SEO Glossary

A Comprehensive List of SEO Terms With Definitions

Below are the important SEO terms and their definitions.

10x Content: Content that is at least ten times better than the current top-ranking result for the target keyword.

301 Redirect: The 301 redirect that takes users to a new URL and tells search engines that the page has moved permanently.

302 Redirect: The 302 redirect indicates that the web page or resource was moved from one location to another temporarily.

304 Not Modified: The 304 Not Modified is one of the redirection HTTP response codes from a server indicating that the resource has not been modified and there is no need to retransmit it since the client still has a cached copy of a resource.

404 Response Code: The 404 Not Found HTTP status code indicates that the server couldn’t find the requested page or resource.

410 Gone: The 410 Gone HTTP status code indicates that the requested resource is no longer available on the server and that this condition is likely to be permanent.

Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP): Created by Google, Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) is an HTML framework for creating stripped-down, fast-loading web page versions optimized for mobile.

AhrefsBot: AhrefsBot is a web crawler developed and run by Ahrefs SEO software suite that powers its index of pages and links.

Alt Text: Alt text (alternative text) is the text description of an image on a web page. It's used by screen readers and search engines.

Anchor Text: Anchor text is the visible clickable text of a hyperlink. Google uses anchor texts to better understand the content of the linked page.

Article Spinning: Article spinning, aka content spinning, is where you take a piece of content and rewrite it to create many “new” pieces of content. Article spinning can be done manually or using automated software.

Article Syndication: Article syndication is when one or more third-party sites republish an exact copy of content that originally appeared elsewhere.

Auto-Generated Content: Auto-generated content is content that's automatically generated using a program or code.

Backlinks: Backlinks are links from a page on one website to another. Search engines analyze the quality of a backlink to estimate how important a page is.

Bing Webmaster Tools: Bing Webmaster Tools is a free service from Microsoft that helps you monitor and troubleshoot your website’s appearance in Bing’s search results.

Bingbot: Bingbot is the web crawler used by Microsoft to gather the information needed and build a searchable index of the web.

Black-Hat SEO: Black-hat SEO refers to the use of strategies, techniques, and tactics that violate a search engine's guidelines. It focuses on finding and exploiting algorithmic loopholes.

Bounce Rate: Bounce rate is the percentage of visitors that take no further action after landing on a website, like clicking through to another page, leaving a comment, or adding an item to their cart.

Branded Keywords: Branded keywords are the words and phrases that are associated with your brand, products, or services.

Breadcrumb Navigation: Breadcrumb navigation are internal links that give users and search engines a clear trail to follow around your site.

Bridge Page: A bridge page is a page solely designed to send users elsewhere. It is used by affiliate marketers to send traffic to an affiliate link.

Broken Link: A broken link is a link on your site that points to a non-existent (or "dead") resource. They can be internal or external links.

Cached Page: A cached page is a version of a web page that has been saved by Google on their servers the last time they visited it.

Canonical Tag: A canonical tag (rel=“canonical”) is a snippet of HTML code that defines the main version for duplicate, near-duplicate and similar pages.

Canonical URL: A canonical URL is a URL that Google sees as the “master” version of a set of duplicate or near-duplicate pages.

Co-citation: Co-citation occurs when two documents are cited together by other documents.

Co-occurrence: When keywords show up together on pages about a certain topic.

Computer-Generated Content: Content created by software that is supposedly on par with what a human can create.

Content Delivery Network (CDN): Globally distributed server network that makes it quicker for users to access your website.

Content hub: Interlinked collections of content about a similar topic.

Core Web Vitals (CWV): Metrics that are part of Google’s Page Experience signals used to measure user experience.

Cornerstone Content: Cornerstone content is the collection of articles on your website that you most want to rank for in search engines.

Crawl Budget: How fast and how many pages a search engine wants to crawl on your site.

Crawlability: A search engine’s ability to access content on a page.

Crawler: A crawler is an internet program designed to browse the internet systematically. Crawlers are most commonly used as a means for search engines to discover and process pages for indexing and showing them in the search results.

Dofollow Link: Link that transfers PageRank. AKA a “followed” link.

Domain Rating (DR): The relative strength of a website’s authority based on its backlink profile.

Doorway Page: Pages designed to rank for similar search queries.

Duplicate Content: Content that appears on the web in more than one place.

Dwell Time: How much time passes between clicking one of the search results and heading back to them?

Dynamic URL: URL with content that depends on variable parameters.

Editorial Link: A link that points to your site (that you didn’t ask or pay for.)

Email Outreach: The process of putting your product or content in front of relevant people by sending them personalized emails.

