The Complete SEO Glossary (100+ Terms Defined)

A permanent redirect that passes link equity to the new URL. Use when content moves permanently.

A temporary redirect. Search engines may keep the original URL indexed.

Page not found. Too many can hurt user experience and crawl budget.

Permanent removal status. Stronger 'this is gone' signal than 404.

Service unavailable — used for planned maintenance, signals 'come back later'.

Accelerated Mobile Pages — a now largely deprecated mobile speed framework.

The set of rules a search engine uses to rank pages.

Text alternative for images, used by screen readers and search engines.

The clickable text in a hyperlink. Descriptive anchors help SEO.

A 0-100 metric (Moz DA, Ahrefs DR) estimating how much a domain's backlinks contribute to ranking.

A link from another site pointing to yours. Quality matters more than quantity.

Manipulative tactics that violate search engine guidelines. Risky.

Microsoft's search engine, also powers ChatGPT Search.

Automated program that fetches pages to build a search index.

Percentage of single-page sessions. High bounce can indicate poor intent match.

Navigation showing the page's location in site hierarchy. Helps users and SEO.

An HTML element telling search engines the preferred URL for duplicate content.

Clicks divided by impressions. Higher CTR can lift rankings.

Showing different content to search engines vs users. Black-hat.

Topics competitors rank for that you don't. Easy growth opportunities.

Optimising pages to convert more visitors into customers.

Google's user-experience metrics: LCP, INP, and CLS.

How many pages a search bot will crawl on your site in a given period.

Number of clicks from the homepage to reach a page. Lower is better for indexation.

Fake clicks to influence rankings. Doesn't work and risks penalties.

Core Web Vital measuring unexpected layout shifts. Aim for under 0.1.

Removing a page from a search engine's index.

Google tool to tell it to ignore certain backlinks.

Domain Name System — translates domain names into IP addresses.

Default link that passes ranking signals (PageRank).

Moz's 0-100 metric predicting ranking strength.

Ahrefs' equivalent of DA.

How long a user stays on a page before returning to the SERP.

Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness — Google's content-quality framework.

How users interact with content — scrolls, clicks, time on page.

A link from your site to another.

The answer box at the top of some SERPs. Position zero.

Link in the site footer. Less valuable than in-body links.

Optimising for AI search engines like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews.

Free Google listing for local businesses.

Free Google tool for monitoring search performance.

An article written by someone external, published on your blog (or vice versa).

HTML tags for headings. H1 is most important; use only one per page.

HTML attribute telling search engines which language/region a page targets.

Web protocols. HTTPS (secure) is required for ranking.

2013 Google algorithm update focused on conversational queries.

When your page appears in a SERP, regardless of clicks.

Another name for a backlink.

The database of pages a search engine knows about.

Core Web Vital replacing FID. Aim for under 200ms.

A link from one page to another on the same domain.

A word or phrase users search for.

Multiple pages competing for the same keyword on your site.

Percentage of times a keyword appears in content. Largely obsolete as a metric.

How hard it is to rank for a keyword (0-100 scale).

Cramming keywords unnaturally. Penalised.

Core Web Vital measuring main content load time. Aim for under 2.5s.

A discredited Google ranking myth. They don't use this.

Earning links from other websites to yours.

Ranking value passed from one page to another through a link.

Network of low-quality sites that link to each other. Black-hat.

The map + 3 business listings on local SERPs.

Specific 4+ word phrases with lower volume but higher intent.

HTML tag describing page content. Influences CTR but not rankings directly.

HTML tag controlling indexing (noindex) and link following (nofollow).

The HTML page title. One of the most important on-page SEO elements.

Google primarily uses the mobile version of your site for indexing.

Name, Address, Phone — must be consistent across local listings.

Malicious attempts to harm a competitor's rankings.

Link with rel='nofollow' that doesn't pass PageRank.

HTML directive telling search engines not to index a page.

Optimising elements on a page (title, headings, content, internal links).

Optimisation done outside your site (backlinks, mentions, social).

Meta tags controlling how pages preview on social media.

A page with no internal links pointing to it. Hard to discover and rank.

Google's original algorithm for ranking pages based on link graph.

How quickly a page loads. Affects rankings and UX.

2011 Google update targeting low-quality content. Now part of core algorithm.

2012 Google update targeting manipulative link-building. Now part of core algorithm.

Manual or algorithmic action that suppresses a site's rankings.

A long, comprehensive page covering a broad topic, linked to detailed sub-pages.

Pay-per-click advertising (Google Ads). Not SEO, but often runs alongside.

What a user types into a search engine.

Monitoring keyword positions over time.

Google's machine-learning ranking component focused on query understanding.

Multiple redirects in sequence. Wastes crawl budget; avoid.

A unique domain linking to your site. Counts once regardless of link count.

Two sites linking to each other. Devalued at scale.

Enhanced SERP result with stars, prices, or other data from schema.

File telling crawlers which parts of your site to ignore.

Structured data (JSON-LD) helping search engines understand content.

Search Engine Results Page.

Non-organic SERP elements (Featured Snippet, People Also Ask, Knowledge Panel).

XML file listing your site's pages to help crawlers discover them.

Overall load performance of your website.

Find top-ranking content, make something better, promote it for backlinks.

Enables HTTPS. Required for modern SEO.

Same as schema markup — formatted data for search engines.

A prefix like blog.example.com. Often treated as separate by search engines.

A path like example.com/blog/. Generally better than subdomain for SEO.

SEO work focused on crawlability, indexability, speed, and architecture.

Pages with little unique value. Devalued or de-indexed.

Time from request to first response byte. Server speed metric.

How much expertise a site demonstrates on a topic. Drives rankings.

Majestic's metric estimating link-quality trustworthiness.

The readable part of a URL after the domain (e.g., /seo-glossary).

The reason behind a search query (informational, navigational, transactional, commercial).

Searches made via voice assistants. Tend to be conversational and longer.

Ethical SEO following search engine guidelines.

Same as Sitemap — XML file listing pages.

Your Money or Your Life — sites that impact health, finance, safety. Held to higher quality standards.

Searches resolved on the SERP itself, no click to a site.