SEO glossary

The clickable text of a hyperlink, visible to users and analyzed by search engines.

Anchor text helps Google understand what the target page is about. Natural, descriptive anchors are useful; exact-match anchors repeated excessively look artificial and can strip links of their value or even lead to a manual action. Vary your anchors: exact, partial, branded, and generic.

A hyperlink from an external website pointing to your website.

Links from other sites remain an important signal for Google. A quality backlink comes from a recognized site close to your topic and sits in a natural editorial context. The number of distinct referring domains often matters more than the total number of links.

Share of visits with no meaningful interaction with the site. In Google Analytics 4, it is the inverse of the engagement rate.

A high bounce rate is not always negative: for a blog post that answers a question, it is normal. For a service page or a product page, however, a high bounce rate points to a mismatch between the promise (title/meta) and the content, or to a poor user experience.

An HTML tag that tells search engines which version of a page is preferred when content is duplicated.

The rel="canonical" tag helps manage duplicate content: URLs with parameters, HTTP/HTTPS variants, or with/without www. It tells Google which URL to prefer for indexing and for consolidating signals. It is a hint, not a directive: Google may choose another URL. A misplaced canonical can push important pages out of the index.

Google metrics that measure visitors' real-world experience: loading, responsiveness, and visual stability.

Core Web Vitals include LCP (Largest Contentful Paint, "good" up to 2.5 s), INP (Interaction to Next Paint, "good" up to 200 ms), and CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift, "good" up to 0.1). INP replaced FID in March 2024. These metrics have been part of the page experience signals since 2021: they matter, but they carry less weight than content relevance.

The process by which search engine bots browse and analyze the pages of a website.

Crawling is the first step of indexing. Googlebot visits your pages by following internal links and the sitemap. Crawlability depends on the site structure, the allocated crawl budget, robots.txt and server response speed. A poorly crawled website cannot be properly indexed or ranked.

The percentage of users who click on your result in the SERPs.

CTR depends mainly on position, the title, the meta description, and any rich results. Improving it is an often-overlooked lever: at the same position, a better CTR brings in more traffic.

Score calculated by a third-party tool to estimate the strength of a domain's link profile.

Domain Authority (Moz) and Domain Rating (Ahrefs) are metrics from tool vendors, not Google criteria. They are based mainly on the quantity and quality of a site's backlinks. Useful for comparing domains with each other, they do not guarantee any ranking.

Identical or very similar content found on several URLs, internal or external, which can harm SEO.

Google does not directly penalize duplicate content, but it chooses a single version to index, which may not be the one you want. Internal duplicate content (similar product pages, versions with/without parameters) is resolved with canonicals, redirects or a content rewrite.

Google's quality criteria: Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness.

E-E-A-T is not a direct algorithmic ranking factor, but a framework used by Google's Quality Raters to assess page quality. It is especially important for YMYL (Your Money Your Life) content. Demonstrating real expertise, proof of hands-on experience and trust signals (mentions, citations, identified authors) has become essential.

A highlighted box in position zero of Google results that extracts a direct answer from a web page.

Featured snippets appear as a paragraph, a list, or a table. To improve your chances, give a concise answer right after a question asked in an H2 or H3. Google usually picks them from pages that already rank well for the query. They are a way to gain visibility without holding the top spot.

The set of rules and calculations Google uses to rank web pages in its search results.

Google relies on many signals to rank pages, including content relevance, links, page experience, and technical signals. Its core updates regularly shift how much each one counts; since March 2024, the helpful content system has been part of those updates. Ongoing monitoring is therefore necessary.

A free Google tool for monitoring and optimizing a website's presence in search results.

Search Console provides essential data: queries, impressions, clicks, CTR, average positions, indexing status, Core Web Vitals, and security issues. This is Google's own data about your site, so check it regularly.

HTML tag for a page's main heading, which announces the topic covered.

A single, unique, descriptive H1 per page is the clearest approach for readers and search engines alike. It naturally includes the main keyword. It can repeat or complement the title tag, as long as it accurately describes the content.

The process by which Google adds a web page to its index so that it can appear in search results.

Indexing follows crawling: after visiting a page, Google decides whether to add it to its index, and never guarantees it will. Indexing problems (unindexed pages, slow indexing) are among the most critical in SEO. An up-to-date XML sitemap, a clear architecture, and useful content all help pages get indexed.

A hyperlink connecting two pages of the same website, essential for navigation and PageRank distribution.

Internal linking is an often-underestimated lever. It distributes authority across your pages, guides Googlebot's crawling, and helps visitors navigate. A well-planned internal linking strategy can noticeably improve the rankings of deep pages.

The strategy of organizing a website's internal links to optimize navigation, crawling and authority distribution.

