SEO glossary
Plain-English definitions of the SEO, link building and AI search terms you will hear most.
Quick answer
This SEO glossary explains 36 common search terms in one or two plain sentences each, from anchor text and canonical tags to AEO, GEO and E-E-A-T. Each term links to a deeper guide or tool where one exists.
A
- AEO
- Answer Engine Optimization: making your content the direct answer in featured snippets, People Also Ask and voice assistants. Learn more
- AI Overviews
- AI-generated summaries that Google shows at the top of some search results, with links to sources.
- Alt text
- A short description of an image in the HTML, used by screen readers and by Google to understand images.
- Anchor text
- The clickable text of a link. A natural mix of branded, URL, generic and keyword anchors is safest. Learn more
B
- Backlink
- A link from another website to yours. Search engines treat relevant backlinks as a sign of trust. Learn more
- Brand mention
- Your brand named on another website, with or without a link. Mentions help build entity and AI visibility. Learn more
C
- Canonical tag
- A tag that tells search engines which version of a page is the main one when several URLs show similar content. Learn more
- Core Web Vitals
- Google’s page experience metrics: LCP (loading), INP (responsiveness) and CLS (visual stability).
- Crawl budget
- How many pages a search engine will crawl on your site in a given time. Matters most for large sites.
D
- DA (Domain Authority)
- A Moz score from 1 to 100 that estimates how strong a domain’s backlink profile is. It is not a Google metric.
- DR (Domain Rating)
- An Ahrefs score from 0 to 100 that measures the strength of a site’s backlink profile. Not a Google metric.
- Dofollow link
- A normal link that can pass ranking signals. It has no nofollow, sponsored or ugc attribute.
E
- E-E-A-T
- Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trust: qualities Google’s quality guidelines use to judge content.
- Entity
- A clearly defined thing, such as a person, brand or place, that search engines and AI tools can recognise.
F
- Featured snippet
- A highlighted answer box at the top of Google results, quoted from one web page. Learn more
G
- GEO
- Generative Engine Optimization: improving your chances of being cited by AI tools like ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity. Learn more
- Google Business Profile
- Your free business listing on Google Search and Maps, central to local SEO.
- Guest post
- An article you publish on another website, usually with a link back to your own site. Learn more
I
- Indexing
- When a search engine stores a page in its database so it can appear in results. Learn more
- Internal link
- A link from one page of your website to another page of the same site.
K
- Keyword research
- Finding the words and questions people type into search engines, and how often they search them.
L
- Local SEO
- Optimising a business to appear in local results and the Google map pack. Learn more
M
- Map pack
- The group of three local businesses shown with a map in Google results.
- Meta description
- A short summary of a page in the HTML that Google may show under your title in results. Learn more
N
- Nofollow link
- A link with rel="nofollow", telling search engines not to treat it as an endorsement.
O
- Organic traffic
- Visitors who come from unpaid search results.
P
- PBN
- Private Blog Network: a group of sites made mainly to link to other sites. This fits Google’s definition of link spam. Learn more
- People Also Ask
- A Google box of related questions with expandable answers taken from web pages.
R
- Robots.txt
- A file that tells search engine crawlers which parts of a site they may crawl. Learn more
S
- SERP
- Search Engine Results Page: the page you see after searching on Google.
- Schema markup
- Structured data added to a page so search engines understand its content, such as FAQs, products or reviews. Learn more
- Sponsored link
- A paid or sponsored link marked with rel="sponsored", as Google recommends.
T
- Technical SEO
- Improving how search engines crawl, render and index a site: speed, structure, sitemaps and more. Learn more
- Title tag
- The page title in the HTML, usually shown as the blue headline in Google results. Learn more
- Topical authority
- How well a site covers a subject in depth, which helps it rank for many related searches.
X
- XML sitemap
- A file that lists the important pages of a site to help search engines find them.
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