This SEO Glossary is your guide to 26 important SEO terms that you need to know. It will help you understand the terminology behind getting higher rankings. Let’s get started.
SEO Glossary of Terms
I’ll begin with some of the more common SEO glossary terms. Scroll down if you want to skip ahead to the more technical terms. I’ve also included a video and images to make understanding these terms easier.
Table of Contents
SERP (Search Engine Results Page)
The first SEO glossary term is SERP. You probably already know what this is.
It’s the actual search engine results page that you see when you perform a search. SEO companies often refer to it simply as SERP.
Keyword Research
Next up is keyword research. This refers to the process of identifying keywords and phrases related to your products and services.
It’s one of the most important steps in search engine optimization. Without proper keyword research, you might end up targeting terms that won’t really help improve your rankings.
Keyword Difficulty
Keyword difficulty is another important concept. It’s represented by a number between zero and 100, indicating how hard it is to rank for a specific term. The lower the percentage, the easier it is for your site to rank. You want to find terms with a difficulty around 20 percent, as these give you the best chance of ranking.
Terms with 50 percent difficulty and above are much harder because they’re competitive and Google has already done a good job indexing them. Finding a term with high search volume and low keyword difficulty can be challenging, but it’s possible.
This is where the keyword research part of SEO becomes really valuable.
Keyword Density
Another word in SEO terminology related to keywords is density. This refers to how many times a word appears on a page. The more times it appears, the higher the keyword density for that specific page.
Be careful not to overuse the term, though. If it has more than a 1 percent keyword density, Google might interpret this as an attempt to over-index on that specific term, which can negatively impact your rankings. You can use tools like RankMath which automatically calculates your keyword density, among other SEO metrics.
Keyword Proximity
The next SEO glossary concept is keyword proximity. This refers to how close words are together. For example, “real estate in the New York area and vicinity” is different from “New York City real estate.”
Based on how the terms are phrased, Google may find that one page aligns better with what someone is searching for than another.
On-Page SEO
Another part of your SEO glossary knowledge is the term on-page SEO. This refers to all the techniques you apply directly to your website. These are elements on the page itself, such as tagging with titles, headings, and so on, which I’ll explain in more detail shortly.
Off-Page SEO
Off-page SEO refers to actions you take outside of your specific page. This could include reaching out to other websites to request backlinks or engaging in social media marketing and other tactics.
Title Tags
When you think about SEO, you likely think about what to do on the page itself. The most important part of your web page or any blog post is the title tag. This refers to the title that’s part of your page, which you see in the browser tab.
It’s the most important signal you can give to Google, so you want to include your keywords in that title tag.
Heading Tags
Related to your title tag are your heading tags. The most important one is the H1 tag, and you should only have one H1 header on your page.
You’ll have multiple H2 and H3 tags, but the H1 should be unique and serve as the main heading of your page. Here’s an example from our analysis of AI detector false positives:
Small note: The H1 tag often aligns closely with the title tag, though it’s not always identical.
Image Alt Tags
Next up in the SEO glossary is the image alt tag. When you hover over an image, you might see some text – though not always. Pages without image alt tags are missing an opportunity.
You should include your keyword in the image alt tag, as this enhances Google’s understanding of what your page is about by showing that your images relate to the keyword as well.
Meta Tags
Other tags you want to include on your page are meta tags. These could include your meta description, meta title, and other information related to the page.
If you’re using a tool like WordPress, you’ll see boxes where you can enter this information. It’s fairly straightforward, and you’ll want to include some of your keywords in these tags as well.
Backlinks
Now let’s talk about links. A backlink is a link from another site pointing to your site. This adds a lot of value because it helps build up your site’s authority.
When you have many inbound links coming from other sites, especially reputable ones, it signals to Google that your site carries weight for specific keywords linked to you.
Internal and External Links
Another important piece of link strategy is internal and external links. These are the links you put on your page itself. Internal links go to other articles on your site, while external links go to articles on other sites.
For example, if you’re referencing a definition, you might link to a Wikipedia entry, Investopedia, or maybe a Forbes article. These are good external links, and they show Google that you’re not only getting inbound links but also providing valuable outbound links.
Dofollow and Nofollow Links
There are a couple of different types of links you can use on your page. One is called “dofollow,” which is the default, and another is “nofollow.” This tag determines whether Google should follow that link or not.
If Google follows a dofollow link (the default), it means that the link you’re sending out counts as a backlink to that other site. If you use a nofollow tag, you’re telling Google not to follow that link. It won’t count toward the other site’s authority.
