100+ SEO Glossary of Essential Terms

What is an SEO Glossary?

An SEO Glossary is a term for all the key SEO terms explained and defined in easy-to-understand language. It is great for beginners (and others) who help them understand technicalities and provide a good grounding in SEO.

Fact: More than 90% of online activity starts with a search engine query, so SEO is fundamental for digital success.

SEO Glossary of 100+ terms every beginner, entrepreneur, or digital marketer should know upfront. This includes terms from the basic concepts, such as keywords and meta tags, to advanced topics like canonical URLs, as well as schema markup.

A to Z: SEO Glossary

A

1. What is an Algorithm in SEO?

In SEO, an algorithm is a set of rules and calculations used by search engines, such as Google, to decide which web pages should appear in the search results and in what order. Algorithms will take many factors like the keywords, quality of content, backlinks, user experience, and much more to determine relevance and which page should be displayed in front of the user per search query. Google’s algorithm is constantly updated to deliver better and more accurate user results.

2. What is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing is a relationship in which you promote other people’s products/ services through your blog, YouTube videos, or on social media. Your reward is a commission for every sale or lead that you bring through your referral. Bloggers, influencers, and content creators love being able to monetize their platforms through this method. You don’t have to create your product, it’s you just share others’ products and make money from sales or actions. A win-win: business increases their Customer, you will earn passive income.

3. What is Alt Text?

Alt text is an HTML description of the images added for better understanding by search engines and accessibility to screen reader users.

👉 Pro Tip: Whenever relevant & useful, write well-described ALT text using keywords, but DO NOT keyword stuff.

4. What is Anchor Text?

Anchor text is the visible link in a hypertext link — usually underlined and blue — that you click on, which will take you to another webpage. This informs both users and search engines of what the linked page is about.

5. What is an Authority Site?

Authority site means the website with top authority in a niche or industry; It refers to authoritative websites that are well respected, with good credibility and good information. These sites are so well known in the eyes of search engines (i.e., Google) that they normally show higher up in search results. Usually, these are authority sites with solid backlink profiles, a reliable stream of traffic, and popular content. E.g., Wikipedia, WebMD, or Moz in their niches.

6. What is an Audit in SEO?

An SEO audit is a comprehensive inspection of your site to determine its current search engine optimization potential. This examines factors such as site speed, mobile usability, broken links, keyword efficiency, technical aspects, on-page SEO, and so on. Basically, that means to identify problems that may be hurting your rankings and suggest ways to fix them so your site can perform better in Google search.

SEO audits are typically the beginning of best practices SEO.

---

B

7. What is Bing Search Engine?

Bing, the second most used search engine, besides Google and Microsoft’s own. Less than 10% of total search queries so far are from Bing, but Microsoft is in conjunction with Yahoo to power all search results back in 2009.

It is a Microsoft (a wink to Bing) supported and Yahoo-driven search engine that has been doing all the behind-the-scenes work of page ranking or user query result-finding, as Yahoo started to do this in earnest in 2010. 

8. What is a Backlink?

A backlink is a link from one website to another, indicating trust and authority, and playing a crucial role in SEO rankings.​ Backlinks are not all created equal: relevant, high-quality backlinks will provide much more value in terms of SEO.

9. What is a Bounce Rate?

The bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who visit your website and exit without taking any actions or navigating to other pages.

A high bounce rate generally means that people either found no value or lost interest and left your content.

This could also mean that the site is loading slowly, nis ot designed well, has irrelevant content, or has a really bad user experience

Still, in the case of (for example, blogs or landing pages), a high bounce rate is not always bad because the user has already gotten what they wanted and left.

10. What is Black Hat SEO?

Black Hat SEO means that manipulative techniques using those sorts of methods can cause search engines to rank a website higher. The following practices are against search engine guidelines that could result in severe penalties or complete deletion.

Some of the common Black Hat techniques are :

• Keyword stuffing
• Cloaking
• Buying backlinks
• Hidden text or links

Some of these shortcuts work well in the short term, but almost always harm the long-term health of your site. 

11. What is a Blog?

A blog is an ongoing (updated regularly) website or webpage that showcases content in a more personal voice (unlike traditional news).

Blogs are typically self-run by individuals (often amateurs or hobbyists) or small business units to promote information, education, opinion, and products/services.

Blogs rank high in SEO, they deliver organic traffic, target keywords, and build authority over time.

