SEO can get complicated real fast thanks to all the abbreviations and acronyms online marketers use.
If you find yourself lost in conversations when talking about SEO or simply need a refresher, we have you covered.
Below are some of the acronyms and abbreviations used by intermediate SEOs.
Note: Some acronyms/abbreviations have more than one meaning.
Table of Contents
A
AJAX — Asynchronous Javascript and XML
ALT — Alternative Text Attribute (Short description of media content and links)
AOV — Average Order Value (Average amount a user orders on a site)
API — Application Program Interface (Set of functions used in the creation of a software)
AR — Augmented Reality (Placing a generated image on top of the user’s view)
AS — Article Submission (Submitting content to article directory sites)
ASP — Application Service Provider
ATD — Agency Trading Desk
B
B2B — Business to Business (Marketing directly to other businesses)
B2C — Business to Consumer (Marketing directly to consumers)
BH — Black Hat (Shady SEO practices)
BL — Backlink (Links coming from outside your domain)
BR — Bounce Rate (Percentage/number of people who leave your site upon arrival)
C
CAPTCHA — Completely Automated Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart
ccTLD — Country Code Top-Level Domain (Examples: .us [USA], .uk [United Kingdom], .au [Australia])
CF — Citation Flow (From Majestic; Used to measure link equity)
CGI — Common Gateway Interface
CLV — Customer Lifetime Value
CMS — Content Management System (Like WordPress or Medium)
COA — Cost of Acquisition (How much you pay to get a paying customer)
CPA — Cost Per Acquisition (Average value of acquiring each customer)
CPC — Cost Per Click (How much you pay for each click on your PPC campaign)
CPI — Cost Per Impression (Cost per number of times an ad is seen)
CPL — Cost Per Lead (How much you pay per lead generated)
CPM — Cost Per Thousand Impressions (How much you pay per 1,000 ad views)
CPO — Cost Per Order
CPV — Cost Per View
CR — Conversion Rate (Rate at which customers take a desired action)
CRM — Customer Relationship Management
CRO — Conversion Rate Optimization
CSE — Comparison Shopping Engine OR Custom Search Engine
CSS — Cascading Style Sheets
CTA — Call To Action (The step you want users to take) OR Content-Targeted Advertising
CTR — Click-Through Rate (Measures how many people click on your links/ads)
D
DA — Domain Authority (From Moz; Measures how well a site will rank on search engines)
DC — Data Center
DFO — Data Feed Optimization
DKI — Dynamic Keyword Insertion
DLP — Directory Listings Page
DLR — Deep Link Ratio
DMCA — Digital Millennium Copyright Act
DMM — Digital Media Marketing
DMP — Data Management Platform
DNS — Domain Name System
DR — Domain Ranking OR Direct Response
DRP — Directory Submission
DS — Directory Results Pages
DSP — Demand-Side Platform
DSRP — Directory Search Results Page
E
ECPC — Enhanced Cost Per Click
EMD — Exact Match Domain (A domain name that includes the keyword you want to rank for)
EPC — Earnings Per Click
EPM — Earnings Per Thousand
ERD — Education Referring Domains
ESP — Email Service Provider (Examples: Mailchimp, ActiveCampaign, HubSpot)
F
FBML — Facebook Markup Language (Lets you change your FB business page appearance)
FCP — Frequently Cached Page
FFA — Free For All Pages
FTP — File Transfer Protocol
G
GA — Google Analytics (Tool for tracking and reporting website traffic and other data)
GAP — Google Advertising Professional
GAS — Guaranteed Article Submission
GDS — Guaranteed Directory Submission
GIS — Google Image Search
GIY — Google It Yourself
GMB — Google My Business (Tool for improving the online presence of local businesses)
GRD — Government Referring Domains
GSC — Google Search Console (Tool for fixing site issues to improve your performance on Google)
GTM — Google Tag Manager (Tool that puts all your marketing tags under one line of code for site efficiency)
GUI — Graphical User Interface
GWT — Google Webmaster Tools (Former name of Google Search Console)
