SEO comes with a lot of jargon, and the most common question we get from clients is what all the terms mean. This glossary explains the SEO terms you are most likely to meet, in plain English, grouped into four areas: general SEO, on-page SEO, technical SEO and off-page SEO.
Jump to: General SEO terms | On-page SEO terms | Technical SEO terms | Off-page SEO terms
The main types of SEO
On-page SEO is the work you do on an individual page to help it rank for a specific keyword: its title, URL, headings, text, images and meta description. Our guide to what on-page SEO is walks through it step by step.
Technical SEO is finding and fixing the issues behind the scenes that stop search engines crawling, understanding or trusting your site: site structure, URLs and redirects, security, speed and mobile usability. Mistakes here can do real damage. For example, changing a live site’s domain name or permalinks without redirecting the old URLs can wipe out its rankings.
Off-page SEO is everything you do away from your website to build its reputation and bring in visitors, such as earning backlinks, managing your Google Business Profile and promoting your content on social media.
An SEO audit checks your website for problems in all three areas, using specialist software and a manual review. Typical findings include crawling or indexing problems, broken URLs, weak site structure, slow pages, poor mobile layouts, thin content and missing metadata. You can start with our DIY SEO audit, or read what a technical SEO audit covers.
General SEO terms
Content relevance
How well your content matches what the searcher is looking for. Google aims to show the most useful answer to each search, so relevant, helpful content is central to ranking.
Cornerstone content
The pages on your site you most want to rank. You usually link to them from many other pages, which shows both visitors and Google that they matter most.
Crawler
Software that works through the internet following links, so search engines can discover pages, process them and add them to their index. Google’s crawler is called Googlebot.
Customer journey
The path someone takes from first hearing about your business to buying from you, and their experience afterwards. Mapping the journey you want and comparing it with what visitors actually do shows where to improve your site.
Duplicate content
Content that appears in more than one place, on your site or across the web. It makes it harder for Google to choose which version to show. Tools such as Siteliner will scan your site for it.
E-E-A-T
Short for experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness. Google uses these qualities to judge whether content is reliable, especially on topics such as health and money. Showing who wrote a page, and why they know the subject, helps.
Evergreen content
Content that stays useful for years without needing frequent updates, because it answers questions people keep asking. A guide on how to write a book is a good example.
Gated content
Content visitors can only reach after giving their contact details, such as an eBook that downloads once someone fills in a form.
Google algorithm
The system Google uses to decide which results to show, and in what order, for each search. Google changes it many times a year, including several larger “core updates”.
Google Analytics
Google’s free tool for tracking how many people visit your website, where they come from and what they do on it. The current version is Google Analytics 4 (GA4).
Google Business Profile
A free Google listing that appears in Google Maps and in local search results. You can add your services, opening hours, photos and posts, and customers can leave reviews. Businesses that serve customers at their own premises, such as tradespeople or consultants, can hide their address and list a service area instead.
Google Search Console
A free Google tool that shows how your site performs in search: which searches it appears for, how often people click, which pages are indexed and any problems Google has found.
Holistic SEO
Improving every part of your website, from content to speed to user experience, rather than focusing on a single tactic.
Indexing
When a search engine adds a page to its database so it can appear in results. A page can be crawled but not indexed, which Search Console reports as “Crawled – currently not indexed”.
Keyword cannibalisation
When several pages on the same site target the same keyword and compete with each other in search results, weakening all of them. Aim for one main keyword per page, and merge pages that overlap.
Keyword ranking
Where your page appears in organic search results for a particular keyword. If your page is the third organic result for “dog collars”, your ranking for that term is 3.
Landing page
The page a visitor arrives on after clicking a link, whether from a search result, an email or an ad. Some landing pages are built for a campaign; others are simply whichever page Google chooses to rank.
Local SEO
Optimising your online presence to appear in searches with local intent, such as “plumber near me” or “bakery Guildford”. It matters most for businesses that serve a particular area.
