SEO Glossary

Descriptive text for images that helps search engines understand visual content.

The clickable text in a hyperlink that signals relevance to search engines.

Links from external websites pointing to your site — a key ranking signal.

Aggressive techniques that violate search engine guidelines for quick ranking gains.

The percentage of visitors who leave after viewing only one page.

An HTML element that tells search engines which version of a page is the primary one.

Online mentions of a business's name, address, and phone number on directories.

The percentage of users who click on your result after seeing it in search.

Creating and distributing valuable content to attract and engage a target audience.

The percentage of visitors who complete a desired action on your website.

Google's metrics for measuring user experience — loading, interactivity, and visual stability.

The number of pages a search engine will crawl on your site within a given timeframe.

A score predicting how well a website will rank on search engine result pages.

Substantially similar content appearing on multiple URLs, which can confuse search engines.

Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness — Google's content quality framework.

A highlighted answer box at the top of Google search results, pulled from a webpage.

Google's free tool for managing your business listing in Search and Maps.

Google's free tool for monitoring and maintaining your site's presence in search results.

HTML heading tags that structure content and signal topic hierarchy to search engines.

An HTML attribute that tells search engines which language and region a page targets.

The number of times your page appears in search results, regardless of clicks.

Links between pages on the same website that help distribute authority and aid navigation.

A structured data format that helps search engines understand your page content for rich results.

When multiple pages on your site compete for the same keyword, diluting ranking potential.

The percentage of times a keyword appears relative to the total word count on a page.

The process of finding and analyzing search terms people use to find information.

The practice of acquiring hyperlinks from other websites to your own.

How visible your brand is in AI-generated responses from ChatGPT, Gemini, and similar.

The map-based results section showing three local businesses in Google search.

Optimizing your online presence to attract local customers through geographically relevant searches.

Specific, multi-word search phrases with lower volume but higher conversion intent.

HTML elements that provide information about a webpage to search engines and browsers.

Google predominantly using the mobile version of content for indexing and ranking.

Name, Address, Phone — the core business info that must be consistent across directories.

A directive telling search engines not to include a page in their search results.

SEO activities performed outside your website — backlinks, citations, social signals.

Optimizing individual web pages to rank higher — content, HTML, and internal links.

Visitors who arrive at your website from unpaid search engine results.

How fast your web page loads — a confirmed Google ranking factor and UX metric.

A permanent redirect that passes full link equity from the old URL to the new one.

A file that tells search engine crawlers which pages they can or cannot access.

Structured data vocabulary that helps search engines understand and display your content.

The purpose behind a search query — informational, navigational, commercial, or transactional.

Search Engine Results Page — the page displayed after entering a search query.

An XML file listing all important pages on your site for search engine discovery.

A security protocol (HTTPS) that encrypts data — a Google ranking signal since 2014.

Optimizing website infrastructure for search engine crawling, indexing, and rendering.

Building comprehensive content coverage around a topic to establish expertise.

A strategic content plan organizing keywords into clusters that build topical authority.

How users interact with your website — increasingly important for SEO rankings.