SEO terms in the glossary

A 301 redirect is a permanent server redirect telling search engines a URL has moved for good.

A 302 redirect is a temporary redirect signalling to search engines that the current URL relocation is not permanent.

Alt text (alternative text) is the description attached to an image, crucial for accessibility and for how search engines understand the image.

Anchor text is the visible, clickable text of a hyperlink — a strong ranking signal about the topic of the destination URL.

A backlink is an incoming link from another website to yours — one of the strongest signals of authority and trust in search engines.

BERT (Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers) is Google's 2019 NLP model that understands query context and nuance by analysing words bidirectionally.

Black-hat SEO refers to techniques violating Google guidelines and chasing short-term ranking gains at the cost of long-term sustainability.

Bounce rate is the percentage of visitors leaving your site after viewing only one page, without any other interaction.

Breadcrumbs are a navigation trail showing the current page's hierarchical position within the site, also displayed as a navigation element in the SERP via structured data.

Broken link building is the technique of finding broken links on other sites and proposing the owner replace them with a link to your relevant content.

A canonical tag is an HTML element that tells search engines which URL is preferred when the same content is reachable at multiple addresses.

CTR is the percentage of users who click your search result compared to how often it was shown.

A CDN is a globally distributed network of edge servers that caches content close to the end user, dramatically reducing load times.

Content gap analysis is identifying topics competitors rank for that you don't, usually as basis for prioritising new content.

Content pruning is systematically removing, consolidating or improving low-performing content to raise overall perceived quality of your site.

Core Web Vitals are Google's core performance metrics: loading (LCP), interactivity (INP) and visual stability (CLS).

Crawl budget is how many URLs Googlebot wants and is able to crawl on your site within a given period, depending on server capacity and URL value.

CLS measures how much a page's visual layout unexpectedly shifts during load — a score safeguarding visual stability.

Google's Disavow tool lets you instruct search engines to ignore certain incoming links, useful in cases of link spam or penalties.

A dofollow link is the standard hyperlink without rel attributes that passes full PageRank and authority to the destination URL.

Domain authority (DA) is a score from 1-100 estimating a domain's overall ranking power, developed by Moz and widely used in link analysis.

Duplicate content is identical or near-identical text reachable at multiple URLs, making it hard for search engines to determine which version to rank.

Dwell time is the time a user spends on a page before returning to search results, a signal of content satisfaction.

E-commerce SEO is applying SEO principles to webshops, focusing on category pages, product pages, schema markup and faceted navigation.

Evergreen content is content remaining relevant for years without major updates, like definitions, how-it-works explainers and timeless guides.

Faceted navigation is filter systems (color, size, price) in shops and directories using URL parameters — often an SEO problem due to duplicate content.

FCP measures the moment the browser first renders text, image or another visible content element — the first signal that the page is alive.

Google Analytics 4 is Google's event-based analytics platform for website and app traffic, successor to Universal Analytics since July 2023.

Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business) is Google's free platform for local businesses to manage their Search and Maps presence.

Google Search Console is Google's free tool for site owners to monitor search performance, including indexing, CTR and technical issues.

Google Tag Manager is a free tag management system that centrally installs marketing and analytics tags (GA4, Ads, Meta Pixel, schema) without code changes on the site.

The H1 is the primary heading of an HTML page and the strongest semantic signal about the page topic.

The Helpful Content Update is Google's algorithm change since 2022 that sitewide rewards or penalises based on whether content is human-first and genuinely useful.

Hreflang is an HTML attribute telling search engines which language variants of a page exist and which audience each variant targets.

HSTS (HTTP Strict Transport Security) is a browser policy enforcing that all connections to a site happen over HTTPS.

An HTTP status code is a three-digit code the server returns with every response, signalling whether the request succeeded, redirected or errored.

An impression counts every time your URL appears in search results, regardless of whether the user clicks.

Indexing is the process by which search engines include crawled pages in their searchable database, qualifying them to appear in results.

INP measures how quickly a page visually responds to user interactions like clicks, taps and keyboard input — the successor to FID since 2024.

Internal links are links between pages on the same domain, a lever for crawlability, authority distribution and thematic context.

International SEO is the discipline of making websites visible in multiple countries or languages, with attention to hreflang, regional targeting and local content.

JavaScript SEO is the specialism of ensuring client-side rendered pages (SPAs, React, Vue) are correctly crawled and indexed by search engines.

JSON-LD is Google's recommended format for adding structured data to a page, via a JSON object inside a <script> tag.

