Glossary of Digital Terms

0-9

• .htaccess: Website configuration file that can be used to establish redirects and password protect files.
• 301 redirect: The server code for a permanent redirect. A file or site has been permanently moved to a new location. SEO best-practice.
• 302 redirect: The server code for a temporary redirect.
• 404 status code: “Not Found” server code. Custom 404 pages can improve usability.

A

• Above the fold: Historically used to describe the content printed above the centerfold of a newspaper. Online, it refers to all content that is viewable without having to scroll down.
• Absolute link: A link that uses the entire URL of a page instead of using a relative link path. Absolute URLs are preferred, as relative link paths can result in problems with canonicalization and hijacking.
• AI Overview (AIO): The AI-generated summaries appearing at the top of search results (formerly SGE), providing direct answers rather than a list of links.
• AI Search Optimization (AIO): The practice of making a brand easier for AI tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google’s AI Overviews to find, understand and cite in their answers. Also called generative engine optimization (GEO) or LLM optimization (LLMO). AIO builds on SEO rather than replacing it. Amplified AIO services.
• AI Search Prompt Audit: An Amplified Audience Partners audit that tests key buyer questions in AI tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google’s AI Overviews, and scores how a brand appears on four layers: Discoverability, Clarity, Authority and Trust. AI Search Prompt Audit.
• AI visibility: How often and how accurately a brand is mentioned, described and cited in answers from AI tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity and Google’s AI Overviews.
• AI Visibility Audit: An Amplified Audience Partners audit that uses AI Search Prompt Audit data for a full assessment of a brand’s AI discoverability, adding competitor analysis and the gaps holding the brand back in AI search. AI Visibility Audit.
• Algorithm: An automated procedure designed to solve problems very quickly. Google’s algorithms determine which websites show up in search results for any given keyword or phrase, and where in the results they appear.
• Alt attribute: HTML code that serves as a text-based alternative to an image or video. Alt attributes are used by screen-readers and search engines because they provide context for the image/video and are used for web accessibility
• Analytics: Information discerned through the analysis of data and statistics. Metrics like page views, user behavior, and load time, and dimensions like demographics and user locations.
• Anchor text: The visible, clickable text in a hyperlink. Anchor text is important in SEO because Google judges how relevant the text is to the content of the link. However, as of Google’s Penguin update, exact match anchor text (or using anchor text identical to a page’s name) is not recommended.
• Answer-first content: Content in which each section opens with a direct answer to one question, followed by supporting detail. Answer-first sections are easier for search engines and AI tools to lift, quote and cite.
• Answer Engine Optimization (AEO): A broader discipline that encompasses AIO, focusing on optimizing content to be the definitive “answer” provided by a bot, voice assistant, or AI search tool.
• Authority score (AS): Authority Score is a SEMrush proprietary metric measuring the domain’s reputability. It accounts for the number and quality of its backlinks, organic search traffic, and overall authenticity of its profile.
• Authority Signals: Indicators (beyond just backlinks) that tell an AI model that  a source is trustworthy. These include consistent NAP (Name, Address, Phone) data, clear expert authorship, and high-quality, non-repetitive content.

