Domain Authority: A search engine ranking score developed by Moz that estimates how well a website will rank in the search engine results pages. Domain Authority scores range from 1 to 100, with higher scores indicating a better possibility of ranking.

Domain Rating: A search engine ranking score developed by Ahrefs that estimates the relative strength of a website’s backlink profile. Domain Rating scores are based on a 100-point scale.

Duplicate Content: A term used in the field of search engine optimization to describe content that appears on more than one web page within the same domain or across multiple domains. The content can be identical (exact duplicates) or very similar to each other.

E

E-A-T: An acronym that stands for Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trust. It is a set of website evaluation standards that comes from Google’s Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines and is part of the ranking algorithm systems.

E-E-A-T: An acronym that stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. Google revised the Search Quality Evaluator Guidelines in December 2022 to include Experience as another important part of the evaluation process and is a new signal for the ranking algorithm systems.

Ecommerce SEO: The practice of search engine optimization that makes an online store more visible on the search engine results pages.

Editorial Link: A link a website receives that is not paid for, asked for, or traded for, but is acquired naturally by publishing high-quality content that other site owners want to link to for the benefit of their users.

Exact Match Keyword: A term that applies to both search engine optimization and pay-per-click advertising. In search engine optimization, an exact match keyword indicates that your target keyword exactly matches a search query. In pay-per-click advertising, an exact match keyword indicates a match type that allows your ads to appear for searches that have the same meaning or same intent as your keyword and not necessarily the exact wording.

External Link: A hyperlink that points to a web page on another domain. Also known as an outbound link.

F

Featured Snippets: A highlighted excerpt of text that appears at the top of a Google search results page to provide users with a quick answer to their query. It is also known as position 0 because it ranks above the first organic search result listing.

G

Generic Keyword: A keyword that has a meaning with a relatively wide scope and is not attributed to a specific brand, product, or service in SEO and PPC campaigns.

Google Analytics: A web analytics service offered by Google that allows users to track and analyze performance metrics for websites and apps.

Google Bard: A conversational Artificial Intelligence (AI) service that is powered by LaMDA (Language Model for Dialogue Applications). Google Bard works as a chatbot to provide fresh, high-quality responses in Google Search by sourcing information from the web.

Google Business Profile: A business listing service offered by Google that allows local businesses to manage how their information shows up across Google products, like Maps and Search. Previously known as Google My Business.

Google Knowledge Graph: Google’s database of billions of facts it has collected about entities (people, places, organizations, and things) that it uses to serve relevant information in an infobox (Knowledge Panel) beside the search results.

Google Knowledge Panel: Information boxes that appear on Google when a user searches for entities (people, places, organizations, things) that contain information stored in the Knowledge Graph.

Google LaMDA: A family of conversational neural language models developed by Google. LaMDA allows Google’s systems to engage in human-like open-ended dialogue with users directly in Search. LaMDA is short for Language Model for Dialogue Applications.

Google Penalty: A negative effect applied to a website’s rankings based on a manual review or algorithm update. A manual action penalty will appear in Google Search Console along with a notification explaining why the penalty was applied.

Google Ranking Factors: A set of criteria Google’s algorithms use to evaluate websites and web pages to compile the ranking order of their search results. It’s estimated that Google has more than 200 ranking factors in its algorithm systems.

Google Search Console: A service offered by Google that allows users to monitor and troubleshoot their website’s presence in Google Search results.

Google Trends: A service offered by Google that gives a largely unfiltered sample of search requests made to Google to help users discover how often specific keywords and topics have been queried over a specific period of time.

Grey Hat SEO: A practice of search engine optimization that combines white hat and black hat SEO techniques to help a website ranking higher in search engine results pages. Some of the methods follow search engine guidelines (e.g., creating high-quality content) while other tactics violate those same guidelines (e.g., buying backlinks). Also spelled as gray hat SEO.

