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SEO terminology cheatsheet

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By Daniel Florido
6 min read

Guest Posting

Guest posting (or guest blogging) is an SEO and content marketing strategy where an individual writes and publishes an article or blog post on someone else’s website. The primary goals are to gain exposure, build authority, and often, to earn backlinks that improve the search engine ranking of their own website. Key Benefits of Guest Posting

  1. Backlink Acquisition: Most guest posts include a link back to the author’s website, boosting SEO by improving domain authority.
  2. Brand Exposure: Posting on reputable websites introduces your brand to a broader audience.
  3. Building Authority: Writing high-quality content for authoritative sites helps establish you as an expert in your field.
  4. Referral Traffic: Readers who find your content engaging may click the included link to visit your website.
  5. Networking Opportunities: Collaborating with website owners and editors can lead to long-term partnerships.

How Guest Posting Works

  1. Identify Relevant Websites: Look for blogs or websites in your industry or niche. Prioritize websites with high domain authority and engaged audiences.

  2. Pitch Your Idea: Send a personalized pitch to the website owner/editor, outlining the topic you want to write about. Emphasize the value your content will bring to their audience.

  3. Write High-Quality Content: Adhere to the website’s guidelines and tone. Avoid overly promotional content; focus on providing value.

  4. Include Your Backlink: Typically, your link is added in the author bio or contextually within the post, depending on the site’s policy.

  5. Promote the Content: Share the published post on your own social media channels or email newsletter to maximize its reach.

Dos and Don’ts of Guest Posting

Do:

  • Target websites relevant to your niche.
  • Ensure your content is unique, insightful, and actionable.
  • Follow the website’s guest posting guidelines.
  • Build a long-term relationship with site owners.

Don’t:

  • Use overly commercial or spammy links.
  • Submit duplicate or low-quality content.
  • Rely solely on guest posting for backlinks—it’s part of a balanced SEO strategy.

Common Metrics for Evaluating Guest Post Opportunities

  • Domain Authority (DA): A higher DA means better SEO impact.
  • Traffic: Ensure the website gets a reasonable amount of monthly visitors.
  • Audience Relevance: The site’s audience should align with your target demographic.
  • Engagement: Check for active comments, shares, and readership.

Parasite SEO

Parasite SEO is a controversial and often black-hat SEO technique that involves leveraging the high authority of someone else’s website or platform to rank your content or promote your products/services in search engine results. How It Works:

Host Content on High-Authority Sites: The practitioner creates and posts content (articles, videos, or links) on authoritative websites or platforms that already rank well in search engines. Examples include Wikipedia, Medium, Quora, forums, or even compromised websites. Piggyback on Authority: Since these sites already have strong domain authority (DA) and credibility, the content posted there is more likely to rank well in search results, often outranking legitimate competition. Redirect Traffic: The content typically includes backlinks or redirects to the person’s own website or product, driving traffic and potential customers.

Types of Parasite SEO:

Legitimate Use: Posting high-quality, relevant content on platforms like Medium, Quora, or LinkedIn, which naturally rank well. Gray/Black-Hat Use: Posting spammy, low-quality, or irrelevant content on high-authority websites or exploiting vulnerabilities to host malicious content.

Risks of Parasite SEO:

Reputation Damage: If your content is flagged as spam or misleading, it can harm your brand reputation. Platform Policies: Many platforms actively monitor for and remove spammy or promotional content. Temporary Gains: Parasite SEO often leads to short-term results since platforms or search engines may remove the content or penalize such tactics.

Ethical Alternatives:

Focus on building your website’s authority through white-hat SEO techniques, such as creating high-quality content, acquiring backlinks organically, and optimizing on-page SEO.

Would you like a deeper dive into ethical strategies to compete with such tactics?

Basic SEO Terms

SEO (Search Engine Optimization): The process of optimizing a website to improve its rankings on search engine results pages (SERPs). SERP (Search Engine Results Page): The page displayed by a search engine in response to a search query. Organic Traffic: Website visits that come from unpaid search engine results. Keywords: Words or phrases people use to search for information online. Alt Text: Descriptive text for images, helping search engines and visually impaired users understand the image content.

Technical SEO Terms

Crawl: When search engine bots (like Googlebot) discover pages on a website. Indexing: Storing and organizing the content found during crawling to display in search results. Canonical URL: The preferred version of a web page to avoid duplicate content issues. XML Sitemap: A file that lists a website’s URLs to help search engines index them. Robots.txt: A file that instructs search engines on which parts of a website to crawl or ignore. Schema Markup: Structured data added to a site to provide additional context to search engines. Mobile-First Indexing: Google’s approach of primarily using the mobile version of a site for indexing and ranking.

On-Page SEO Terms

Meta Title: The clickable headline shown in search results. Meta Description: A short description of a page’s content displayed in search results. H1, H2, H3 (Header Tags): HTML tags used to define headings and subheadings on a page. Internal Linking: Links that connect different pages on the same website. Anchor Text: The clickable text of a hyperlink. Bounce Rate: The percentage of visitors who leave a site after viewing only one page.

Off-Page SEO Terms

Backlink: A link from another website to your website. Link Building: The process of acquiring backlinks to improve SEO. Domain Authority (DA): A metric that predicts a site’s ability to rank in search engines. Nofollow Link: A backlink that tells search engines not to pass ranking value to the linked page. Citation: A mention of your business’s name, address, and phone number (NAP) online.

Content SEO Terms

Content Optimization: Enhancing content to improve its visibility and ranking potential. Long-Tail Keywords: Specific, less competitive keyword phrases with lower search volume. Keyword Density: The percentage of times a keyword appears in content relative to the total word count. LSI Keywords (Latent Semantic Indexing): Related terms and phrases that search engines use to understand content context.

Analytics & Metrics

CTR (Click-Through Rate): The percentage of users who click on a link compared to those who saw it. Impressions: The number of times a webpage appears in search results. Conversion Rate: The percentage of visitors who take a desired action (e.g., filling a form or making a purchase). Bounce Rate: The percentage of visitors who leave without interacting with the page. Session Duration: The average time a visitor spends on your site. Pages Per Session: The average number of pages viewed in a single session.

Local SEO Terms

Google My Business (GMB): A free tool to manage your business’s online presence on Google, especially for local search. NAP (Name, Address, Phone): Critical business information for local SEO. Local Pack: A set of local business results displayed on a map in SERPs.

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