B

• B2B SEO: B2B SEO involves enhancing and optimizing your website to target other businesses instead of individual consumers. B2B SEO strategy refers to on-page, off-page, and technical optimizations.
• Backlinks: Backlinks are incoming hyperlinks from one web page to another website. These links are crucial for users, search engines, and advertisers alike. Backlinks allow users and search engines to explore new content on the web and advertisers to boost their search engine optimization (SEO).
• Backlink analysis: A backlink analysis is a way to help you understand what kind of websites link to your website or your competitors’ websites and identify bad links that you want to disavow.
• Backlink toxicity score: The score is based on the number of toxic domains referring to the website and the importance of the toxic markers discovered.
• Bing: Microsoft’s search engine, created in 2009. Bing now also powers Yahoo! Search.
• Black hat SEO: SEO techniques that do not fall within a search engine’s defined guidelines. These techniques are usually deemed deceptive in nature, but could also exploit part of a search algorithm in order to achieve high ranking results in a short frame of time.
• Blacklist: If malware is definitely detected on the site, the website will be inaccessible to visitors, or “blacklisted.” Blacklisting means that the site will be removed from search results so that it can’t be found through search, and a warning will prevent direct visitors from entering the site.
• Blog: Comes from “weblog” or “web log.” A continually updated “journal” that is usually run by an individual or small group. Blogs are typically informal in nature. Most blogs are part of a larger community and have commenting capabilities.Within the context of Internet marketing, many blogs are good examples of content marketing.
• Bounce rate: As seen in Google Analytics, bounce rate refers to the percentage of website visitors who leave a particular page of a website without visiting any other pages.  The average bounce rate is somewhere between 26% and 70%, with the optimal range being between 26% and 40%.
• Brand: A company or organization that is associated with a specific product or service. For example, “Levi’s” is a brand of jeans.
• Branded keywords: Keywords associated with a brand. Usually high-value, high-converting keywords. Searches for these keywords may be taken into account by search algorithms as signals of relevance.
• Brand positioning: The distinct place a brand holds in buyers’ minds compared with competitors, defined by who it serves, what it offers and why it is the better choice.
• Breadcrumb navigation: A navigation practice that helps explain the relationship between pages, to both search engines and visitors. Breadcrumb navigation typically takes this format: “Home > SubCategory1 > Content” and represents of the website’s architecture.
• Broken link: Any hyperlink which is not working as intended. This can happen because of websites going offline, content moving to a different location, or other reasons. The occasional broken link will have no impact on SEO, but a lot of broken links can act as a negative signal to most search engine algorithms.

C

• Canonical URL: A single page or piece of content can be accessed through various different URLs. Marking a URL as canonical indicates its authority as the “correct” or preferred version to search engines. Designating a certain URL as canonical can help address inconsistent or messy internal link structures.
• Cart abandon rate: On ecommerce websites, the percentage of visitors who added a product to their cart and left the website before completing a purchase.
• Country code top level domain (ccTLD): ccTLDs typically refer to a specific country. For example, .uk is the ccTLD for the United Kingdom.
• ChatGPT: An AI assistant from OpenAI that can generate, analyze, and summarize information and can search the web for current information and cite sources. For SEO, visibility in ChatGPT can create additional discovery and referral opportunities beyond traditional search; for AIO, businesses should make their content authoritative, clearly structured, factually consistent, and easy for AI systems to understand and cite.
• Citations/Source Attribution: The links or references AI models provide to their      sources. Obtaining these is a primary goal of modern AIO.
• Claude: An AI assistant developed by Anthropic that specializes in conversational reasoning, analysis, writing, and working with complex information. For SEO, authoritative web content can contribute to brand discovery when Claude accesses or reasons over web information; for AIO, businesses should establish clear topical expertise, consistent entity information, and comprehensive content that accurately communicates what the organization does.
• Click-through rate (CTR): The percentage of visitors who click to a page via a specified link.
• Connected TV (CTV): Television content streamed over the internet to smart TVs and streaming devices. CTV advertising places video ads in that streaming content, usually bought programmatically and targeted by audience or geography. Amplified paid media services.
• Content management system (CMS): A content management system, or CMS, is any “back end” website software used to control the text, graphics, and/or code that appears on a website. If you use WordPress, Magento, Joomla!, Drupal, Sitecore, or something similar, you are using a CMS.
• Content marketing: Content marketing refers to the practice by which companies reach potential leads through the use of blogs, articles, videos, graphics, and other site elements that they create. Content marketing is a specific practice that is considered part of inbound marketing.
• Contextual Relevance: Unlike traditional keyword matching, AIO focuses on whether the content provides the right context to answer a user’s underlying intent, which the AI model uses to determine authority.
• Conversion: A conversion is any desired action taken on a website like a purchase, the completion of a contact form, and so on. Unique conversions can be set up and tracked in Google Analytics for a website so one can see how many times these actions have been taken.
• Conversion rate: The percentage at which visitors to a website convert, or go through with a conversion. For example, if one in every 100 visitors makes a purchase, the conversion rate is 1%.
• Conversion rate optimization (CRO): The practice of actively testing a website to determine how it can be improved, with the end goal of increasing one’s conversion rate.
• Conversion tracking: Measuring the actions visitors take after clicking an ad or reaching a website, such as form fills, calls or purchases, so marketing results can be tied to leads and revenue.
• Cookie: A unique identification data file saved to users’ web browsers for tracking purposes. Cookies can be used to personalize user experiences, track conversions, and remarketing to past site visitors.
• Core Web Vitals: Google’s set of page experience metrics that measure loading speed (Largest Contentful Paint), responsiveness (Interaction to Next Paint) and visual stability (Cumulative Layout Shift).
• Crawl budget: The number of pages a search engine will crawl on a website within a given period. Large or poorly structured sites can waste crawl budget on low-value pages.
• Crawler: A search engine’s crawlers are responsible for discovering new webpages and indexing them accordingly. Ensuring one’s content is visible to search engine crawlers is critical for SEO.
• Customer acquisition cost (CAC): The total marketing and sales cost of winning one new customer, calculated by dividing acquisition spend by the number of new customers gained.