Guest Blogging: A content marketing tactic that involves writing and publishing a blog post on a third-party website with the intention of increasing brand awareness for the author or their organization. Also known as guest posting.

Guest Posting: The practice of writing content that is published on another company’s website or blog with the intention of inserting backlinks into the post for off-site SEO purposes. Also known as guest blogging.

H

Header Tags: HTML elements used to separate headings and subheadings on a web page to provide a hierarchical structure to the content. Header tags consist of six levels: H1 to H6. Also known as heading tags.

H1 Tag: An HTML element that defines the first-level heading on a web page to mark up the main subject for the content. The

tag is often coded in website themes to be the first visible header tag on the page and includes the title of the content. It also carries the most weight for on-page SEO compared to the H2-H3 tags.

H2 Tag: An HTML element that defines the second-level heading (or subheading) on a web page to mark up a subsection of the content. A web page can have any number of

tags to break up the subsections of the main topic. It carries less SEO value than the H1 tag but more weight than the H3 tag.

H3 Tag: An HTML element that defines the third-level heading (or subheading) on a web page to mark up a subsection of an H2 heading in the content. A web page can have any number of

tags to break up the subsections of the

subheading topics. It carries the least value for on-page SEO.

H4: Tag: An HTML element that defines the fourth-level heading (or subheading) on a web page to mark up a subsection of an H3 heading in the content. A web page can have any number of

tags to break up the subsections of the

subheading topics. It does not carry any weight for SEO.

H5: Tag: An HTML element that defines the fifth-level heading (or subheading) on a web page to mark up a subsection of an H4 heading in the content. A web page can have any number of

tags to break up the subsections of the

subheading topics. It does not carry any weight for SEO.

H6 Tag: An HTML element that defines the sixth-level heading (or subheading) on a web page to mark up a subsection of an H5 heading in the content. A web page can have any number of

tags to break up the subsections of the

subheading topics. It does not carry any weight for SEO.

Hreflang: An HTML attribute used to tell search engines about alternate versions of a web page for different languages and geographic regions.

---

I

Inbound Link: A link on a website that points to a web page on another site. Also known as an incoming link or backlink.

Index: A database used by a search engine to store information for all the websites it has crawled on the Internet. Also known as a search index.

Indexing: The process a search engine uses to organize and store the website information it found during the crawling process in the index.

Internal Link: A hyperlink from one web page to another web page on the same website.

International SEO: A practice of search engine optimization that optimizes a website for multiple countries or languages.

J

JavaScript: An object-oriented computer programming language used to create interactive effects within web browsers.

JavaScript SEO: A practice of search engine optimization that makes it easy for search engines to crawl and index JavaScript code.

K

Keyword Cannibalization: A website issue where multiple pages target the same or similar keywords and end up competing against each other (cannibalizing) for rankings in the search engine results.

Keyword Clustering: A content optimization practice that groups similar and semantically related keywords together on the same web page. The goal is to optimize the page for multiple (and relevant) variations of the keyword phrase so it has stronger on-page SEO signals for the entire cluster as a method to increase overall search engine visibility.

Keyword Density: The percentage of times a keyword phrase appears on a web page divided by the total number of words on the page. Also known as keyword frequency and keyword repetition.

Keyword Frequency: The number of times a keyword phrase appears on a web page. Also known as keyword density or keyword repetition.

Keyword Difficulty: A scoring metric that keyword research tools use to estimate how hard it would be to rank in the top 10 positions on Google for a given keyword. Keyword Difficulty (KD) is based on the strength of the backlink profiles for the top-ranking URLs. KD scores range between 1 to 100, with 100 being the most difficult.

Keyword Prominence: A content optimization practice that uses a target keyword in prominent locations on a web page to send a strong signal to search engines about what keywords the page should rank for in the search results.

Keyword Proximity: The distance between individual words of a keyword phrase within a body of text. Keywords can have low proximity or high proximity for related search terms based on how close or far out they are spaced.

Keyword Ranking: The organic ranking position in the search results for a particular keyword.

