SEO glossary

AEO (answer engine optimization)

Making your content easy for search features, voice assistants and AI tools to use as a direct answer.

Alt text

A short description of an image, used by screen readers and search engines.

Backlink

A link from another website to yours. Links from trusted, relevant sites help your rankings.

Bounce rate

The share of visits where someone leaves without interacting. In GA4 this is the opposite of engagement rate.

Canonical tag

A tag that tells search engines which version of a page is the main one when similar pages exist.

Conversion

A valuable action on your site, such as a form submission, call, sign-up or purchase.

Conversion rate optimization (CRO)

Improving pages and journeys so more visitors take the action you want.

Core Web Vitals

Google’s measures of real-user experience: loading (LCP), responsiveness (INP) and visual stability (CLS).

Crawling

How search engine bots discover pages by following links and sitemaps.

E-E-A-T

Experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trust. Signals Google looks for in helpful content.

Featured snippet

A highlighted answer shown above the regular results in Google.

GA4

Google Analytics 4, Google’s current analytics platform, based on events.

GEO (generative engine optimization)

Helping AI tools such as ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google’s AI Overviews understand, mention and cite your brand.

Google Business Profile

Your free business listing on Google Search and Maps. Key for local SEO.

Google Tag Manager

A tool for adding and managing tracking tags on your site without editing code each time.

Indexing

When a search engine stores a page so it can appear in results.

Internal link

A link from one page on your site to another. Helps visitors and search engines find content.

Keyword

A word or phrase people type into a search engine.

Local SEO

Improving visibility for searches with local intent, such as “plumber near me”.

Meta description

The short summary under a page title in search results. It doesn’t affect rankings directly but can improve clicks.

Organic traffic

Visitors who arrive from unpaid search results.

Page speed

How quickly a page loads and becomes usable. Affects rankings, conversions and user experience.

PPC (pay per click)

Advertising where you pay each time someone clicks your ad, such as Google Ads.

Redirect (301)

A permanent forward from an old URL to a new one, which keeps most of the old page’s ranking value.

Schema markup (structured data)

Code that describes your content to search engines, for example reviews, FAQs, products or opening hours.

Search intent

The goal behind a search: to learn, compare, buy or find a specific site.

SERP

Search engine results page: the page of results you see after a search.

Technical SEO

The behind-the-scenes work that helps search engines crawl, render and index your site.

Title tag

The page title shown as the clickable headline in search results and in the browser tab.

XML sitemap

A file listing your important pages so search engines can find them.

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