D

• Dayparting: Modifying an ad campaign in accordance with the time periods one’s target audience is most active and least active. Dayparting can be done through completely shutting off a campaign at certain times, adjusting bids at certain times, or changing budget parameters.
• Dead link: See broken link.
• De-listing: When a web page or pages are removed from a search engine directory. This can be temporary or permanent, and can happen for any number of reasons including a penalty from the search engine, a change in search engine crawl priorities, or a change in location of the page in question.
• Demand generation: Marketing that builds awareness of and interest in a brand’s products or services among people who are not yet actively shopping, creating future demand.
• Demographics: Subsets of a population, such as gender, age, location, and so on. Many advertising platforms allow the specific targeting of certain demographics.
• Directories: A categorical collection of websites. High-quality directories are manually curated by experts in that specific industry.
• Disavow: The disavow tool allows one to remove an inbound link from a disreputable source. This indicates to Google that a webmaster does not approve of the link’s source, and combats negative SEO or SEO penalties that may have otherwise been incurred.
• Domain name: The customizable or branded part of a website’s name.
• Domain name server (DNS): A naming format that pairs a domain name or host with a certain TCP/IP address.
• Doorway page: A webpage created specifically to rank well for very particular search terms, but cover different topics. Doorway pages often redirect to other pages that serve advertisements relevant to the targeted search term.
• Duplicate content: Content that is extremely similar or copied verbatim. Duplicate content is heavily penalized by search engines.
• Dwell time: (AKA Time On Site) The length of time a searcher spends on a given website before returning to the search results.
• Dynamic content: Content that is programmed to change over time. Search engines can have difficulty indexing dynamic content.

E

• Ecommerce: A type of website that sells products online. Short for “electronic commerce.”
• Ecommerce SEO: Ecommerce search engine optimization is a set of optimization techniques that enables your ecommerce website to rank higher in search results. SEO for ecommerce allows you to appear in more relevant search results, which enables you to drive more traffic, and sales to grow your store online.
• Editorial link: An inbound link that was not paid for or requested. Editorial links are achieved as a result of great content and marketing techniques.
• E-E-A-T: Google’s framework for judging content quality, standing for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness. Content that shows first-hand experience and credible expertise is more likely to rank and be cited.
• Engagement metrics: Data points used to measure how engaged users are on a website. Some examples of engagement metrics are click-through rate, repeat visits, and time on page.
• Entities: Real-world objects, people, places, or concepts that AI models      “understand” through knowledge graphs. AIO focuses on ensuring     your brand is recognized as an authoritative entity for specific topics.
• Exit rate: The percentage of visitors who look at a page and then leave the website entirely. Differs from bounce rate.
• External link: A link that points to a different website or domain name. Search engines consider the quality of external links in their algorithms.

F

• Favicon: The small picture that is displayed next to a URL in web browsers.
• File transfer protocol (FTP): A protocol for transferring files to and from a website’s server.
• Forum: An online message board driven by a community of users. Usually created around a common interest or other niche subject.
• Fractional CMO: An experienced marketing executive who provides strategy, leadership and oversight on a part-time or project basis instead of as a full-time hire. Amplified fractional marketing.
• Fractional marketing: A model in which a business gets senior marketing leadership and specialized execution on a part-time, project or retained basis, without the cost of full-time executive hires. Amplified fractional marketing.
• Fresh content: New, dynamic content. Continuously creating fresh content can result in more frequent search engine crawling and higher levels of engagement (depending on the quality of the content).