Entry Page: The first page a searcher views on your site.

Evergreen Content: Content that doesn’t go out of date.

External Link: Link from your site to another site.

Faceted Navigation: Type of navigation found on category/archive pages of sites that deal with many listings.

Gated Content: Content that visitors can only access after providing their contact information.

Gateway Page: A gateway page is a web page designed to rank for particular search queries without offering useful information or answering the user’s search query. When clicked from SERP, the page will redirect the visitor to a different page.

Google Alerts: Free service from Google that monitors the web for content changes matching a specific search query.

Google Algorithm: Set of rules used by Google to rank matching results when a user performs a search.

Google Analytics: Google Analytics is a free web tracking tool offered by Google to analyze how visitors interact with your website.

Google Autocomplete: Search suggestions given by Google when entering a search.

Google Bombing: Where you get a website to rank higher in Google for irrelevant or unrelated search queries using black-hat SEO tactics.

Google Business Profile: Free business listing from Google that shows up in maps and web search results.

Google Caffeine: The search index introduced by Google in 2010 allowed them to index more content and provide fresher search results.

Google Dance: Slang term describing the volatility a new website or page experiences when Google is trying to determine where it should rank.

Google Hummingbird: Algorithm update released by Google in 2013 to return better search results. It emphasized the meaning of search queries over individual keywords.

Google Knowledge Graph: Knowledge base of entities and the relationships between them.

Google Knowledge Panel: SERP feature that provides information about the main subject of the query.

GMB Google My Business: Free service from Google that allows business owners to create, manage, and optimize their Google Business Profile.

Google Panda: Google Panda is an algorithm update launched in an effort to filter out sites with lower-quality, thin content. Today, it’s part of Google’s core algorithm.

Google Penalty: A Google penalty is a punishment a human reviewer can impose on website for violating Google’s webmaster quality guidelines.

Google Penguin: Algorithm update released in 2012 by Google to downgrade sites that engaged in manipulative link schemes and keyword stuffing.

Google Pigeon: Algorithm update released in 2013 by Google to improve search results for local search queries.

Google Sandbox: Alleged filter by Google that prevents new websites from ranking in Google’s top results.

Google Search Console: Free service from Google that helps you monitor and troubleshoot your website’s appearance in their search results.

Google Top Heavy Update: Algorithm update released in 2012 by Google to downgrade web pages with too many ads at the top.

Google Webmaster Guidelines: Best practices from Google to help them find, index, and rank your site.

Google Webmaster Tools: Google Webmaster Tools - now Google Search Console - is a free tool by Google that allows users to check how their website is performing in the search results and whether it experiences any issues that can affect that performance.

Googlebot: Web crawler that powers Google’s search engine.

Grey Hat SEO: The use of SEO strategies and tactics that blur the line between white-hat and black-hat methods.

Guest Blogging: Guest blogging is the practice of writing and publishing a blog post on another person or company’s website.

Guestographic: Infographic created by you but published on other websites.

H1 Tag: HTML heading that’s most commonly used to mark up a web page title.

Header Tags: Header tags are HTML tags used to set apart headings and subheadings from the rest of the content on a webpage, in descending order of importance from H1 to H6.

Hilltop Algorithm: Algorithm adopted by Google in 2003 to identify authoritative web pages to rank.

Holistic SEO: The practice of improving all aspects of a website to rank higher in search engines.

Hreflang: HTML attribute used to tell Google about alternate versions of a web page for different languages and regions.

HTTP 200 Response Code: The HTTP 200 (OK) is the status response code from a server for successful HTTP requests from a client.

HTTPS: Encrypted version of HTTP that protects the communications between your browser and server from being intercepted and tampered with by attackers.

Inbound Link: Link from another site to your website.

Indexability: A search engine’s ability to analyze and store a web page in its database.

Informational Query: Query where someone wants to find information, not products.

Internal Link: Link from another page on the same website.

Interstitial Ad: Full-screen interactive ads that cover the interface of the website or app.

Javascript SEO: A part of technical SEO that seeks to make JavaScript-heavy websites more search-friendly.

Keyword Cannibalization: Keyword cannibalization happens when a single website unintentionally targets the same keyword across multiple posts or pages.

Keyword Clustering: Keyword clustering is a practice in SEO used to combine similar, relevant keywords into groups (clusters).

Keyword Density: Keyword density is a metric that tells us how frequently a keyword is used within a piece of content in relation to the overall word count.

Keyword Difficulty: Metric used by SEO tool providers to estimate a keyword’s ranking difficulty.

Keyword Ranking: A keyword ranking is a website's organic ranking position in the search results for a particular keyword.

