SEO Glossary: The Basic Terms Everyone Needs To Know

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a set of actions aimed at optimizing and promoting a site, and also increasing its position in search results. There are two areas of SEO: on-page SEO (internal optimization) and off-page (Off-site) SEO (external website optimization).

On-page SEO is about internal optimization. These are actions aimed at improving the site to increase its position: collecting the semantic core, improving the structure of the site, implementing internal linking, eliminating technical problems, improving usability, increasing the relevance of pages, optimization of multimedia.

Off-page (Off-site) SEO is working on developing a site's link profile and getting backlinks from external resources. Off-page optimization includes registration in search engines and directories, obtaining links from high-quality resources, link exchange, activity on thematic forums, posting viral material (which users will share).

Search engine is a computer system for finding information on the Internet. It consists of a search robot that collects data, an indexer that finds what is needed from the collected information, and a search engine (graphical interface). The most frequently used systems are Google, Yahoo, Bing, Yandex, etc.

Scanning (or crawling web pages) is the process of identifying new pages on the Internet and updating the information on those already indexed, performed by the Google bots. The basis for crawling is a Sitemap - a file containing all the pages of a site created for search engines.

SERP (Search Engine Results Page) is a page displaying the results of a search query, the page of search results. When analyzing SERPs, it is important to take into account link and text factors, the type of content, the complexity of the keyword that hits the top, and also be able to analyze the search results themselves correctly.

Indexing is the process when a search engine bot adds the resource information to the search engine's database. Checking the indexing of pages is necessary so that the webmaster is aware of how robots crawl the site, whether errors occur.

Top is the first page of search engine results, generated in response to a user's request, which contains 10 snippets of sites. These sites get the most traffic and good conversion rates, that is why SEOs strive to take the lead in search results.

Ranking factors are the criteria applied by search engines when evaluating pages to compile the rankings of their search results. In 2021, it is essential to consider the Core Update factor, namely, such ranking factors as link authority, thematic reputation, subject matter expertise, and user engagement.

Behavioral factors are the actions of users on the SERP in relation to the site, and on the resource itself. Search engine algorithms analyze the ratio of the number of clicks on a site snippet to impressions in the SERP (CTR), the average duration of page visits, the depth of site visits, and the bounce rate.

Search robot/crawler (Google Bot) is a program that finds and downloads web pages, compresses them, and sends them to the Google server. In this case, the crawler follows the links placed on the page, scanning them as well.

Relevance is the degree to which a page matches a user's request. Several factors affect the relevance of a page: the content and usefulness of the page, well-chosen keywords, internal linking of the site, etc.

SERM (Search Engine Reputation Management) is a technique aimed at managing the reputation of a website on the network; it identifies the factors affecting the reputation of a business structure or individual. To successfully promote your page on the web, you need to learn how to conduct a SERM audit to analyze search queries by keywords and visually correctly, as well as implement other techniques in SERM analysis.

Ranking is the order in which sites are displayed in the search engine. The basis of ranking is the PageRank algorithm patented by the creators of Google, which determines the importance of pages depending on the number and quality of links to them. Among the factors that also affect the ranking, experts name their age and trust, content quality, click-through rate (CTR) in organic search results, adaptability for mobile devices, page loading speed.

Intent is a question that the user wants to solve with the help of a search query. The main factor for determining the intent is the meaning of the search query, which determines the relevance of search results pages, as well as the process of their ranking and their position in the top.

Assessor is a moderator of search engine results. This specialist checks sites in the top of the SERPs for relevance to search queries, the absence of malicious content, and compliance with the requirements of search engines. The assessor evaluates the quality of content, site usability, behavioral and link factors.

Snippet is a short informational block displayed on the SERP that describes the site page's content. An informative snippet that is relevant to the user's request increases the number of page visits. It is generated by the search engine automatically, taking into account the user's request and the filled title and description meta tags.