12. What is a Broken Link?

A broken link is simply a link on your site that is no longer functional. This could be the page has been deleted or moved, etc. When a broken link is clicked on by someone, they see the 404 error, which basically means this page does not exist.

Broken links will affect user experience and SEO rankings as well because it indicates to search engines that your site isn’t well-maintained.

Are you enjoying? 

Please do share this SEO Glossary on your social profile then keep reading.

C

13. What is a Canonical Tag?

The canonical tag is a piece of code that tells search engines which is the original version of a page or lets search engines know if there are similar/duplicate pages on your website.

This helps avoid duplicate content errors and also ensures that the correct page is displayed in search results.

If you have two pages with similar content, the canonical tag tells search engines which page to show.

14. What is Click-Through Rate (CTR)?

CTR means Click-Through Rate. What that is, is how many people click on the link after they see it.

Like, if an ad is viewed 100 times and gets 10 clicks in %, its CTR is 10%.

CTR is a way to see how well your ads, emails, or search listings are performing. A higher CTR means more people find your content useful or interesting.

15. What is Cloaking in SEO?

Cloaking is a black hat SEO method in which a website displays content differently to search engines and real users. 

This is to affect search rankings. A site may display very optimized content to rank high on search engines, but in the same time content display completely different to real Users.

Cloaking goes against the search engine guidelines and will get you flagged (sometimes even a removal from search results).

16. What is Content Marketing?

Content marketing is the technique of creating and sharing valuable, relevant content to attract potential customers. Well, the idea is to establish trust and create value for your audience that leads eventually to taking actions in favor of your business for the audience, i.e., they will buy or convert in whatever you offering.

The content could be blogs, videos or social media posts, e-books, etc.

17. What is a Conversion Rate?

Conversion rate is the percentage of people who visit your website and do what you want them to do, ie, a purchase, sign up for a newsletter, or fill in the contact form.

Supposing that: if your website has 100 viewers and 5 of them make an actual purchase, then your conversion rate is 5%.

Well, if your website is doing a better job at making people convert, that usually means your site is compelling people to take action regarding whatever it is you want them to do.

18. What is Crawling?

Crawling is when search engines like Google send bots (called Googlebot) to look at your website. These bots go through your pages to see what’s on them and save that information so your site can show up in Google search.

If a page is not crawled, it may not appear in search results.

19. What is Co-citation of Links?

Co-citation of links means two websites from different categories and separate industries are getting backlinks from an unrelated third-party website withing no direct links to each other.

Search engines use co-citation to map the relationship between the two websites, as they reference themselves from the same third source. So it lets search engines have some correlation that the places are linked, even though they aren’t directly related. Sites in particularly similar niches (same topic, the same industry, etc.) benefit from search engines and can improve their ranking potential as it may signal search engines that they are co-citers. 

20. What is CPA Marketing?

Cost Per Action Marketing (CPA Marketing) is one of the affiliate marketing methods where a promoter gets paid after some action has occurred, whether it be a user submitting a form, filling out a newsletter sign-up, or purchase. CPA Marketing, as opposed to standard affiliate marketing (where you get paid per sale), you get paid on actions or leads driven from your referral. For instance, you will be paid for a lead you generate when that person gives you their email. Performance-based marketing.

D

21. What is Domain Authority (DA)?

Domain Authority (DA) = A number [1-100] that ranks how strong a website is on Google and other search engine rankings

It was developed Moz company. The More DA you have, the better your odds at appearing higher in search results. It is not a metric used by Google but SEOs use this.

22. What is Duplicate Content?

Duplicate content means having the same or very similar content in more than one page — be it on your website or other websites.

This could make your SEO rankings suffer as search engines like Google might think that they have to show you in two different versions and confuse.

23. What is a Deep Link?

A deep link is essentially a regular link that leads you to the specified page on the website, not just the homepage

Say, instead of linking to www.example.com, a deep link could be www.paotavirtuosa.com/blog article-on-seo— makes it easier for users to quickly find relevant content, and is user-friendly as well for Seo.

24. What is a Directory Submission?

Directory submission means adding your website (its link and some details) to online directories.

It makes your site visible, gives you backlinks, some of which may be useful for SEO, and is one of the simplest link-building techniques:).

25. What is a DoFollow Link?

A DoFollow link is a normal link that tells search engines to follow it and rank the site that it points to with link juice (SEO value). The links will help the linked site in search rankings. 

