Copywriters and SEO agencies have a language of their own. This glossary of copywriting terminology is designed to help you decipher the jargon and gain a better understanding of SEO terms and phrases you might encounter when we work together.
Define SEO copywriting vs content writing, learn about keywords, local SEO and more. Feel free to bookmark this page so you can refer to it as and when you need it.
Above the fold refers to the section of a website you see first – before you start scrolling. It might be text, images, a form or call to action. Ideally, copy above the fold is the most important information. Also known as the “hero section”.
Anchor text is snippet of text on a web page that contains a clickable hyperlink. The link takes you to relevant point on the page, rather than having to scroll or load the full page at the top.
For example, the letters at the top of this page are anchor linked to the corresponding section. Clever, huh?
AI refers to using computers and technology to do things that traditionally require human intelligence. It involves complex systems designed to imitate human processes by simulating problem-solving and decision-making skills.
These systems can recognise patterns and make decisions like humans, learning from experience and adjusting to new inputs to perform tasks more efficiently.
Content written by Artificial Intelligence.
AI-generated content uses AI-powered tools and algorithms to create copy such as blogs, articles and product descriptions.
The person behind the tool inputs certain phrases, topics or keywords, then AI generates content from these cues. Although it sounds like an easy and cost-effective way to write tons of content, 100% AI-written content is harmful to SEO and will be flagged by Google.
Also known as “AI writing” or “AI content creation.”
Learn More: Should You Use AI for Creating Brilliant, More Efficient Content?
This word gets thrown around a lot, especially when we’re working out the finer details of your project. It can have multiple meanings, depending on who we’re talking to.
For example, your audience might be:
Ideally, you should produce content for two or more different audiences. This can be effective for targeting people no matter where they are on their buyer’s journey.
In copywriting and content marketing, knowing your audience is vital. It’ll help you target the right people and keywords, and create content that speaks directly to their needs and wants. It also determines how you talk to them, the language you use and the type of information you provide.
Backlinks act as a ‘vote of confidence’ for a website. These links point from one website to another and are used by search engines to assess how useful the content is on a particular page. The more high-quality backlinks pointing to your site, the better your search visibility meaning your brand will rank higher in the search results.
Because of this, backlinks are extremely important to Search Engine Optimisation.
The process of earning backlinks is called “link building” or “outreach“. Followed, trackable backlinks on high-authority and trustworthy sites are the most valuable. This can be achieved by creating quality audience-focused content that provides value to users, and then outreaching it to relevant and popular sites.
Backlinks are also called “inbound links” or “incoming links.”
A blog is a valuable resource for your website because it helps generate organic traffic, build your brand awareness and position your business as an industry expert.
Blogs refer to the section of a website where blog articles are written and published. It is a platform where a writer or expert on a topic can educate their audience and feed them with useful, consistent information.
Businesses that have an updated blog, news or resource section on their site get 67% more leads than those without one. That’s because blog content is an important part of any effective SEO strategy.
Blogs stem from the name “weblog”.
Blog articles are pieces of content written for your website and typically kept under a blog, news or resource section.
These articles are an essential form of content marketing.
Expertly written blog articles written for your audience can fulfil multiple objectives such as:
Also known as “blog content”, “blog posts” or “website content.”
Learn More:
Bounce rate is the percentage of visitors that leave a webpage without acting, such as clicking on a link, filling out a form, or making a purchase. This metric is analysed when monitoring a website’s traffic on Google Analytics and comparing the rates by channel. For example, organic vs paid search.
According to HubSpot, the average bounce rate is between 26% and 70%, with the optimal range being 26% and 40%. To land anywhere under 20% is generally unlikely.
It is important to understand and monitor your site’s bounce rate as it indicates how well – or, more importantly, how poorly people engage with the content and the user experience of a webpage.
A set of keywords or keyphrases that directly relate to your brand, goods and/or services, and include your business name.
Case studies refer to a before-and-after analysis of how a business has solved a client’s problem with its services or products. They are the success stories people use to prove what they’re offering works and/or gets results. Case studies may also include testimonials and customer stories. They can also be project profiles.
Learn More: Read one of my client’s case studies.
A CMS is a software program that allows users to create, manage and modify a website without having to code it.
