30 SEO Terms Cannabis Companies Should Know

Immersing yourself in the vocabulary and jargon of SEO feels a lot like learning an entirely new language! Familiarizing yourself with the abbreviations and specific definitions of common words can be overwhelming at the start. In this blog, I’ve compiled 30 of the top SEO terms the cannabis and CBD companies should know, organized alphabetically. Come back to this page as needed, and let me know if you think I should add more terms!

30 Terms Cannabis Companies Should Know (+ 1 bonus word)

1. Alt-text

   1. HTML code that describes images

2. Backlinks

   1. Inbound links from other websites that point or link to your website.

3. Black hat

   1. SEO practices that don’t comply with Google’s guidelines.

4. Bots

   1. Also called “crawlers”, these crawl the internet to find content

5. Cache

   1. A saved version of your page.

6. Crawling

   1. How search engines discover your page.

7. Featured snippets

   1. Organic answer boxes that appear at the top of certain search queries.

8. Header tags

   1. HTML element used to designate headings and page content on a page. Name in order of importance for crawling (H₁, H₂, H₃, H₄)

9. Indexing

   1. How search engines store the information they find while crawling your page.

10. Informational intent

    1. Searcher wants to find answers to their questions or unclear and looking for further information. Awareness phase of the buyer’s journey. Also called ambiguous intent.

11. Internal links

    1. Links on your site that point to other pages on your site.

12. Keyword difficulty

    1. An estimated numerical score of how difficult it is for a site to outrank the competitors.

13. Keyword stuffing

    1. Spam tactic where you overuse important keywords and variants in content and links.

14. Long-tail keywords

    1. Long queries, typically containing more than three words. Specific search intent.

15. LSI keywords

    1. Latent semantic indexing. Thematic keywords that relate to and support your main or seed keywords. Provide context for crawlers and work well in blogs

16. Meta descriptions

    1. HTML elements that describe page contents. May be used in place of description line on research results pages.

17. Navigational intent

    1. Searcher wants to find a specific brand or get to a certain page location. Consideration phase of the buyer’s journey. Also called navigational queries.

18. Organic

    1. Earned placement, as opposed to paid.

19. PageRank

    1. A link analysis program that estimates the importance of a page by measuring the quantity and quality of links pointing to it. Part of the core Google algorithm

20. Query

    1. What is typed in the search bar.

21. Ranking

    1. The order search results appear by relevance to the query.

22. Regional keywords

    1. Keywords unique or specific to a location.

23. Search intent

    1. What a user wants when they type a search.

24. Search volume

    1. The number of times a keyword was searched, usually in a month.

25. Seed keyword

    1. Primary words or keywords to describe your product or service. Also called primary or focus keywords.

26. SEM

    1. Search engine marketing.

27. SEO

    1. Search engine optimization. The strategy through which you increase your organic search engine ranking to bring in new site visitors and increase sales

28. SERP

    1. Search engine results page. The page that appears after you hit enter on your query.

29. Short-tail keywords

    1. Short queries.

30. Transactional intent

    1. Searcher wants to take action and is looking to buy something. Bottom of marketing funnel, decision-making phase of the buyer’s journey. Also called transactional queries.

31. White hat

    1. SEO practices that comply with Google’s guidelines.