301 redirect – An HTTP status code sent by a web server to a browser, indicating that one URL is permanently redirected to another URL.
302 redirect – An HTTP status code sent by a web server to a browser, indicating that one URL is temporarily redirected to another URL.
ALT text – HTML attribute that provides alternative text when non-textual elements, typically images, cannot be displayed.
anchor text – The text contained in a hyperlink.
average position – In Google Search Console, a metric that shows an average of the position your site appeared in the organic search results.
backlink – a link from a site outside of your site.
black hat SEO – Using tactics to increase organic search traffic that are in violation of search engine guidelines.
comment spam – Irrelevant comments posted to a blog for the sole purpose of dropping a link to the spammer’s website.
core web vitals – A set of web page performance and user experience metrics that Google calculates based on real world usage data.
deep linking – Linking to a web page other than a site’s home page.
description tag – An HTML tag used by Web page authors to provide a description for search engine listings.
dofollow links – A description of links that do not contain the “nofollow” attribute, and thus may convey authority in the eyes of search engines.
domain authority – A metric created by Moz to predict a website’s power to rank in organic search results.
doorway page – A page made specifically to rank well in search engines for particular keywords, serving as an entry point through which visitors pass to the main content.
duplicate content – Web page content that appears multiple places online, either as exact copies or in versions that are deemed to be substantially similar by search engines.
ego bait – The strategy of positively mentioning a brand or influencer in the hope that they reciprocate and share your content or link to your site.
evergreen content – Content that is likely to be relevant for a long time.
Google Business Profile – A free service from Google that lets businesses manage how their company information appears across Google products, including Maps, Search and Ads location assets.
Google Search Console – A free service from Google, formerly known as Google Webmaster Tools, that lets website owners check their search performance, indexing status, and various other website measures.
guest blogging – writing a blog post to be published on another blog as a temporary featured author.
inbound marketing – a marketing model whose sales performance relies on the initiative of its client base to find and purchase a product.
internal link – A hyperlink from one page on a website to another page or resource on the same site.
keyword – a word used in a performing a search.
keyword density – keywords as a percentage of indexable text words.
keyword difficulty – A metric that estimates how difficult it would be to rank for an organic search keyword.
keyword marketing – putting your message in front of people who are searching using particular keywords and keyphrases.
keyword research – the search for keywords related to your Web site, and the analysis of which ones yield the highest return on investment (ROI).
keyword stuffing – the excessive, unnatural use of keywords on a web page for search engine optimization purposes.
keywords tag – META tag used to help define the primary keywords of a Web page.
link building – The process of increasing the number of inbound links to a website in a way that will increase search engine rankings.
link checker – Tool used to check for broken hyperlinks.
link popularity – A measure of the quantity and quality of sites that link to your site.
linkbait – A piece of content created with the primary purpose of attracting inbound links.
long tail keywords – Keywords that get relatively little search traffic.
manual submission – Adding a URL to the search engines individually by hand.
META tag generator – Tool that will output META tags based on input page information.
META tags – Tags to describe various aspects about a Web page.
mobile first indexing – Google’s practice of primarily using the mobile version of a web page for indexing and ranking.
NAP (Name, Address, Phone Number) – Ads that adapt their appearance based on the website they appear on, in order to blend in with the content.
negative SEO – Malicious tactics used to try and hurt the organic search rankings of other websites.
nofollow links – Hyperlinks that contain the rel=”nofollow” attribute, giving search engines a hint that the they might not want to pass ranking benefits to the target page.
organic search – The unpaid entries in a search engine results page that were derived based on their contents’ relevance to the keyword query.
outbound link – A link to a site outside of your site.
owned media – Content created on properties you own or control.
pagejacking – Theft of a page from the original site and publication of a copy (or near-copy) at another site.
PageRank – An algorithm used by Google to signal the relative popularity of pages, according to the weighted value of their backlinks.
query (search query) – The exact string of words a user types into a search engine.
rank tracking – The process of tacking a website’s organic search engine rankings for certain keywords over time.
reciprocal links – Links between two sites, often based on an agreement by the site owners to exchange links.
rel canonical – An HTML element that tells the search engines the preferred URL for indexing content.
search quality rater guidelines – A document prepared by Google to help its search quality raters evaluate search results for relevancy and reliability.
search engine – A program that indexes documents, then attempts to match documents relevant to the users search requests.
search engine optimization – The process of choosing targeted keyword phrases related to a site, and ensuring that the site places well when those keyword phrases are part of a Web search.
search engine spam – Excessive manipulation to influence search engine rankings, often for pages which contain little or no relevant content.
search engine submission – The act of supplying a URL to a search engine in an attempt to make a search engine aware of a site or page.
search partners – In search advertising, sites that partner with Google to show ads in search and search-like settings.
SERP – Shorthand for a page of search engine listings, typically the first page of organic results.
sitemap – A file containing a website’s content that is meant to be found by search engines and users.
skyscraper technique – An SEO tactic of finding highly-linked content, creating a significantly better version, and reaching out to site owners who have already linked to similar content.
soft 404 – A situation where a web server returns a “200 OK” (success) response, but Google treats it like a “404 Not Found” response.
technical SEO – The process of ensuring search engines can properly crawl and index a website’s content,.to achieve optimal rankings in organic search results.
thin content – Web page content that search engines deem to have little or no value.
title tag – HTML tag used to define the text in the top line of a Web browser, also used by many search engines as the title of search listings.
white hat SEO – Using tactics to increase organic search traffic that are strictly within the guidelines of the search engines.
Your Money or Your Life (YMYL) Pages – A category of web pages identified in the Google Quality Rater Guidelines as potentially impacting the future happiness, health, financial stability, or safety of users.