These types of systems have an easy-to-use interface. Using a CMS simplifies the website building, design and content process without having prior web development experience.
A CMS is made up of two major parts: a content delivery application (CDA) and a content management application (CMA). These applications, when combined, handle the code, database queries and infrastructure in the back end, allowing you to focus on the front end of your site.
An example of a CMS is WordPress, which is what I use for this website.
Content marketing is the art of creating and sharing valuable and audience-specific content.
It involves a marketing strategy for producing free content, ensuring everything you publish solves your audience’s problems or helps them to understand more about a topic. Effective content marketing tells stories, creates a long-term impact and maximises your online exposure.
Your content might include:
The strategic skill of writing copy with the purpose of advertising or marketing a business, person, product or idea.
There are 3 core goals of effective copywriting:
Copywriting assets consist of webpages, blog content, articles, social media posts, ads, emails and product descriptions. There are different types of copywriting too, such as SEO copywriting, B2B and B2C copywriting, brand copywriting and more.
Copywriting and content writing are interchangeable, but they’re not the same thing.
Content writing falls under the marketing umbrella rather than advertising. While copywriting is written to persuade, content writing is informative storytelling designed to build and nurture relationships.
Creative content writing educates and entertains readers, and provides solutions to their problems. It increases brand awareness and informs via helpful content. It doesn’t sell – at least not directly.
Content writers, such as myself, write content.
Compared to copy, content is often longer and helps to create a broader narrative about why people should use your product or service. It is a tool for creating growth and building an audience, because if the content you publish is good, readers will keep coming back to your site for more.
The purpose of content is to build brand awareness and inform, educate or inspire an audience. Although content can nudge your audience towards a sale, this is not its main goal.
Examples of content include:
Also called “SEO content“.
A CTA is where we prompt and motivate your readers to take action. That might be:
The call to action is a key element on a web page and should be positioned as a signpost to guide users on where to go next. It must clearly tell your readers what it is you want them to do. Strong CTAs are specific, simple and enticing, and often with a sense of urgency.
Domain Authority determines how rankable a website is. The metric was developed by Moz as a way to predict how well a site is performing on search engines such as Google. It’s measured on a scale of 0 to 100, with higher scores indicating more positive ‘votes’ and a greater potential for higher search rankings.
While DA is not a Google ranking factor, there is a correlation between DA scores and SERP ranking.
Domain Authority is calculated by more than 40 factors. Some of these include how many quality and reputable backlinks your site has, the quality of your content, social signals and SEO performance. High-performing websites with more link juice, like Government sites, Wikipedia and Facebook tend to have a higher DA.
New websites tend to have a low DA. This is because it takes time to build results from new content and technical SEO. Increasing the score is a long-term process that needs consistent effort over time. You need to improve and optimise content marketing, SEO and paid media to increase the chances of better website traffic.
Domain (or “domain name”) is the name and address of a website. It’s what users type into the browser URL bar to visit a specific site. It comes after the letter @ in an email address and after the letters www in a web address. For example, the domain of my website is www.thelittletypewriter.com.au
EAT content prioritises valuable content written by experts. Now updated to E-E-A-T, the acronym stands for Expertise, Experience, Authority and Trust – a principle Google uses to determine the quality and effectiveness of search results.
When Google rates and ranks your site, these are the factors it looks for. The better your website can demonstrate the traits the higher your content ranks.
Under Google’s guidelines, the content must be helpful and solve a specific problem. Authority is given to websites that better connect people to the useful information they seek.
External links are hyperlinks that point to another domain outside of your website. They are important for improving your SEO, as they help search engines determine the usefulness and quality of your pages. After all, high-quality pages link to high-quality pages, which act as positive votes for both websites.
Web pages and blog articles should have at least one external link and one internal link to indicate credibility to search engines.
The focus keyword or keyphrase is the primary target search term you want your article or page to get ranked for by search engines. When your audience searches for that phrase, they should find you – providing you have in-depth content around the search term with the aim of creating quality material that answers the reader’s problem.
Also called a “primary keyword” or “target keyword/keyphrase”.
How findable is your website online?