Keyword Research: The process of finding and analyzing search terms that people enter into search engines with the goal of using that information to formulate a search engine optimization strategy. Keyword research helps evaluate the organic traffic, ranking difficulty, and monetary value of potential words and phrases to target on a website.

Keyword Research Tool: A software application for conducting keyword research.

Keyword Stuffing: The practice of repeating the same keywords a large number of times on a web page to try to manipulate search engine rankings.

Keyword: A word or phrase that you target on a web page for search engine optimization.

L

LaMDA: A family of conversational neural language models developed by Google. LaMDA allows Google’s systems to engage in human-like open-ended dialogue with users directly in Search. LaMDA is short for Language Model for Dialogue Applications.

Link Bait: Content that is specifically designed to attract backlinks from other websites.

Link Building: The process of acquiring backlinks for a website using a variety of off-site search engine optimization techniques.

Link Equity: A value that is passed from one web page to another through a hyperlink. All web pages contain some level of popularity and authority (called PageRank) and some of that value is transferred as link equity to the hyperlinked URL. Link equity can be passed internally through links on the same domain or to other websites with outbound links. Also known as link juice.

Link Exchange: The practice of exchanging links with other websites to manipulate search engine rankings. Also known as reciprocal linking.

Link Juice: A slang term used in the field of search engine optimization to describe the power a backlink passes to another website. Also known as link equity.

Link Manipulation: A search engine optimization technique used to manipulate search engine rankings of a website by creating backlinks in an unnatural manner. Also known as a link scheme.

Link Profile: The collection of inbound links pointing to a website. Also known as a backlink profile.

Link Rot: A term used to describe a natural process of links becoming broken over time (or rotting) due to content being moved or deleted from websites.

Link Scheme: Any attempt to manipulate a website’s search engine rankings through the use of unnatural links. Also known as link manipulation.

Link Spam: Any links that are intended to manipulate search engine rankings.

Link Velocity: The rate at which a website or web page gains backlinks over a set period of time.

Local SEO: A practice of search engine optimization that focuses on increasing the visibility and rankings of a website in local search results.

Long Tail Keyword: A keyword phrase that includes 5 or more words.

LSI Keywords: An SEO term used to describe words and phrases that are semantically related to a particular topic.

Local Citation: An online reference of a business’s name, address, and phone number (commonly referred to as NAP) that’s displayed on a third-party website. Also known as just a citation.

Local Pack: A section at the top of Google’s search results that displays 3 local businesses when a query has local search intent. Also known as the map pack or 3-pack.

M

Manual Action Penalty: A penalty that is manually applied by Google to a website for violating its search engine guidelines. Manual actions appear in Google Search Console with a notification explaining why the penalty was applied.

Medium Tail Keyword: A keyword phrase that includes 3 to 4 words.

Meta Description: An HTML meta tag that summarizes the web page’s content for search engines and users.

Meta Keywords: An HTML meta tag that provides keyword data to help search engine crawlers understand what the main topics are for the web page. This meta tag is no longer used by major search engines.

Meta Tags: Snippets of HTML code that give important metadata information to search engine crawlers about a web page.

Mobile-First Indexing: An indexing method that uses the mobile version of a website’s content (crawled with the smartphone agent) for indexing and ranking in search engines. Google uses a mobile-first indexing system.

Mobile SEO: The practice of optimizing website content for mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. 

Money Page: A web page specifically designed to generate revenue.

N

Natural Link: A link that occurs organically without any effort from the website owner to generate the backlink for search engine optimization. Also known as a natural backlink, organic link, and organic backlink.

Negative Keyword: A negative match keyword that lets you exclude a search term from your ad campaigns so it prevents your ad from being shown to users who search for that term online.

Negative SEO: A malicious search engine optimization practice aimed at lower a website’s search engine rankings by getting it penalized.

Niche Site: SEO vocabulary used for a website that focuses on a specific subset of a broader market with the purpose of monetizing the traffic.

