200+ SEO Acronyms & Abbreviations (Must Know Terms)
This guide includes over 200 SEO acronyms and abbreviations used by professionals.
One of the most common acronyms used in digital marketing is SEO, which stands for Search Engine Optimization. SEO is a practice of Search Engine Marketing that seeks to improve search engine rankings. This primarily includes Google, but can also include other search engines like Bing.
There are a few specific areas of SEO, which include the following:
- On-page SEO – Refers to “on-page” copy edits.
- Off-page SEO – Refers to “off-page” efforts like building.
- Content Marketing – The publishing of content to improve SEO.
In addition to these basics, there are over 200 SEO terms that you should know…
List of 200+ SEO Acronyms
| Acronym | Description |
|---|---|
| AJAX | Asynchronous Javascript and XML |
| AOV | Average Order Value |
| API | Application Program Interface |
| AR | Augmented Reality |
| AS | Article Submission |
| ASP | Application service provider |
| ASP.NET | A program that runs insidee IIS which allows web programmers to build dynamic websites on Microsoft servers. |
| ATD | Agency Trading Desk |
| AV | AltaVista |
| B2B | Business to Business |
| B2C | Business to Consumer |
| BH | Blackhat |
| BHW | Blackhat World |
| BL | Bright Local |
| BR | Bounce Rate |
| ccTLD | country code Top-level Domain |
| CAPTCHA | Completely Automated Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart |
| CF | Citation flow |
| CGI | Common Gateway Interface |
| CLV | Customer Lifetime Value |
| CMS | Content Management System |
| COA | Cost of Acquisition |
| CPA | Cost per Acquisition |
| CPC | Cost per Click |
| CPI | Cost per Impression |
| CPL | Cost per Lead |
| CPM | Cost per Thousands |
| CPO | Cost per Order |
| CPV | Cost per View |
| CR | Conversion Rate |
| CRM | Customer Relationship Management |
| CRO | Conversion Rate Optimization |
| CSE | Comparison Shopping Engine/Custom Search Engine |
| CSS | Cascading Style Sheet |
| CTA | Call to Action |
| CTR | Click-through Rate |
| CWV | Core Wev Vitals |
| CX | Customer Experience |
| DA | Domain Authority |
| DC | Data Center |
| DFO | Data Feed Optimization |
| DKI | Dynamic Keyword Insertion |
| DLP | Directory Listings Page |
| DLR | Deep Link Ratio |
| DMCA | Digital Millennium Copyright Act |
| DMOZ | Directory – Mozilla |
| DMP | Data Management Platform |
| DNS | Domain Name System |
| DR | Domain Ranking |
| DS | Directory Results Pages |
| DRPs | Directory Submission |
| DSP | Demand-side Platform |
| DSRP | Directory Search Results Page |
| ECPC | Enhanced Cost Per Click |
| EMD | Exact Match Domain |
| EMQ | Exact Match Query |
| EPC | Earnings per Click |
| EPM | Earnings per Thousand |
| ERD | Education Referring Domains |
| ESP | Email Service Provider |
| FB | |
| FBML | Facebook Markup Language |
| FCP | Frequently Cached Page |
| FFA | Free for All Pages |
| FTP | File Transfer Protocol |
| G | |
| G+ | Google Plus |
| GA | Google Analytics |
| GA4 | Google Analytics 4 |
| GAP | Google Advertising Professional |
| GAS | Guaranteed Article Submission |
| GBP | Google Business Profile |
| GDS | Guaranteed Directory Submission |
| GIS | Google Image Search |
| GIY | Google It Yourself |
| GKP | Google Knowledge Panel |
| GRD | Government referring domains |
| GSC | Google Search Console |
| GTM | Google Tag Manager |
| GUI | Graphical user interface |
| GWT | Google Webmaster Tools |
| GYM | Google Yahoo MSN |
| H1 | Heading Level 6 HTML Markup |
| H2 | Heading Level 6 HTML Markup |
| H3 | Heading Level 6 HTML Markup |
| H4 | Heading Level 6 HTML Markup |
| H5 | Heading Level 6 HTML Markup |
| H6 | Heading Level 6 HTML Markup |
| Href | Hypertext Reference |
| HTML | Hypertext Markup Language |
| HTTP | HyperText Transfer Protocol |
| HTTPS | Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure |
| IBL | Inbound Links |
| IDF | Inverse Document Frequency |
| IG | |
| IFTTT | If This, Then That |
| IM | Internet Marketing |
| IP | Internet Protocol (Address) |
| ISP | Internet Service Providers |
| JGI | Just Google It |
| KW | Keyword |
| KWR | Keyword Research |
| LB | Link Building |
| LPO | Landing Page Optimization |