E

26. What is E-E-A-T in SEO?

It stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. Google uses it to judge content quality, especially for health and finance topics.

27. What is an External Link?

An external link is a hyperlink that points from one domain to another, connecting different websites.​

28. What is an Exit Rate?

Exit rate is the percentage of visitors who leave a website from a specific page, indicating how often users exit after viewing that page.​

29. What is Engagement Rate?

Engagement rate measures the level of interaction (likes, shares, comments) a piece of content receives from its audience.​

30. What is Evergreen Content?

Evergreen content remains relevant and valuable over time, continually attracting traffic long after it’s published.​

I am sure you are getting your answers, do you?

If yes, then please share this content on your social profile to help others.

F

31. What is a Featured Snippet?

A featured snippet is a special box that appears at the very top of Google search results, showing a quick answer to a question.

Google picks this short answer from a webpage and highlights it so users can get info fast — without clicking a link right away. It often includes text, lists, tables, or images.

32. What is a Footer Link?

A footer link is the link at the end of the page (at the footer).

Link usually go to pages such as Privacy Policy, Contact page, Terms of Service or navigation of the site. They help users and search engines explore your site better.

33. What is Fresh Content?

Fresh content means newly published or recently updated content on a website.

Articles that change constantly should be fresh as per search engines like google (news/trending/updates). Good to keep your website updated helps in SEO benefit and also in user trust.

34. What is a Favicon?

Tiny icon that appears in your browser tab (next to page title) is a favicon.

It also makes an appearance in bookmarks and helps your site be easily identifiable to the user. Just makes your website look cleaner and more professional/trustworthy.

35. What is a Forum Signature?

Forum signature is a little bit of text or links that will display just underneath every post user has made on the online forum.

Usually it’s something to throw out info like his name, website or a great quote. Forum signatures can occasionally be used by some marketers to add backlinks to their site (although overdoing this is quick service and can be harmful for SEO.

G

36. What is the Google Panda Algorithm?

Google Panda Algorithm (2011) was introduced to hit those search results that have low-quality content, commonly known as content farms. B. Sites with thin, low-value, or duplicated content that aren’t adding value to your users. The goal of this update was to demote websites that failed to deliver quality, informative content to the users. The results are skewed at about 11%, and high-quality content sites can see an amazing boost in their rankings. 

37. What is the Google Penguin Algorithm?

Google Penguin Algorithm: Launched in 2012 to combat sites that utilize black hat practices (such as link farming) for search rankings. Before Penguin came around many websites would essentially blogs out for the sake of volume backlinks quality be damned. When Penguin went live, it went after these sites, demoting the ones that spammed and/or used irrelevant backlinks. The algorithm changed the game and shifted blame to quality links rather than just quantity, rewarding sites with more organic & authoritative inbound links.

38. What is the Google Hummingbird Algorithm?

Google introduced the Hummingbird Algorithm in 2013 to the point at which Google works better on how to understand search queries. Contrary to most other updates, Hummingbird made an effort toward search intent rather than singular keywords. This helped Google to understand the actual meaning of what a user is searching for, therefore showing better and more relevant results. Google could now more accurately return the answers with context behind them, regardless of how the query may be worded differently by users. It also improved the performance of Knowledge Graph serving, which showed results that could be an image or related data. 

39. What is Google AdSense?

Google AdSense (launched in 2003) — Ad platform from Google that allows earning from ads on a website, blog, or YouTube. You start earning once your platform is approved and users view or click the ads.

40. What is the Google Pigeon Algorithm?

Google Pigeon Algorithm 2014 local search algorithm, was here to stay and strengthen the results. This allowed the search engine to be more specific and relevant for location-based queries, e.g., “best hotel near me” or “where are the closest cafes”. The Pigeon made local listings, map positions, and organic search results more connected, so more focus on the prominence of a business was perceptible by the Pigeon. This algorithm rewarded sites with proper local SEO, meaning great Google My Business listings, links from the location pages, and location keywords. 

41. What is the Google Rank Brain Algorithm?

In 2015, Google implemented an AI system, RankBrain, that would let Google understand searches that have never been queried before (in natural language). Provides the best results by analyzing new or different searches on simple machine learning and natural language understanding. RankBrain is integrated with the fundamental algorithm of Google for bettering search quality and results. 