URL (Uniform Resource Locator) is an individual resource address, a unique link that the browser uses to display specific content - pages, pictures, videos, etc. A URL consists of several parts: protocol - most often http or its secure version https, domain name, address, additional parameters. Also, the URL can contain an anchor that automatically redirects the user to a specific location on the page.

Friendly URL displays a website address that uses words that are understandable to the user and have a clear structure. It is essential to include the page path and keywords in the URL. This makes it easier to navigate the site and immediately understand the topic of the page, see its address, and improve the position of the resource in the search results.

GET-parameter/CGI parameter is a dynamic addition to the page URL that appears after the question mark character and allows you to change the content of the document. Several of these parameters can be used simultaneously, separated by the "&" symbol. This will enable you to generate pages for a specific set of filters, for example, a specific size, brand, and color of a product in an online store.

Vertical search is a type of search when the user views additional tabs instead of standard search results - pictures, videos, maps, and news. Vertical search allows you to get more relevant search results within a specific topic. To get to the top of the search results for images, you need to use the relevant file name, add keywords to the alt and title attributes, and place text content of the relevant topic next to the image.

Sales funnel is a theoretical marketing model that describes all the stages from getting information about a product to purchasing it. This model allows you to identify weaknesses, increase and maintain customer engagement, and increase profits. It is vital that the customers need to complete the minimum number of steps to the purchase since they can interrupt the process at any stage.

API (Application programming interface) is a set of components that offer a service or application to create external program elements and functions on another site. For SEO, using the API allows you to automate many processes: collecting semantic core, carrying out SEO audits, tracking positions, analyzing competitors, etc. Thanks to the API, SEO specialists save time and significantly increase work efficiency. Among the most popular SEO APIs is Serpstat, which allows you to solve many SEO problems successfully.

API-token is an electronic key for authorizing and working with API. This is the password for accessing the API. A token is sent with every API request to authenticate the sender and verify their access rights. With an invalid or missing token, the API request will fail. At the same time, the token should not be publicly available because this will allow anyone who wants to perform some operations under this name.

SEO audit is a check of a resource for technical errors and compliance with the requirements of search engines. With the help of an SEO audit, you can significantly improve your site's performance. This is a necessary step before website optimization. When conducting an SEO audit, the main attention is paid to analyzing competitors, content, traffic, site structure; checking technical files, meta tags, broken links, and indexing resource pages. It is also necessary to check the site loading speed and micro-markup, large images, the resource link profile, etc.

Competitor analysis is a necessary stage in website optimization, which allows you to find out the advantages and weaknesses of competitors. Thanks to the analysis of competitors, you can choose the best strategy for promoting your project. First of all, you need to identify the main competitors, find out their business rules, and check the site's age and domain. It is also essential to find out the quality index of competitors' sites, check the indexing of pages, the amount and sources of traffic, analyze the semantic core, content, site loading speed and other parameters.

Parsing is a method of automatically collecting and organizing the necessary information posted on third-party sites using special programs. Parsers allow you to speed up the collection of information that is available while avoiding possible errors. With the help of Serpstat, you can parse the top organic and paid search results, as well as the volume. Top parsing allows you to monitor the top results of Google in the selected region. At the same time, you can set up a convenient scanning schedule and receive information through the API.

Google My Business is a service that allows you to register your company on Google Maps and then manage this account. This will help you improve the company's ranking and interact with users on behalf of the organization. To confirm the company's rights, in most cases, you need to enter a code that the service will send to the specified mailing address. Newly registered businesses rarely appear on Google Maps, but as their rankings increase, the organization will appear more frequently in search results for various queries.

Google PageSpeed Insights / PageSpeed is a system of tools for assessing the speed of a website. The service allows you to get information about the speed of loading pages on mobile devices and computers. After testing, you get recommendations for increasing the speed. The system evaluates the loading speed of real users and simulates the page loading process, making it possible to identify possible problems.

Black Hat is a way of website optimization performed by methods that are not allowed by search engines. For example, cloaking, doorway/satellite creation, paid links, duplicate content, or placing hidden text.

