SEO Glossary

2xx status code means that the request from the client - web browser - was received and processed by the server successfully. These are the most common HTTP codes.

4xx status codes are used to indicate errors that occur on the client's side when a server processes a request. They help inform the users about the type of error.

5xx status codes – “5xx server error” - indicate the errors that happen when someone tries to access your website but the server is unable to complete the request.

The area of a website that a visitor sees right after landing and before scrolling down is called "Above the Fold." This idea directly has no connection with the web.

A search operator (search parameter) is a special character, a short command, or a string of characters used in a search engine bar to narrow down the search results.

This case study examines the performance of AI-assisted content in search engine results pages and explores the impact of AI on SEODebate's content creation process.

Ambiguous intent is when a statement, request, or question has many possible meanings. It can occur in natural language processing (NLP) and conversational AI systems.

Accelerated Mobile Pages are pages designed specifically for mobile users to ensure fast speed. It involves enabling web pages to load quickly on mobile and tablets.

Anchor text is visible, clickable, and usually blue-coloured text in a hyperlink. This text is different from the surrounding text in appearance and is underlined.

Article syndication is distributing a single piece of content, such as an article or blog post, to multiple third-party websites, online platforms, or media outlets.

An authority site is a website that has established itself as an expert in its niche. It provides high-quality content that is informative, engaging, and valuable.

Backlink authority is the strength or value of a particular backlink in terms of its impact on search engine rankings. A backlink is a link from one website to another.

Ahrefs Batch Analysis tool is a feature of the Ahrefs SEO toolset that allows users to analyze several URLs or domains at once and gather data on various SEO metrics.

In the online advertisement, such as Google Ads, the billing threshold is a specific amount that serves as a threshold or a trigger point for billing advertising costs.

Black Hat SEO is the use of unethical techniques to improve a website's SERP ranking. It violates search engine guidelines and is intended to manipulate algorithms.

Bots (internet bots) are computer programs created by humans to execute specific tasks repeatedly and more efficiently. These bots can communicate over the internet.

Branded keywords are specific words or phrases that include a company's brand name or a variation of it. They target customers who are already familiar with the brand.

Breadcrumbs are a navigational feature that shows a trail followed by a searcher on a website. It shows a path of all the pages viewed by a searcher hierarchically.

Broken links refer to the links that lead a searcher to a missing or error page. Broken links can lead to poor user experience and negatively impact your SEO efforts.

Caching is the process of temporarily storing data in a place - either software or hardware - to speed up its access. This data can be quickly retrieved and used again.

A canonical tag (or rel canonical) tells the search engine that this URL is the most definitive version of a page from a set of similar or duplicate pages on a website.

Click depth is the number of clicks a page is away from its homepage. The pages with greater depth usually do not perform well while a click depth of 1-2 is ideal.

Cloaking is a black hat SEO technique used to get a high SERP ranking by deceiving the search engines and showing different content to both users and search engines.

Content gap analysis is the method of analyzing existing content on your website by finding gaps and opportunities to make improvements to the development strategy.

In SEO, a content hub is a comprehensive resource center that focuses on a specific topic. It helps to organize and optimize your content to make it easily accessible.

Content relevance refers to how closely the content on a webpage matches the intent behind a user's search query. Higher relevance results in higher page rankings.

The content score is the measure of content quality, relevance and the possibility of success. It helps you make a better content strategy that performs well in SERPs.

Crawl budget refers to the number of pages a crawler will crawl on a website within a given timeframe, based on the site's size, complexity, authority, and relevance,

Crawl directives are instructions given to search engines to control their interaction with a site by telling crawlers which pages they should or shouldn't access.

Crawl errors occur when Users, Bots, Google, or another search engine cannot access your website pages. This prevents search engines from indexing your website pages.

Crawlability is the ability of a website or web page to be discovered and indexed by search engine bots. If that page is not crawlable, search engines may not find it.

Crawlers (aka spiders, or bots) are automated software programs that systematically browse the internet to index and gather information about the content on websites.

Cross-linking is the practice of linking your website or a page to another website or a page via external links to provide additional information or related resources.

Curated content differs from original content in that it is not created by the curator rather it is carefully selected, organized, and presented to a target audience.

De-indexing is the process of removing a webpage or an entire website from a search engine's index. When a webpage is de-indexed, it will no longer appear in SERPs.

Disavowing backlinks is the process of directing Google to remove the low-quality and unwanted backlinks coming to your domain from low authority or spammy websites.

DNS (Domain Name System) is a system that translates domain names into IP addresses, which are numerical identifiers used by computers to communicate over the internet.

Moz developed domain authority & page authority metrics. DA and PA are the most popular SEO metrics that are used to study and evaluate the performance of websites.

Domain Rating (DR) and URL Rating (UR) are metrics developed by Ahrefs to see the ranking strength of a domain or a particular URL by examining its backlink profile.