Long-tail keyword
A longer, more specific search with lower search volume, such as “men’s black winter jacket waterproof”. Long-tail keywords are usually easier to rank for, so they are a good place to start.
Organic search results
The unpaid results in a search engine, ranked on relevance and quality rather than ad spend. Organic SEO aims to improve your position in these results.
Organic traffic
Visitors who reach your site from unpaid search results. Many people skip the ads and click on organic results, so this is often a site’s most valuable source of visitors.
Primary keyword
The main keyword a page is built and optimised around. Other keywords on the page should relate to it.
Search intent
The reason behind a search. Someone searching “buy black boots” intends to buy; someone searching “boots or shoes for walking” is still researching. Content that matches the intent behind its keyword has the best chance of ranking.
Search term
The words someone types into a search engine, also called a search query. You choose target keywords to match the search terms your customers use.
Search volume
The average number of times a search term is searched for each month. A volume of 10,000 for “red hats” means about 10,000 searches a month, averaged over the past year.
SERP
Short for search engine results page: the page of results you see after searching. As well as links, it can include ads, a map with local businesses, image results and AI-generated summaries.
Short-tail keyword
A short, general search of one to three words, such as “jackets”. Short-tail keywords have high search volume and heavy competition, so they are harder to rank for.
Thin content
Pages with little useful information for the reader. Not every page needs to rank, but any page you want to rank should be clear, accurate and helpful.
Transactional query
A search from someone ready to buy, such as “buy running shoes size 8”. Sales pages, such as product and service pages, should be optimised for these searches.
On-page SEO terms
On-page SEO covers the content and metadata of each page. On WordPress, a plugin such as Yoast SEO lets you edit most of these settings page by page.
10x content
Content that is far better than anything currently ranking for the same keyword: more useful, more accurate and easier to follow.
Alt text
A short text description of an image, added in its settings. Screen readers read it aloud for people who cannot see the image, and search engines use it to understand what the image shows.
Anchor text
The visible, clickable words of a link. Google uses anchor text to understand what the linked page is about, so it should describe that page. “Our website planning guide” tells readers and Google far more than “click here”.
Breadcrumb navigation
A trail of links, usually near the top of a page, showing where the page sits in your site (for example Home > Blog > SEO). Breadcrumbs help visitors find their way and help Google understand your site’s structure.
Canonical URL
The version of a page you tell search engines to treat as the original when similar or duplicate versions exist. It is set with a canonical tag in the page’s code.
Click-through rate (CTR)
The percentage of people who click your result after seeing it in search. A clear SEO title and meta description can raise it. Search Console shows CTR for each page and search term.
External link
A link from your website to a different website, also called an outbound link.
H1 tag
The HTML tag for a page’s main heading. Each page should have one H1 that says clearly what the page is about.
Header tags
HTML tags from H1 to H6 that mark headings and subheadings. Using them in order (H2s under the H1, H3s under an H2) shows readers and search engines how the content is organised.
Internal link
A link from one page on your website to another page on the same site. Internal links help visitors find related content and help Google discover your pages and understand which matter most.
Keyword density
How often a keyword appears in a piece of content compared with its total word count. There is no ideal figure; write naturally for the reader.
Keyword stuffing
Repeating a keyword, or close variations, unnaturally often to try to manipulate rankings. Google treats it as spam, and it makes content harder to read.
Meta description
The short summary that can appear under your page title in search results. It does not directly affect rankings, but a clear, accurate description encourages people to click. Google sometimes writes its own instead.
Orphan page
A page with no internal links pointing to it from the rest of your site. Visitors and search engines struggle to find orphan pages, so link to them from relevant pages.
SEO title
The title shown as the clickable headline in search results, set in the page’s title tag. It can differ from the heading on the page itself. Keep it under about 60 characters so it is not cut off.
Technical SEO terms
Some of these you can check yourself; others are best left to a web developer. Knowing what they mean helps you ask the right questions.
404 error
The response a website gives when a page cannot be found, because it was deleted, moved or the link is wrong. A few are normal, but links on your own site should never lead to one. Redirect deleted pages to the closest relevant page.
