SEO glossary
Accessibility
The practice of designing websites and web applications to be usable by people with disabilities. Accessibility can improve the user experience for everyone.
Anchor text
Anchor text is the visible, clickable text in a hyperlink. The text should help the reader to better understand where the link is going to navigate..
Alt text
Alt text improves website's accessibility and helps search engines to better understand image's content.
Backlink
A backlink is a link from one webpage to another. Based on webpage's backlink profile, search engines will determine the quality of the page. The more relevant and quality backlinks a webpage has, the higher chances it has on ranking higher on the search engines.
Breadcrumb navigation
Breadcrumb navigation is a type of navigation that helps users understand their current location within a website or web application. It is typically displayed as a series of links, with the current page being represented by the last link in the series.
Black-hat SEO
Techniques that are used to improve the ranking of a website, but which violate the search engines' terms of service. Black-hat SEO techniques can include keyword stuffing, link schemes, hidden text, using techniques like hacking to harm your competitors.
Bounce rate
The percentage of visitors to a webpage who leave after viewing it. A high bounce rate can indicate a poor user experience or low-quality content. It can also mean that the visitor got the answer and left the page satisfied.
Clearscope
Clearscope is a tool used by SEO and content marketing teams to achieve a more effective content optimization process and better rankings in search engine results.
More information: Clearscope review
Crawling
Crawling is the process by which search engines discover new web pages or collect updated information from the existing web pages.
It's the 1st stage of search engine process of getting a web page in its SERPs and making sure it's updated. After crawling - rendering, indexing and ranking follows.
Canonical tag
Canonical tags are used to help search engines understand which version of a piece of content is the original version. This is helpful when there are multiple versions of very similar content on the internet.
Canonical tag: <link rel="canonical" href=""/>
Content marketing
The process of creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience.
Deep linking
The practice of linking to a specific page or piece of content on a website, rather than the homepage. Deep linking can help search engines to understand the structure and hierarchy of a website and can also help to improve the user experience.
Dofollow link
It's a link attribute that signals crawlers to "follow" (navigate) the link and to pass SEO value. It has no impact for UX.
Domain authority
A metric developed by Moz which shows how a certain website compares to other websites (scale from 0 to 100) and how likely the website is to perform well in the SERPs.
Email outreach
Email outreach is one of the prominent link building tactics. It's the process of contacting relevant individuals or organizations by email in order to build relationships and to introduce your work. In terms of SEO, usually, the main goal of email outreach is to get a mention or a backlink from the web property.
E-E-A-T (Experience - Expertise - Authoritativeness - Trustworthiness)
E-E-A-T is a concept created by Google and used by quality raters to assess websites they are reviewing. It isn't a ranking factor, however, understanding E-E-A-T can be a huge help in improving your website and ranking better on SERPs.
More information: Marie Haynes on E-E-A-T
External linking
The practice of linking to other websites from within the content of a website. External linking can help to improve the user experience and provide credibility.
Freshness
Freshness is the degree to which a piece of content is up-to-date and relevant. Some content, in order to be considered fresh, has to be updated frequently - at least once a year. Evergreen content can be updated less frequently.
Featured snippet
A featured snippet is a short summary of an answer (in form of a paragraph, a table or a list) to a searcher's query that is displayed on top of the search results page. It is meant to give the searcher a quick answer to the query without having to click through to a website.
Google algorithm
A set of rules that determine how Google ranks and displays search results. The rules are constantly being updated and improved using machine learning and AI, in order to provide the best possible experience for users.
Google Penguin
Google Penguin is a code name for a Google algorithm update that was first announced on April, 2012. It targeted websites that engaged in manipulative link schemes (obtaining spammy links, unnatural anchor text, link exchanges and similar).
Google Panda
Google Panda was a change to Google's search results ranking algorithm that was first released in February 2011. The change aimed to lower the rank of low-quality (thin content) sites—sites that Google believed provided a poor user experience.
Google Pigeon
Google Pigeon is an algorithm used by Google to improve local search results. It was released in 2014, and its main purpose is to provide better, more relevant results for searches that are location-specific.
Google Coati
Announced as a successor to Google Panda by Hyung-Jin Kim in 2022 November. Hyung-Jin Kim said that as time evolved, so has Panda, and it evolved to Coati.
Google My Business
A free tool offered by Google that allows businesses to manage their business profiles on Google and Google Maps.
