The SEO acronym stands for Search Engine Optimization, a process which involves improving your website in order to increase its visibility on search engines such as Google.
SEO is a key component for an effective digital marketing strategy. Without a properly optimized website, your business is being hosted on a digital billboard that no one cares about.
In the SEO industry, there’s also plenty of abbreviations and Google acronyms you may need to become familiar with in order to understand your SEO audits and reports. I put together this helpful list of some of the more prominent terms you may come across.
SEO Acronyms and Abbreviations
ALT – Alternate attribute, also known as alt tags.
B2b – Business to business
B2c – Business to consumer
BH – Blackhat SEO
BR – Bounce Rate
CF – Citation flow
CMS – Content Management System
CPA – Cost per Acquisition
CPC – Cost per Click
CPI – Cost per Impression
CPL – Cost per Lead
CPV – Cost per View
CRM – Customer Relationship Management
CTA – Call to Action
CTR – Click Through Rate
DMCA – Digital Millennium Copyright Act
DNS – Domain Name System
DR – Domain Ranking
EMD – Exact Match Domain
GA – Google Analytics
GMB – Google My Business
GMBL – Google My Business Listing
GSC – Google Search Console
GTM – Google Tag Manager
GWT – Google Webmaster Tools
H1 – Heading 1 Markup
H2 – Heading 2 Markup
H3 – Heading 3 Markup
H4 – Heading 4 Markup
H5 – Heading 5 Markup
H6 – Heading 6 Markup
Href – Hypertext Reference
HTML – Hypertext Markup Language
HTTP – Hyper Text Transfer Protocol
HTTPS – Hyper Text Transfer Protocol Secure
IFTTT – If This Than That
IM – Internet Marketing
IP – Internet Protocol Address
ISP – Internet Service Provider
KPI – Key Performance Indicator
LPO – Landing Page Optimization
LSI – Latent Semantic Indexing
LSEO – Local Search Engine Optimization
LTK – Long Tail Keyword
LTV – Lifetime Value
NAP – Name, Address, Phone number
OBL – Outbound Link
ORM – Online Reputation Management
PBN – Private Blog Network
PDF – Portable Document Format
PPC – Pay Per Click
PPL – Pay Per Lead
PR – Press Release. Can also be Page Rank.
PV – Page Views
RD – Referring Domains
ROI – Return on Investment
RSS – Really Simple Syndication
SaaS – Software as a Service
SE – Search Engine
SEM – Search Engine Marketing
SERP – Search Engine Results Page
SMM – Social Media Marketing
SMO – Social Media Optimization
TF – Trust Flow
TLD – Top Level Domain
TOS – Terms of Service
UI – User Interface
UGC – User Generated Content
URL – Uniform Resource Locator
USP – Unique Selling Point / Proposition
UX – User Experience
VA – Virtual Assistant
VOD – Video on Demand
WH – Whitehat
WMT – Web Master Tools
WWW – World Wide Web
YOY – Year on Year
YTD – Year to Date
301 – Permanent Redirect
302 – Temporary Redirect
401 – Unauthorized Access
403 – Forbidden Access
404 – Page not found
503 – Server Unavailable
If I missed any important SEO acronyms or abbreviations, feel free to drop a comment with your favorite terms. Have any questions about SEO? Ask John Sottile for a free SEO consultation today.
If you’re interested in a small introduction to SEO, check out my blog post “What is SEO?“