| LSA | Latent Semantic Analysis |
| LSEO | Local SEO |
| LSI | Latent Semantic Indexing |
| LTKW | Long Tail keyword |
| LTV | Lifetime Value |
| LV | Local Viking |
| MCP | Moderately Cached Page |
| MFA | Made For Advertising |
| MQL | Marketing qualified Lead |
| MTO | Meta Tags Optimization |
| MVT | Multivariate testing |
| NAP | Name Address Phone Number |
| NSEO | Negative SEO |
| OBL | Outbound Link |
| ODP | Open Directory Project |
| ORM | Online Reputation Management |
| OS | Operating System (or Open Source) |
| OSE | Open Site Explorer |
| OWBL | One Way Back Link |
| P4P | Paid For Placement |
| PA | Page Authority |
| PBN | Private Blog Network |
| Portable Document Format | |
| PFI | Pay for Inclusion |
| PFL | Paid for Listings |
| PFP | Pay for Performance |
| PHP | Hypertext Preprocessor |
| PMQ | Partial Match Query |
| PPC | Pay per Click |
| PPCSE | Pay per Click Search Engine |
| PPL | Pay per Lead |
| PPR | Pay per Rank |
| PPS | Pay per Sale |
| PR | Press Release |
| PV | Pageviews |
| QA | Quality Assurance |
| QS | Quality Score |
| RD | Referring Domains |
| RFI | Request for information |
| RI | Regular Index |
| RM | Reputation Management |
| ROI | Return on Investment |
| RON | Run of Network |
| ROR | Ruby on Rails |
| ROS | Run of Site |
| RSS | Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary |
| RTD | Real Time Data |
| RTL | Regional Long Tail |
| SaaS | Software as a Service |
| SAB | Service Area Business |
| SB | Social Bookmarking |
| SD | Semantic Distance |
| SDTT | Structured Data Testing Tool |
| SE | Search Engine |
| SEJ | Search Engine Journal |
| SEM | Search Engine Marketing |
| SEO | Search engine optimisation |
| SEOs | Search Engine Optimization Performance |
| SEP | Search Engine Positioning |
| SER | Search Engine Ranking |
| SERM | Search Engine Results Management |
| SERP | Search Engine Results Page |
| SES | Search Engine Strategies |
| SEW | Search Engine Watch |
| SI | Supplemental Index |
| SLA | Service Level Agreement |
| SMB | Small and Medium Businesses |
| SMEs | Small And Medium-Sized Enterprises |
| SMM | Social Media Marketing |
| SMO | Social Media Optimization |
| SMP | Social Media Platform |
| SNS | Social Networking Service |
| SQL | Sales Qualified Lead (or Structured Query Language) |
| SRM | Search Reputation Management |
| SSI | Server Side Includes |
| SSL | Secure Sockets Layer |
| SSP | Supply-side platform |
| STW | Search the Web |
| SVG | Scalable Vector Graphic |
| SWL | SiteWide Link |
| TBPR | Toolbar PageRank |
| TF | Trust Flow |
| TF-IDF | Term Frequency-inverse Document Frequency |
| TLD | Top Level Domain |
| TLP | Top Level Page |
| ToS | Terms of Service |
| TR | Trust Rank |
| TTF | Topical Trust Flow |
| UA | Universal Analytics |
| UCD | User-centric Design |
| UI | User Interface |
| UR | Url Ranking |
| URL | Uniform Resource Locator |
| USP | Unique Selling Point |
| UTM | Urchin Tracking Module |
| UV | Unique Visitor |
| UX | User Experience |
| VA | Virtual Assistant |
| VIPS | Visual-block Page Segmentation |
| VOD | Video on Demand |
| W3C | World Wide Web Consortium |
| WH | Whitehat |
| WMT | Web Master Tools |
| WMW | Webmaster World |
| WOMM | Word of Mouth Marketing |
| WP | WordPress |
| WWW | World Wide Web |
| XHTML | Extensible HyperText Markup Language |
| XML | Extensible Markup Language |
| Y! | Yahoo! |
| Y2K | Year Two Thousand |
| YoY | Year on year |
| YT | YouTube |
| YTD | Year to date |
| 301 | Resource Moved Permanently (A permanent redirect code to a new domain or location) |
| 302 | Resource Moved Temporarily (A temporary redirect code to a new domain or location) |
| 401 | Unauthorized Access to Resource (requires authentication) |
| 403 | Forbidden Access (not allowed, server understood the request but refuses to fulfill it) |
| 404 | Resource / page not found |
| 503 | The server is unavailable (usually a temporary response due to overloading or maintenance) |
You don’t need to know all of them, but many of these are used on a weekly basis.
Being familiar with the list will put you ahead of most traditional marketers, and enable you to have better conversations.
Happy SEO-ing 🙂