G

• Generative Engine Optimization (GEO): Another name for AI Search Optimization (AIO): the practice of improving how a brand appears in answers generated by AI tools. Amplified AIO services.
• Google Ads: Google’s advertising platform for search, display, YouTube and other ad placements, where advertisers bid to show ads to targeted audiences and typically pay per click. Amplified paid media services.
• Google Algorithm: Google’s algorithm is a very complex algorithm designed to help connect search queries with search results relevant to the query. The algorithm is constantly changing, so it is essential to stay up to date on the newest changes to optimize your website.
• Google Analytics 4 (GA4): Google’s current web analytics platform, which tracks website and app activity as events and reports on traffic, engagement and conversions.
• Googlebot: The name of Google’s crawler/search spider.
• Google Business Profile: Google’s free business listing that shows a company’s name, address, phone number, hours, reviews and photos in Google Search and Maps. A key factor in local search rankings.
• Google Gemini: Google’s generative AI platform that provides conversational answers, research capabilities, and AI-powered experiences across Google’s ecosystem. For SEO, strong organic search fundamentals remain important because Google’s AI experiences draw on information from the web; for AIO, clear content, strong topical authority, structured data, and consistent business information can help AI systems understand and surface a brand.
• Google Indexing: Web pages are found by being indexed. Indexing is the process of search engines visiting and analyzing new and updated web pages before adding them to their index (database) of webpages. MindFire sends weekly requests Google to index (or re-index) websites to ensure that they show up as high as possible as fast as possible on search returns.
• Google Penalties: Google penalties are negative consequences for websites with broken rules – whether well-intended or not. A penalty can range from a drop in rankings to removal from the search engine page results altogether.
• Google Search Central guidelines: Google’s published rules and best practices for websites that want to appear in Google Search, now called Google Search Essentials (formerly the Google webmaster guidelines).
• Google Search Console: Google’s free tool for monitoring how a website performs in Google Search, including indexing status, search queries, clicks, errors and sitemap submission.
• Google SEO: Google SEO is the series of steps you take to optimize your website for higher rankings in Google search results. When someone searches a keyword or phrase on Google, they get a list of results that Google considers the best answer to their query.
• Google Search Essentials A basic set of guidelines and best practices for ranking well in Google’s search results, as
• Google Tag Manager (GTM): Google’s free tool for adding and managing tracking codes, such as analytics and conversion tags, on a website without editing the site’s code.
• Grounding: The process by which an AI tool bases its answer on retrieved sources, such as live search results or web pages, rather than only on its training data. Grounded answers are the ones that cite websites.

H

• Hallucination: When an AI model confidently provides inaccurate, fabricated, or nonsensical information. AIO strategies involve structuring content to minimize the risk of AI hallucinating about your brand.
• Headings: An HTML element meant to briefly describe the content on a page. Headings go from H1 to H6, and properly using them is an SEO best practice.
• Hidden text: Text meant for search engine crawlers, but not humans. Sites utilizing hidden text always get caught and penalized by Google.
• Homepage: The main page of a website through which users can navigate the rest of a site.
• Hypertext markup language (HTML): A basic coding language used to create websites. When someone refers to a website’s “code,” they are usually referring to its HTML.
• Hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP): The protocol used to communicate between servers and web browsers. Data is sent from a website’s server to a user’s browser.

I

• Impressions: The number of times an ad or search result is shown to users, whether or not anyone clicks on it.
• Inbound link: A link pointing to one’s website, originating from a different website.
• Inbound marketing: A form of marketing in which a company attracts potential customers to it instead of reaching out to them.
• Indexation: Whether a search engine has added a page to its index. Only indexed pages can appear in search results.
• Infographic: Short for “information graphic,” an infographic is a visual representation of data. They are usually presented as long images filled with information on one specific topic.
• Internal link: A link from one page to another page, both on the same website. Internal links are a crucial part of SEO for three main reasons: They help search engines understand your site’s structure. They pass authority. They help users navigate your site.
• Internet service provider (ISP): The companies that sell Internet access.
• Internet protocol (IP) address: The specific identification number assigned to an individual device with Internet access. Every device connected to the Internet has an IP address, and it can be thought of as a recognizable “name.”

