A-to-Z glossary of every important SEO term and definition explained.
In SEO, a redirect is a way of automatically sending users and search engines from one URL to another URL. A redirect tells browsers and search engines where the content has moved.
For example:
Redirects not only preserve SEO value (link equity) but also prevent 404 errors and improve user experience. They’re more important during website migrations and redesigns and can be used to consolidate duplicate content.
The eedirects and canonical tags help consolidate authority into a single URL.
Many people confuse redirects and canonical tags.
Redirect
Canonical Tag
Example:
<link rel="canonical" href="https://example.com/product">
Use this as your ultimate SEO glossary and supportive SEO checklist.
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Created by Google, Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) is a HTML framework for creating stripped-down, fast-loading web page versions optimized for mobile. It's a mobile-first SEO approach.
An ad impression is a metric used in digital advertising to count the number of times an advertisement is displayed, regardless of whether it was clicked or not.
ADA website compliance refers to the adherence of a website to the standards set by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).
AhrefsBot is a web crawler run by the Ahrefs SEO software suite that powers its index of pages and links.
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 is the visible, clickable text of a hyperlink. Google uses anchor texts to better understand the content of the linked page.
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. SEOs sometimes call it the “skycrapper technique.”
Article syndication is when one or more third-party sites republish an exact copy of content that originally appeared elsewhere.
Auto-generated content is content that's automatically generated using a program or code.
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 is a free service from Microsoft that helps you monitor and troubleshoot your website’s appearance in Bing’s search results.
Bingbot is the web crawler used by Microsoft to gather the information needed and build a searchable index of the web.
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 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 content is ancy created by brands promoting their products, services, or values. It can also be called Entity SEO.
Branded keywords are the words and phrases that are associated with your entity, brand, products, or services.
Breadcrumb navigation are internal links that give users and search engines a clear trail to follow around your site.
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.
A broken link is a link on a web page that points to a non-existent (or "dead") resource. They can be internal or external links.
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.
A canonical tag (rel=“canonical”) is a snippet of HTML code that defines the main version for duplicate, near-duplicate and similar pages.
A canonical URL is a URL that Google sees as the “master” version of a set of duplicate or near-duplicate pages.
Cloaking in SEO is a deceptive technique that presents different content or URLs to human users and search engines.
Co-citation occurs when two documents are cited together by other documents
When keywords show up together on pages about a certain topic.
Content created by software that is supposedly on par with what a human can create.
Globally distributed server network that makes it quicker for users to access your website.
Content gap uses competitor research to identify missing or underrepresented topics on a website.
Interlinked collections of content about a similar topic.
Content relevance is the extent to which the content is relevant to the needs, interests, and preferences of the reader.
Core Web Vitals are SEO Metrics that are part of Google’s Page Experience signals used to measure user experience.
Cornerstone content is the collection of articles on your website that you most want to rank for in search engines.
How fast and how many pages a search engine wants to crawl on your site.
A search engine’s ability to access content on a page.
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.
The customer journey is a comprehensive mapping of the steps a consumer takes from their initial awareness of a brand to the eventual purchase of a product or service, and their experiences beyond this point.
Link that transfers PageRank. AKA a “followed” link.
The relative strength of a website’s authority based on its backlink profile.
Domain structure is way a website's domain name and its subdomains and directories are organized.
Pages designed to rank for similar search queries.
Content on your website that appears on the web in more than one place.
How much time passes between clicking one of the search results and heading back to them.
URL with content that depends on variable parameters.
Link that points to your site (that you didn’t ask or pay for.)
Ego bait is a specific tactic in digital marketing that involves creating content designed to attract the attention and engagement of influential individuals or experts in a particular field.
The process of putting your product or content in front of relevant people by sending them personalized emails.
Entity SEO is an approach in search engine optimization that focuses on the concept of entities as the central element, rather than relying solely on keywords.
The first page a searcher views on your site.
Content that doesn’t go out of date.
Link from your site to another site.
Type of navigation found on websites with a large number of listings, such as e-commerce sites.
Content that visitors can only access after providing their contact information.
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.
Free service from Google that monitors the web for content changes matching a specific search query.
A set of rules used by Google to rank matching results when a user performs a search.
Google Analytics is a free web tracking tool offered by Google to analyze how visitors interact with your website.
Search suggestions given by Google when entering a search.
Google Bombing is a practice in which individuals or groups intentionally manipulate search engine rankings to produce unexpected or humorous results.
Google Business Profile, or GBP, is the free business listing from Google that shows up in maps and web search results.
Search index introduced by Google in 2010 that allowed them to index more content and provide fresher search results.
Slang term describing the volatility a new website or page experiences when Google is trying to determine where it should rank.
Algorithm update released by Google in 2013 to better understand natural language search queries. It emphasized the meaning of search queries over individual keywords.
Knowledge base of entities and the relationships between them.