Semantic core is a structured system of keywords and words that most closely match the topic of the site. To collect the semantic core of the site, you should use the analysis of competitors' projects, find suitable keywords manually or get them using various tools. After that, the semantics are cleaned up - non-relevant requests are removed. Then the keywords are clustered - distributed depending on the frequency and semantic similarity into categories, subcategories, meta tags, text content of individual pages.

Geo-dependent request is a keyword that is associated with a user's actual or technically modified location. Queries that include a region name are also geo-dependent. For such queries, search engines generate results relevant to the keyword, regardless of the user's location. To improve your local search rankings, you should add your company to Google Business.

Long-tailed keyword is a type of low-frequency request that contains several additional qualifying words. The use of such keywords is recommended for many reasons: their conversion is higher, the competition is lower, they can be quickly promoted to the top with minimum financial investment. The main disadvantage of such requests is the little traffic they bring, so they need to be promoted in hundreds and thousands. Also, long-tail requests are not suitable for landing pages and business card sites.

Search engine visibility is an indicator that assesses the effectiveness of all SEO work carried out with a project and shows whether a resource is well-visible in search results. The higher the visibility of a resource, the more search traffic it has. To assess a specific visibility indicator, you need to analyze its change in dynamics and compare it with the indicators of competitors. You can check the visibility of the project using Serpstat Search Analytics module, which shows changes in visibility over the entire period of the site's existence and compares it with the indicators of the main competitors.

Clustering is the distribution of keywords into semantically similar groups (clusters). Inside the clusters, it is necessary to place the most similar in meaning keywords on one page. Keywords from different clusters should differ as much as possible. Clustering allows you to combine words by meaning, analyze semantics, group keywords for placement on the required page, and create a competent site structure. This is a time-consuming process that is better to automate, for example, using the appropriate Serpstat tool.

Text analytics is a method that allows you to determine the reasons for the low relevance of a site's content. This complex process can be automated using Serpstat. This will allow you to quickly solve the following tasks: to form a technical specification for copywriters by analyzing competitors in the top of the search results; analyze primary keywords and generate additional LSI words; expand the semantics of a specific page; optimize meta tags; improve ranking for necessary keywords, etc. Thanks to the use of text analytics, the labor costs of an SEO specialist to work with the semantic core can be significantly reduced.

Domain name is a symbolic site address used to avoid the complex IP address of a resource. The site address should be clear and concise, contain a brand name or a keyword. To analyze the structure of a domain, it is correct to read it from right to left. A top-level domain can be national (ca, uk), international (org, com), new international (app, photography), sponsored, etc. Then there is a second-level domain - the name of the site itself.

IP address (Internet Protocol address) is a unique digital identifier of a computer, site, or server operating in the global or local network. An IP address consists of a network number and a host number. The site receives its IP address from a provider or regional Internet registrar. In some cases, the IP address of the site may be blacklisted; then, it will not be possible to send letters to clients from it.

Server response code / HTTP status code is a three-digit number and small text that the server uses to signal user interaction. Server responses are divided into classes from 1 to 5: 1 - informational codes; 2 - successful execution of the request; 3 - redirecting; 4 and 5 - error codes. When changing CMS or changing URLs, it becomes necessary to set up redirects by changing codes. Using this setting, you can influence the indexing process of the resource.

CMS/management system is an engine that allows you to manage website content. With the help of CMS, you can quickly create resources, change their design based on ready-made templates and themes, add additional functionality even without programming skills. After the website is created, it is managed through the administrative panel: the content is edited, the necessary modules and plugins are added to enable SEO optimization.

JS / JavaScript is a programming language that creates dynamically updated content, animation effects, and other interactive functions that make website pages lively and attractive. Programs created with JS are called scripts. Using APIs - ready-made blocks of code - further expands the capabilities of JavaScript. However, it should be borne in mind that creating a site on a JS engine is not suitable for all projects since it complicates SEO optimization and requires more experience and effort than promoting standard HTML pages.

