Sorted alphabetically. If a term you need is missing, tell us and we'll add it.
- Algorithm
- The set of rules Google uses to rank pages. Updated dozens of times per year.
- Alt text
- Descriptive text on an image. Used by screen readers and as a ranking signal.
- Anchor text
- The visible, clickable text in a hyperlink. A ranking signal for the linked page.
- Authority
- A subjective measure of a domain’s trust and ranking power, derived from backlinks.
- Backlink
- A link from another website to yours. Often called an inbound link.
- Black-hat SEO
- Tactics that violate Google guidelines (link buying, cloaking, content spinning). Risky and short-term.
- Bounce rate
- Percentage of visitors who leave after one page. Imperfect signal — high bounce can mean satisfaction.
- Canonical tag
- HTML tag telling Google which version of a duplicated URL is the canonical one.
- Click-through rate (CTR)
- Percentage of impressions that resulted in a click. A strong indirect ranking signal.
- Cloaking
- Showing different content to search engines vs users. Against guidelines.
- Content gap
- A topic competitors cover but you don’t. Common keyword research output.
- Core Web Vitals
- Google’s page-experience metrics: LCP, INP, CLS. Confirmed ranking factors.
- Crawl
- How Googlebot follows links and reads pages.
- Crawl budget
- How many pages Google will crawl on your site per visit. Matters for large sites only.
- Direct traffic
- Visitors arriving without a referrer (typed URL, bookmark, app link).
- Domain authority (DA)
- Moz’s 1–100 trust score. Useful as a comparative metric, not a Google signal.
- Dwell time
- How long a visitor stays on your page after clicking from search.
- E-E-A-T
- Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness. Quality framework Google emphasises.
- Featured snippet
- Box at the top of search results with an extracted answer. Position zero.
- Google Business Profile (GBP)
- Free local listing on Google. Critical for near-me visibility.
- H1, H2, H3
- HTML heading tags. H1 is the page’s primary heading; H2/H3 structure sub-sections.
- Indexation
- Google having your page in its searchable index. No index = no rankings.
- Internal link
- A link from one page on your site to another. Underused ranking lever.
- Keyword
- The search term a user types.
- Keyword cannibalisation
- Multiple pages on your site competing for the same keyword. Usually hurts both.
- Keyword difficulty (KD)
- A 0–100 score estimating how hard a keyword is to rank for. Read the KD guide.
- Link equity
- The ranking power passed through a link. Sometimes called link juice.
- Local pack
- The map + 3 listings shown for local queries. Separate algorithm from organic.
- Long-tail keyword
- A specific 3+ word query. Lower volume, higher intent, easier to rank.
- Meta description
- The short snippet under your title in search results. Not a ranking factor, but affects CTR.
- NAP
- Name, Address, Phone. Must match exactly across local citations.
- Nofollow
- A link attribute telling Google not to follow it for ranking. Defaults on most user-submitted content.
- Off-page SEO
- Everything you do outside your site to influence rankings — mainly backlinks and brand mentions.
- On-page SEO
- Everything you do on the page itself — title, headings, content, internal links, structured data.
- Organic traffic
- Visitors arriving from unpaid search results.
- PageRank
- Google’s original link-based ranking algorithm. Still relevant in a much-evolved form.
- Pillar page
- A long, comprehensive page on a broad topic, supported by linked cluster pages.
- Rank tracker
- A tool that monitors your position over time for chosen keywords. Try our free rank checker.
- Redirect (301/302)
- 301 = permanent move, 302 = temporary. Use 301 unless you genuinely mean temporary.
- Referring domain
- A unique website linking to yours. More valuable as a count than total backlinks.
- Rich result
- Enhanced search listing with stars, FAQs, sitelinks, etc. Triggered by structured data.
- Robots.txt
- A file telling crawlers which paths to skip.
- Schema markup
- Structured data (usually JSON-LD) describing your page’s content type.
- SERP
- Search Engine Results Page. The page you see after a Google search.
- Site audit
- A health-check of your site’s SEO basics. Run our free site audit.
- Sitemap
- An XML file listing all your URLs for search engines.
- TF-IDF
- A term-weighting model. Modern Google uses something more sophisticated, but the principle still helps content depth.
- Title tag
- The page’s primary on-page SEO signal. Lead with the keyword.
- Topical authority
- Google’s sense that your site is a credible source on a topic — built through depth and links.
- White-hat SEO
- SEO that follows Google’s guidelines. The only sustainable approach.
- Zero-click search
- A query Google answers directly in the SERP without anyone clicking. Increasingly common.