithms
• Sequential algorithms
• Operational algorithms
• Theoretical algorithms

Some of the most well known algorithms in computing are:

• Sort: Displaying data in a useful and logical manner.
• Search: Finding key data in sorted data groups.
• Hashing: Finding key data with an indexed key ID component.
• Dynamic programming: Transforms large, complex problems into a set of smaller, easy to resolve problems instead.
• Exponential by squaring (EBS): Speeds up and reduces the calculation of large numerical problems. It is also known as binary exponentiation.
• String matching and parsing: Finds patterns in large databases by using predetermined terms and restrictions.
• Primality testing: Establishes prime numbers either in a determined or probabilistic way. It is mostly used in cryptography.

An ALT attribute is an HTML attribute (or tag) for an image described in a text form. Whenever an image is not correctly shown for any reason in a page, this ALT attribute will show an alternative text instead. An ALT Attribute is used by search engines to identify the image content, as files can not generally be read by crawlers. With normal and correct web functionality, these attributes will not appear at all, since the image will be shown without any complications. 

When it comes to SEO, an ALT attribute has a very important role both for the user and also for the search engines.

• User: If these attributes do not appear in a web page, it means the page works correctly and that the UX is not being affected. It also means a big deal for people with visual disabilities as they are able to read and understand the image shown that they can not really see.
• Search engine: These attributes serve the search engines with essential data about the image content and, most importantly, about the website content.

ALT Text is a short description added to an image in a website to tell the search engines what that image is and what elements appear in it. ALT Text is also known as ‘alternative text’. This HTML code does not only describe an image content but also its context and purpose in a website. 

Three main uses are identified in the use of ALT Text:

• Replace an image or describe an image in a text form whenever a web page does not load properly. In that case, a text will appear instead of an image and it will show the non seen image description.
• Allow people with visual disabilities to know when they have an image in front of them in a webpage and be able to understand what the image is about.
• Give data to the search engine so it can index the images in a webpage properly. This is very important in SEO as crawlers read these HTML codes and index the media content on the internet.

Ambiguous intent is basically an unclear and unspecific search on the internet made by the user that will definitely need further detail in order to get a more concrete answer from the search engine.

In these kinds of searches, the search engines use the context as an organic position on the SERPs (Search Engine Ranking Pages) as the engines can not focus on anything specific since the used keyword is too generic.

AMP is the abbreviation for ‘Accelerated Mobile Pages’. The AMP is an HTML open source framework designed by the AMP Open Source Project to improve the web pages performance on mobile devices. It was formerly created by Google as a competitive strategy against Instagram and Apple.

Since the use of smartphones and tablets has considerably increased and even overtaken desktop devices, a new framework as the AMP was needed.

Specifically, what AMPs do is to use a stripped-down version of HTML that enables it to create websites that load as quickly as possible on mobile devices. 

There are three elements that are characteristic of the AMPs framework, being these the ‘AMP HTML’, ‘AMP JavaScript’ and, last but not least, the ‘AMP CDN’.

However, the truth is that all servers can read AMPs Source Code as each code is based on well-known scripts.

Amplification is a marketing term used to describe methods used on the internet so as to impact a larger audience. In the SEO world, amplifying a website’s content is the only way to drive traffic to your website as sometimes it can turn out to be quite difficult to do this when competing with all the other websites on the net. 

An amplification strategy or method applied to a website will result in:

• An expansion of your audience
• New business opportunities
• New leads
• Increasing your customers' loyalty towards your business and brand.

Some of the best amplifications methods considered in the digital world are:

• Influencer marketing
• Tagging (and also using hashtags)
• Including CTA strategies to your content and posts
• Email marketing
• Retargeting
• Looking into new niche communities worthy to be included to your database
• Using promotional messages and adding social buttons to your content

Anchor text is the visible and clickable text in a hyperlink when linked to another document or website. It is usually seen on browsers in blue and underlined, although it can be modified through HTML or CSS.

Anchor text is crucial in SEO since browsers use the external anchor text as a way to figure out how other users will visualise your page and, at the same time, figure out what the pages are about. Anchor text can provide important data about the link’s destination content to users and search engines. SEO-friendly anchor text will be considered as such when being succinct, relevant to the page where it is linked to, not generic and by having low keyword density.

The Anchor Text types found on the web are: 

• Exact-match
• Partial-match
• Naked link
• Generic
• Images

An API (Application Programming Interface) is a software interface that allows two different applications to ‘talk’ to each other. Technically speaking, when people use an application on their mobile phone, such as Facebook, for example, this application connects to the Internet and sends information and data to the server. Then when the server receives this data, it interprets it so as to be able to perform the required actions and then sends it back to the user's phone. Whenever the data gets back to the user’s phone, the application interprets it and presents the information in a readable way into the user’s phone screen.

Article Spinning is an SEO writing technique used as a way to create new content automatically from existing content. The offered software for the content creation is known as article spinner. 

This technique is based on the rewriting of a whole article or a part of it, not by changing the subject or the topic of it, but by changing the words used in order to make the text look different from the original. The article spinning can be manual, when the writer does the recycling and rewriting of the text by him/herself, or automatic, when the writer used a specific software to do it instead.

Although the spinning article technique may seem attractive to content creators, extra care must be taken when doing it as search engines can - due to algorithm improvements - identify spinned articles and mark them as spam, which will be identified by Google’s webmasters as rule breaking.

Async (asynchronous) is an SEO term that refers to when the browser does not have to wait for a task to finish before moving to the next web page. 
In the early years of the Internet, a resource on the net had to be downloaded sequentially, meaning that every resource had to be completely downloaded for the second to start downloading. However, when nowadays everything on the net depends basically on SEO strategies and users' experience in it, it is of important relevance to offer a great and fast website’s loading speed.

It is known that the more resources a webpage has in it, the heavier it is to load, which ends up giving the user a bad experience. Async technique will be of great help as this resource will ensure that every resource is individually downloaded, meaning the user will be able to see and use the page faster.

Auto-generated content refers to that content that has been generated programmatically; in other words, content created through coding from an established or pre-defined template. 

In many cases, attention must be paid so as not to be involved in what Google will identify as a ‘black-hat’ tactic, as auto-generated content can sometimes be used to index many pages and manipulate search rankings.

In the SEO world, the auto-generated content results, most of the times, in giving the user a real bad UX, as the content turns out to be unoriginal, repeated and unhelpful. 

Google helps us with this by providing some examples of what is considered as bad auto-generated content:

• Content automatically generated from pre-existing content, for example when using auto-correction techniques.
• Content automatically generated by putting together related data from different websites without unifying it and making it different from its original source.
• Content automatically generated after literally translating it without getting checked by a human before its publication. 
• Content automatically generated from ‘scraping’ the RSS.