42. What is Google Analytics?

Google Analytics is a free tool by Google that helps you track and understand how people use your website. It shows data like how many visitors came, where they came from (like Google, Facebook, or direct), which pages they viewed, how long they stayed, and more. This data helps you improve your website, measure marketing performance, and make smarter business decisions.

43. What is Google Search Console (GSC)?

Google Search Console — A Free tool from Google to see how your website is doing in Google search.

It shows you:

• What keywords are you ranking for
• If Google can index your pages
• Any errors on your site
• How your site works on mobile devices
  

It’s super helpful for improving your website’s SEO performance.

44. What is Googlebot?

Googlebot is Google’s web crawler—a special program that visits websites to find new pages or check for updates.

It reads your site like a user, follows links, and sends the information back to Google. This helps your pages show up in Google search results.

45. What is a Google Penalty?

Google Penalty is given when a website is using rules that are not quite right (ex, spammy backlinks or keyword stuffing, etc)

Thereby, Google might demote your ranking or remove your site from the search results. Manual penalties (assigned by a human reviewing) as well as algorithmic (Google updates like Penguin or Panda).

46. What is Gray hat SEO

When you mix the White Hat and Black Hat SEO techniques, that single act of an individual is known as Gray Hat SEO most businesses use it to rank faster for their imminent product launch.

It will help your website for a few days or days to come, but hey will be in a safer place indeed where the site will not be de-indexed by Google. 

47. What is the Google Sandbox?

Although Google itself has never confirmed or denied the existence of this thing from SEO experts, a site is newly indexed via the normal method of indexing, Google has a sort of Google Sandbox concept.

New Site -> Sandbox ( for lack of authority ), and Google is just spamming user experience test, if the site is user-friendly in context to what the user wants, Google will start ranking all other keywords and will rank as a normal site.

48. What is Google disavow?

Google Disavow is the tool that you can use with Google not to count some of the backlinks that are directed to your site. Should a website with no link equity, or worse, the site you wish to disavow as spam and low-quality links, load your page, you can use the disavow tool in Spreadsheets. That, in turn, protects your site from the possibility of being hit with penalties by bad or rotten backlinks. 

49. What is Google Trends?

Google Trends is a free & easy tool (by Google) to find how many times a particular search term has been entered into over time.

It informs you popularity of a certain topic, keyword or trend in various geographical areas. It is useful to do A/B testing on search terms, visual charts, and analyze the interest level of any subject (both present & past). It reveals the trending topics live too, which will be beneficial for businesses as well as content creators to see what people are relating to.

50. What is WordPress?

WordPress is the most used and free Content Management System (or CMS) to build as well manage websites. 35% of all websites on the internet run by it, and it’s particularly popular for blogs. WordPress is very user-friendly and practically everybody can build a website using it with little to no technical knowledge. But to stop using WordPress, you’ll have to get a domain name and web hosting that costs about $100 yearly. It is customisable with a large library of themes & plugins, making it flexible, easy to use.

H

51. What is a Heading Tag (H1, H2, etc.)?

Heading tags are used to organize content on a webpage.

• H1 is the main title of the page (used only once).
• The H2, H3, H4, etc., above all, subheadings are used to break content into logical parts.

They help readers in the quick readability of your content, and help search engines to know what each part of your page is talking about.

52. What is a Homepage?

The homepage is the very starting page of your website.

By far, the page most people see when they get to your domain (eg, www.example.com), it introduces readers to the site and provides links to the vital parts like Services, About, and Contact, or those that have to be seen.

Consider your website entrance or front door. The entrance.

53. What is HTML?

HTML = HyperText Markup Language. The foundational code that comes in creating, structuring a web page. HTML adds the text + images + links, and other content on the page.

Every website, no HTML, no structure — HTML is the foundation of any webpage.

54. What is Hosting?

Hosting: The service that stores all the files and data of your website (HTML, CSS, Images, etc) etc. Hosting is essentially where your website lives, in a container. It offers the place and the means for keeping your website accessible to visitors as well as live applications running.

Since every hosting is paired with a domain name, when someone enters your domain in the browser, it directly accesses your stored webpages on the hosting. Specifically, if you go to A2 Hosting, they are the custodian of all your website data and are out to make it globally accessible. 

55. What is HTTP vs HTTPS?

Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP) is the most used protocol to exchange data on the internet. But it’s not secure.