Nofollow Link: A hyperlink that includes the rel=”nofollow” attribute to instruct search engine crawlers not to crawl the link or pass transfer link equity (or PageRank) to the destination URL. Also known as a nofollow backlink.

Noindex Tag: An HTML directive that informs search engines not to index the page in search results.

Noopener: An HTML attribute (rel=”noopener”) that can be added to external links set to open in a new browser tab or window that works as a security measure to prevent malicious links from gaining access to a user’s browser through the original page.

Noreferrer: An HTML attribute (rel=”noreferrer”) that can be added to external links to prevent the external sites from seeing the originating domain as referral traffic in analytics reports. Traffic sent to the external site will be reported as direct traffic in analytics.

O

Off-Page SEO: Any activity taken outside of a web page to improve its search engine rankings. Also known as off-site SEO.

On-Page SEO: Any activity taken on a web page to improve its search engine rankings. Also known as on-site SEO.

Organic Keyword: A type of keyword that attracts free website traffic from the organic search results listings.

Organic Link: Also known as a natural backlink.

Organic Ranking: The position a web page ranks in the unpaid listings of the search engine results page.

Organic Search Results: The unpaid listings that are displayed on the search engine results page.

Organic Traffic: A type of website traffic that comes from the unpaid organic search results listings.

Orphan Page: A web page that is not linked to from any other page on the website. It is completely isolated and the only way users can get to the orphan page is by using a direct link.

Outbound Link: A hyperlink that points to a web page on another domain. Also known as an external link.

P

Page Authority: A search engine ranking score developed by Moz that estimates how well a web page will rank in the search engine results. Page Authority scores range from 1 to 100, with higher scores indicating a better possibility of ranking.

Page Speed: Refers to the amount of time it takes for content on a web page to load in the browser.

PageRank: A metric used by Google to assign a value of importance to a web page that is based on the quantity and quality of other web pages linking to it.

PageRank Algorithm: An algorithm used by Google Search to rank web pages in their search engine results. It is named after both the term “web page” and co-founder Larry Page.

Pageviews: A metric in Google Analytics that reports the total number of views a web page receives in a given time period. It is different than unique pageviews which aggregate views that are generated by separate users during the same session.

Phrase Match Keyword: A keyword match type offered by pay-per-click advertising platforms that allow ads to be displayed for the searches that include the meaning target keyword. This allows you to reach more searches than with exact match keywords but fewer searches than with broad match keywords.

Pillar Page: A piece of content that serves as the cornerstone for a topic cluster. It provides a broad overview of the core topic and links internally to articles that go in-depth about the subtopics. Also known as a hub page.

Pogo-Sticking: The act of a searcher going back and forth between web pages that are listed in the SERPs. It indicates that the searcher is not finding what they are looking for on a web page and immediately bounces off the site by hitting the back button and then clicking on another SERP result.

Primary Keyword: The main SEO term you are targeting on a web page for search engine optimization. Also known as the main keyword.

Private Blog Network: A private network of websites that are used to link out to a target site to improve its search engine rankings. It is a black hat SEO method of generating artificial backlinks. Also known as a PBN.

Q

Query: A word or phrase that is entered into search engines to find relevant information. Also known as a search query.

R

Ranking Algorithm: A set of mathematical systems of calculations that ranks web pages and documents in search engine results pages according to specific criteria.

Reciprocal Link: A link that is created when two parties agree to link to each other’s websites. Also known as a link exchange.

Referral Traffic: Traffic that comes to a website from sources outside of the search engines.

Rich Snippet: Enhanced information that is displayed for a search results listing, such as ratings, reviews, event details, and recipe information. The information comes from structured data in the web page’s source code with the help of markups. Also known as a rich result.

Robots.txt: A file on a web server that tells search engine crawlers which URLs the crawler can access on the site.

S

Schema Markup: A form of microdata that helps search engines better understand the information on your website. Often confused with the SEO terminology for Structured Data.

