Glossary of terms

Schema markup, also called structured data, is code added to your website HTML which is used to tell search engines what your content is about. This is helpful for SEO because it means that search engines can display your page for more relevant searches. This description of your page in code creates a rich snippet which is added to the search engine results page (SERP). Scheme markup is commonly used to add information about people, places, organisations, and events.

The Search Engine Results Page (SERP) is the page that is shown to search engine users after they input a search query. It lists organic search results, search ads, and SERP features such as featured snippets. The organic results on this page are ranked by how relevant the search engine's algorithm considers them to be.

Search intent, also known as audience intent or user intent, is the reason a user has typed a search query into a browser. There are three types of search intent: navigational (for example, searching for 'Twitter'), informational (for example, 'how do peanuts grow?'), or transactional (for example, 'buy Apple Macbook Pro'). SEOs need to keep search intent in mind when creating website content to ensure that it is relevant and useful to them.

Search visibility, also known as search engine visibility, describes how visible a page is in the search engine results pages. It's the percentage of people who see the page after putting a search query into the search bar. The higher the ranking of a page, the higher the search visibility will be.

Search volume refers to the number of searches for a specific query in a search engine such as Google. You can use Google Keyword Planner to calculate the search volumes for different terms. This can help you optimise page content to correspond to keywords with a high search volume.

Search traffic and website traffic are often impacted by annual events such as Christmas or Summer. For example, an e-commerce business that sells swimwear may see an increase in searches in the spring and summer, while a toy retailer is likely to want to rank highly in Christmas-related searches. These seasonal trends are replicated annually and are an opportunity to target seasonal markets and visitors.

Secondary keywords add context or additional information to the primary search terms. For example, if the primary keywords are 'phone charger', the secondary keywords might be 'braided', or 'portable'. These keywords are unlikely to help you rank higher on the search engine results page, but they help show search engines that your content is relevant to search intent.

SEO audits are a full analysis of a site's performance and ability to rank on search engine results pages (SERPS). It will indicate the areas that can be improved to boost SEO such as any issues with technical SEO, website structure, user experience problems, or even content gaps. Performing an SEO audit is usually the first step in creating or updating an SEO strategy. Audits should be carried out frequently in order to quickly resolve issues and achieve SEO success.

When a user enters a search query into Google, the vast majority of results pages include SERP features. These are any elements on the page that are not the organic search results, also known as the 10 blue links. SERP features include featured snippets, local packs, shopping results, knowledge panels, top stories, top ads, and instant answers. These are important for SEO because they have a high click-through rate; for example, around 8% of clicks go to a featured snippet.

Sitemaps in HTML are lists of all the important pages of your website which are made to help users navigate your site. Intended to improve user expeirence, they are different to XML sitemaps which are designed specifically for search engine crawlers to help them index your pages. While an XML sitemap is necessary for SEO, HTML sitemaps are less important but can still be useful.

An XML (Extensible Markup Language) sitemap is a list of all the important pages on a website. This is useful for telling search engines about the structure of your website and allowing them to crawl and index it more easily. Crawlers use internal links to find their way around a website, but using an XML sitemap can speed up the process of finding pages for them. Webmasters can also include additional metadata about the URLs listed in the sitemap such as when they were last updated.