SEO Glossary
Common SEO terms, definitions, and concepts explained simply.
What is a Dofollow Link?
A dofollow link is a regular hyperlink that passes ranking credit from one website to another.
What is Anchor Text?
Anchor text is the visible, clickable text in a hyperlink. It is usually highlighted in blue and underlined, but its style can vary depending on website design.
What is Content Silo (Siloing)
A content silo is a way of organizing website content into distinct, tightly grouped sections where each section covers a specific topic and all the pages within it are closely related and interlinked.
What is Domain Authority?
Domain Authority (DA) is a score developed by Moz that predicts how well a website might rank in search engine results.
What is Dwell Time?
Dwell time is a search-engine-side concept.
What is Google Business Profile?
Google Business Profile (GBP), formerly known as Google My Business, is a free tool that lets you manage how your business appears on Google Search and Google Maps.
What is Keyword Density?
Keyword density is the percentage of times a target keyword appears on a page relative to the total word count.
What is Ranking?
Ranking is the process by which search engines determine the order of web pages in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) for a specific user query.
Entity-Based SEO
An entity is anything that is distinct, identifiable, and well defined.
Google Ranking Factors
Google has confirmed the existence of hundreds of ranking signals, but the precise weight of each one, how they interact, and how they change with every algorithm update remains deliberately opaque.
Guest posting
Guest posting is the practice of writing and publishing an article on someone else's website.
Image Alt Text
Alt text, short for alternative text, is an HTML attribute added to image tags that describes what an image shows.
Paid Traffic vs Organic Traffic
Paid traffic comes from ads. You pay to appear at the top of search results and the moment you stop paying, the traffic stops. Organic traffic comes from SEO.
Semantic Search Optimization
Semantic search is Google's ability to understand the meaning behind a search query rather than just the literal words used.
Technical SEO
Technical SEO is the process of optimizing the infrastructure of your website so that search engines can crawl, index, and understand it without obstacles.
Toxic Backlink
A toxic backlink is a link pointing to your website from a source that Google considers low quality, manipulative, or spammy.
What are Orphan Pages in SEO
An orphan page is any page on your website that has no internal links pointing to it from other pages on the same site.
What is a 301 Redirect?
A 301 redirect is a permanent redirect that sends both visitors and search engines from one URL to another.
What is a 302 Redirect?
A 302 redirect is a temporary redirect that sends visitors and search engines from one URL to another, while signaling that the move is not permanent.
What is a Backlink?
A backlink is a link from one website to another. When an external site links to your page, that link is a backlink. These links act as votes of confidence, signaling to search engines that other websites consider your content valuable enough to reference.
What is a Broken Link?
A broken link is any hyperlink that points to a page that no longer exists or cannot be reached.
What is a Canonical Tag?
A canonical tag is an HTML element that tells search engines which version of a page is the original, preferred one.
What is a Content Cluster?
A content cluster is a group of interlinked pages that together cover a single topic from multiple angles. One central page handles the broad overview.
What is a Content Gap?
A content gap is the difference between what your audience is searching for and what your website currently covers.
What is a Featured Snippet?
A featured snippet is a highlighted box that appears at the top of Google's search results page, above all the regular organic listings.
What is a Keyword?
A keyword is a word or phrase that people type into search engines when looking for information, products, or services. It is the bridge between what your audience is searching for and the content you create.
What is a Long-Tail Keyword?
A long-tail keyword is a longer, more specific search phrase that typically contains three or more words.
What is a Meta Title?
A meta title, also called a title tag, is the clickable headline that appears on a search engine results page when your website shows up in Google.
What is a Nofollow Link?
A nofollow link is a hyperlink that includes a small piece of code telling search engines not to pass any ranking credit to the page being linked to.
What is a Search Engine Results Page (SERP)?
A carefully engineered page designed to answer your query without you ever having to leave Google if possible.
What is a Search Engine?
A search engine is a system that crawls the web, organizes what it finds, and retrieves the most relevant results when someone searches for something.
What is a Web Bot?
A web bot is an automated software program that systematically browses the internet by fetching web pages and following hyperlinks without continuous human intervention.
What is an Impression?
An impression is counted every time a link to your page appears in Google search results for a user. It does not matter whether they clicked it, scrolled to it, or even noticed it.
What is Black Hat SEO?
Black hat SEO refers to tactics that manipulate search engine algorithms to gain rankings quickly, in ways that violate Google's guidelines.
What is Bounce Rate?
Bounce rate is the percentage of sessions where a user lands on your page and leaves without any meaningful interaction.
What is Click-Through Rate
Click-through rate (CTR) is the percentage of people who click on your page after seeing it in search results.