Google Search Console
A free tool offered by Google that allows website owners to monitor and maintain their website's presence in Google search results.
Google PageSpeed Insights
A free tool offered by Google that allows website owners to test the performance of their website and to receive recommendations for improvement.
Google Tag Manager
A free tool offered by Google that allows website owners to add and manage marketing and analytics tags on their website without requiring code changes.
Google Trends
A free tool offered by Google that allows users to see how often certain search terms are being used over time and how they are trending.
Hyperlink
A hyperlink is a link from one web page to another, typically enabled by clicking on a highlighted word or phrase. The linked pages can be on the same website or on different websites. When you click on a hyperlink, it takes you to the linked page.
HTTPS
Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) is an extension of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). It is used for secure (encrypt) communication over a computer network.
Hreflang
The hreflang attribute is used to specify the language and the region of a webpage if there are alternate versions of the page. It is placed within the <head> element of a page.
Index
A database that contains all of the web pages that a search engine decided to index. When you search for something on the search engine, it looks through its index and using algorithms serves up the most relevant results.
Indexing
It's the process of adding webpages to search engine's database. After search engine crawls and renders a webpage it then decides whether it should be included in its index and served to the searcher.
Internal link
A link from one page on a website to another page on the same website. Internal links can help search engines understand the structure of a website and can also be used to pass link equity between pages.
JavaScript (JS)
JavaScript is a programming language that enables you to create dynamically changing content on websites. Some search engines have harder time understanding JavaScript so it's recommended to not place your most important content under JavaScript.
Keyword
A keyword is a word or a phrase that is used by a person to look for information on search engines.
Lists of keywords are used to optimize website's content so it's better understood by the users and search engines.
Keyword density
The percentage of times a keyword or a phrase appears on a web page compared to the total number of words on the page. High keyword density means that keyword was used many times throughout the page.
Knowledge graph
A knowledge graph is a database of information about entities (people, places and things) and relation between the entities. It is used by Google to help provide more relevant and targeted search results.
Knowledge panel
Knowledge panel is search engine's search feature displaying most important information about specific people, places, organizations and things in a box format on SERPs.
LSI keywords
Latent semantic indexing keywords are keywords or phrases that are semantically related to each other.
Link building
Link building is an off-site SEO process where main goal is to get a link back from another web property. It is used to improve rankings on search engines.
Link equity
The value that is passed between pages or websites through links.
Local pack
It is a SERP feature that appears in the search results when someone performs a local query. The businesses in the local pack are typically the most relevant and popular results for that location.
Long tail keyword
A long tail keyword is a keyword phrase that is more specific and targeted than a general, shorter keyword (short-tail keyword). Long tail keywords are usually longer than 3 words in length. Long-tail keywords are often easier to rank for and can be more effective in attracting targeted traffic.
For example, a general keyword could be considered "shoes" and long tail keyword "adidas running shoes for men".
Link exchange
It is a reciprocal link building technique in which two websites agree to link to each other's content.
Manual action
Google's penalty for a website that didn't comply with Google's Webmaster guidelines. Being given manual action can result in webpages or the whole website removed from the index.
Meta description
A meta description is a short piece of text that summarises the content of a web page. It is used by search engines to display website's search snippet in SERPs. Meta descriptions can also be used by social media platforms to generate preview snippets when users share links to web pages.
Meta keywords
The tag that is used by the search engines (Google doesn't use it anymore) to better understand the keywords (context) of the page.
Meta tags
HTML tags that are used to provide metadata about a webpage. Meta tags can include the title tag, which specifies the title of the webpage, and the meta description tag, which provides a brief summary of the page's content. As well as other tags like robots, viewport, language and more.
Mobile-first indexing
A policy implemented by Google in which the mobile version of a website is used as the primary version for indexing and ranking in search results.
Natural language processing (NLP)
A field of computer science that focuses on enabling computers to understand, interpret, and generate human language. NLP can be used to improve search engine results by allowing search engines to better understand the content of web pages.
Nofollow link
It's a link attribute that signals crawlers not to "follow" (navigate) the link and not pass any value to the target page. It has no impact for UX.
See: Dofollow link
Noindex tag
A tag used to instruct search engines not to index the page.
On-page SEO
The process of optimizing webpage's content and source code in order to rank higher.
Off-page SEO
The process of optimizing your website for better search engine visibility by building links and improving your online reputation.