Effective internal linking relies on a silo or topic cluster architecture, where pages are grouped by theme and linked logically. The most important pages (money pages) should receive the most internal links. Links placed in the body text generally carry more weight than navigation links.

An over-optimization practice that repeats a keyword excessively on a page in an attempt to manipulate rankings.

Keyword stuffing is one of the spam practices described in Google's policies. It makes text harder to read and can lead to lost rankings or even a manual action. Favor natural writing and a rich vocabulary over mechanically repeating a single term.

The strategy of acquiring inbound links (backlinks) from external websites to strengthen a domain's authority.

Link building is still a pillar of SEO, but the methods have evolved. Effective techniques include digital PR, quality guest blogging, creating content that attracts links (studies, infographics, free tools), and link reclamation. Buying links in bulk and using PBNs violate Google's policies and expose a site to penalties.

A set of optimization techniques aimed at improving a business's visibility in location-based search results.

Local SEO is crucial for businesses with a physical service area. It relies on optimizing the Google Business Profile, consistent NAP citations (Name, Address, Phone), customer reviews, and localized content. The Local Pack (the block of results shown with a map) holds a highly visible spot on local queries.

The set of specific, low-competition search queries that together generate significant traffic.

Long-tail queries tend to be longer and more specific. Each one has little volume, but there are a great many of them, and together they make up a large share of demand. Because they reflect a precise intent, they often convert better. Targeting them is an effective strategy for newer sites or competitive markets.

An HTML tag providing a summary of the page, shown below the title in search results.

The meta description is not a ranking factor, but it can influence CTR. It should be unique, descriptive, and make people want to click; at around 155 to 160 characters, it avoids being truncated. Google often replaces it with an excerpt from the page that it considers more relevant to the query.

Google's policy of using the mobile version of a website as the main reference for indexing and ranking.

Since late 2023, Google has crawled and indexed nearly all sites with its mobile crawler. Content, internal links, or structured data missing from the mobile version may therefore not be taken into account. Responsive design is the simplest way to avoid these gaps.

An HTML attribute (rel="nofollow") telling search engines not to follow a link or pass on authority.

Nofollow links do not pass PageRank directly, but Google has treated them as a "hint" since 2019. Sponsored links should use rel="sponsored" and user-generated content rel="ugc". A natural backlink profile contains a mix of dofollow and nofollow links.

A directive telling search engines not to index a specific page.

The meta robots noindex tag (or the X-Robots-Tag HTTP header) keeps a page out of search results. It suits pages that have no value in search results: thank-you pages, internal search, login. The page must remain accessible to crawlers: if it is blocked in robots.txt, Google will not see the directive.

All the optimization actions carried out outside your website to improve its authority and reputation.

Off-page SEO mainly covers link building, but also brand mentions, social media marketing, digital PR and online reputation management. The goal is to strengthen the trust and authority signals Google uses to assess your website's credibility.

Optimizations made directly on a website's pages: content, HTML tags, structure and internal linking.

On-page SEO covers optimizing title tags and meta descriptions, heading structure (H1-H6), content quality and relevance, image optimization (alt, compression), internal linking and user experience. It is the pillar over which you have the most direct control.

All the visits coming from search engines' natural (unpaid) search results.

Organic traffic is often considered one of the most profitable acquisition channels in the long run. Unlike SEA (paid search), it does not stop when the budget runs out. Measuring and segmenting your organic traffic (by page, keyword, and intent) is essential to assess the ROI of your SEO strategy.

The time it takes for a web page to fully display in the user's browser.

Speed is one of the page experience signals Google uses, among many others: between pages of comparable relevance it can make a difference, but it does not make up for less useful content. It matters most to visitors, who are more likely to leave a slow page. The main levers: image compression, caching, code minification, a CDN, and lazy loading.

Google's historical algorithm measuring the importance of a web page based on the quantity and quality of the links pointing to it.

PageRank has not been displayed publicly since 2016, but Google says it still uses it, among other signals. Each link passes part of the source page's importance on to the target page. That is why internal linking and quality backlinks matter in SEO.

A result displayed above all standard organic results in Google's SERPs.

Position zero is most often held by a featured snippet. It offers strong visibility, but the answer shown is sometimes enough for searchers, who then do not click. Well-structured content that answers frequent questions concisely has the best chance of reaching it. AI-generated overviews (AI Overviews) now often appear above it.

A unique website containing at least one link pointing to your website.

The number of referring domains is often more meaningful than the total number of backlinks. Having 100 links from 100 different domains is generally more powerful than 100 links from a single domain. The diversity of referring domains is a key indicator of a website's natural popularity.

A web design approach in which the website automatically adapts to the size of the user's screen.

Responsive design is the method Google recommends for mobile compatibility. A single URL serves every device, which simplifies indexing and the consolidation of SEO signals. The alternatives (m-dot sites, dynamic serving) are still supported, but they make technical management heavier.