So which of these types of links should you use? For the most part, you’ll use dofollow links.
However, if you’re linking to sponsors or affiliate programs, you want those to be nofollow. Otherwise, dofollow is usually the best practice.
Anchor Text
The actual text that you link is called anchor text. This is important because it generally serves as the keyword related to the link.
When you’re linking to one of your own internal pages or to another site, Google will look at that keyword you’ve linked and consider it the term you believe to be relevant for that link.
Bounce Rate
When someone visits your webpage and then leaves, going back to another site or to Google, that’s called a bounce. Your bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who leave after viewing only one page.
Watch this metric closely. It’s an indicator that your site or page isn’t very engaging.
Domain and Page Authority
So how does Google know whether your page or site is worth ranking? It’s based on a score called domain authority. Google uses their own SEO glossary term for this: page authority.
They want to know if your page has many inbound links pointing to it. Does it have high-quality content? Is it helpful? Is it unique?
All of these factors are used to determine your page authority, which helps elevate your rankings. You want to get that as high as you possibly can.
The way to do this is by producing unique, high-quality content. (That’s where MakeMEDIA can help.)
Local SEO
Next up is local SEO. This is how you get ranked for localized searches. For example, if you’re in Washington, DC, and you want to be found for data backup services, “data backup service, Washington DC” would be a localized search.
There are things you can do on your website, as well as enhancements to your Google Business Profile, which is designed for local businesses, to help you get higher rankings on these local searches.
Sitemaps
Now let’s talk about some other components related to SEO. The sitemap is basically an index of all the content on your site. The articles, posts, videos, images – all of that is indexed in different files on your sitemap.
WordPress and some other website publishing tools automatically include a sitemap. You generally don’t have to update your sitemap yourself; it usually happens automatically if you set up WordPress properly. Google looks at the sitemap to see what’s changed on your site.
Content Clusters
One of my favorite parts of SEO is the content cluster. A content cluster is basically a group of related content. You can think of it as a hub and spoke, like a bicycle tire.
The hub is what we call pillar content – the really important, juicy stuff. It’s long, detailed information that you want other pages pointing to. Around that, you’ve got spoke content, which is related to your website.
When you create content clusters, you’re building a network of different types of core content with related terms. This allows you to create lots of different content and shows Google what your site is all about.
Schema Markup
Another thing that can help your site get indexed better is using schema markup. Many SEO companies still recommend mapping your schema to the type of content you’re producing.
For example, if you have articles on your site, you would use an article schema. If you have videos on a page, you would use a video schema. This tells Google the different components of your page that are relevant for that type of content, helping it index your site more effectively.
Robots.txt
You may have heard of the robots.txt file, an important addition to any SEO glossary of terms. It’s a file that tells search engine crawlers like Google and Bing which pages are allowed to be crawled and which ones are not.
You might think you want everything to be crawled, but in some cases, you actually don’t want specific pages to be accessed. For example, if you have private information for logged-in users, you can specify that you want those pages omitted from being crawled.
Page Load Speed
Page load speed is one of the most important factors in how Google ranks your site. You can test your page load speed free by using Google’s tool, Pagespeed Insights.
Google wants to provide an excellent experience for its visitors. Imagine someone typing in a search term on Google and then waiting a long time for your page to load. That’s not a great experience.
When your page loads faster, you’re giving the user a better experience, which is what Google wants to see. Faster load times can inch up your rankings.
First Contentful Paint
Google uses a couple of SEO glossary terms to figure out how fast your page is loading. The first one is First Contentful Paint, which is the time between when a page starts to load and when any of its content is rendered on the screen. Ideally, you want this to be a fraction of a second.
Largest Contentful Paint
A related term is Largest Contentful Paint, which is the time between when a page starts to load and when the first image or block of text is visible. In today’s environment, where people expect pages to display super fast, all of this plays a role in the page experience you’re providing.
There are several things you can do to improve your page load speed, such as hosting on a high-quality server that doesn’t host tons of other websites, reducing image file sizes, and using caching techniques. Improving your page load speed will help inch up your rankings.
Scaled Content Abuse
The last term I’ll discuss in this SEO glossary is scaled content abuse. In March 2024, Google completely re-did their algorithm to stop ranking pages solely written by AI without adding any value or useful content for people.
The companies, pages, and websites using AI alone to write regurgitated ChatGPT information were destroyed and are no longer ranked well on Google. Be mindful of how you create content. You can still use AI, but you must do so in a structured, strategic way without letting it do all the thinking for you.
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