R

Rankings

Position of a website in Google. Google and other search engines calculate their search results for keywords using highly complex algorithms. The individual ranking factors and their weighting within the ranking calculation are well-guarded intellectual property that belongs to the search engines and is not publicly disclosed.

Ranking Factor

Contributes to the position of a website on Search Engines.

number of backlinks
sitemap and internal linking
usage of keywords in text elements like meta titles, meta descriptions, text etc.
term optimization of content, based on comparison with other documents on the same topic (proof and relevant terms, topic/content clusters, WDF*IDF)
URL structure
trust assigned to the page
page load time (site speed)
time on site and bounce rate (here: how long a visitor spends on the page before they return to the SERP)
CTR in the SERPs, i.e. how often searchers click on the result
and presumably many other factors like page traffic, authorship, how up-to-date a page is
etc.

Reputation management (online/SEO)

Search engine reputation management services focus on the first page of Google results. But it also digs much deeper into the SERPs. Positive content that has been submerged past page 3 may need to be pulled up.

Reputation management SEO strategies curate search results to provide the most positive first impression of a business or individual. But to do so, that means ranking multiple properties in search engine results, not just the one you own. This can prove especially challenging if you don’t have control of the site.

Reciprocal Links

Is an agreement between two webmasters to provide a hyperlink within their own website to each other's site. Generally this is done to provide readers with quick access to related sites, or to show a partnership between two sites.

Redirect

Also called URL forwarding, is a World Wide Web technique for making a web page available under more than one URL address. When a web browser attempts to open a URL that has been redirected, a page with a different URL is opened.

301: Permanent
302: Temporary

Referrer

The address of the webpage where a person clicked a link that sent them to your page. The referrer is the webpage that sends visitors to your site using a link. In other words, it's the webpage that a person was on right before they landed on your page.

Reinclusion

Relevance

Describes the extent to which the content of a website corresponds to the search term used. The relevance of a website's content is particularly important for search engines; it affects how high a website will appear in the search results for a given search term.

Responsive Website

Is the approach that suggests that design and development should respond to the user's behavior and environment based on screen size, platform and orientation. The practice consists of a mix of flexible grids and layouts, images and an intelligent use of CSS media queries.

Rich Snippet

Structured data can be added to the HTML of a website to provide contextual information to the search engines during crawling. This information can then be displayed in the SERPs, resulting in an enhanced listing, known as a rich snippet.

Rich cards

Rich cards are a new type of mobile-optimised search result format developed from rich snippets.

Robots.txt (robots exclusion standard)

The Robots.txt file is used as a communication method to control indexing from search engine bots. It is possible to allow and disallow all or specific search engines on areas of a website.

Robots Meta Tag

Is a tag that tells search engines what to follow and what not to follow. It is a piece of code in the <head> section of your webpage. It's a simple code that gives you the power to decide about what pages you want to hide from search engine crawlers and what pages you want them to index and look at.

ROI (Return On Investment)

ROI, short for Return On Investment, refers to the benefit that can be received from a service or action. A way to measure the performance of SEO activities. This is calculated by dividing how much revenue you earned via organic search by the cost of the total investment, then multiplying by 100.

Root domain

Is the overarching structure that contains the subdomains (http://blog.example.com), and every folder (/seo/article) that belongs to a website. Let's illustrate this with an example: Root Domain is the site name that you need to buy or register with a TLD extension.