HTML is the standard markup language for documents on the internet. Most modern sites are created with HTML, styles and interactive elements are added using CSS and JavaScript. HTML code allows you to form the structure of a web page - headings, paragraphs, tables, lists. By interpreting the HTML code, the browser displays the formatted text. Reducing the size of the HTML code will speed up the loading speed of the project pages.

HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol) / HTTPS (HyperText Transfer Protocol Secure) are protocols used to transfer data over a network. The HTTP protocol is used to exchange data between the client (browser) and the server, making the internet work. HTTPS is an extended version of the HTTP protocol that has the advantage of providing security through data encryption.

Meta-tags are elements of HTML code that structure metadata on a page and provide additional information to search engines. These elements are added to the header of the HTML page to optimize the resource. Usually, three meta tags are used: Title, Description, and Keywords. The last tag, according to experts, does not affect the ranking of the page; however, the title and description are used when forming a snippet in search results and affect website promotion. The meta tags must be unique within your site, informative, and not spammy.

Title is a meta tag that is used as the title of the page. Title is located at the top of the page in a snippet of any site in search results; it is also used when adding a page to browser bookmarks. If the Title meta tag is empty, the search engine automatically generates it based on the page's text content. Thanks to the title, you can use more keywords and attract the attention of users. Title must be informative, readable, unique, and contain no more than 80 characters; otherwise, the search engine will cut off its ending.

Description is a meta tag that contains a short description of a page on a site. The content of the description tag is placed in the snippet below the Title tag. A well-written Description allows you to increase the site's visibility, click-through rate in search results, and traffic. The description of each page of the resource should be unique, relevant to the content, use high-frequency and medium-frequency queries, add a call to action. The recommended length is 160-170 characters.

Alt is an attribute of the img tag that contains a short description of the image using keywords. Search engine robots cannot recognize the content of images, so they get information about them using this attribute. The filled-in attribute allows you to get additional traffic from image search. When filling in the alt attribute, you should avoid spam, make the tag meaningful and not exceed 70-80 characters in length.

Keywords is a meta tag that includes a list of keywords relevant to the content of this page. It contains 3-6 keywords or phrases. Many experts believe that it makes no sense to fill in the keywords tag now since it does not affect the page's ranking. In this meta tag, you can specify several keywords that are not included in the Title and Description and are also relevant to the content of the page.

Attribute rel="nofollow" is an attribute that prohibits search bots from following either all links on a specific page or a specific hyperlink. It is recommended to use the nofollow tag in external links to non-authoritative resources, in affiliate and advertising links, and on comment pages to not lose link weight and reduce the trust level of your site. You should also use this attribute on your link profile to make it look natural to search engines.

Noindex is an attribute of the meta robots meta tag that prevents search bots from indexing website's pages. It's better to block pages that users don't find interesting and can negatively affect optimization, such as print pages, profile, and shopping cart.

Robots.txt is a text file containing directives for search robots that describe how a site should be crawled. These commands are advisory and, in some cases, can be ignored by search engines. You can edit the file in the hosting provider's control panel or using CMS modules and plugins. The main directives used in the file: user-agent - indicates which robot should follow the command; disallow - forbids indexing of any section, page, or entire site; allow - opens access to scanning a section.

Redirect is a way to automatically send a user from one site to another or different pages within one resource. Redirects are used to combat duplicate pages and save positions and traffic when creating a new version of a site page. There are 3 types of redirects used in SEO: 301 Moved Permanently - indicates a permanent page transfer to another URL. 302 Moved Temporarily - used for temporary forwarding. 307 Temporary Redirect is similar to 302 redirect and performs the same functions. When using these redirects, Google passes 100% of the link weight and PageRank of the original page.

Sitemap.xml is a file containing information about all the pages of the site that need to be indexed. Sitemap.xml includes the URL, the date the document was created and updated, the priority, and the frequency with which the crawlers should index pages. If the indexing of any pages is closed in the robots.txt file, you should not add them to the sitemap.xml. An XML map can be created using online services or special plugins; it should be dynamic (automatically updated when new pages are added to the site). You can also create a map manually by using simple tags.