GYM — Google, Yahoo, MSN
H
H1 — Level 1 Heading Markup
H2 — Level 2 Heading Markup
H3 — Level 3 Heading Markup
H4 — Level 4 Heading Markup
H5 — Level 5 Heading Markup
Href — Hypertext Reference
HTML — Hypertext Markup Language
HTTP — HyperText Transfer Protocol
HTTPS — HyperText Transfer Protocol Secure
I
IBL — Inbound Links (Links pointing towards your site/page)
IDF — Inverse Document Frequency
IFTTT — If This Then That (Tool for automating commands)
IM — Internet Marketing
IP — Internet Protocol
ISP — Internet Service Provider
IYP — Internet Yellow Pages
J
JGI — Just Google It
K
KDA — Keyword Density Analyzer (Tool for measuring the density of keywords in a page)
KEI — Keyword Effectiveness Index (Method for determining what keywords to use)
KPI — Key Performance Indicator (A measure by which to evaluate the success of a campaign)
L
LB — Link Building (The process of getting other websites to link back to your domain)
LPO — Landing Page Optimization (The process of optimizing a specific landing page)
LSA — Latent Semantic Analysis
LSEO — Local Search Engine Optimization (Ranking for localized search terms)
LSI — Latent Semantic Indexing (Method of comparing the relationship between keywords)
LTKW — Long Tail Keyword (Longer, more specific keywords; usually 3 to 4 words in length)
LTV — Lifetime Value (The average amount spent by a customer since the beginning)
M
MCP — Moderately Cached Page
MFA — Made For Advertising
MQL — Marketing Qualified Lead (A person who’ll likely become a customer thanks to marketing)
MTO — Meta Tags Optimization (Improving metadata to be more effective for ranking online)
MVT — Multivariate Testing (Testing variables to see which option to use on a campaign)
N
NAP — Name, Address, Phone Number (Used in the context of local SEO marketing)
NSEO — Negative SEO (Refers to black hat SEO tactics)
O
OBL — Outbound Links (Links pointing outside your site/page)
ODP — Open Directory Project (Human-edited index of websites)
ORM — Online Reputation Management (Curating online content to remove damaging information)
OS — Operating System OR Open Source
OSE — Open Site Explorer (From Moz; Tool that tracks links pointing to your site)
OWBL — One-Way Backlink (The opposite of reciprocal link building)
P
P4P — Paid For Placement (The act of paying to be featured prominently on SERPs; usually through ad placements)
PA — Page Authority (From Moz; Predicts how a specific page will rank on search engines)
PBN — Private Blog Network (Collection of sites that link to one another; a black hat tactic)
PDF — Portable Document Format
PFI — Pay For Inclusion
PFL — Pay For Listings
PFP — Pay for Performance
PHP — Hypertext Preprocessor
PPC — Pay Per Click (Google Adwords; Paying every time a user clicks on your ad)
PPCSE — Pay-Per-Click Search Engine
PPL — Pay Per Lead
PPP — Pay Per Post
PPR — Pay Per Rank
PPS — Pay Per Sale
PR — Press Release OR Page Rank (An algorithm used by Google to rank websites)
PV — Page Views (Count of how many users have viewed a page; Not to be confused with page visit)
Q
QA — Quality Assurance (Inspecting to product to make sure it’s up to standard)
QS — Quality Score (Google’s rating of the quality and relevance of your keywords)
R
RD — Referring Domains (A domain that linked back to you regardless of frequency)
RFI — Request for Information
RI — Regular Index
RM — Reputation Management
ROI — Return on Investment (Determines how much you’ve gained/lost from an SEO campaign)
RSS — Really Simple Syndication OR Rich Site Summary
RTB — Real-Time Bidding (Ads are bought on a per-impression basis)
RTD — Real-Time Data (Data that is delivered immediately)
RTL — Regional Long Tail
S
SaaS — Software as a Service (Software services that are accessed online)
SB — Social Bookmarking (Services that let you save pages online instead of your browser)
SD — Semantic Distance (Calculates distance between relevant keywords)
SE — Search Engine
SEM — Search Engine Marketing (Ranking a site through organic and paid advertising)