SERP feature that provides information about the main subject of the query.
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.
A Google penalty is a punishment a human reviewer can impose on a website for violating Google’s webmaster quality guidelines.
Algorithm update released in 2012 by Google to downgrade sites that engaged in manipulative link schemes and keyword stuffing.
Algorithm update released in 2013 by Google to improve search results for local search queries.
Alleged filter by Google that prevents new websites from ranking in Google’s top results.
Free service from Google that helps you monitor and troubleshoot your website’s appearance in their search results.
Algorithm update released in 2012 by Google to downgrade web pages with too many ads at the top.
Best practices from Google to help them find, index, and rank your site.
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.
Web crawler that powers Google’s search engine.
The use of SEO strategies and tactics that blur the line between white-hat and black-hat methods.
Guest blogging is the practice of writing and publishing a blog post on another person or company’s website.
An infographic created by you but published on other websites.
HTML heading that’s most commonly used to mark up a web page title.
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.
Algorithm adopted by Google in 2003 to identify authoritative web pages to rank.
The practice of improving all aspects of a website to rank higher in search engines.
HTML attribute used to tell Google about alternate versions of a web page for different languages and regions.
The HTTP 200 (OK) is the status response code from a server for successful HTTP requests from a client.
Encrypted version of HTTP that protects the communications between your browser and server from being intercepted and tampered with by attackers.
Link from another site to your website.
Index bloat occurs when a large portion of a website's less important web pages are indexed.
A search engine’s ability to analyze and store a web page in its database.
Query where someone wants to find information, not products.
Link from another page on the same website.
Full-screen interactive ads that cover the interface of the website or app.
A part of technical SEO that seeks to make JavaScript-heavy websites more search-friendly.
Keyword cannibalization happens when a single website unintentionally targets the same keyword across multiple posts or pages.
Keyword clustering is a practice in SEO used to combine similar, relevant keywords into groups (clusters).
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 is a metric provided by various SEO tools intended to estimate a keyword’s ranking difficulty.
Keyword intent is Think of keyword intent as the filter you use during keyword research to decide whether a keyword belongs in your strategy at all.
A keyword ranking is a website's organic ranking position in the search results for a particular keyword.
Process of reducing a word to its ‘stem’ or ‘root’ (e.g., flowers, flowery -> flower).
Repeating the same keywords (or similar phrases) in your content to try to manipulate rankings.
Overall, keywords are words and phrases that a particular web page is associated with.
A landing page is a web page where a visitor "lands" after clicking on a link in a specific marketing campaign.
Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) is a technique in natural language processing and computational linguistics used to analyze relationships between a set of documents and the terms they contain.
Content specifically designed to attract backlinks.
The process of getting other websites to link to pages on your website.
‘Authority’ that is passed when one page links to another.
Agreement between two websites to link to each other.
Group of websites created to link to each other to improve search engine rankings.
Link juice is the value that one page or website can pass to another page or website through a link.
The number of backlinks that point to a website.
Assessment of all the backlinks (quantity, quality, diversity, etc.) a website has.
The process of trying to get back lost links.
Natural tendency for links to become broken on the web over time.
Links intended to manipulate PageRank or a site’s ranking in Google search results.
Irrelevant links placed on pages to try and improve search engine rankings.
Link text, often known as "anchor text," is the visible, clickable text in a hyperlink on a web page.
The rate at which a website’s backlink profile is growing.
A specific type of structured data for local businesses recognized by search engines and used in local search results.
A local citation is any mention of your business’s name, address, and phone number (NAP) online.
The local pack is the SERP feature that appears for local queries and displays local Google business listings.
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.
In SEO, Local SEO is the process of ‘optimizing’ your online presence to show up and rank higher in relevant local searches.
Where you analyze the crawl behaviour of search engine bots in server logs to discover opportunities to improve SEO.
A low-volume search query on a specific topic.
Misnomer for semantically-related words and phrases. (LSI keywords don’t exist.).
Demotion or removal of websites/webpages issued by Google to sites that do not comply with their webmaster guidelines.
HTML attribute used to describe what a page is about.
Meta tags that give some search engines (not Google) more information about a page’s content.
Code that tells the web browser to redirect the user to a different URL after a set amount of time.
An HTML snippet that tells search engines how to crawl and index a page.
Snippets of code that tell search engines important information about your web page.
A mirror website is a copy of a site hosted on another server.
Google’s shift to using the mobile version of a website for indexing and ranking.
In SEO, NAP stands for Name, Address, and Phone Number, which are key details in a business's online profile.
NLU is about enabling computers to understand and interpret human language as it is spoken or written, recognizing the nuances, intent, and sentiment behind the words.
A natural link is a type of external link created voluntarily by a website owner or content creator.
Query where someone is looking for a specific website.
When a competitor uses black-hat tactics to attempt to sabotage the rankings of a competing website or web page.