Micromarkup is a way of marking up the pages of a website using a specific format that helps search engines find the information they need on a resource faster. You can use various types of micro-markup - Schema.org, Open Graph, etc. Such markup helps structure the site and display advanced search results on it - prices, ratings, reviews, contacts, etc. Thanks to the micro-markup, the site snippet becomes more attractive and informative, which increases the CTR.

Schema.org is one of the most extensive dictionaries of site micro-markup, which allows you to provide search engines with information about a resource in a structured form. The format is used to mark up various data - products, recipes, biographies, video files, bread crumbs. Schema.org micro-markup allows you to create informative snippets that provide additional information about the page and increase site traffic. This micro-markup can be added with the necessary tags to the code of HTML pages, or you can use plugins that add Schema.org tags automatically.

Open Graph is a micro-markup used to optimize the display of links to website pages on Facebook. This markup adds a title, an image, and a short description to the link to a page shared on social media. This makes the post more informative and increases the chances of the page being visited by social media users. Open Graph tags are added to the header section of the html page by placing them in the meta property meta tag. You can use additional tags to add an audio file, geolocation, age restrictions, etc. to the post.

Twitter Card is a micro-markup used to edit the visual display of a post on Twitter. This micro-markup helps the snippet be correctly formed and adds the title, picture, and summary of the HTML page. You can also automatically add media files. An informative post in this format will increase website traffic from Twitter. The publication of links in social networks is taken into account by search robots as a mention of the project and can positively impact the ranking of the site.

Breadcrumbs is a site navigation system that allows you to go to any parent category in one click. It is a chain of movement of the user through the site from the main page to the current page. Breadcrumbs improve usability and internal project optimization. Such navigation is important for sites with a complex structure; it can be omitted on landing pages and business card sites.

AMP is an accelerated mobile page that cuts additional content on the site - widgets, ads, and other optional elements. Google stores these lightweight versions of the pages in its cache to be loaded quickly from a mobile phone. The use of technology positively affects behavioral factors, reducing the likelihood that the user will leave the site without waiting for it to load. This reduces the bounce rate and improves the ranking of the resource, and improves the customer experience.

Loading speed is the time during which various software processes are executed to render a web page correctly. This includes the loading time of HTML, images, style files, and scripts, and then run JS scripts. Loading speed directly affects website usability, as well as behavioral factors and conversions. To check the speed, they most often use Google PageSpeed Insights - a service that allows you to analyze website loading speed on computers and mobile devices.

Google Analytics is an analytical service for obtaining a detailed report on visits and behavior of site users. The service provides information on the number of visitors, average session duration, bounce rate, landing and exit pages, most popular pages, traffic sources. Google Analytics has a list of 1000 requests by which users found the site, information about devices used to access the resource, and whether the goals were achieved. Analysis of the data obtained allows you to track the project promotion strategy's effectiveness and, if necessary, change it.

Google Tag Manager is a tag management system (TMS) that enables you to quickly update measurement codes and connected code parts known as tags on your website or mobile app. Once the small segment of Tag Manager code has been added to your project, you can securely and efficiently use analytics and measurement tag configurations from a web-based user interface.

Bounce rate is the ratio of sessions in which one page of a resource is viewed, and no further action is taken to the total number of sessions. A high bounce rate may indicate a low quality of the project and a lack of user interest; therefore, it refers to negative behavioral factors.

Traffic is a search term the number of users who have visited a site in a given time. Depending on the source, there are different types of traffic: organic, direct, referral, social, and advertising. Internal and external optimization aims to increase organic or search traffic. You can maximize this traffic by getting to the top of search engine results. You can personalize your Google Analytics reports to get more information about your site's traffic and audience.

Search Console is a Google service that provides extensive information about the performance of a resource. You can find out how many times the site has been shown in the search results for a certain period, how many users have switched to it, the click-through rate, and the average position of the project. However, you can only analyze the indicators in the required country.

