SEO and Digital Marketing terms and definitions

AJAX stands for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML. This is a set of web development techniques which allows data to be sent and received in the background without interfering with the display of a page. AJAX allows content to change dynamically, without the need to reload the entire page.

The alt tag, also known as "alt attribute," and "alt description", is an HTML attribute applied to images as a text alternative for search engines. The alt tag will be shown if the webpage does not load correctly. Applying alt tags to images can positively affect your search engine rankings.

A link can be absolute or relative. An absolute link shows the full URL of the page being linked, whereas a relative link only shows the part after the domain. Example of an absolute link: http://example.com/folder/filename.html Example of a relative link: ../folder/filename.html Whilst both versions of the link will work, due to potential issues with canonicalisation, it’s generally best to use absolute links rather than relative links where possible.

The algorithm is a complex computer program used by search engines to extract data and deliver results for a query. Search engines use a combination of algorithms to show ranked web pages via a results page based on various ranking factors and signals.

Anchor text is the text in a hyperlink. Anchor text should be relevant to the page you are linking to rather than just scattering it on any available text.

Above the fold refers to the webpage content that the user sees initially on their screen before they scroll down.

Authority refers to the signal search engines use to assess web pages and websites for ranking purposes.

API stands for Application Programming Interface. An API is a piece of software which allows two applications to talk to each other. An example of an API could be when you use a flight comparison website. The flight comparison website will use an API to gather data from each airline’s database and deliver it to the website so that it can be displayed to the user.

Async is short for ‘asynchronous’, which means ‘at the same time’. In web development, it means that when a page is loading, the browser doesn’t have to wait for a task to finish before moving on to the next one - they all happen at the same time.

AMP stands for Accelerated Mobile Pages. AMP is an open-source, stripped-down form of HTML which allows pages to load very quickly on mobile devices.