Findability is how easy it is for your audience to access the products and services you offer. It’s also the simplicity of how search engines can discover (and crawl) your website’s content.
A featured snippet is the fastest answer to your search query. The highlighted text will appear at the top of a Google search, making the brief excerpt the most noticeable. Featured snippets draw greater attention to your content and are more likely to appear with informational search queries.
They’re important for SEO to help users find what they’re seeking more easily, without having to click through links and pages to have their questions answered.
Google Analytics is a free tool that allows you to analyse important data for your business. You can get a better grasp of how your website and content are performing, learn more about your customers and collect detailed information to target them better.
It is essential for evaluating and measuring your marketing efforts, and must be set up properly to gain the full benefits.
Google Search Console is a free tool that allows your maintain, monitor and troubleshoot your website’s visibility in the search results. It is an extension of Google Analytics and should be used together to create detailed data reports and assess your site’s performance.
While Google Analytics provides a more holistic view of your website, Google Search Console is more keyword-focused and can show you where each page of your site is ranking and what search terms it’s ranking for.
This information is particularly useful for SEO copywriters to understand what keywords are already working to keep and augment them in your web copy and blog content.
Webmaster guidelines are quality guidelines used by search engines such as Google and Bing. They provide webmasters with information on how websites should be optimised so that they are optimally found by search engines (and therefore users).
The rules include basic recommendations to help your site appear in Google and Bing searches, as well as quality criteria and practices to follow. If the guidelines are not followed, it may result in your page or site being removed from the search results.
Google My Business is a free tool to connect with customers and manage how your business appears in local results for Google Search and Google Maps.
If you’re a business owner, you’ll be eligible for a free Google My Business listing.
The listing appears on the right-hand side of the desktop screen (or at the top on mobile) when you perform a Google search for your business name or branded and relevant keywords. It will look something like this:
Having a well-implemented GMB listing is great for your SEO and an essential part of local SEO. It includes a link to your website, your map location, photographs and customer reviews. You can also use your listing to publish short posts, new products or special discounts.
And if you have a new website that isn’t ranking yet, you can use your listing as a mini website, so you have online visibility until it does.
Also called ‘Google Business Profile’.
Learn More: How to Get Client Reviews on Google My Business
Guest posting is one of the best ways to create quality backlinks to your website. The process is strategic and involves contributing an article to another website to acquire referral traffic, authority and link juice.
When you create valuable information that helps readers, other relevant sites are more likely to want to publish these pieces. By sharing interesting articles, you’re providing information that educates your audience and in turn, introduces them to your brand. Guest posting is also known as outreach.
Headings are words or phrases that appear at the beginning of a section on a web page and explain what it’s about. They help users scan a page, allowing visitors and search engines to better understand the structure and contents of the page even while skimming. Headers are classified into six levels; H1 to H6. They are essential for SEO and user experience.
A form of content that is aimed at providing value and being educational, informative and helpful. Helpful content gives readers a satisfying experience and is designed to understand and meet their expectations with useful articles that solve their problems.
Google has created a ‘helpful content system’ that rewards content that leaves visitors feeling they’ve had a positive experience, while content that doesn’t meet the user’s expectations won’t perform as well or at all.
For content to be deemed as helpful it must be:
Learn More: 3 Important Tips to Prepare for Google’s Helpful Content Update
Hero content is designed to reach a wider audience and create connections, like the heroes from your favourite book or movie. It is the Peter Pan, Simba, Ariel and Aladdin of Walt Disney stories. The Danny Torrance of Stephen King’s The Shining, the Losers Club from It or John Coffey from The Green Mile.
This core piece of content is essential for bringing attention to your brand through powerful storytelling.
It involves creating long-form pieces that generate value for your target audience, leading to an amplified interest in your brand. Also known as “big rock assets” or “lead magnets.”
Learn More: 4 Effective Techniques to Master Hero Content
A hyperlink is when a URL is embedded behind words or images. When clicked, the hyperlink will take you to another page to access more information.
Text hyperlinks (referred to as “hypertext”) are the most commonly used on web pages.
Hyperlinks are beneficial for SEO because it gives your users the best experience by providing them with the most credible, useful information. Search engines value hyperlinks, both internal and external, as they show the additional, related content your page offers site visitors. Naturally, a strong linking strategy will improve your SEO.
