SEO and Website Terms, Explained Simply
You should not need a technical dictionary to understand your website or an SEO report. Use this glossary to look up common terms, from backlinks and keywords to hosting, schema, and website code.
Choose a letter to jump to that section. Each section has a link back to the alphabet. You can also use your browser’s Find feature to search for a word.
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0–9: Status Codes
200 OK — The server successfully returned the requested resource.
301 redirect — A permanent redirect to a different URL.
302 redirect — A temporary redirect to a different URL.
404 Not Found — The server could not find the requested resource.
410 Gone — The server indicates that a resource is no longer available.
500 Internal Server Error — The server encountered a problem that prevented it from completing the request.
A
Accessibility — Designing a website so people with different abilities can use its content and controls.
Algorithm — A set of rules or calculations a system uses to process information and choose results.
Alt text — A text alternative for an image. Describe the image’s purpose in context rather than stuffing it with keywords.
Analytics — Information about how people find and use a website, such as visits, actions, and traffic sources.
Anchor text — The visible, clickable words in a link. Clear wording helps people understand where the link goes.
API — An interface that lets software systems exchange information or request actions from each other.
B
Backlink — A link from another website to yours. Relevance, placement, and context matter more than a raw link count.
Black-hat SEO — Tactics intended to manipulate search rankings through practices that violate a search engine’s spam policies.
Bounce rate — A measure of visits that do not meet a tool’s engagement criteria. The exact calculation varies between analytics systems.
Breadcrumbs — A navigation trail showing where a page sits within a website’s hierarchy.
Broken link — A link that leads to an unavailable page or another destination that does not work as expected.
C
Cache — A stored copy of data that helps a browser or server load content faster.
Canonical URL — The preferred version of a page among duplicate or closely similar URLs. A canonical tag signals a preference, not a guarantee.
CDN — A content delivery network that serves website files from multiple locations to reduce loading delays.
Citation — An online mention of a business’s details, often its name, address, and phone number.
Click-through rate (CTR) — The percentage of impressions that result in a click. The same metric can apply to search results, ads, or emails.
CMS — A content management system, such as WordPress, used to create and manage website content.
Conversion — An action that supports a business goal, such as an inquiry, purchase, booking, or signup.
Core Web Vitals — Google’s metrics for loading, responsiveness, and visual stability: LCP, INP, and CLS.
Crawling — The process of a search engine fetching pages and resources to discover and understand content.
CSS — Cascading Style Sheets: rules that control a web page’s colors, spacing, typography, and layout.
D
DNS — The domain name system, which connects human-readable domain names with the information needed to locate online services.
Domain — A website’s name on the internet, such as example.com.
Domain authority / domain rating — Third-party metrics that estimate aspects of a website’s link strength. They are not Google ranking scores.
Duplicate content — The same or very similar content available at multiple URLs. It does not automatically mean a search penalty.
E
E-E-A-T — Experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness: concepts used in Google’s search quality evaluation guidance, rather than one numerical score.
eCommerce SEO — Work that helps search engines and shoppers understand an online store’s products, categories, and supporting pages.
Engagement rate — The proportion of visits or sessions that meet an analytics platform’s engagement rules.
External link — A link from a page to a website on a different domain.
F
Favicon — The small website icon shown in browser tabs and sometimes search results.
Featured snippet — A search result format that highlights an answer or useful information drawn from a web page.
First-party data — Information a business collects directly through its own interactions with visitors or customers.
Footer — The section near the bottom of a website, often containing navigation, contact details, and policies.
G
Google Analytics 4 (GA4) — Google’s analytics platform for measuring website or app activity through events.
Google Business Profile — The business listing used to manage information that can appear in Google Search and Maps.
Google Search Console — Google’s free reporting service for reviewing a verified website’s search performance and indexing.
Guest post — An article contributed to another website. Paid placements need appropriate disclosure and link qualification.
H
H1–H6 headings — HTML heading levels that organize a page. H1 typically identifies the main topic; lower levels introduce sections.
Hosting — The service that stores a website’s files and makes them available online.
Hreflang — Markup that helps search engines understand related versions of content for different languages or regions.
HTML — HyperText Markup Language: the markup used to structure a web page’s content.
HTTPS — The encrypted version of HTTP, which protects data as it travels between a browser and a website.
I
Impression — A recorded appearance of content, such as a search listing or ad. Each platform defines when it counts an impression.
Indexing — Processing and storing information about a page so a search engine can consider it for search results.
Internal link — A link from one page to another within the same website.
INP — Interaction to Next Paint: a Core Web Vital that measures responsiveness to user interactions.
J
JavaScript — A programming language often used to add interactive behavior to websites.
JSON-LD — A structured-data format that can describe entities and relationships in a script on a web page.
K
Key event — An analytics event marked as especially important to a business, such as completing an inquiry.
Keyword — A word or phrase related to what people search for and the content a website provides.
Keyword cannibalization — Overlapping pages competing for the same search intent in a way that weakens clarity or performance.
Keyword difficulty — A tool’s estimate of how challenging a keyword may be to compete for. Methods vary between providers.
Keyword research — Studying search queries, intent, and competition to decide which topics deserve useful content.
Keyword stuffing — Repeating keywords unnaturally to manipulate rankings. It can harm readability and violate spam policies.
L
Landing page — The page a visitor arrives on, or a page designed around a particular campaign or action.
LCP — Largest Contentful Paint: a Core Web Vital that measures when the main visible content finishes rendering.