Search Algorithm: The procedure a search engine uses to retrieve information stored within the index. It includes a collection of other algorithms that have their own purpose and task to deliver relevant results to the user.

Search Engine Crawler: An Internet bot that systematically browses the World Wide Web in order to create an index of data. Also known as a web crawler or search engine spider.

Search Engine Optimization: A set of processes that are focused on improving the ranking positions and visibility of web pages in the search engine results pages. Also known as SEO.

Search Engine Ranking: The position of a web page in the search engine results pages for a target keyword.

Search Engine Results Page: The page that is returned by a search engine after a user submits a query. Also known as SERP.

Search Engine Spider: An Internet bot that systematically browses the World Wide Web in order to create an index of data. Also known as a web crawler or search engine crawler.

Search Engine Visibility: The total share of visibility a website receives in the organic search results. Also known as search visibility.

Search Index: A database used by a search engine to store information for all the websites it has crawled on the Internet. Also known as an index.

Search Intent: A term used to describe the purpose of an online search. Also known as user search intent.

Search Volume: The number of searches a specific word or phrase receives in a search engine within a given timeframe. 

Secondary Keyword: A keyword that is closely related to the primary keyword that is being targeted on a web page. It typically consists of keyword variations and synonyms that match the same user search intent.

Seed Keyword: A word or phrase that is used as the starting point in the keyword research process to discover more related keywords. It usually consists of one or two words.

Semantic Keyword: A keyword that is conceptually related to the primary keyword.

Semantically Related Keywords: Words and phrases that are conceptually related to each other which are used to enhance the depth of information about a web page topic to help search engine algorithms determine the correct indexing and rankings for relevant search queries.

Semantic SEO: The practice of optimizing content for a topic instead of a keyword. This is done by including semantically related phrases, entities, and facts to establish relational relevance.

SEO: The acronym for search engine optimization, which is a set of processes that are focused on improving the ranking positions and visibility of web pages in the search engine results pages.

SEO Audit: An analysis of all factors that affect a website’s visibility in search engines, including on-site and off-site elements. Also known as an SEO analysis.

SEO Content Brief: A document that compiles all the information a writer needs to produce a piece of content that is structured and optimized for the target SEO keywords for a particular topic. Also known as an SEO brief.

SEO-Friendly URL: A URL that is optimized for search engines by including relevant keywords for the web page.

SEO Copywriting: The practice of writing keyword-optimized content that appeals to human readers and search engine algorithms. It helps increase a website’s rankings in the search engine results pages and satisfies the reader’s interest to drive more traffic, links, shares, and revenue.

SEO Writing: The process of writing content with SEO to help it rank on the first page of search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Bing. It focuses on using keywords in the content to improve relevance for search queries that match user intent.

Session: A group of actions recorded for one user in a given time frame. A user may have a single session that consists of multiple pageviews or events.

SERP: The acronym for search engine results page, which is the page that is returned by a search engine after a user submits a query.

Short Tail Keyword: A keyword phrase that includes 1 or 2 words.

Sitelinks: Links from the same domain that appear under a search listing that take users to other pages or sections of a page. Search engines like Google analyze the link structure of a website to find relevant shortcuts that can be beneficial for searchers.

Sitemap: A file on a web server that provides information about the pages, images, videos, and other files on the domain and the relationships between them. Search engines read this file to crawl a website more efficiently. There are two types of sitemaps: HTML and XML.

Sponsored Link: A hyperlink that has been paid for by a third party to act as an advertisement on a web page. It is labeled with the rel=”sponosored” attribute to inform search engine crawlers of the monetary relationship between the participating sites.

Supporting Page: A web page that supports the main pillar page for a topic on a website to improve topical relevance and authority. It typically focuses on long-tail keywords related to the main topic and links to the pillar page with keyword-optimized anchor text. Also known as supporting content.