SEO — Search Engine Optimization (Ranking a site through on-site and off-site strategies)
SEP — Search Engine Positioning (Your rank in search engine result pages)
SER — Search Engine Ranking
SERM — Search Engine Results Management (Similar in definition to SEO)
SERP — Search Engine Results Page (Shows results based on the search phrase used)
SES — Search Engine Strategies
SEW — Search Engine Watch (A popular SEO news and features website)
SI — Supplemental Index (A separate index where Google stores webpages)
SLA — Service Level Agreement (An agreement between a service provider and a client)
SMB — Small and Medium Businesses
SMEs — Small And Medium-Sized Enterprises OR Subject-Matter Expert
SMM — Social Media Marketing (Using social media to increase brand awareness)
SMO — Social Media Optimization (Optimizing social media pages to increase visibility)
SMP — Social Media Platform (Refers to social media sites)
SNS — Social Networking Service (An alternative name for social media sites)
SQL — Sales Qualified Lead (A potential customer vetted by the marketing and sales teams)
SRM — Search Reputation Management (Using search results to influence brand impression)
SSI — Server Side Includes (A scripting language used in web development)
SSL — Secure Sockets Layer (A security protocol for encrypting server-client exchanges)
SSP — Supply-Side Platform (Lets you manage, sell, and optimize ad space on websites)
STW — Search the Web
SWL — Sitewide Link (A link that appears on all your pages)
T
TBPR — Toolbar PageRank (A browser extension by Google; No longer exists)
TF — Trust Flow (From Majestic; A site’s score based on the links it has)
TF-IDF — Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency
TLD — Top-Level Domain (The suffix attached at the end of your domain [.com, .net, etc.])
TLP — Top-Level Page
TOS — Terms of Service (Agreement between user and provider for using a service)
TR — TrustRank (The use of trust signals to fight spam)
TSETSB — The Search Engine That Spam Built
TTF — Topical Trust Flow (From Majestic; Provides website categorization)
U
UCD — User-Centric Design (Prioritizing user experience first when building a site)
UCG — User-Generated Content (Additional content by users [comments, forums, etc.])
UEO — User Experience Optimization (Improving user experience on a website)
UI — User Interface (Means of how users inetract with your website)
UIO — User Intent Optimization (Optimizing a site based on what user intends to do)
UR — URL Ranking
URI — Uniform Resource Identifier (Characters used to find a source on a network like URLs)
URL — Uniform Resource Locator (The address of a website)
USP — Unique Selling Point OR Unique Selling Proposition (What makes your product stand out)
UTM — Urchin Tracking Module (Tracking code that you add to a page for monitoring campaigns)
UV — Unique Visitor (A person who visits a site during a certain period of time)
UX — User Experience (The experience a user has while visiting a site)
V
VA — Virtual Assistant (Someone who helps you work from a remote location)
VIPS — Visual-Block Page Segmentation
VOD — Video on Demand (Service where users choose to watch any video from a database)
VS — Video Submission (Uploading videos online like you do on YouTube)
W
W3C — World Wide Web Consortium (An international organization that develops web standards)
WH — White Hat (SEO tactics that are seen as the best practices)
WMT — Webmaster Tools (Tool that evaluates your performance on search engines)
WMW — Webmaster World (An online forum that focuses on SEO)
WOMM — Word-of-Mouth Marketing (Spreading information about a brand organically)
X
XHTML — Extensible Hypertext Markup Language (A stricter version of HTML)
XML — Extensible Markup Language (Markup language that stores and transports data)
Y
YOY — Year-on-Year (Evaluating site performance over the course of a business year)
YTD — Year-to-Date (Period of time that covers the start of the year to the current day)
