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SEO Glossary
72 SEO terms explained in plain English.
Search marketing comes with a lot of jargon. This glossary explains the terms you will see in audits, reports and our conversations with you, in short and simple definitions.
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0-9
- 301 redirect
- A permanent redirect that sends visitors and search engines from an old URL to a new one and passes on most of the old page's signals.
- 404 error
- The response a server gives when a page does not exist. A few are normal; many broken internal links are worth fixing.
A
- AI Overviews
- AI-generated summaries that Google shows above some search results, built from information on several web pages.
- Alt text
- A short text description of an image in the HTML. It helps screen reader users and tells search engines what the image shows.
- Anchor text
- The clickable words in a link. Descriptive anchor text helps users and search engines understand the linked page.
B
- Backlink
- A link from another website to yours. Relevant links from trusted sites are one of the strongest ranking signals.
- Bounce rate
- In older analytics, the share of sessions with only one page view. GA4 uses engagement rate instead.
C
- Canonical tag
- A tag that tells search engines which URL is the main version of a page when similar versions exist.
- Citation
- A mention of your business name, address and phone number on another site, such as a directory. Important for local SEO.
- Click-through rate (CTR)
- The share of people who click your result after seeing it in search. Titles and descriptions influence it.
- Core Web Vitals
- Google's user experience metrics for loading (LCP), responsiveness (INP) and visual stability (CLS).
- Crawl budget
- Roughly how many pages a search engine will crawl on your site in a given time. It matters most on large sites.
- Crawler
- A program, such as Googlebot, that visits web pages and follows links to discover content.
- Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)
- A Core Web Vital that measures how much content jumps around while a page loads.
D
- Duplicate content
- The same or very similar content on more than one URL, which can split signals between pages.
E
- E-E-A-T
- Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness: qualities Google's quality raters look for, especially on health, money and legal topics.
F
- Featured snippet
- A highlighted answer shown at the top of some search results, taken from one web page.
- First Contentful Paint (FCP)
- The time until the first text or image appears on screen while a page loads.
G
- GA4
- Google Analytics 4, Google's current analytics platform, which measures events such as page views, form submissions and purchases.
- Google Business Profile
- Your free business listing on Google Search and Maps, showing details such as hours, reviews, photos and services.
- Google Search Console
- A free Google tool that shows how your site performs in search and reports indexing and technical issues.
H
- Headings (H1 to H6)
- HTML tags that structure page content. Usually one H1 for the main topic, with H2s and H3s for sections.
- Hreflang
- A tag that tells search engines which language or country version of a page to show to which users.
I
- Impressions
- How many times your page appeared in search results, whether or not anyone clicked.
- Indexing
- When a search engine stores a page in its index so it can appear in results.
- Interaction to Next Paint (INP)
- A Core Web Vital that measures how quickly a page responds to clicks, taps and key presses.
- Internal links
- Links from one page on your site to another. They help users and spread authority through the site.
J
- JavaScript SEO
- Making sure content and links that rely on JavaScript can be rendered and indexed by search engines.
K
- Keyword
- A word or phrase people type into a search engine. In practice, pages target topics and groups of related keywords.
- Keyword cannibalisation
- When several pages on one site compete for the same search, often weakening all of them.
- Keyword density
- How often a word appears compared with the total words on a page. Useful as a sanity check, not a target.
- Keyword difficulty
- A third-party estimate of how hard it is to rank for a keyword, usually based on competitors' links.
L
- Landing page
- The page a visitor first arrives on, from search, an ad or another link.
- Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)
- A Core Web Vital that measures how long the main content of a page takes to load.
- Link building
- Earning links from other websites through useful content, outreach, partnerships and digital PR.
- Local pack
- The map and list of local businesses shown near the top of Google for searches with local intent.
- Long-tail keyword
- A longer, more specific search phrase. Each has fewer searches but often clearer intent.
M
- Meta description
- A short summary in the HTML that search engines may show under your title in results.
- Meta robots tag
- A tag that tells search engines whether to index a page and follow its links, such as noindex or nofollow.
- Mobile-first indexing
- Google mainly uses the mobile version of a page for indexing and ranking.
N
- NAP
- Name, Address and Phone: business details that should match across your website, Google Business Profile and directories.
- Nofollow
- A link attribute asking search engines not to pass ranking credit through a link. Sponsored and UGC are related attributes.
- Noindex
- A directive that tells search engines not to include a page in their index.
O
- Off-page SEO
- Activity outside your website that affects rankings, mainly links, mentions and reviews.
- On-page SEO
- Optimising elements on a page, such as titles, headings, content, images and internal links.
- Organic traffic
- Visitors who arrive from unpaid search results.
- Orphan page
- A page with no internal links pointing to it, which makes it hard for users and crawlers to find.
P
- PageSpeed Insights
- A free Google tool that tests page speed and Core Web Vitals and suggests fixes.
- Pagination
- Splitting long lists, such as product categories or blog archives, across several pages.
- People Also Ask
- A box of related questions in Google results, each expanding to show a short answer.
- PPC
- Pay-per-click advertising, such as Google Ads, where you pay each time someone clicks your ad.
R
- Ranking factor
- Any signal a search engine uses to decide the order of results.
- Redirect chain
- Several redirects in a row before reaching the final page. They slow pages and waste crawl budget.
- Rich results
- Search results with extra features such as stars, FAQs, prices or events, often enabled by structured data.
- Robots.txt
- A file that tells crawlers which parts of a site they should not crawl.
S
- Schema markup
- Structured data added to a page so search engines understand things like businesses, products, events and FAQs.
- Search intent
- What the searcher actually wants: information, a specific site, to compare options or to buy.
- SERP
- Search Engine Results Page: the page of results you see after searching.
- Site architecture
- How pages are organised and linked together, from the homepage down to individual pages.
- Sitemap (XML)
- A file listing the URLs you want search engines to find and crawl.
- Structured data
- Code in a standard format, usually JSON-LD, that describes the content of a page to search engines.
T
- Technical SEO
- Work that helps search engines crawl, render and index your site, such as speed, structure and fixing errors.
- Thin content
- Pages with little useful or original content, which rarely rank well.
- Title tag
- The HTML title of a page, usually shown as the clickable headline in search results.
U
- URL slug
- The part of a URL that identifies a specific page, such as /local-seo.
- User-generated content (UGC)
- Content created by users, such as reviews, comments and forum posts.
W
- White label SEO
- SEO work delivered by one agency under another agency's brand.
Z
- Zero-click search
- A search where the user gets an answer on the results page and does not click any result.
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