The secure version of HTTP is called HTTPS (HyperText Transfer Protocol Secure). Websites that support HTTPS add an SSL cert to the mix that encrypts data and hence can be safe for transfer.

• HTTP insecure; unencrypted
• HTTPS Secured (noted as secure) — Which protects the user data.

This is why Google loves HTTPS websites more (better position in SERP) as their the user-friendly ones.

I

56. What is an Internal Link?

An internal link is a hyperlink that links one page of your website to another.

This helps users navigate your site and look for similar content. As it relates to SEO, internal links are also important because they spread link equity (or ranking equity) between your pages,, which ultimately makes them more visible in search engines.

57. What is Indexing?

Indexing is the process by which search engines store the information about your website after they’ve crawled it.

Only pages that are indexed can show up in Google search results. If a page isn’t indexed, people won’t find it in search.

58. What is Image Optimization in SEO?

Image optimization is the process of making your images smaller in size without losing quality and adding proper alt text.

This helps images load faster on your website, improving user experience and boosting your search engine rankings.

J

59. What is JavaScript SEO?

JavaScript SEO is the process of making sure that content created or changed by JavaScript on a website can still be seen by search engines.

Since some content is hidden until JavaScript loads it, it’s important to ensure search engines can find and rank it.

K

60. What is a Keyword?

A keyword is a word or phrase that people type into search engines when they’re looking for information.

In SEO, the goal is to optimize content to match these relevant keywords so your site appears in search results.

61. What is Keyword Density?

Keyword density is the percentage of times a keyword appears in your content compared to the total number of words.

If a keyword is used too many times, it can be seen as keyword stuffing, which can hurt your SEO.

62. What is Keyword Stuffing?

Keyword stuffing is when a keyword is repeated too many times in a way that feels unnatural or forced.

This can lead to penalties from Google, making your page rank lower.

63. What is Keyword Research?

Keyword research — Finding out what people type in search engines to look for something.

This will help you generate content based on those words. When someone searches for content related to your business, your website shows up as a result. It’s like knowing what your audience wants to know so that you can serve it!

Additionally, you look at how frequently those searches are and how difficult it is to rank for them, to narrow down to the best ones to target.

L

64. What is a Landing Page?

A landing page is the first page to load when someone clicks on a link (whether it’s from an ad, email, or search result). The well-designed targets a single goal, such as merchandising goods, offering discounts, or collecting contact information

Landing pages are crucial in moving visitors into customers or leads.

65. What is a Link Building Strategy?

Link building strategy is trying to get other websites to link back to your site. This is important for SEO because the links can be considered as “trust votes” for your site, informing search engines that the content is reliable and worth my time reading.

The better the quality of your backlinks, the more likely you are to rank higher in search results.

66. What is Local SEO?

Local SEO is the practice of optimizing your website and online presence so that you come up in location-based searches such as “plumber near me” or “best restaurant in the city”.

Well, it all depends on making sure your local customers can find you online on Google. Optimizing your Google Business Profile to appear in Google Maps and local search results is a crucial local SEO element.

67. What is Link Farming?

Link farming (one of the black hat SEO strategies) means massively creating low-quality and unlinked backlinks; Search engine optimization rankings were being affected.

The backlinks are coming from sites you are not related to or spammy, and more are the number of sites is increasing, that you need to build the authority and rankings of your target website.

While link farming is not good quality links from authoritative sites, instead, you are looking at quantitative over qualitative. Link-building sites should not be created since it goes against the guidelines for organic and relevant backlink profiles established by Google, Bing, etc.

M

68. What is a Meta Title?

The meta title is the blue clickable headline in Google SERPs. It tells search engines what your page is about.

69. What is a Meta Description?

Meta description (about 155-160 characters) – This is a summary that appears below the title of a webpage in search results.

It provides users with a concise summary of what they will find on the page and sways their decision to click.

A good meta description, although it will not directly affect rankings, can still help you get clickthroughs — (CTR)%.

70. What is Mobile-First Indexing?

Mobile-first indexing tells Google to index the mobile version of your website the same as the desktop version to determine how it ranks in mobile search results.

Since people access websites via mobile the majority of the time, Google prefers to consider mobile-friendly sites more highly.

When you look at this, you should also have an optimized mobile version of your website because this is what Google uses most for your search engine rankings.

