SEO Glossary
Organic search terms explained simply, without unnecessary jargon.
301 redirect
A permanent redirect telling Google and browsers that a page has permanently moved, passing most of its SEO value to the new URL.
Anchor text
The clickable text of a hyperlink. Descriptive anchor text (e.g. "technical SEO audit") helps Google understand the topic of the linked page, unlike a generic anchor like "click here".
Backlink
An inbound link from another website. Google interprets these as votes of trust toward the page they point to.
Related service: Link building →CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift)
A Core Web Vitals metric measuring a page's visual stability while loading. A score under 0.1 is recommended.
Core Web Vitals
A set of Google metrics (LCP, INP, CLS) that measure a web page's loading and interaction experience.
Crawl budget
The number of pages Googlebot is willing to crawl on a given site within a given time. Mostly relevant for very large sites.
Crawling
The process by which Google's bots (Googlebot) visit and analyze a website's pages.
Disavow
A file submitted to Google asking it to ignore certain toxic backlinks when evaluating a site, a tool to use with caution.
Domain authority
An estimate of a site's overall trust and credibility, built mainly through the accumulation of quality backlinks over time.
Related service: Link building →Duplicate content
Identical or highly similar content present across multiple URLs, which can dilute perceived relevance in Google's eyes and hurt indexation.
E-E-A-T
Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness: the framework Google uses to assess a piece of content's perceived quality and reliability.
Featured snippet
A direct-answer excerpt Google displays at the top of results, above the traditional first organic position.
Google Business Profile
A business's free listing on Google, essential for appearing in the local pack and on Google Maps.
Related service: Local SEO →Hreflang
An HTML tag that tells Google which language or regional version of a page to show based on the searcher's language and location.
Related service: Multilingual SEO strategy →Indexation
Adding a crawled page to Google's searchable index, a prerequisite for it to appear in search results at all.
INP (Interaction to Next Paint)
The Core Web Vitals metric measuring a page's responsiveness to user interactions. Replaced FID in March 2024.
Internal linking
The links between pages on the same site, which help Google understand the content's hierarchy and topical relationships.
Related service: On-page optimization & content →Keyword
A term or phrase searchers type into a search engine, which an SEO strategy aims to rank a page for.
LCP (Largest Contentful Paint)
A Core Web Vitals metric measuring the load time of the page's largest visible element. Target: under 2.5 seconds.
Link building
All actions aimed at earning quality backlinks to strengthen a site's authority.
Related service: Link building →Local SEO
Optimizing a business's visibility for geolocated searches, notably through Google Business Profile.
Related service: Local SEO →Long tail
Precise, low-competition search queries, often made up of several words, that individually generate little traffic but collectively represent a significant share of searches.
Meta description
A page's descriptive text shown under the title in search results, which doesn't directly affect ranking but does affect click-through rate.
Nofollow
A link attribute that has historically told Google not to pass authority through that link, now treated as a hint rather than a strict directive.
Noindex
A tag explicitly asking Google not to index a page, while still allowing it to be crawled.
Organic search (SEO)
All techniques aimed at improving a site's visibility in organic search results, without paid advertising.
PBN (Private Blog Network)
A network of artificially created sites with the sole purpose of generating backlinks, a risky practice exposed to Google penalties.
Robots.txt
A file at a site's root that tells search engine bots which areas they're allowed to crawl.
Search intent
What the searcher is actually looking for behind a query: informational, navigational, transactional, or commercial.
SEO ROI
The return on investment of an SEO strategy, measured notably through cost per organic lead.
Related service: Technical SEO audit →SERP
Search Engine Results Page: the results page a search engine shows after a query.
Structured data
Markup (JSON-LD format, Schema.org standard) that helps Google precisely understand a page's content and can unlock enriched search results.
Title tag
A page's HTML title, shown in the browser tab and typically as the clickable headline in Google's results. Best kept under 60 characters.
XML sitemap
A file listing every URL on a site meant to be indexed, submitted to Google Search Console to speed up their discovery.