Keyword Stemming: Process of reducing a word to its ‘stem’ or ‘root’ (e.g., flowers, flowery -> flower).

Keyword Stuffing: Repeating the same keywords (or similar phrases) in your content to try to manipulate rankings.

Keywords: Words and phrases that people type into search engines to find what they’re looking for.

Link Bait: Content specifically formulated to attract links.

Link Building: The process of getting other websites to link to pages on your website.

Link Equity: ‘Authority’ is passed when one page links to another.

Link Exchange: Agreement between two websites to link to each other.

Link Farm: Group of websites created to link to each other to improve search engine rankings.

Link Popularity: The number of backlinks that point to a website.

Link Profile: Assessment of all the backlinks (quantity, quality, diversity, etc.) a website has.

Link Reclamation: The process of trying to get back lost links.

Link Rot: The natural tendency for links to become broken on the web over time.

Link Scheme: Links intended to manipulate PageRank or a site’s ranking in Google search results.

Link Spam: Irrelevant links are placed on pages to try and improve search engine rankings.

Link Velocity: The rate at which a website’s backlink profile is growing.

Local Business Schema: Type of structured data markup to help local businesses optimize for local SEO.

Local Citation: Any mention of your business’s name, address, and phone number (NAP) online.

Local Pack: SERP feature that appears for local queries and displays local Google business listings.

Local Search Marketing: Local search marketing is the process of improving a local business's search visibility online. A local business is any business that serves its customers in person.

Local SEO: The process of ‘optimizing’ your online presence to show up and rank higher in relevant local searches.

Log File Analysis: Where you analyze the crawling behavior of search engine bots in server logs to discover opportunities to improve SEO.

Long-tail Keyword: A low-volume search query.

LSI Keywords: A misnomer for semantically-related words and phrases. (LSI keywords don’t exist.)

Manual Action: Demotion or removal of websites/webpages issued by Google to sites that do not comply with their webmaster guidelines.

Meta Description: HTML attribute used to describe what a page is about.

Meta Keywords: Meta tags that give some search engines (not Google) more information about a page’s content.

Meta Redirect: Code that tells the web browser to redirect the user to a different URL after a set amount of time.

Meta Robots Tag: HTML snippet that tells search engines how to crawl or index a page.

Meta Tags: Snippets of code that tell search engines important information about your web page.

Mirror Site: A copy of a website hosted on another server.

Mobile-first Indexing: Google’s shift to using the mobile version of the content for indexing and ranking.

Natural Link: A link that occurs organically.

Navigational Query: Query where someone is looking for a specific website.

Negative SEO: When a competitor uses black-hat tactics to attempt to sabotage the rankings of a competing website or web page.

Nofollow: Tag that tells Google not to take a link into account for ranking purposes.

Noindex Tag: Tag that instructs search engines not to index a page.

Noopener: The term “noopener” refers to the rel="noopener" HTML attribute that’s added to links set to open in a new browser tab or window for security reasons.

Noreferrer: HTML attribute that prevents referrer information from passing through a link.

Not Provided: Keyword data that Google omits from sharing with you in Google Analytics.

Off-page SEO: Any efforts took outside of a website to improve its search engine rankings.

On-page SEO: The practice of optimizing a web page’s visible content and source code to rank higher.

Open Graph Meta Tags: Snippets of code that control how URLs are displayed when shared on social media.

Organic Search Results: Non-paid search results from a search engine that can’t be bought or influenced by advertisers.

Organic Traffic: Traffic from a search engine’s organic results.

Orphan Page: Page with no internal links pointing to it.

Outbound Link: The link that points to a page, not on your website.

Page Speed: The amount of time it takes for a web page to load.

PageRank: A formula that judges the value of a page by looking at the quantity and quality of other pages that link to it.

Paid Link: A backlink that you pay for.

People Also Ask: SERP feature that answers questions related to the user’s search query.

Pillar Page: A pillar page is a high-level guide about a broad topic. It is part of a topic cluster, which are topically-grouped pages designed for ranking.

Pogo-Sticking: Back-and-forth process between the SERPs and its results when a searcher is unable to find the content they want.

Private Blog Network (PBN): A private blog network (PBN) is a network of websites created solely to link out to another website and improve its organic search visibility.

RankBrain: RankBrain is a deep machine learning system developed by Google to better understand new and long-tail search queries and return more relevant search results.

Reciprocal Link: When two websites link to each other.

Reconsideration Request: Request to have Google review your site after fixing problems identified in a manual action or security issues notification.

Related Searches: Related searches are search queries related to the keyword you type into a search engine. After you type in your search query, scroll to the bottom of the SERP. There, you’ll find a list of related searches.