Text factors are parameters of a site's textual content that affect its ranking. These factors include the number of keywords on the page, keywords in the title meta tag, the length of the text, the relevance of the text to user requests, etc. To create influential texts, you need to consider the content of competing sites from the top of the search results, avoid spam, use synonyms and various word forms, analyze textual factors using various services, for example, Serpstat Text Analytics module.

BM25 / Okapi BM25 is a ranking model used by search engines to generate search engine results pages. This feature is called BM25; the Okapi add-on was added after the name of the search engine developed in the 80s, where it was first used. This is a complex of ranking functions with various components and parameters, working based on the TF-IDF model - calculating the degree of importance of keywords in the text. Modern search engines also work with other ranking algorithms to provide high-quality searches.

Link building is external SEO optimization of a website that increases its link profile. External links play an essential role in ranking a resource if posted on reputable donor sites with similar topics. The main tasks of link building are finding suitable donor sites, placing links, and analyzing their effectiveness. In this case, links can be added to thematic articles, blogs, reviews, social networks, and other resources. It is important to gradually build up the link mass, use natural anchors, and add the nofollow attribute to some links so that search engines do not impose sanctions on manipulating search results.

Crowd-marketing is a way of posting links to a website in comments on forums, review sites and other popular communities. In this case, the comment serves as a hidden advertisement of a product or service and can be veiled under an honest review on a topic added by other service users. This method allows you to increase link mass and traffic, form a positive opinion about the brand, and promote a specific product.

Link profile is a set of all links and anchors to a website that directs the user to the resource being promoted. If the profile is well constructed, its pages will rank high in the search engine rankings.

Anchor is a text that appears as a link to another web page. Using various keywords in anchors is an effective way to affect the ranking of a project for these queries positively. Most often, natural links are without anchor - in the form of a site URL or general words, for example, "here", "article"; therefore, such links must be present in the site's link profile.

Anchor list is a list of anchor texts used when posting external links. Anchor is a clickable text that will redirect you to the site. When placing paid links, non-anchor links must make up 80-90%, and keywords in anchors can be added to 10-20% of the remaining links. If the anchor list contains only commercial queries ("buy", "price", etc.), then search engines may impose sanctions on the site, since their recommendations prohibit using paid links to promote the project.

Non-anchor link is a type of link that does not have a keyword as anchor text; instead of them, there are general words - "here", "there", "learn more", etc. Also, the link can be the URL of the page. Using the majority of non-anchor links in the anchor list (up to 90%) helps protect the site from search engine filters provided for buying links. It is also important that links are of different types - nofollow-links, images, redirects, etc. In this case, be sure to take into account the quality of the donor site. You can analyze already posted links and their anchors using Serpstat.

External link is a link to a site hosted on another resource. High-quality inbound links are an important ranking factor since it is considered an indicator of a site's authority for search engines. When creating an external promotion strategy, it is vital to check competitors' links, compile a varied anchor list, choose landing pages for promotion, and find trust donors of similar topics. The link mass should be gradually built up using different types of links and the minimum number of transactional anchors (up to 20%).

Internal link is a link on a site that directs the user to another page on the same resource. Internal linking allows you to redistribute link weight, increase the average bill in online stores, and improve behavioral factors by increasing the depth of site browsing and the duration of user sessions. When posting internal links, it is inappropriate to use the nofollow attribute. Placing links to various categories and subcategories of the site in the menu and bread crumbs is also part of the internal linking. It is convenient to use Serpstat to optimize internal links.

Inbound link is a link that leads to a page from another web resource. The total number of external links to the site from other projects is the external link mass, which plays a crucial role in promoting the resource. Sites linked from different resources are called acceptors; projects that post links are called donor sites. Low-quality external links and errors in their posting, e.g., the active use of transactional anchors, the lack of nofollow links, placement on non-trust donors of different topics can lead to sanctions of search engines. You can analyze inbound links to a site using Serpstat.

