Ready to get into some advanced SEO terms and definitions?
Once you reach a certain point in your SEO learning journey, you’ll want to learn more and get into the nitty gritty, technical details of SEO.
That’s what this article is all about.
My name is Connor Gillivan. I’ve been an SEO for 10+ years now and have been studying Google and SEO intimately as I’ve grown my own companies with it and I now manage 30+ SEO clients through my business, TrioSEO.
In the first few years, I was focused on getting to know SEO at a high level and implementing it within my businesses through content and backlink building.
After having a strong understanding of the foundations, I wanted to get to know “technical SEO” a bit more and that launched me down a rabbit hole of where things got a bit more cloudy.
Not everything made sense at first and I had to read multiple articles, watch videos, and ask more technical SEOs about certain concepts so I could fully wrap my head around them.
In this article, I wanted to bring all of those learnings together so that other SEOs and marketers (you!) could learn from what I’ve learned over the past 10 years.
If you have questions about any of these advanced SEO terms, feel free to reach out and I’ll do my best to explain them in further detail for you.
Alright, let’s dive in…
10 Advanced SEO Terms Every SEO Should Know
1. Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI)
- Google’s way of understanding related keywords.
- Boosts content relevance.
2. Crawl Budget
- Number of pages Google crawls on your site.
- Manage it to prioritize important pages.
3. Canonicalization
- Prevents duplicate content by selecting a preferred URL.
- Consolidates link equity.
4. Structured Data (Schema Markup)
- Helps search engines understand content.
- Enables rich snippets.
5. PageRank Sculpting
- Controls internal link flow for PageRank.
- Prioritizes high-value pages.
6. Entity-Based SEO
- Optimizes around real-world concepts, not just keywords.
- Enhances relevance.
7. Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)
- Measures content shifting during page load.
- Key in Google’s Core Web Vitals.
8. TF-IDF
- Weighs keyword importance relative to the document.
- Optimizes for semantic relevance.
9. Link Reclamation
- Recovers broken or lost backlinks.
- Regains link equity.
10. Edge SEO
- Implements SEO changes at the CDN level.
- Speeds up fixes.
Action Items
- Use tools like Screaming Frog to analyze your crawl budget and ensure important pages are being prioritized.
- Implement schema markup on your site to enable rich snippets and improve content understanding for search engines.
- Regularly monitor and fix broken or lost backlinks as part of your link reclamation strategy.
- Optimize for Core Web Vitals, including Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS), to improve user experience and rankings.
- Focus on semantic relevance by leveraging LSI keywords and using TF-IDF analysis for content optimization.
FAQs
What is Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI), and why is it important for SEO?
LSI is Google’s method of understanding related keywords and how they connect to the main topic. It helps improve content relevance, ensuring your page aligns with user intent. Using LSI keywords enhances your content’s ability to rank for a broader range of queries.
How can I manage my crawl budget effectively?
Prioritize important pages by creating a clean XML sitemap and ensuring unimportant pages (like duplicates) are excluded using robots.txt or noindex tags. Regularly audit your site to remove unnecessary pages and improve loading speeds to optimize crawling efficiency.
Why is structured data (schema markup) important for SEO?
Structured data helps search engines better understand your content by providing additional context. It enables features like rich snippets, which can increase click-through rates (CTR) and improve search visibility. Schema markup is especially useful for reviews, events, and products.
What is the role of Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) in SEO?
CLS measures the stability of a webpage as it loads, ensuring content doesn’t shift unexpectedly. It’s part of Google’s Core Web Vitals and directly impacts rankings. Reducing CLS improves user experience and helps your site meet Google’s performance standards.
How does Edge SEO improve website performance?
Edge SEO implements changes at the CDN (Content Delivery Network) level, reducing the need to update the core website. It speeds up fixes and optimizations, especially for technical SEO issues. This approach is ideal for large sites that require fast scalability and updates.
Thoughts and Outro
Getting to know advanced SEO terms like these and understanding the methods to implement them to help your SEO takes time and you shouldn’t expect to get all of them on the first time around.
If you’re new to SEO, I’d recommend bookmarking this for a later date, but don’t spend too much time on it now.
If you’re intermediate to SEO, it’s time you should start to learn some of these concepts so you can implement them into your SEO tool belt.
And if you’re an advanced SEO, there’s a strong chance you already know some of these and use them for your SEO strategy. For the ones you don’t know, schedule time to go deeper on them and get to know them intimately.
The more you know about SEO, the better.
Why? Because it helps you better understand Google and how they rank content on search.
The more intimately you know Google, the better chance you can create content and websites that will rank at the top of Google for the keywords you’re aiming for.
My name is Connor Gillivan. I’m on a mission to make SEO and digital marketing simpler for millions.
Thanks for reading and stopping by.
I’ll see you in the next article!
Best,
Connor
Whenever you’re ready, here’s 3 ways I can help you:
1. My SEO Course: “The SEO System” teaches the exact daily, weekly, and monthly SEO processes I’ve used to scale multiple companies to 6, 7, & 8 figures in sales. Available for pre-sale now!
2. TrioSEO: Hire me & my team to create SEO content for your business. We’ll create a comprehensive SEO plan, execute, & keep you updated so your business gains more traffic, leads, & sales. Get a Free SEO Audit.
3. Promote yourself to 90,000+ SEOs, marketers, & entrepreneurs by sponsoring this newsletter and my social channels. (Booked out 1 month). Email me for info.