Doorway pages, also known as gateway pages, are web pages that are designed to rank highly in search engine results pages (SERPs) for specific keywords or phrases.

Dwell time is the amount of time a user spends on a web page after clicking a link on search results before heading back to SERPs. It is an important metric in SEO.

External links are hyperlinks that direct users to a web page outside the website they visit. They are a great way to direct users to other related and helpful content.

A featured image refers to an image that is chosen to represent a particular piece of content, such as a blog post or article, on a website or social media platform.

Geographic modifier, aka geo modifier or geotag, refers to a keyword that is used to locate a local business. For example, "near me" in the keyword "pizza near me."

Global volume is the total number of searches performed globally for a keyword or phrase. It is a metric that is used in SEO to assess the popularity of a keyword.

Google algorithm is a complex process by which Google retrieves the data from its index by looking at several factors and displays the best possible search results. 

Autocomplete is a feature in Google Search that helps you complete your search query. You start typing in the Google search box and it predicts relevant search terms.

Google Dance is the period of time when Google's search engine rankings fluctuate significantly, resulting in dramatic shifts in search results for particular keywords.

Google Honeymoon Period is a theory that believes that Google temporarily ranks new websites for some particular targeted keywords to see if they perform well in SERPs.

A Google penalty is a negative action, in the form of dropped organic traffic and ranking, against your website for not adhering to the Google Webmaster Guidelines.

The alleged probation period that restricts your website from ranking in Google's top search results is called Google Sandbox. Google denies but SEOs believe it exists.

Google SERP features are the search results that appear on the Google Search Engine Result Page (SERP) and are different from the typical blue-coloured website's link.

Google Trends is a free online tool that provides real-time data on what people are searching for. It was introduced in 2006 and the most recent version was in 2018.

Googlebot is a web crawler or spider of Google that collects information from different websites by crawling them making these web pages available for Google Index.

Grey Hat SEO refers to search engine optimization techniques that are somewhere between White Hat SEO techniques (ethical) and Black Hat SEO techniques (unethical).

An image sitemap is a sitemap that contains information about the images on a website. It is useful for images that are not easily found by Google's crawling process.

Index Coverage Report is found in Google Search Console, which provides a detailed indexing report of all your website URLs and informs you about various site issues.

Indexability is the ability of search engines to analyze your web pages and add them to their index. Without indexability, your web pages will be invisible in SERPs.

Internal links are hyperlinks that point to another page on the same website. They connect various pages on a website making the website content easily accessible.

In the context of Search Engine Optimization, a keyword is a term that you want your website to rank for in search engine results to attract a specific target audience.

Keyword cannibalization occurs when multiple pages or posts on your website target similar keywords. As a result, a website's pages start competing with one another.

Keyword density, usually shown in percentage, is a way to measure how frequently a particular keyword is used in a piece of content, such as a web page or a blog post.

Keyword proximity refers to the distance or closeness between two or more keywords or keyphrases within a piece of content, such as a webpage, article, or blog post.

Keyword stemming is a technique used by search engines to recognize and understand different variations of a search term. Its purpose is to avoid the overuse of a term.

Keyword stuffing is the practice of overloading a web page with excessive keywords in an attempt to manipulate rankings. It is considered a black-hat SEO technique.

Latent Semantic Indexing is a process of analyzing the relationship between different words or phrases on a web page to provide the most accurate results to users.

Server capacity refers to the maximum amount of traffic, requests, or data that a server can handle at any given time without compromising its performance or stability.

Link equity or juice refers to the idea of passing authority from one page to another. This is passed on to other pages via links that can be internal and external. 

A link farm is a website or a series of websites that are made to link together to get more visibility in SE rankings which is totally against Google’s guidelines.

In SEO, a link profile is the collection of inbound links that point to a particular website or webpage. A strong link profile can help to improve a website's rankings.

Link Reclamation is a process where you identify and recover lost or broken backlinks to your website. It positively impacts your website's SEO and online visibility.

Link rot is the phenomenon where hyperlinks (outbound links) to other websites on your website become obsolete or inaccessible over time and affects user experience.

A link scheme - also called link spam - refers to any fraudulent technique or practice that is used to manipulate the number or quality of links pointing to a website.

Link velocity is the rate at which a website acquires new backlinks over a period of time. A sudden increase can indicate that a website is using manipulative tactics.

Link Volume refers to the total number of links to a web page or a website and is an important measure that can be used to see the overall performance of a website.

Local Business Schema is a type of schema or structured data markup that is added to a local business website to help improve its appearance in local search results. 

These are search queries that contain location-specific terms, such as a city name, zip code, etc. They work more for businesses that serve in a specific location.

Log File Analyzer is a tool for analyzing log files generated by web servers or web apps. The log files contain information about the activities occurring on a site.

Long-tail keywords are long and specific search terms that have a smaller search volume than shorter keywords. They are less-competitive and have a lower search volume.