Tag that tells Google not to take a link into account for ranking purposes.
Tag that instructs search engines not to index a page.
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.
HTML attribute that prevents referrer information passing through a link.
Keyword data that Google omits from sharing with you in Google Analytics.
Any efforts taken outside of a website to improve its search engine rankings.
The practice of optimizing a web page’s visible content and source code to rank higher.
Snippets of code that control how URLs are displayed when shared on social media.
Non-paid search results from a search engine that can’t be bought or influenced by advertisers.
Traffic from a search engine’s organic results.
Page with no internal links pointing to it.
Link that points to a page not on your website.
The amount of time it takes for a web page to load.
A formula that judges the value of a page by looking at the quantity and quality of other pages that link to it.
A backlink that you pay for.
SERP feature that answers questions related to the user’s search query.
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.
Back-and-forth process between the SERPs and its results when a searcher is unable to find the content they want.
A primary keyword is the single, main keyword around which a web page is created and optimized.
A private blog network (PBN) is a network of websites created solely to link out to another website and improve its organic search visibility.
QDF, or Query Deserves Freshness, is one of the search ranking system in Google designed to show fresher content for the search queries where it would be expected.
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.
When two websites link to each other.
Request to have Google review your site after fixing problems identified in a manual action or security issues notification.
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.
This article explains what a relative URL is, how it is different from absolute URLs and how it affects SEO.
Resource pages are web pages that curate and link out to useful industry resources.
Google search result with additional data shown alongside it, usually from structured data on the page.
A file that tells search engines where they can and can’t go on your site.
Code that helps search engines to better understand and represent your content in the search results.
List of rules used by search engines to rank matching results when a user performs a search.
When malicious hackers create dummy websites that appear to be legitimate search engine results. Their goal is to steal personal information or install malware.
Pages that search engines show in response to a user’s search query.
Search intent = The reason behind a search.
Search results are a list of webpages from a search engine that appear in response to a particular search query.
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 is the estimated percentage of clicks a website gets from its organic rankings for one or more keywords.
Search volume is the number of times, on average, that users enter a particular search query into a search engine each month.
Terms closely related to the keyword you want to target.
Protocol for establishing a secure private connection between networked computers.
Seed keywords are words or phrases used in the keyword research process as the starting point to unlock more keyword suggestions.
The practice of optimizing a website or webpage to get more high-quality traffic from a search engine’s organic results.
The process of evaluating and assessing your website to see how well it’s performing in search engines.
The grouping together of topically-related web pages via internal links.
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.
How visible your brand is in the market.
Terms with high search volumes.
Links to other pages or sections of a page that appear under some Google search results.
A sitemap is an XML file listing all the pages on your website that you want search engines like Google to index.
Outbound link that appears on every page of a website.
Deliberate manipulation of search engine results using techniques that are against their guidelines.
Link attribute that shows a link is an advertisement, paid placement, sponsorship, or affiliate link.
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.
A standardized way to provide additional information about a web page to search engines, social networks and other services.
A subdomain is a part of a website that’s placed under that website’s root directory. It is represented by an addition at the front of the root domain name.
Optimizing for search engines by organizing the structure of content.
Making technical adjustments to help search engines find, crawl, understand, and index your pages.
Statistical measure that aims to judge the relative importance of a word in a document.
Content that has little or no value for the user.
Tiered link building involves creating links to external pages that link to your website or page.
HTML element used to specify the title of a webpage.
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.
In the context of link-building and SEO, topical relevance means that the content of the linking page is closely related to the content of the linked page.
Query where someone is looking to purchase something but hasn’t yet decided where to buy it from.
An updated, more secure version of SSL. Used interchangeably with SSL.
Algorithm that analyzes links to separate useful web pages from spam.
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 was introduced in 2007 as an expansion of search results to incorporate other media formats - like images, videos, maps, and news - in SERPs
Links in a page’s content that are not editorially placed or vouched for by the site’s owner.
The strength of a target page’s backlink profile on a 0–100 scale, with 100 being the strongest.
A URL Slug is the part of the URL that follows the slash ("/") after the domain name or subfolder.
User intent is the purpose behind a user's search query on a search engine.
Search engine dedicated to a specific area of focus.
Voice search is the use of voice to interact with a search engine (rather than searching by text).
A metric from SEO tool providers that measures the relative strength of a site. (Ours is Domain Rating.)
A website hit refers to any request made to the server hosting the website, including requests for individual elements such as HTML pages, images, stylesheets, scripts, etc.
How a site is organized and its web pages interlinked.
Webspam is any online content created to manipulate search engine rankings.
The use of Google-approved website SEO strategies, techniques, and tactics.
The X-Robots-Tag is an HTTP header sent from a web server that contains the directives for the web crawlers such as Googlebot.
Pages about topics that could impact a person’s future happiness, health, financial stability, or safety