Link building — Work that helps relevant audiences discover content and creates opportunities to earn appropriate links.
Local pack — The group of local business listings shown for some searches, often alongside a map.
Local SEO — Improving a business’s visibility for searches tied to a location or service area.
Long-tail keyword — A relatively specific search phrase, often with lower individual search demand than a broad topic.
M
Meta description — A short page summary in HTML. Search engines may use it as a snippet or choose different text.
Metadata — Information that describes a page or resource, such as its title, description, or indexing instructions.
Mobile-first indexing — Google’s use of the mobile version of a page’s content for indexing and ranking.
Mobile-friendly — A website that people can read and use comfortably on smaller screens.
N
NAP — Name, address, and phone number: business details used across local listings and websites.
Navigation — The links and menus that help visitors move through a website.
Nofollow — A link attribute that signals the publisher is not endorsing a destination in the usual way. Google treats it as a hint.
Noindex — An instruction asking search engines not to include a page in their results. They must access it to see the instruction.
O
Off-page SEO — Work beyond your own website that supports its visibility and reputation, including relevant mentions and links.
On-page SEO — Improving a page’s content, titles, headings, links, and other elements so it serves people and makes sense to search engines.
Organic traffic — Visits attributed to unpaid search results.
Orphan page — A page with no internal links pointing to it, making it harder for people and crawlers to discover.
P
Page speed — How quickly a page loads and becomes useful. Different metrics describe different parts of that experience.
Pagination — Dividing a long list of content or products across multiple pages.
Permalink — A page or post’s stable web address.
Plugin — An add-on that extends a platform’s features, such as a WordPress SEO or contact-form plugin.
PPC — Pay-per-click advertising, where advertisers generally pay when someone clicks an ad.
Primary keyword — The main search phrase a page aims to address, supported by related wording and a clear purpose.
Q
Query — The words someone enters into a search engine.
Query parameter — Extra information after a question mark in a URL, often used for filters, tracking, or page selection.
Quality content — Content that meets a real audience need with clear, reliable, useful information.
R
Ranking — A page’s position in a particular set of search results. It can vary by query, location, device, and time.
Redirect — An instruction that sends a visitor or crawler from one URL to another.
Rendering — The process of turning website code and resources into the page users or search engines can see.
Responsive design — A layout that adapts to different screen sizes.
Rich result — A search appearance enhanced with supported information, such as product details. Valid markup does not guarantee display.
Robots.txt — A file giving crawlers instructions about which paths they may access. It is not a reliable way to remove indexed URLs.
S
Schema markup — Structured data that uses the Schema.org vocabulary to describe information such as organizations, products, or articles.
Search intent — What someone hopes to accomplish with a search, such as learning, comparing, finding a business, or buying.
Search volume — A tool’s estimate of how often people search for a query within a specified period and market.
SEO — Search engine optimization: helping search engines understand a website and helping the right people find useful content.
SERP — Search engine results page: the page of listings and features shown after a search.
Sitemap — A file or page listing website URLs. An XML sitemap can help search engines discover important pages.
Slug — The readable part of a URL that identifies a page or post.
SSL / TLS — Technologies for encrypting connections. TLS is the modern protocol used for HTTPS.
Structured data — Machine-readable information that describes the content or entities on a page.
Subdomain — A part of a domain placed before its main name, such as shop.example.com.
T
Technical SEO — Work on crawling, indexing, rendering, site structure, and other technical conditions that affect search access and understanding.
Thin content — Content that provides little useful value for its purpose. Word count alone does not determine usefulness.
Title tag — The HTML title for a page, used in browser tabs and often as a source for a search result’s title.
Traffic — Visits to a website from search, links, ads, direct visits, and other sources.
U
UGC — User-generated content, such as customer reviews or forum posts. A ugc link attribute can identify links within this content.
URL — Uniform Resource Locator: the address of a page or other online resource.
URL Inspection — A Search Console tool that shows information about a specific URL’s indexing and how Google sees it.
UTM parameters — Tracking labels added to links so analytics can identify campaign sources and related information.
UX — User experience: how someone experiences using a website, including ease, clarity, and accessibility.
V
Viewport — The visible area of a web page within a browser window or device screen.
Visibility — How often and prominently a website appears for relevant searches or within a tool’s chosen measurement set.
Voice search — A search spoken to a device instead of typed. Helpful answers and clear content still matter.
W
Web crawler — A program that systematically fetches web pages and resources. Search engines use crawlers to discover content.
WebP — An image format that can reduce file sizes while supporting features such as transparency.
White-hat SEO — SEO practices that focus on users and follow the relevant search engine’s guidelines.
WordPress — A content management system used to build and manage websites.
X
XML — A markup format used to structure data. Search engines commonly receive sitemap information in XML.
XML sitemap — A machine-readable file listing URLs and optional information that helps search engines discover a site’s content.
X-Robots-Tag — An HTTP response header that can provide indexing instructions, including for files such as PDFs.
Y
YMYL — Your Money or Your Life: topics where inaccurate information could significantly affect health, finances, safety, or well-being.
YouTube SEO — Helping viewers and YouTube understand and discover videos through useful content, titles, descriptions, and related signals.
Z
Zero-click search — A search where a person gets what they need without clicking through to a separate website.
Zoom accessibility — Keeping text and controls usable when someone enlarges a page through browser zoom.
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Learn More From the Original Documentation
For detailed explanations, explore Google’s SEO Starter Guide and the MDN glossary of web terms. Our definitions are short explanations for business owners; platform-specific metrics may use different rules.