Outbound link is a link that leads to a page on another site. When placing outbound links to other projects, one should consider their authority and relevance to the topic; adding many links to suspicious projects can lead to sanctions by search engines. You can reduce the risk by adding the nofollow attribute to the link so that the link weight of the page is not passed on to another resource. It is also preferable to use non-anchor links - "here", "read more", etc. You can find out which links are posted on your own or a competitor's resource, as well as on the donor site, using Serpstat.

Cross-link is a link placed on all site pages: in the menu, footer, sidebars. Such links can lead to other resources or be part of the internal linking of the site. The presence of such links on high-quality donor sites has a positive effect on the promotion of the project since the acceptor receives as many links as the donor's pages. Thanks to this, the indexing of large sites is accelerated, traffic and link mass increase. The main thing is that the donor site is trustworthy, corresponds to the subject of the acceptor, is placed in the same geographic area and is not under filters or sanctions of search engines. You can check links on your site or any other site using Serpstat.

Nesting level (NL) is the position of the page in the site structure in relation to the main page. A site shouldn't have important pages with a nesting level of more than 3. At the same time, the main page has a nesting level with the highest weight - 1. Documents in one click from the main page have a nesting level of 2, etc. The lower the nesting level, the higher the importance of the page and the easier it is for both ordinary users and search robots to explore it. If the page is located further than the third nesting level, the robot may not reach and index it.

Broken link is a link that takes the user to a page/file that does not exist. Mostly, it is accompanied by an Error 404. This problem negatively affects behavioral factors and site ratings. Broken links appear when a page is deleted, or its URL changes. It is important to regularly identify and fix broken links on the site using the webmaster panel or Serpstat.

Satellite is a site created specifically to promote another resource with external links. To increase the link mass, SEOs can create a hidden network of satellite sites, each of which links to a specific project. This set of satellites is called PBN - Private Blog Network. The satellites must be of similar subject matter, not under the filters of search engines, and link to any other authoritative sites. The advantage of the method is that you can completely control the donor sites and their content. The risk lies in the possible falling under the sanctions of the search engines of both the donors and the acceptor.

PBN (Private Blog Network) is a private network of satellite sites dedicated to promoting the main project. Search engines prohibit such an optimization because it belongs to black hat methods. It is necessary to post links to your project and other authoritative resources to reduce the risk of filters and sanctions from search engines. It is also important to monitor the quality and coincidence of each satellite's content, check if it fell under the filters, etc. This type of promotion is quite complicated and requires financial investments.

Favicon is a small icon with a branded site image displayed in a browser tab or search results. The favicon can be either 16x16 or 32x32 pixels. Thanks to the branded icon, an original and memorable look of the site is provided; it is more convenient to find it in a browser with many open tabs. You can make a favicon yourself using an online generator.

Algorithms are specially designed mathematical formulas used to determine the position of resources in a search engine's ranking. Search engines decide which sites suit best to a particular query. That is, they look for the most relevant ones. This is done based on keywords. Search engines analyze the content of sites based on the algorithm, finding a keyword entered, then assigned to a resource a specific position. Different search engines have different algorithms.

BERT (Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers) is a Google update to implement neural networks and natural language processing. The technology makes it possible to understand the intent of a user's request even without keywords and form search results of relevant answers. The algorithm allows you to analyze complex keywords by checking the relationship of each word with the parts of the query before and after it. The algorithm update hurt sites with over-optimized texts that did not present any benefit to visitors.

Google Core Update is a large-scale meaningful change made by a search engine in its ranking algorithm every quarter. It affects many previously indexed pages. Such an update involves shuffling the search rankings of sites to improve the relevance and quality of search results. The formula by which rankings are performed is changed. Examples of such Google Core updates include BERT, Penguin, and Mobilegeddon.

Manual sanctions are semi-automatic measures applied in situations where algorithms cannot cope. It takes time to remove poor-quality pages from the index. Therefore, manual sanctions are applied when sites that violate the search engine's quality policy are reported. For example, in the case of fraud. The main danger of such is the long-term nature of the negative consequences. Sanctions may continue even after the restrictions have been removed from the site.