A marketing calendar is a strategic planning tool, typically covering one year period or more, outlining all marketing activities and events over a specified period.

A meta description refers to a brief introduction of the web page that you can find on SERPs, along with the URL and title. It usually consists of a sentence or two.

Meta keywords or tags are a set of keywords that are included in a webpage's HTML source code to help search engines understand the content of that specific webpage.

A meta robots tag, aka a robots tag, is a type of HTML code that is inserted into the <head> section of a web page to control the indexing behaviour of web crawlers.

A meta title is a short phrase that appears as clickable blue text on search engine results pages. It describes the content of a webpage using as few words as possible.

The MozBar is a free browser extension by Moz that provides website metrics and SEO insights in the browser. One can use MozBar to analyze the site's on-page elements.

A noindex tag is meta robots tag that blocks indexing a web page by crawlers. This tag is usually placed in the head section of a web page, or by using X-Robots-Tag.

Noopener or rel=noopener is an HTML tag used in the link to instruct the browser not to allow the newly opened browsing context to access the document that opened it.

The noreferrer attribute is added to <A> tag that prevents passing referrer info to the linked website. It stops targeted sites from seeing your website's details.

Orphan pages are the pages on a website that are not connected with other pages through internal linking. These pages are not accessible through normal navigation.

PageRank is one of Google's algorithms responsible for determining the ranking of a web page in search engine results pages. The PageRank score ranges between 0 and 10.

Pagination is the practice of showing a large set of search results (products, reviews, comments, etc) into more manageable subsets and showing them on separate pages.

A permalink is a permanent and static link to a specific webpage or content on your website. It remains the same over time even if the content is updated or moved.

In SEO, "ranking" is the position of a website or webpage in the search engine results pages for a specific keyword or search query. A high ranking is always better.

Regional keywords are search terms that are specific to a particular geographical location. They are usually a combination of a general keyword and some location. 

Robots.txt is a text file that helps crawlers determine which pages to crawl on a website. It prevents crawlers from overloading a website with excessive requests.

Schema Markup Validator is a tool to test the schema markup for structured data. It is the replacement for Google Structured Data Testing Tool and can test all types.

Schema markup is a code that is added to the HTML of a website and tells the search engines about your website's content and helps them present it to users efficiently.

Scraped content refers to data or information that has been automatically extracted or copied from websites using software tools known as web scrapers or web crawlers.

A search engine is a software system that helps users find information on the internet by searching relevant web pages, documents, as well as other types of content.

Search engine spam or spamdexing refers to the practice of using unethical or deceptive techniques to manipulate search engine rankings and the visibility of a website.

Search intent - aka user intent or keyword intent -  refers to the purpose or objective a user has when entering a specific query into a search engine's search bar.

The seasonal trend refers to the fluctuation in demand for goods and services at specific times of the year, often tied to holidays, weather, and other annual events.

Seed keywords are short and simple primary keywords that usually consist of one or two words and contain a head noun. They are essential for achieving high rankings.

Side ads refer to the ads that appear on the right-hand side of the search results page in Google's desktop search. In 2016, Google placed them at the top and bottom.

A sitemap is a file that lists all the pages on a website, serving as a roadmap that helps search engines crawl and index content on that website more efficiently.

A slug is part of a URL that identifies a particular page on your website. It typically comes after the domain name and is often referred to as the "URL extension".

Spam Score is a metric developed by Moz in 2015 to check which websites are spammy and which ones are trustworthy. Usually, websites are assigned a score from 1-100.

Spammy links are low-quality bad backlinks that you get from a spam website. These links can lower the authority of your website or the pages that get these links.

Sponsored links are online ads displayed at the top or bottom of SERPs or on websites. Users can click on these links to visit the advertiser's website and learn more.

Thin content refers to web pages or articles that contain little to no valuable or unique information. This content is usually short, and lacking in depth and quality.

A top ad, aka a top-of-page ad, is a type of PPC ad that appears at the top of the SERPs when a user enters a relevant query. It is labeled as "sponsored" or "ad".

Transactional queries are search queries that show that a user intends to perform a specific action. They usually include words such as "Buy," "Order," "Download," etc.

There are 792 types of Schema, but, Google mainly relies on 32 types and recommends using them for website optimization; all other schemas are not required for Google. 

URL parameters – aka query strings, URL query parameters – are the elements that are part of a URL and are used for traffic tracking, content structuring and sorting.

Webmaster Guidelines are the set of rules provided by search engines to webmasters to help them rank their websites in SERPs while following the best SEO practices. 

Website navigation is the system or arrangement of links and pathways that connect a website's pages. It enables users to easily access different sections of a website.

White Hat SEO refers to the use of ethical and legitimate techniques and strategies to optimize a website for search engines and improve its ranking in search results.

XML (Extensible Markup Language) sitemap is a file that contains a list of all the pages on a website and information thereof. It acts as a table of contents of a site.