SEO Glossary: Do You Know All of These SEO Terms?

Anchor Text

The clickable text that you use to send users to another webpage. For example, if I included a link to our SEO anchor text article, SEO anchor text is the anchor text for this link!

Alt Text

Alt text is used to describe an image for search engines and screen readers. It’s one of the key ways you can make your site accessible for all visitors.

Backlink

Backlinks are inbound links from other websites that point to your website. Do backlinks still add value to your site? I asked SEO experts to share their thoughts on the strategy.

Bounce Rate

This metric shows the percentage of people that visit an individual page of your website and then leave – or bounce – before visiting another page.

Crawling

This is the process of using a program, such as a bot or spider, to “crawl” websites and gather information, in order to add to a search engine’s index. This helps relevant websites and pages appear in search results.

External Link

External links are links that direct from your site to a different site. For example, if I linked to Google’s homepage in this SEO glossary, that would be an external link.

Header Tags

Header tags, such as H1s, H2s, and H3s, help search engines understand your content’s structure. For example, the H1 tag is recognized as the headline, marked as the most important heading on the page, H2s are headings within the content, H3s are subheadings, and so on.

HTTPS

HTTPS stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure and it protects the transfer of data between a browser and server.

Indexability

The indexability of a website reflects how easy it is for a search engine to understand and store your pages in its index.

Internal Link

Internal links direct readers to other content on your website, encouraging them to stay on your site for longer. They can be added to your website’s copy, navigation bar, or related content elements.

Keyword

The words and phrases that users input into a search engine and, therefore, the words and phrases that website owners target on their websites. The aim of using keywords is to drive people who have searched for that word or phrase to your website.

Landing Page

A unique page on your website that a person is led to via a link, whether that’s through your navigation bar or directly from a search result.

Meta Description

Like alt text for images, meta descriptions describe or summarize each page’s content. This can be useful for Google, which will often display the meta description in search results, giving users a snippet of what the page is about.

Meta Title

The meta title, also known as the title tag, is displayed as the title of the web page alongside meta descriptions in the search results.

Off-Page Optimization 

The process of optimizing your pages for factors that sit outside of your website, such as backlinks and directory listings, in order to appear in search results.

On-Page Optimization 

The process of optimizing your pages for factors that are within your control and on your website, such as on-page content and image alt tags, in order to appear in search results.

Organic Search Results

Organic search results are unpaid listings that appear in the SERPs, meaning these pages naturally rank and can’t be purchased or replaced with ads.

Ranking

Your website’s position, or rank, in search results. The higher your page ranks, the more likely you’ll be rewarded with a boost in traffic since more people will see your site at the top of their search result.

Search Engine

A computer program that allows users to input a query or question in order to retrieve information from the program’s index, usually made up of web pages and websites. Google, Bing, and Yahoo are all search engines.

Search Engine Results Page (SERP)

The page of results that a search engine presents to users once they have made their initial query. A SERP is usually made up of around 10 different web pages and online resources.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

What is SEO? SEO is the process of optimizing your website and content to rank well in search engines. This results in more traffic to your site.

Traffic

This refers to how many people visit your website.

URL

A URL (or uniform resource locator) is a web address, such as www.websitebuilderexpert.com, that you click on or enter into your browser of choice. This then directs you to a website or specific web page.

Visibility

How often your website appears in a search engine’s organic search results. Read more about identifying your site’s SEO visibility score in our detailed guide.

Breadcrumb Navigation

Using internal links to guide users (and search engines) along a set journey. Like the name, you’re leaving a trail of breadcrumbs for them to follow.

Cannibalization

This isn’t the kind of cannibalization you’re thinking of. Cannibalization in the world of SEO is where multiple pages on your website compete with one another for the same keywords. It’s better to let one page rank well, rather than provide multiple pages that all suffer in the SERPs.

Content Calendar

A schedule of when and where you’ll publish content for your audience, covering platforms such as social media, your website, and YouTube.

Content Curation 

Finding the best content about a given topic and sharing it with your audience in one place.

Content Marketing

A form of marketing based around the creation and sharing of engaging content, such as articles and blog posts, videos, and podcasts. The aim of content marketing is to grow brand awareness, build trust, and stimulate interest in your products and services, as opposed to solely promoting your brand.

➡️ Should you use SEO or PPC to market your business? Our guide walks you through the pros and cons.

Content Optimization 

The process of producing content in a way that ensures it will reach the widest audience possible. Steps include frequently mentioning your target keywords/search terms, and writing detailed meta and title tags.

Customer Journey

The interactions customers have with your business as they progress through the sales funnel, usually from initial awareness of your brand to completing a purchase. The customer journey also encompasses the experiences a person has with your business post-purchase.

Evergreen Content

Content that doesn’t go out of date and that can be re-shared time and time again in the future.

Keyword Difficulty

This metric identifies how difficult it will be to rank for your chosen keyword.

Keyword Stuffing

Overloading your content with repeated mentions of the same or similar keywords to boost your site’s rankings. This is a bad SEO practice to follow and could result in your page being penalized.

Long-Tail Keywords

Long-tail keywords are usually very specific and include multiple words. For example, “website builder” is a traditional keyword, whereas “easy website builders for students” is a long-tail keyword. These terms are usually easier to rank for, but they aren’t as commonly searched for.

User-Generated Content (UGC)

User-generated content is original content themed around your brand that is created by your audience or other users and shared online, usually on social media.

YMYL

YMYL stands for Your Money or Your Life, and it’s used to describe content that could have a real impact on a person’s life. For example, this would include content about money or health.

Local Business Schema

This structured data is used by local businesses to help search engines identify and highlight relevant search results for the local area.