Pinterest SEO
Pinterest SEO is Search Engine Optimization for Pinterest. It is optimizing your account, pins and boards in a way that Pinterest’s algorithm can clearly understand and determine what users will see in their smart feed.
More information: Pinterest SEO guide
PageRank
PageRank is a value that represents how important a webpage is. The importance of a webpage is determined by the number and quality links to the page.
People Also Ask (PAA)
People Also Ask (PAA) is a type of Google results page feature that displays a list of questions and answers related to the user's initial query.
Public Blog Network (PBN)
It is a group of blogs that are used to unnaturally generate backlinks to a website with the objective of improving the website's rankings. This link building tactic is against Google's ToS.
Query
A word or a phrase the searcher enters into a search box in order to get relevant information to it.
Reciprocal link
When two websites exchange links.
Referral traffic
Traffic that comes to a website from sources outside of search engines. It refers to visitors who arrive at a website by clicking on a link from another website, rather than by typing a URL into their web browser or clicking on a search engine result.
Robots.txt
Robots.txt is a file that tells crawlers which pages on your website to crawl and which to ignore.
Schema markup
Schema markup is a code that can be added to your website to help search engines better understand and present your site's content. This markup can include information like product reviews, recipes, event information, and more.
SEM (Search Engine Marketing)
The practice of promoting websites by increasing their visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs) through paid advertising.
Sitemap
A list of pages in XML format that can be found on a website. It is used to help search engines to find your content and index it easier.
Search Engine Result Page (SERP)
A page shown by a search engine in response to searcher's query.
Search intent
The purpose behind a searcher's query. Different queries can mean same thing and very similar queries can mean very different things. Understanding search intent is essential for SEO success.
Search volume
The number of times a keyword or a phrase is searched on a search engine.
Semantic SEO
A type of SEO that focuses on the meaning and context of a content, rather than just the individual keywords.
TF*IDF
Term frequency is a measure of the number of times a term appears in a document. Inverse document frequency is a measure of how common a term is across all documents. The combination of these two measures is used to calculate the TF-IDF score for a term, which tells you how important a term is in a document.
Title tag
A title tag is a short piece of HTML code that explains what the webpage is about (name of the page). Title tags are used by search engines to display a page's title in search results pages.
User-generated content (UGC)
User-generated content is a type of content that is created by end users. It can take many forms, including blog posts, reviews, images, videos, and more.
URL slug
It's a part of URL that follows the "/" after the domain name.
Vertical search
Vertical search is a type of search engine that focuses on a particular niche, industry or type of search. For example: Google Maps, Youtube, Google Images, Pinterest, Facebook and similar.
White-hat SEO
White hat SEO is a type of optimization that focus on improving the visibility of a website in search engine results pages through techniques that comply with search engine guidelines.
Website structure
Organization and hierarchy of the website. It includes the website's navigation, layout, and architecture.
X-robots-tag
The x-robots-tag is an HTTP header that can be used to control the indexing of web pages.
Yoast SEO
Most popular WordPress plugin to assist optimizing website for search engines.
Yahoo
Yahoo is a web services provider that offers a variety of services to its users, including a search engine, email, online mapping, and news. Today Yahoo’s search engine is powered by Bing and it has a market share of 2.46%.
Yandex
A Russian company which operates the largest search engine in Russia (53.28% share in Russia and 0.58% worldwide).
Zero-click search
Type of search where the answer to searcher's query is found on the SERP page itself and not by navigating to a specific website (doesn't require a click on the result).
301 redirect
A 301 redirect is a permanent redirect from one URL to another. It indicates that the original page is no longer available. 301 redirect passes SEO value collected from the original page to the redirect.
302 redirect
A 302 redirect is a temporary redirect from one URL to another. It indicates that the original page is temporarily not available. 302 redirect doesn't pass SEO value collected from the original page to the redirect.
404 response code
The 404 response code is an HTTP status code that means the requested resource could not be found on the server. This code is often returned when a user tries to access a page that doesn't exist, or when a URL is mistyped.
Author's note: the glossary is being constantly updated with new terms and supporting material.
About author Paulius Petkevicius
For more than 6 years Paulius has been working in the SEO industry and for the last 3 years he has been leading SEO team in MailerGroup (group of leading email marketing and marketing automation platforms) overlooking MailerLite, MailerSend and MailerCheck SEO strategy and operations.
Over the years Paulius accumulated vast experience (30+ clients) in the SEO field working in an agency, as a freelancer and in-house specialist with different size clients from various industries and regions.
