SEO Acronyms & Abbreviations (Full A-Z List)

SEO acronyms and abbreviations are important terms that everyone who is interested in search engine optimization should know.

People in the SEO industry often use short words and phrases to represent important jargon and meanings that are common among search engine experts.

And if you want to be well-prepared throughout your SEO career and understand the details of SEO news updates, then this complete list of SEO abbreviations and acronyms is a good place to find out what they all mean.

Below, you’ll find the most common SEO terms, definitions, and slang on search engine optimization in alphabetical order. So read through them all one by one if you’re new to the industry or scan through the list to find a particular acronym or abbreviation you need the SEO meaning for right now.

When you’re done here, you may also want to read my introduction guide on what is SEO to get an in-depth understanding of the topic. I also have a collection of SEO case study examples to learn more about search engine optimization to rank your content higher on Google.

SEO Acronyms and Abbreviations List

Numbers

Acronym Meaning
200 The request has succeeded and is being processed
201 The request is successful and as a result, a resource has been created
202 The request has been accepted for processing, but the processing has not been completed
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 – the server understood the request but refuses to fulfill it)
404 Resource not found
503 The server is unavailable (usually a temporary response due to overloading or maintenance)

A

Acronym Meaning
AJAX Asynchronous Javascript and XML
ALT Alternative Text Attribute
AOV Average order value
API Application Program Interface
AR Augmented reality
AS Article Submission
ASP Application service provider
ASP.NET A program that runs inside IIS which allows web programmers to build dynamic websites on Microsoft servers
ATD Agency trading desk
AV AltaVista

B

Acronym Meaning
B2B Business to Business
B2C Business to Consumer
BH Black Hat
BHW Black Hat world
BL Backlink
BR Bounce rate

C

Acronym Meaning
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 Sheets
CTA Call to Action
CTR Click Through Rate
CX Customer experience

D

Acronym Meaning
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
DR Direct response
DS Directory Results Pages
DRPs Directory Submission
DSP Demand-side platform
DSRP Directory Search Results Page

E

Acronym Meaning
ECPC Enhanced Cost Per Click
EMD Exact Match Domain
EPC Earnings per click
EPM Earnings per thousand
ERD Education referring domains
ESP Email service provider

F

Acronym Meaning
FBML Facebook Markup Language
FCP Frequently Cached Page
FFA Free For All Pages
FTP File transfer protocol

G

Acronym Meaning
G+ Google Plus
GA Google Analytics
GAP Google Advertising Professional
GAS Guaranteed Article Submission
GDS Guaranteed Directory Submission
GIS Google Image Search
GIY Google It Yourself
GRD Government referring domains
GSC Google Search Console
GTM Google Tag Manager
GUI Graphical user interface
GWT Google Webmaster Tools
GYM Google Yahoo MSN

H

Acronym Meaning
H1 Level 1 heading markup
H2 Level 2 heading markup
H3 Level 3 heading markup
H4 Level 4 heading markup
H5 Level 5 heading markup
Href HypertextReference
HTML Hypertext Markup Language
HTTP HyperText Transfer Protocol
HTTPS Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure

I

Acronym Meaning
IBL In Bound Links
IDF Inverse Document Frequency
IFTTT If this than that
IM Internet Marketing
IP Internet Protocol (Address)
ISP Internet Service Providers

J

Acronym Meaning
JGI Just Google It

K

Acronym Meaning
KD Keyword Density
KDA Keyword Density Analyzer
KEI Keyword Effectiveness Index

L

Acronym Meaning
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

M

Acronym Meaning
MCP Moderately Cached Page
MFA Made For Advertising
MQL Marketing qualified Lead
MTO Meta Tags Optimization
MVT Multivariate testing

N

Acronym Meaning
NAP Name Address Phone Number
NSEO Negative SEO

O

Acronym Meaning
OBL Outbound Link
ODP Open Directory Project
ORM Online Reputation Management
OS Operating system (sometimes this is used for ‘open source’)
OSE Open Site Explorer
OWBL One Way Back Link

P

Acronym Meaning
P4P Paid For Placement
PBN Private Blog Network
PDF Portable Document Format
PFI Pay For Inclusion
PFL Paid For Listings
PFP Pay for Performance
PHP Hypertext Preprocessor
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
PR Page Rank
PV Pageviews

Q

Acronyms Meaning
QA Quality assurance
QS Quality score

R

Acronym Meaning
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

S

Acronyms Meaning
SaaS Software as a service
SB Social Bookmarking
SD Semantic Distance
SE Search Engine
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 optimisation
SMP Social media platform
SNS Social Networking Service
SQL Sales qualified lead
SRM Search Reputation Management
SSI Server Side Includes
SSL Secure Sockets Layer
SSP Supply-side platform
STW Search The Web
SWL SiteWide Link

T

Acronym Meaning
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
TSETSB The Search Engine That Spam Built
TTF Topical Trust Flow

U

Acronym Meaning
UCD User-centric design
UI User interface
UR Url Ranking
URL Uniform Resource Locator
USP Unique Selling Point
USP Unique selling proposition
UTM Urchin Tracking Module
UV Unique visitor
UX User experience

V

Acronym Meaning
VA Virtual Assistant
VIPS Visual-block Page Segmentation
VOD Video on demand

W

Acronym Meaning
W3C World Wide Web Consortium
WH White Hat
WMT Web Master Tools
WMW Webmaster World
WOMM Word of mouth marketing
WWW World Wide Web
WYSIWYG What you see is what you get

X

Acronym Meaning
XHTML Extensible HyperText Markup Language
XML Extensible Markup Language

Y

Acronym Meaning
Y! Yahoo!
Y2K Year Two Thousand
YOY Year on year
YTD Year to date

SEO Abbreviations and Acronyms Summary

I hope you enjoyed this list of SEO acronyms and SEO abbreviations.

As you get deeper into your SEO career, you’ll find more and more people using these search engine optimization terms and jargon in their communications with each other.

Additionally, many of these terms apply across other businesses and industries outside of SEO. Therefore, it’s good to learn the most common SEO meanings so you can communicate properly with other marketers as an SEO specialist.

SEO Acronyms & Abbreviations