Local Citations

Mention of your business name, website, address, or contact information on another website.

Local Keyword Research

Uncovering the key search terms your local target audience are inputting into search engines. The outcome of this research will allow you to create a list of keywords to target.

Geo-Targeting

The process of delivering different content or ads to users based on their geographical location.

Google Business Profile

A free tool allowing local businesses to list their business on Google, showcasing key information such as contact details, reviews, and opening hours.

NAP Consistency

This refers to the accuracy of your name, address, and phone number when mentioned online. Every citation or mention should state all three in the same way.

Canonical Tag

HTML code (rel=”canonical”) that informs search engines which page is the main version.

Canonical URL

A canonical URL is the best address for a webpage. Sometimes you may have a piece of content that can be accessed in more than one way, the canonical URL tells the search engine which address it should use.

Crawl Budget

The average number of pages a search engine bot will crawl from your website, and how quickly it will do so.

Meta Robots Tag

HTML code that instructs search engines, like Google, on how to crawl your website’s page.

Mobile First Indexing

A process used by Google whereby it crawls the mobile version of your website.

Nofollow

Nofollow is added to a link to tell search engines to ignore the page being linked to. It’s used to hint that you give no endorsement or value to the page.

Noindex Tag

Like the nofollow attribute, the noindex tag instructs search engines to not include a specific page in its index.

Page Speed

Page speed is simply how long it takes for a web page to fully load. The faster your page speed, the better – free online tools like PageSpeed Insights can help you measure your own website’s performance. You’ll often get suggestions on how to improve your speed too!

Robots.txt

This is a text file that tells search engines which areas of your website to crawl and rank and which areas to ignore (e.g. there’s no point in a search engine ranking your shopping cart page in search listings, so you can tell it to ignore this page when crawling your site).

Sitemap

A sitemap lists every single webpage on your website that you want Google (or any other search engine) to index and rank. It is literally what the name suggests – a map of your website.

SSL Certificate

An SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificate is used by websites to encrypt data and generate a secure connection between a server and browser.

Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)

An HTML framework created by Google that makes simpler and fast-loading versions of your web pages that are optimized for mobile users.

Black Hat SEO

Tactics and strategies that go against a search engine’s guidelines. You’re essentially trying to exploit the algorithm to work in your favor.

Content Clustering

Creating a group of pages that focus on a particular subject. The content cluster builds connections between the pages, and includes one page that describes or explains the topic, and is usually treated as the “pillar” or main page.

Domain Authority (DA)

Domain authority is a metric used to give a domain a score based on the likelihood that it will rank well in search results.

Domain Rating (DR)

This metric refers to a website’s backlink profile and how strong it is in comparison to other sites.

Pagination

When people can navigate between multiple pages by clicking numbered buttons or links, such as “Next” or “Load More.” This helps to break up large pages and is often used for blogs.

Parasite SEO

Parasite SEO is a strategy where you leverage the authority and strength of a third-party website to boost your own site’s status in search engines.

Rich Snippets

A snippet is the title and brief description that the search engine displays in its results. A rich snippet is a more enhanced version of this that displays even more data such as a review rating.

Schema Markup

Custom code that allows search engines to better understand the content of your website and display it correctly in search results.

➡️ Read our detailed guide to find out more about the role of schema markup in ecommerce SEO.

Structured Data

Structured data gives context to search engines about your website and web pages.

Tiered Link Building

Generating links to external websites that also link back to your website.

White Hat SEO

As opposed to black hat SEO strategies, which are generally frowned upon, white hat SEO refers to SEO techniques that are encouraged by search engines like Google.

Core Updates

A core update is when Google makes wider changes to its algorithm in an effort to improve its search results. These usually happen a few times a year. You can see some of our coverage of the latest core updates below:

• All the Google algorithm updates since 2022
• Google’s November 2024 core update is here
• Google’s August 2024 core update is complete
• Google’s August 2024 core update arrives: what we know

Core Web Vitals

This data is used to measure the user experience when visiting your website. Google has confirmed that this is a ranking factor.

Google Algorithm

The complex system, made up of various ranking factors, including quality, user experience, and relevance, that Google uses to crawl, index, and rank web pages.

➡️ You can read more about Google’s algorithm updates in our regularly updated article.

Google Analytics

This free SEO tool lets you monitor your site’s performance and see how people engage with your web pages.

Google Penalty

Google can punish websites with a manual action if they violate the search engine’s guidelines or policies. This will happen after a human reviewer has checked the site to see if it complies with Google’s guidelines. Manual actions usually include being removed from search results or knocked down in the rankings.

Google Sandbox

An SEO myth or fact? Google’s algorithm leak in 2024 suggested that Google’s sandbox does exist, meaning new websites are blocked from ranking in the SERPs until Google’s had time to understand the site’s purpose and quality.

Google Search Console

A free tool from Google with which you can get an overview of how your site appears in the SERPs.

Helpful Content

Google’s helpful content update first rolled out in August 2022 with the aim of serving users with relevant and valuable content. Helpful content speaks to the reader and their needs or pain points, as opposed to writing content for search engines.

SEO is a constantly-evolving process. Search engines, like Google, never fail to keep us on our toes by introducing new priorities and updating their algorithms.

Therefore, the key to SEO success is to keep learning and to always stay on top of new algorithm and industry updates. 

This glossary page will help you understand key SEO terms, from beginner-friendly basics to technical SEO language.

Be sure to bookmark this page so you can refer back to the SEO glossary if you come across a term you’re unsure of. And, in the meantime, why not check out our list of the best SEO-friendly website builders next? Or see how much SEO costs to help you implement the right SEO strategy for your business.