Broken link
A link to a page or file that no longer exists. Broken links can be internal (to your own site) or external (to another site). They frustrate visitors and waste search engines’ time, so fix them when you find them.
Content delivery network (CDN)
A network of servers around the world that store copies of your site’s files and serve them from the location nearest each visitor. A CDN such as Cloudflare can make your site load noticeably faster.
Core Web Vitals
Three Google measures of real visitors’ experience: Largest Contentful Paint (how quickly the main content loads), Interaction to Next Paint (how quickly the page responds to clicks and taps) and Cumulative Layout Shift (how much the layout jumps around while loading). You can check them in PageSpeed Insights and Search Console.
Engagement rate and bounce rate
In Google Analytics 4, engagement rate is the share of visits where someone stayed at least 10 seconds, viewed two or more pages or completed a key action such as a form. Bounce rate is the opposite: the share of visits that were not engaged. A high bounce rate is a sign to check whether a page gives visitors what they expected; Google does not use your Analytics bounce rate to rank pages.
HTTPS
The secure, encrypted version of HTTP, which protects information passing between a visitor’s browser and your website. It needs an SSL certificate, which most web hosts provide free. Browsers warn visitors about sites without it, and Google prefers secure pages.
Noindex
An instruction in a page’s code telling search engines not to show that page in results. It is useful for pages such as thank-you pages or internal search results, but if added by mistake it can remove important pages from Google.
Page speed
How long a page takes to load. Slow pages lose visitors, and speed is one of the signals Google considers. Test your pages with PageSpeed Insights and GTmetrix.
Permalink
The permanent web address of a page or post. If you change a permalink on a live site, redirect the old address to the new one so you keep your rankings and links.
Redirect
A way of automatically sending visitors and search engines from one URL to another, for example when a page moves to a new address. A 301 redirect marks the move as permanent and passes most of the old page’s ranking value to the new one.
Robots.txt
A small text file at the root of your website that tells search engine crawlers which areas they may and may not crawl. A mistake in it can block search engines from your whole site.
Structured data
Code added to a page, usually in the schema.org format, that describes its content to search engines: for example your business details, a product’s price or an article’s author. It can help your pages appear with extra details in search results.
Website structure
How your pages are organised and linked together. A clear hierarchy, with your most important pages near the top and related pages grouped beneath them, helps visitors find what they need and helps Google understand your site.
XML sitemap
A file listing the pages on your site that you want search engines to find. You can submit it in Google Search Console. SEO plugins such as Yoast create one automatically.
Off-page SEO terms
Off-page SEO builds your site’s reputation and authority through activity elsewhere: links from other websites, mentions, reviews and social media. These signals tell search engines that other people find your site useful.
Ad impression
One showing of an ad to a user, whether or not they click it. If your Google Ads ad appears in search results 1,000 times, it has 1,000 impressions. Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn ads are counted the same way.
Backlink
A link from another website to yours, also called an inbound link. Search engines treat backlinks from relevant, trusted sites as a vote of confidence. Quality matters far more than quantity: a handful of links from respected sites in your field is worth more than hundreds of spammy ones.
Guest blogging
Writing an article for another website’s blog, usually with a short author bio linking back to your site. It works best when the article is genuinely useful to that site’s readers, not just a way to get a link.
Link building
The work of earning backlinks from other websites, for example by creating content worth citing, getting listed in industry directories or working with partners and suppliers. It takes time and patience, but good backlinks are one of the strongest ranking signals.
Link equity (link juice)
The ranking value one page passes to another through a link. A link from a large, trusted site such as a national newspaper passes much more than a link from a small, new site.
Paid link
A link you pay another website to publish. Google’s rules require paid links to be marked with a sponsored or nofollow attribute; buying links to manipulate rankings can lead to a penalty.
Need help with your SEO?
If you would like to know how your own website measures up, request a free SEO check, or see our SEO services. If there is a term you would like added to this glossary, get in touch.