HTML is the standard markup computer language that tells search engine’s what your site is about. It is the foundation of most web pages, and one of the most important aspects of technical SEO.
HTML sitemaps are created for users, while XML sitemaps are for search engine spiders to crawl.
These sitemaps assist users in finding the pages on your website when navigating. A link to your HTML sitemap should be placed in the footer and be updated each time a new page is added to your site.
For example: View my HTML sitemap.
Inbound links represent another website’s traffic pointing back to your site. Google considers these types of links to be a sign of high-quality content, making them one of the most essential elements of SEO.
The more quality content you create, the more likely other people will link out to it. This is important for educating people, increasing brand awareness and bringing users (and more traffic) to your site.
Inbound links are also called “backlinks“.
An internal link connects two pages on the same domain (website). Both users and search engines use them to find and crawl relevant content on your site. Because internal links pass PageRank (or SEO value) as well as context, they’re essential for establishing a hierarchy on your site.
JavaScript is a text-based programming language that allows webmasters to create dynamic and interactive web content. Programmers user it to control multimedia, animate images, design interactive maps and more.
Keyphrases are long-tail keywords that are made up of three to five words.
For example, if you want your blog article to rank for ‘sustainable clothing’, then optimise your content for that term as well as your focus keyphrase which will be a bit longer.
For instance, you could write an article about clothing materials and optimise it for ‘sustainable clothing materials’ or ‘what is sustainable clothing’.
You could also create content specifically for a niche eg: ‘organic yoga clothing’, ‘sustainable clothing for women’ or ‘sustainable clothing dresses’.
Keywords are concepts and themes that define the subject matter of your business, industry and products/services you offer. They’re the words and phrases users type into search engines to find the information they’re searching for online.
An effective SEO and content strategy will have a mix of primary and secondary keywords, as well as long-tail keywords that include relevant phrases.
Keywords are also called “search terms” and “search queries”.
Keyword mapping is the process of pairing keywords with relevant pages on your website.
Keyword research is the calculated process of finding relevant words and phrases that your audience is entering into search engines, and using them to optimise your website and create high-value content around them.
The purpose of keyword research is to discover detailed insights about your users and the queries they’re searching for. When you target the right keywords and optimise your content, your website and articles are more likely to be found online by your target audience.
As such, keyword research is the blueprint of any successful website. You need it to streamline your web copy, keep your content on track and your brand and audience’s search intent in focus. Also referred to as “keyword optimisation”.
Learn More: Why Start with Keyword Research for Website Success?
Link juice is an SEO term that refers to the value, equity or authority passed from one page or site to another. This value is communicated using hyperlinks. Search engines use this information to determine the relevance and authority of a site, rewarding content with more inbound links. These links are seen as positive “votes” by other websites that your page is valuable and worth promoting, helping to rank it higher in the results.
Local Search Engine Optimisation is the process of improving your online presence to amplify local traffic, visibility and brand awareness. It is primarily for local businesses with brick-and-mortar locations. However, local SEO can still be useful for online brands so that it’s found by nearby online searchers.
Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business) is the biggest driver of local SEO.
Learn More: How to Improve Your Local Ranking on Google
Long-tail keywords are a vital part of an effective content and keyword strategy. These keywords are phrases (or “keyphrases”) that are made up of three to five words for a more specific and specialised target search term. Because they are less common than generic keywords, they allow you to target niche demographics.
They are less competitive and designed to better reflect how people make queries. Visitors are more likely to utilise them when they are at a point of sale or when they use voice search.
Metadata is the snippet of text that appears for web pages in search engine results. It’s made up of a meta title (or “meta tag“) and a meta description that communicates what your webpage is about to search engines and users.
This data is vital for SEO as it helps Google and other search engines better understand your landing pages, articles, ebooks etc on your site. It is critical for helping you rank in search engines.
The metadata is also important for readers to gain a quick overview of what your page is about, helping them decide whether or not it meets their search enquiry and if so, to then click on your website.
If your website is not compliant with Google’s webmaster quality guidelines, it will receive a manual action, meaning a penalty punishment imposed by Google’s webspam team.