71. What is a Manual Action?

Manual action is a punishment in Google, by which a real person(not just an algorithm) will do an audit of your site and find it not conforming to the rules -ex, bad link, spammy, or smart technique.

This will make your pages drop in search results or vanish entirely.

You can see manual actions in your Google Search Console and fix these to request a re-investigation.

72. What is Machine Learning?

Machine Learning is the branch of Artificial Intelligence (AI) that enables systems to learn and improve automatically from experience without being explicitly programmed. For SEO, this is crucial because it gives a clue to search engines such as Google through user behavior and interaction of our end users with respective search results to classify/predict what users actually look for. Over time, as it sees more data, the algorithms get better and deliver more accurate, better results for the users. 

N

73. What is a Nofollow Link?

A nofollow link is a unique link that says, “Search engines, do not follow this link when crawling”. It is mostly for blog comments, paid links, or whatever you don’t want to kill SEO.

🔗 Still works for users, but is ignored for ranking by search engines.

74. What is a Niche?

A particular subject or area that you work in or specialise in. Let’s say not to write on simply “health” but rather go for something more specific, let’s say “keto diet” for niching. This guides you to get the best audiences and helps you stand apart.

O

75. What is On-Page SEO?

Well, On-page SEO stands for On-Page Search Engine Optimization your written content should be highly optimized with a specific keyword or search query, as a result, the search engine would understand what your content is all about.

On-page SEO is the easiest part of SEO, because the Content writers simply write the content with user interest with proper using keywords properly in the proper places like the Title, the middle of the content, URL, heading, or subheading.

76. What is Off-Page SEO?

Off-page SEO, or off-page search engine optimization, is the effort to acquire backlinks or links from other websites by submitting posts/pages to niche directories.

Off-page SEO from a marketing perspective of blog sharing them on social media, search engines & asking other blogs to link to your blog explicitly.

Combining Onpage and Off SEO is the way to quickly rank your site in search engine like Google, and others.

77. What is Organic Traffic?

Organic traffic, I mean real, “free” (unpaid) clicks that people click on search results in Google or other search engines that bring you to your site. This is traffic you actually grow with SEO, not ads.

This time I am sure you have shared.

P

78. What is PageSpeed?

PageSpeed is how quickly your website loads. A faster site keeps visitors happy and helps you rank better on Google.

79. What is Page Authority (PA)?

Page Authority is a score (by Moz) that shows how likely a single page is to rank on search engines. Higher score = better chances of ranking.

80. What is PPC (Pay-Per-Click)?

PPC is a type of online advertising where you only pay when someone clicks on your ad. It’s a fast way to drive traffic to your website, often used with Google Ads or Facebook Ads.

81. What is Quality Content?

Quality content is helpful, original, and easy to understand. It gives real value to readers, answers their questions, and keeps them engaged. Google ranks this kind of content higher in search results.

82. What is a Private Blog Network (PBN)?

A Private Blog Network (PBN) is a bunch of websites owned and created to increase traffic in a “main” money site, and improve their own higher search rankings by way of backlinks.

The single entity takes control of small blogs, usually falling under the grip of a single person to conduct SEO.

Since PBNs are among the black hat SEO methods one first thinks about for boosting a website authority by abusing low-quality/backlink mining. There is no manual yet for Google to find PBNs, but over time they do reviews manually. PBN sites used can land your site to be de-indexed or massively penalized in search engine ranking.

---

R

83. What is a Redirect?

A redirect sends users and search engines from one URL to another. 301 is permanent; 302 is temporary.

84. What is a 301 Redirect?

301 Redirect is a Permanent Redirect from old url to new URL It was helpful in making prevent 404 errors (page not found) A website owner may re-name a URL, such as when they change the permalink for a post or page.

301 redirect: the old URL is immutable, so your visitor is redirected right on time to the new one. This not only keeps users from seeing a “Page not found” 404, but also transmits approximately 90–99% of the SEO value (link equity) from old to new URL, you are retaining your rankings.

85. What is a 302 Redirect?

A 302 Redirect is a redirect that tells search engines and users a page is moved to a temporary location. It is mainly used for things such as site-wide maintenance mode, split testing or just temporarily calling attention to a page.

As opposed to a 301 redirect (permanently redirecting), a 302 redirect is used to keep the SEO value of the original page by not allowing full link juice flow to a new page.