Resource Pages: Resource pages are web pages that curate and link out to useful industry resources.

Rich Snippet: Google search result with additional data shown alongside it, usually from structured data on the page.

Robots.txt: A file that tells search engines where they can and can’t go on your site.

Schema Markup: Code that helps search engines to better understand and represent your content in the search results.

Search Algorithm: List of rules used by search engines to rank matching results when a user performs a search.

Search Engine Poisoning: When malicious hackers create dummy websites that appear to be legitimate search engine results. Their goal is to steal personal information or install malware.

Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs): Pages that search engines show in response to a user’s search query.

Search Intent: The reason behind a search.

Search Results: Search results are a list of web pages from a search engine that appears in response to a particular search query.

Search Term: A search term (or search query) is a word or set of words that a person enters on a search engine like Google to generate specific results.

Search Visibility: Search visibility is the estimated percentage of clicks a website gets from its organic rankings for one or more keywords.

Search Volume: Search volume is the number of times, on average, that users enter a particular search query into a search engine each month.

Secondary Keywords: Terms closely related to the keyword you want to target.

Secure Sockets Layer (SSL): Protocol for establishing a secure private connection between networked computers.

Seed Keywords: Keywords that define your niche and help you identify your competitors.

SEO: The practice of optimizing a website or webpage to get more high-quality traffic from a search engine’s organic results.

SEO Audit: The process of evaluating and assessing your website to see how well it’s performing in search engines.

SEO Silo: The grouping together of topically-related web pages via internal links.

SERP Features: SERP features are the elements of search engines’ search result pages that aren’t traditional organic search results. They provide additional and related information on the search query.

Share of Voice: How visible your brand is in the market.

Short-tail Keywords: Terms with high search volumes.

Sitelinks: Links to other pages or sections of a page that appear under some Google search results.

Sitemaps: A sitemap is an XML file listing all the pages on your website that you want search engines like Google to index.

Sitewide Link: An outbound link that appears on every page of a website.

Spamdexing: Deliberate manipulation of search engine results using techniques that are against their guidelines.

Sponsored Link Attribute: The link attribute that shows a link is an advertisement, paid placement, sponsorship, or affiliate link.

SRCSET: Srcset is an HTML image attribute that specifies the list of images to use in different browser situations. The browser will pick the most optimal image version, based on the screen size and resolution.

Structured Data: A standardized way to provide information about a web page.

Subdomain: A subdomain is a part of a website that’s placed under that website’s root directory. It is represented by addition at the front of the root domain name.

Taxonomy SEO: Optimizing for search engines by organizing the structure of content.

Technical SEO: Make technical adjustments to help search engines find, crawl, understand, and index your pages.

TF-IDF: Statistical measure that aims to judge the relative importance of a word in a document.

Thin Content: Content that has little or no value for the user.

Title Tag: HTML element is used to specify the title of a webpage.

Top-Level Domain (TLD): A top-level domain is the segment of a domain that immediately follows the last dot symbol in a domain name. It has the highest level in the hierarchical Domain Name System of the Internet.

Transactional Query: Query where someone is looking to purchase something but hasn’t yet decided where to buy it from.

Transport Layer Security (TLS): An updated, more secure version of SSL. Used interchangeably with SSL.

TrustRank: An algorithm that analyzes links to separate useful web pages from spam.

UGC Link Attribute: A link attribute that shows a link is user-generated content (UGC). Used for comments, forum posts, or any other content sections where users can add content.

Universal Search: Universal Search was introduced in 2007 as an expansion of search results to incorporate other media formats - like images, videos, maps, and news - in SERPs

Unnatural Links: Links in a page’s content that are not editorially placed or vouched for by the site’s owner.

URL Rating (UR): The strength of a target page’s backlink profile on a 0–100 scale, with 100 being the strongest.

URL Slug: A URL Slug is the part of the URL that follows the slash ("/") after the domain name or subfolder.

Vertical Search: Search engine dedicated to a specific area of focus.

Voice Search: The use of voice to interact with a search engine (rather than searching by text).

Website Authority: A metric from SEO tool providers that measures the relative strength of a site. (Ours is Domain Rating.)

Website Structure: How a site is organized and its web pages interlinked.

Webspam: Webspam is any online content created to manipulate search engine rankings.

White-hat SEO: The use of Google-approved website SEO strategies, techniques, and tactics.

X-robots-Tag: HTTP header sent from a web server that controls the indexing of a page.

YMYL Pages: Pages about topics that could impact a person’s future happiness, health, financial stability, or safety.