This is Google’s method of demoting or deleting web pages (or entire websites) when a human reviewer has determined it does not meet the guidelines.
Nofollow links are links with the HTML attribute <rel=”nofollow”>. This code tells search engines to disregard that link and not to follow it or pass on link juice. Nofollow links do not influence search engine results since they don’t transfer PageRank or SEO value.
It is important to note that Google can still choose to ignore the request and follow the link, passing on link authority anyway. Nofollow links are standard practice for sites that outbound links on a regular basis.
On-page SEO is the process of tweaking and optimising web pages for specific target keywords to improve search visibility and increase organic traffic. It includes keyword-aligning and page-specific components such as content, metadata, headers and internal links.
Also known as “SEO” or “Search Engine Optimsation“.
Organic search refers to the process of ranking web pages based on their relevance to the search query, without any direct influence from paid advertising.
It is one of the most affordable channels to gain traffic or conversions because it’s free. This is achieved by a strong SEO and content strategy.
Organic search results are the unpaid listings that appear on a search engine results page (SERP).
Content outreach is one the best ways to provide value to readers and other websites, while acquiring links back to your site.
The process involves building authentic relationships with other site owners and offering them valuable articles to publish. These articles include a link back to your site, which improves your search engine rankings.
The time it takes for content on a webpage to load. Page Speed is frequently confused with other SEO phrases such as “site speed,” which refers to the average loading time of several sample pages for a given site.
Page Speed can impact the bounce rate and session time of your website, which can negatively affect SEO if your site is too slow or pages struggle to load.
Paid search is any paid placements that appear on search engine results pages (SERPs). These advertisements operate on a pay-per-click (PPC) model, meaning the business only pays when the ads are clicked.
Paid ads can be set up through your Google Ads search campaign. The ad should include your target or focus keyword to encourage your web page to show up when a user searches the corresponding query.
Copywriters talk about pain points a lot – especially when we’re writing sales copy and product descriptions.
The pain point is the specific problem that prospective customers of your business are experiencing. They refer to the various problems people have throughout their customer journey. Ideally, the content you provide should clearly describe the pain point, and then show how the product or service can make it go away.
PageRank refers to the value passed between websites by links that help to rank a site higher. The greater a link’s PageRank, the more authoritative it is.
Google’s PageRank algorithm uses a complex mathematical formula that determines the relevance of a webpage by evaluating the number and quality of links pointing to it. Every link to a website is counted as a vote.
Improving your PageRank means increasing your authority (often through quality backlinks), which can lead to more visitors and higher ranks.
PageRank is also called “SEO value.”
PPC is the acronym for pay-per-click – an online marketing approach where businesses pay a fee each time one of their ads is clicked.
It is a form of advertising where you can bid on keywords relevant to your brand and target specific audiences based on factors such as location, device type and search history. You can get immediate, measurable results rather than trying to ‘earn’ website views organically.
Quality content is any form of content that adds value to the reader. It’s designed to engage, inform, support and inspire your audience. Creating genuine, quality content is essential for search engine exposure.
For content to deemed helpful and high-quality, it must be:
A ranking factor refers to one of the many small pieces of information that Google uses to evaluate web pages and rank them in the search results. Google and other search engines use the criteria to decide how well a page or article answers a specific search query, and then rank it accordingly.
Ranking factors can be related to a website’s content, technical implementation, user signals, backlink profile and other qualities deemed important by search engines. Understanding ranking factors is a prerequisite for effective SEO.
Some of the top-ranking factors are:
Responsive websites are vital for SEO and user experience because they’re faster to load, more accessible and easier to navigate. When a site is responsive, it can adapt to any device and screen size regardless of whether you view the site from mobile, tablet or PC.
You can test whether your site is responsive or ‘mobile-friendly’ by using Google’s test.
Search intent describes why a user applies a particular query for an online search.
For example: What is your primary objective when you type or speak a query into a search engine?
If you’re searching ‘hire a Perth copywriter’, you would expect to find the top copywriters in Perth to consider working with on your next project.
You’re not trying to navigate to a specific page. And you don’t want to buy a specific service either (at least not yet.) You want to do your research before making a decision.
This is the search intent.