It tells Search engines that the redirect is for temporary use so that the original page does not get ranked forever.

86. What is Robots.txt?

Robots.txt is a file on your website that tells search engines which pages or sections they should or should not crawl and index. It helps manage what content is included in search results.

S

87. What is Schema Markup?

Schema markup is a special code added to your website to help search engines understand your content better. It can improve how your pages show up in search results, making them more eye-catching and informative.

88. What is SEO (Search Engine Optimization)?

SEO is the practice of improving your website to make it more visible on search engines like Google, helping it attract more visitors without paying for ads.

89. What is a Sitemap?

A sitemap is a file that contains a list of all the pages on your website, helping search engines find and index your content more easily.

90. What is SERP?

SERP stands for Search Engine Results Page. It is the page that shows the results after you search for something on Google or other search engines.

91. What is a Search Engine? 

A search engine is therefore a vast collection of billions of web pages or content and the search engine, and once a particular user sets foot on their platform, and if the user searches for a query, then based on its algorithm, a search engine serves the best results of the user’s interest.

E.g.: Google/Bing/Youtube/DuckDuckGo/Yandex/Baidu are search engines for webpages and YouTube for videos, eCommerce products(Amazon), etc;. 

92. What is SEM or Search Engine Marketing?

Basically, SEM is for search engine marketing, and you are running some ad campaign in Google AdWords to show off your post at the top of the search results, plus Running Ads on Bing (if any) to show ads in the Bing search engine.

IN GENERAL, it costs money to use search engine marketing (a marketing or business site owner technique in top search result and will list while you are purchasing for it EVERYTHING.  

T

93. What is Technical SEO?

Technical SEO is about improving your website’s structure, speed, security, and making it easy for search engines to crawl and index your pages.

94. What is Thin Content?

Thin content refers to low-quality or short content that doesn’t provide much value to the user and can harm SEO rankings.

95. What is a Trust Flow (TF)?

Trust Flow (TF) is a Majestic tool that develops a metric, the Trustworthiness of a website.

This tells you how many of the high quality, reputable sites linking back to your site or pages. So in a nutshell, it is how much the site backlink profile trusts the site. The higher the Trust Flow, the more a site is likely to rank at the top of search engine results because it tells search engines that are this site is trustworthy & authoritative. 

U

96. What is User Experience (UX)?

UX refers to how users feel when navigating your website. A good user experience leads to better engagement, lower bounce rates, and improved rankings.

97. What is URL Structure?

URL structure is how your website’s web addresses are organized. Clean, simple, and keyword-rich URLs are better for SEO and easier for users to understand.

V

98. What is Voice Search Optimization?

Voice search optimization is the process of making your content easy to find through voice searches, typically in question formats like “What is…” or “How to…”.

W

99. What is White Hat SEO?

When you follow all the on-page and off-page SEO techniques that align with Google’s or any other search engine’s guidelines, it is known as White Hat SEO.

Although the results from White Hat SEO may take time to show, they provide long-lasting organic reach and help maintain your website’s credibility over the long term.

100. What is Web 2.0 in SEO?

Web 2.0 in SEO refers to content-sharing platforms (such as Medium, Tumblr, WordPress.com) where users can create and share their content, including backlinks. These platforms allow users to build authority by creating content that links back to their website, helping boost SEO through improved backlinks.

Y

101. What is Yahoo’s Search Engine?

Yahoo was in fact the very first search engine of WWII, 1994 which was more like directory at that point where the website owners had to manually submit their web pages and result was based on user search query Yahoo had its own search (powered by a Google partnership till 2004 when Yahoo had created the advanced algorithm).

Yahoo partnered with Google in the year 2000 to provide its queries till 2004, Yahoo developed it’s own search algorithm only after the Google partnership. 

FAQs About SEO Glossary

Final Thoughts on SEO Glossary

No Doubt, you enjoy or learn almost everything about SEO terms and SEO glossary. Whether a beginning SEO, an entrepreneur trying to learn the language of Google, or even a digital marketing freelancer, these 100+ SEO terms are your key to a universe full of online visibility.

Meta tags, backlinks, Google Search Console, schema markup — you’ve got most of the key SEO vocabulary covered already. I am pretty sure that you have learned something from this glossary, and it will help with the share on their social media profiles.

👉 Tip: Bookmark this page and revisit it whenever you're confused about a term. SEO changes constantly—staying updated is half the battle!