Structured Data: A standardized format for providing information about a web page and classifying the content on that page using markup that search engines can interpret. Often confused with the SEO term and definition for Schema Markup.

Subdomain: A separate section of a website that uses a prefix added to the domain name. It acts as a completely separate website but is hosted on the main domain.

T

Technical SEO: The process of using website and server optimizations to improve search engine optimization. This SEO jargon is used to classify the group of technical requirements for search engine spiders to crawl and index a site more effectively.

Thin Content: Content that has little or no value for the user, including copied, repetitive, scraped, and sparse content.

Tiered Link Building: The process of building backlinks from a variety of sources to a website through a tiered system to artificially increase the flow of link equity. It consists of three levels where tier 1 links point to the main website, tier 2 links point to the tier 1 links, and tier 3 links point to the tier 2 links.

Title Tag: An HTML element that specifies the title of a web page for search engine crawlers. Also known as the title attribute or meta title.

Topical Authority: The measure of authority a website earns through producing a large number of high-quality content on a particular subject matter.

Topical Relevance: The relevance a website has to a particular topic or keyword. The more web pages a site has about a topic or keyword, the more topical relevance it has for that subject matter.

Trust Flow: A trademark score by Majestic that ranges between 0-100. It measures the trustworthiness of a URL by evaluating the quality of the backlinks.

TrustRank: An algorithm developed by Google to identify the most trustworthy web pages on the Internet by analyzing the backlink profiles based on the link origin. It assigns a score to the target web page based on the trustworthiness of the incoming links to help the search algorithm systems better identify spam websites.

U

UGC Link: An HTML element that can be applied to hyperlinks using the rel=”ugc” attribute to signal to search engine crawlers that the link is user-generated content.

Unique Pageviews: A metric in Google Analytics that reports the aggregate number of views a web page receives from separate users in a given time period. It is different than the total pageviews metric that reports how many views are generated without aggregating pageviews by the same user during the same session.

Unnatural Links: Artificially built links that are intended to manipulate a web page’s rankings in the search engine results.

User Search Intent: An SEO term used to describe the purpose of an online search. Also known as search intent.

V

Voice Search: A search engine technology that allows the user to use a voice command to perform a search on the Internet, a website, or an application.

Voice SEO: A practice of search engine optimization that optimizes content for natural language keyword phrases that are used by voice assistants to answer questions and search queries.

W

Web Crawler: An Internet bot that systematically browses the World Wide Web in order to create an index of data. Also known as a search engine crawler and search engine spider.

White Hat SEO: A practice of search engine optimization that follows search engine guidelines to help improve a website’s rankings in the organic search results. It does not engage in spam methods to manipulate the ranking algorithms.

Word Count: The total number of words in the body content of a web article.

X

XML: An acronym for Extensible Markup Language, which is is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing arbitrary data.

XML Sitemap: A file on a web server that uses Extensible Markup Language (XML) to provide information about the pages, videos, and other files on the domain and the relationships between them.

Y

YMYL: An acronym for the phrase “Your Money or Your Life”, which is a type of content categorized by Google’s Search Quality Rater Guidelines as selling products or services or providing information that can impact a person’s happiness, health, financial stability, or safety.

Z

Zero Click Search: A search that displays the answer to a person’s query directly in the search engine results page. It results in the user not clicking a link to a third-party website from an organic search result.

SEO Terms and Definitions Updates

I hope you enjoyed this SEO Glossary with the body of terms used in the technical field of search engine optimization. The SEO terminology on this page is updated on a regular basis as new SEO terms and definitions are created and adopted by experts on the subject.

Feel free to bookmark this Glossary of SEO terms for beginners to use as a personal reference as well as share the link with others to help improve their SEO vocabulary and understanding of commonly used SEO jargon being used in the search engine optimization field.

The Editorial Staff at SEO Chatter is a team of search engine optimization and digital marketing experts led by Stephen Hockman with more than 15 years of experience in search engine marketing. We publish guides on the fundamentals of SEO for beginner marketers.