For this query in particular, it means the keyphrase has a commercial intent. And we can use this knowledge to adjust our content to target the phrase better.
There are (4) types of search intent:
Understanding search intent is vital for SEO. That’s because it helps you have a more effective content strategy, create relevant content and rank higher in search results.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the process of optimising your website so it performs well in search engine listings when people look for your business, products or services on search engines such as Google, Bing.
There are many components that make up an effective SEO strategy, but SEO copywriters are mostly concerned with:
SEO is a broad subject to cover in detail here, but you’ll more information below.
SERPs are the list of website results you get from your search engine when you’ve entered a search term. Search engines return a ranked list of URLs related to the specific terms supplied.
SEO copywriting is the tactical art of writing on-brand, quality content guided by experienced SEOs and optimised to rank. Targeted content that’s written for people, by people.
It is a type of copywriting intended for digital purposes with the goal to convert web traffic into leads and sales.
SEO copywriting consists of:
The job of an SEO copywriter, such as myself, is to research the keywords your audience is using, then strategically include those search terms into your copy and create audience-specific content around them. Also called “SEO writing” or “writing for SEO”.
Learn More: SEO Copywriter FAQs
If your goal is to attract more organic traffic to your site, then you want to invest in SEO content.
This type of online content serves a few purposes:
SEO content includes everything to do with writing and structuring the content on your website. When done properly, it encourages your web pages to rank higher by feeding your audience with useful and relevant information.
As an SEO content writer, it’s my job to create high-quality, keyword-optimised content. SEO content writers need to be skilled in Search Engine Optimisation and know how to write content that’s informative, influential and interesting.
While SEO content and SEO copywriting overlap, SEO copywriting can be more effective for driving conversions.
SEO services fall into the domain of digital marketing and are intended to increase online visibility and organic search traffic to a website. They are often provided by specialised agencies or businesses who are experts in Search Engine Optimisation, and can execute web development and design strategies for optimising the elements of a web page so that it performs well in search engine results pages (SERPs).
SEO services include a variety of tasks that finds out what your customers need the most, where they are online and what they’re doing, then optimises your website and content in such a way that your business becomes exactly what they want at the right time and place.
Types of SEO services include:
Learn More: View my SEO copywriting services.
The title tag, also called a “meta tag”, is part of a website’s metadata.
The tag is an HTML code that specifies the title of a web page. Like the metadata, it doesn’t appear on your site but is seen when you do a Google search. Each page of your website should have a unique and relevant page title with high-performing keywords for effective on-page SEO.
It’s the large blue line of text that appears under your URL in the search engine results pages (SERPs). A glimpse of the title tag also appears on the tab in your browser.
You can see mine here:
A URL is the web address you type into a browser to view a web page.
Each page of your website has its own unique URL. This is the full address of your website with the https and/or www at the front.
For example, this URL is https://thelittletypewriter.com.au/faqs/seo-copywriting-glossary
Web URLs are also known as “links”.
Visibility refers to how visible a business is to its target audiences online, whether in the organic search results or on social media.
Also known as “SEO visibility” or “online visibility”.
This type of search allows you to search the Internet, website or app via a voice command. Eg: In Google Voice Search, Siri, Cortana and Amazon Echo.
For SEO purposes, voice search requires you to optimise phrases and keywords based on how users search verbally, which can result in different keyphrases than enquiries that have been typed into the search engine.
Also known as “voice-enabled” or “voice SEO”.
An XML sitemap is an online file that lists every URL on your website. Not to be confused with an HTML sitemap.
It serves as an important road map for search engines, letting them know what material is accessible on your site and how to find and crawl it.
XML sitemaps are essential for SEO because of the information they provide about the pages, videos and other content on your site, and how they interconnect.
Learn More: Why XML sitemaps are the most misunderstood tool in the SEO toolbox.
YMYL is a particular kind of content.
The concept is part of Google’s Search Quality Rater Guidelines and determines what pages you should be focusing on to improve Expertise, Experience, Authority and Trust.
YMYL describes topics or pages that could potentially impact a person’s happiness, health, financial stability or safety if presented inaccurately. That’s why Google’s algorithms hold these pages to a higher standard.
No “Z” terms… Yet!
