Important SEO technical terms: Part 2
W3C Validation:
W3C stands for Worldwide Web Consortium is an organization responsible for setting the standard of a website to run over the internet
Doctype:
This term helps search crawlers in determining which version of HTML is running on a particular website which further helps while indexing.
- HTML Vs. XML
HTML stands for HyperText Markup Language are the pre-defined code used to design web pages.
XML stands for Extensible Markup Language used to store structured data
Example of HTML tags:,, and
Example of XML files storing computer information may include the following tags: , ,
- CSS Files:
CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets used in conjunction with HTML to make it user-friendly.
These files have “.css” extension and have the following impact:
- How HTML element will be displayed on the screen
- Layout adjustment
- Styles in your webpage
- JavaScript Files:
One side where Javascript files boost website performance but sometimes create a crawling issue if we implement them wrongly.
- Ratio between Source Code & Text Content
This ratio help in determining the amount of content on your website as compare to codes.
Text to code ratio of 20% to 70% is generally considered to be good.
- Common HTTP Error Responses:
A. 404 Error Message:
The most common reason for receiving 404 error could be:
- URL has been removed or moved
- Not added 301 redirects while moving the website
- The server may be temporarily down
- Wrong URL typed
B. 301 Error Message:
Receiving 301 Error means they have redirected the old URL to a new URL. It’s the responsibility of web coder to display a message on the old URL or use 301 re-direction to automatically redirect the user to the newer version of the URL.
C. 302 Redirection:
This symbolizes the temporary change of URL to a newer version. E-Commerce stores use this redirection for seasonal items.
- Fetch & Render:
SEO professionals earlier used this option to get the URL index by Google. Now, this option is no longer available in search console and has been replaced by URL inspection.
- CTR:
CTR stands for Click-Through Rate is the ratio between Total Clicks by Impressions.
CTR: Total Clicks/Impression (dependent on average position of your site)
- No-Follow Backlink:
As we earlier discussed in technical terms set 1 this backlink does not pass link juice but is used for Brand awareness, referral traffic, etc.
- Do-Follow Backlink:
High-quality do-follow backlink leads to a boost in search engine ranking along with better Domain & Page Authority.
General Syntax:
- https://rockgrow.com/” rel=”dofollow”>Link Text
- Index Tag:
By default all the pages are crawled and index by the search engine unless restricted using sitemap and robots.txt file (recently Google stop no index feature within robots.txt file).
- No-Index Tag:
This directive stops crawler to index a particular page. Web Designer used this option for the admin page.
- Canonical Tag:
This tag helps search engine determining the master copy of a specific article on your website and thus prevent duplicity issue.
- Favicon:
This icon is visible with the SEO title of your page used to enhance user experience. Also, useful while bookmarking a link.
- Website Speed Optimization:
It is the technique through which we optimize our website for faster speed. Factors which reduce website speed includes large size images, Hosting Provider, Ads on your site, plugins, etc.
- BING Webmaster:
This tool enables users to monitor its website performance over the BING search engine including:
- Crawling status
- Indexing Issue
- Sitemap Submit, etc.
- Google Webmaster/Search Console:
Google Search console earlier know as a Google webmaster is a web-based tool enables its user to monitor his website activity over Google. Some features of webmaster:
- Crawling and Indexing Status
- Sitemap submission
- CTR check
- Impression, Average position, etc.
- Google Analytics:
This tool act as a spy which monitor your reader movement throughout your website. Example:
- Landing Page
- Exit Page
- Session Duration
- Gender, etc.
- Schema Vs Snippet:
There is no formal difference between them but yes one of the difference is during the establishment of schema data (known as structured data) and snippet.
Establishing schema refers to setting structured data whereas rich snippet adds extra information to the article i.e. reviews, rating, pricing, etc.
- Rich Snippet Vs Featured Snippet:
Rich Snippet adds extra information like reviews, price, rating on a web page when it pops up at SERP whereas Featured snippet took the website at position 0 0f SERP.
- Google Dance:
When you observe a sudden change in your website ranking on various keywords, it is known as the Google dance period.
- Google Weblight:
This smart technology of Google convert the regular web pages into their lighter version enabling them to load faster in slow internet connection devices. This increases website traffic by 50%
- Google Honeymoon Period:
Google boosts new website ranking for initial 24 – 48 hours of its release and then down-rank or up-rank it based on various criteria.
- Keyword Proximity:
This defines the distance or closeness between two keywords or phrase within a body of the text.
- Keyword Density:
It is the measure of how many time a keyword appears on your webpage compare with the total amount of text. Keyword density of 2% – 5% is considered being good.
Browse Set 1: Technical Terms Set 1
Stay tuned for Set 3!