J

• JSON-LD: The format Google recommends for adding schema markup to a web page, written as a block of code that describes the page’s content to search engines and AI tools.
• JavaScript: A programming and scripting language that is often embedded in HTML content to add non-static features.

K

• Key performance indicator (KPI): A specific metric that shows whether a marketing initiative succeeds. For example, one KPI may be bounce rate (the percentage of visitors who leave after looking at only one page), and one could track this to determine how much interest a website is generating for first-time visitors.
• Keywords: Keywords for SEO are words and phrases placed strategically into your website’s content to help searchers find your website through the search results. Keywords should be relevant to the content on the site and intended to help searchers find useful information and become a conversion for your business.
• Keyword cannibalization: Keyword cannibalization refers to multiple pages from the same website targeting the same keywords. Although this is typically done unintentionally, Google will likely drop all of those pages’ rankings because it can’t understand which page fits the results the best.
• Keyword density: The amount of times a specific keyword appears on a page. Monitoring keyword density is no longer considered important, but it is a good idea to make sure targeted keywords appear naturally on pages where one wants them to rank.
• Keyword research: The process of identifying desired relevant/profitable keywords to target with SEO, paid search and PPC campaigns.
• Keyword stuffing: The practice of excessively using a specific keyword on a page. Keyword stuffing no longer works in SEO and negatively impacts a page’s ranking.
• Knowledge Graph: Google scrapes information related to a search query and displays it at the top of the results page in an easy, accessible format. Users don’t have to leave the search page to access this information.

L

• Landing page: The page a user is directed to upon clicking on a link or ad.
• Large Language Model (LLM): The type of AI (e.g., GPT-4, Claude, Gemini) that powers chatbots and AI search engines, trained on vast datasets to predict and generate human-like text.
• Lead generation: Marketing aimed at attracting potential customers and capturing their contact information, such as through forms, calls or consultations.
• Link: A path from one webpage to another webpage, or to a different place on the same webpage.
• Link building: The practice of obtaining links to a page from other websites with the intent of raising a specific page or website’s rank in search engine results. This includes 1) LinkProspect Analysis with link building tool 2) LinkProspect sorting for contact 3) Segemented Emails Management 3) Monthly Reporting + Meeting Time.
• Link churn: The measurement of lost links within a specified time period.
• Link equity: The measurement of a website’s quality, based on its inbound link profile and the potential ranking power they can give to another site by linking to it. Websites with high link equity usually rank better in search engine results, and help other sites rank better by linking to them. Sites that spam links to other domains have very little link equity and can hurt one’s website.
• Link farm: Websites that only to link out to other sites.
• Link hoarding: The practice of attempting to retain link popularity by refusing to link to other websites, or by doing so using methods that do not convey link equity.
• Link popularity: A website’s link popularity is the number of inbound links it has. Google strongly values quality backlinks over quantity of backlinks.
• Link reputation: A measurement of the overall quality and relevancy of a website’s link profile.
• Link rot: The process in which links to other websites no longer work because those pages or sites are no longer unavailable.
• LLM Optimization (LLMO): Another name for AI Search Optimization (AIO), focused on how large language models understand and cite a brand. Amplified AIO services.
• llms.txt: A proposed standard file placed at a website’s root that gives AI tools a curated map of the site’s most important pages. Major AI platforms have not confirmed they use it. llms.txt setup.
• Local pack: The group of map listings, usually three, that Google shows for local searches such as “marketing agency near me.” Rankings depend largely on Google Business Profile signals.
• Local search: A type of search that allows users to search in a specific geographic area against an established index of local business listings.
• Lookalike audience: An advertising audience built from people who share traits with an existing group, such as current customers, so ads reach new people likely to respond.
• Long tail keywords: Specific keywords or phrases that reflect user intent. They are higher value and lower competition as a result.

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