What is Content Freshness?
Content freshness is how recently and meaningfully a page has been updated.
What is Content Pruning
Content pruning is the process of auditing your existing pages and deciding what to keep, improve, consolidate, or remove.
What is Cornerstone Content?
Cornerstone content is the most important, comprehensive content on your website. It covers a core topic in your niche at a depth that no other page on your site matches.
What is Crawling?
Crawling is the automated process by which software programs called web crawlers, spiders, or bots systematically browse the internet by following links, downloading pages, and indexing content.
What is Duplicate Content?
Duplicate content is any block of content that appears in more than one place on the web, either across different websites or across multiple pages of the same site.
What is E-E-A-T in SEO?
E-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. It is a framework Google's human quality raters use to evaluate the quality of web pages.
What is Header Tags
Header tags are HTML elements that define the headings and subheadings on a webpage.
What is Helpful Content Update
The Helpful Content Update is a Google algorithm change first rolled out in August 2022
What is Image Optimization?
Image optimization is the process of making images on your website as small in file size as possible without noticeably reducing their visual quality, while also making sure search engines can understand what those images show.
What is Indexing?
Indexing is the process by which search engines store and organize the pages they have crawled.
What is Internal Linking?
Internal linking is the practice of linking from one page on your website to another page on the same website.
What is Keyword Cannibalization?
Keyword cannibalization happens when two or more pages on your website target the same keyword and end up competing against each other in search results.
What is Keyword Difficulty?
Keyword difficulty is a metric that estimates how hard it would be to rank on the first page of Google for a specific keyword.
What is Keyword Research?
Keyword research is the process of finding and analyzing the words and phrases people type into search engines. It helps you understand what your audience is searching for so you can create content that matches their queries, satisfies their intent, and ranks in search results.
What is Keyword Stuffing?
Keyword stuffing is the practice of overloading a page with a target keyword in an unnatural, excessive way with the intention of manipulating search rankings.
What is Local SEO?
Local SEO is the practice of optimizing your online presence so your business appears in search results when people nearby are looking for what you offer.
What is LSI Keywords?
LSI keywords, short for Latent Semantic Indexing keywords, are terms and phrases that are conceptually related to your main keyword.
What is Meta Description
A meta description is a short snippet of text that appears below your page title in search results.
What is NAP Consistency?
NAP consistency means having your business Name, Address, and Phone number listed in exactly the same format across every place your business appears online.
What is NAP in SEO?
NAP refers to the three core pieces of contact information that represent your business online — and keeping them consistent across the web is one of the simplest things you can do to improve your local search visibility.
What is Off-Page SEO?
Off-page SEO refers to everything you do outside your website to improve its authority and rankings on search engines. While on-page SEO is about what is on your pages, off-page SEO is about how the rest of the internet perceives and references your site.
What is On-Page SEO?
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What is Organic Traffic?
Organic traffic is the visitors who land on your website through unpaid search engine results. When someone searches a query on Google and clicks on your page without it being an ad, that is organic traffic.
What is People Also Ask in Google?
People Also Ask (PAA) is a Google SERP feature that displays a set of expandable questions related to the original search query.
What Is Robots.txt?
Robots.txt is a simple text file placed in the root directory of your website that gives instructions to search engine crawlers about which pages or sections they are allowed or not allowed to access.
What is Schema Markup?
Schema markup is structured data code added to your website's HTML that helps search engines understand your content better.
What is Search Intent?
Search intent is the reason behind a search query. It is what a person actually wants to find when they type something into Google.
What is SEO content?
SEO content is any content created with the specific goal of ranking in search engines and attracting organic traffic. It is not just about writing for Google though.
What is SEO?
The process of improving the quality and quantity of website traffic to a website or a web page from search engines.
What is the Google Local Pack?
If you have ever searched for a service near you and seen a map with three business listings appear near the top of Google before any of the regular results, that is the Google local pack.
What is Thin Content?
Thin content is any page on your website that offers little to no real value to the person reading it.
What is Topical Authority?
Topical authority is the level of trust a search engine places in your website as a reliable, comprehensive source on a specific subject.
What is User Experience (UX) in SEO?
User experience in SEO is how easy, fast, and satisfying it is for someone to use your website.
What is White Hat SEO?
White hat SEO refers to optimization practices that follow search engine guidelines and focus on providing genuine value to users.
What is XML Sitemap?
An XML sitemap is a file that lists all the important URLs on your website in a structured format that search engines can easily read.
Zero-Click Searches
A zero-click search is any search where the user gets their answer directly from the search results page without clicking through to any website.