Keyword cannibalization occurs when multiple pages on the same site compete for the same search term, weakening each other's ranking.

Keyword difficulty (KD) is a 0–100 score estimating how hard it is for a new page to rank on Google's first page for a search term.

Keyword research is systematically mapping search terms your audience uses, including volume, intent and competition, as basis for SEO strategy.

LCP measures how long it takes for the largest visible element on a page to load — the primary measure of perceived loading speed.

Lazy loading is the technique where images, iframes or scripts only load once they're about to appear in the viewport, speeding up initial page load.

Local SEO is optimising online presence for location-bound queries, crucial for businesses with physical locations or service areas.

Log file analysis is the study of server access logs to see how search engine crawlers actually navigate a site — which pages, how often, and with which status codes.

A long-tail keyword is a specific search phrase (typically 3+ words) with low search volume but much higher conversion potential and less competition.

The meta description is the short descriptive text under the meta title in search results, intended to entice the click.

The meta title is the clickable title of a web page in search results and browser tabs, usually set via the HTML title tag.

Mobile-first indexing is Google's system where the mobile version of your site is the primary source for indexing and ranking, standard since 2021.

MUM is Google's 2021 multimodal AI model that processes text, images and 75 languages simultaneously and understands complex multi-step queries.

NAP stands for Name, Address, Phone — business info that must appear consistently on external sites (directories, review platforms) for local SEO.

The nofollow attribute on a link tells search engines not to pass trust or authority signals to the destination URL.

A noindex directive tells search engines not to include a page in the index, even though it still gets crawled.

Off-page SEO covers all optimisation activities outside your own site: link building, brand mentions, PR, social signals and reputation.

On-page SEO covers all optimisations within the HTML of individual pages: titles, headings, content quality, internal links, media and schema.

Open Graph is a Facebook-introduced protocol using meta tags to control how a URL is presented when shared on social platforms.

An orphan page is a web page with no internal links from other pages on the domain, making it hard or impossible for crawlers to find.

PageRank is Google's original 1998 algorithm that calculates a page's authority by analysing the quantity and quality of inbound links.

Pagespeed is the load speed of a web page, directly tied to user experience, conversion and ranking through Core Web Vitals.

Pagination is splitting long lists (search results, category pages, archives) across multiple URLs with navigation between them.

People Also Ask is a Google SERP feature displaying related follow-up questions in expandable form, often powered by content from ranking pages.

A pillar page is a comprehensive main page that fully introduces a broad topic and links to multiple detailed cluster pages.

RankBrain is Google's 2015 machine-learning algorithm that interprets unfamiliar and ambiguous queries by recognising semantic patterns.

Render-blocking resources are CSS or JS files holding up page rendering until fully downloaded and processed.

Rich results are enhanced search results with extra visual elements like stars, prices, FAQ accordions or recipes — powered by structured data.

A robots.txt file in a website's root tells crawlers which URLs they may or may not crawl.

Search intent is the goal behind a search query — informational, navigational, commercial or transactional — determining what type of content Google shows.

Search volume is the estimated number of times per month a specific query is entered into a search engine, usually expressed as a 12-month average.

SERP stands for Search Engine Results Page — the page a search engine shows in response to a query.

Sitelinks are extra internal links Google shows under your main result for branded queries, typical for large brands or strong sites.

A sitemap.xml is an XML file giving search engines a complete list of indexable URLs on a site, with metadata about freshness and priority.

A soft 404 is a page returning HTTP 200 but functioning as a 404 error page, confusing Google about the real status.

SSL/TLS is the encryption between browser and server enabling HTTPS — a light ranking factor since 2014 and an absolute must today.

Technical SEO covers all SEO aspects on the server, code or infrastructure side, independent of content and links.

Thin content is pages with little or little valuable substance, which Google judges insufficient to keep in the search index.

TTFB measures the time between an HTTP request and the first byte returning from the server — the primary indicator of server-side performance.

A topic cluster is a group of interlinked pages around one central topic, usually one pillar page plus multiple supporting articles.

Topical authority is a domain's perceived expertise within a specific topic cluster, built through complete, well-linked content architecture.

A URL slug is the final, human-readable part of a URL after the last slash that identifies the page and can include keywords.

White-hat SEO refers to optimisation techniques fully compliant with Google guidelines and delivering durable long-term ranking growth.

x-default is a special hreflang value indicating which page Google should show when no other language variant fits the searcher.