Enhanced search result showing extra information (stars, prices, availability, images) thanks to structured data.

Rich snippets make a result more visible and can improve its click-through rate, with no guarantee: Google decides whether to show them. They rely on Schema.org structured data. Common types: reviews (Review), products (Product), recipes (Recipe), and events (Event). Since 2023, Google has limited FAQ results to well-known, authoritative government and health websites.

A text file at the root of a website telling search engine bots which pages to crawl or ignore.

Robots.txt controls crawl budget by blocking access to irrelevant sections (admin, cart, internal search). Careful: blocking a URL in robots.txt does not prevent it from being indexed if other pages link to it. To deindex a page, use the noindex tag and leave the page accessible to crawlers.

The user's real goal behind a search query: informational, navigational, transactional or commercial.

Understanding search intent is essential to creating content that ranks. To identify the dominant intent, look at the current SERP: guides and articles signal informational intent, while product pages signal transactional intent. Meeting that intent matters more than repeating the keyword.

An in-depth analysis of a website to identify the technical, semantic and popularity issues holding back its search rankings.

A complete SEO audit covers three areas: technical (speed, crawling, indexing), content (relevance, heading structure, cannibalization), and authority (backlink profile). It is usually the starting point of an SEO strategy.

When several pages of the same website compete for the same keyword, diluting their ranking potential.

Cannibalisation happens when Google hesitates between two or more of your pages for the same query. Traffic is then split instead of being concentrated on a single strong page. The fix is to consolidate the content, use 301 redirects or differentiate the search intents targeted.

A document summarizing a website's SEO performance: organic traffic, rankings, backlinks, technical errors and recommendations.

A professional SEO report should be clear, actionable and suited to its audience. For a non-technical client, focus on business KPIs (traffic, conversions, ROI). For a technical team, detail the crawl errors, Core Web Vitals and implementation recommendations. Regularity (monthly or weekly) is essential to measure progress.

The results page a search engine displays in response to a user query.

Today's SERPs are far richer than a simple list of blue links. They include featured snippets, People Also Ask, video results, Knowledge Panels, local results, shopping results, and AI-generated answers (AI Overviews, formerly SGE). Understanding the makeup of the SERP for your target keywords is essential to adapt your strategy.

Semantic markup added to the HTML code to help search engines understand the content of a page.

Structured data uses the Schema.org vocabulary, preferably in JSON-LD format, to describe entities such as articles, products, reviews, and events. It makes a page eligible for rich results (stars, prices, availability), with no guarantee they will appear: Google decides case by case.

The branch of SEO focused on a website's technical infrastructure: speed, crawlability, indexing and architecture.

Technical SEO is the foundation on which content and popularity rest. Without a solid technical base (fast loading, clear architecture, no crawl errors, HTTPS, up-to-date sitemap), even the best content and backlinks will not be enough to rank well.

The HTML tag that defines the title of a page shown in Google search results.

The title tag is one of the most important on-page elements. It should contain the main keyword and be unique to each page. Google truncates titles that are too long (the limit depends on pixel width), so put the essentials first. Google may also rewrite the title it displays. A clear title influences click-through rate (CTR), and therefore traffic.

A Majestic metric measuring the quality and trustworthiness of the backlinks pointing to a website.

Trust Flow assesses how close your backlinks are to trusted websites (government, academic, and well-known media sites). A high Trust Flow indicates a quality link profile. The Trust Flow / Citation Flow (TF/CF) ratio is often used as a benchmark: close to 1, it suggests quality links; low, it points to low-quality bulk links. It is a Majestic metric, not a Google criterion.

A unique address identifying a web page on the Internet, made up of a protocol, a domain and a path.

An SEO-friendly URL is short and descriptive, contains the main keyword, uses hyphens as separators, and avoids unnecessary parameters. The URL structure reflects the site architecture and helps Google understand the content hierarchy. Readable URLs also reassure searchers who see them in search results.

SEO practices that comply with search engine guidelines, focusing on quality and longevity.

White hat SEO relies on creating quality content, clean technical optimization, natural link acquisition, and an optimal user experience. Unlike black hat (manipulative techniques), white hat builds lasting visibility that withstands algorithm updates. It is the safest long-term approach.

An XML file listing all the important URLs of a website to help search engines discover them.

The XML sitemap helps Googlebot discover and crawl your pages efficiently, especially on large websites or for deep, poorly linked pages. It should be submitted through Search Console, updated automatically and contain only indexable canonical URLs. Image and video sitemaps are also recommended.

A category of web pages covering topics that can affect users' health, finances or safety.

Google holds YMYL pages to stricter quality criteria. Health, finance, legal, and news websites must demonstrate higher expertise and trustworthiness (E-E-A-T). Low-quality YMYL content is particularly exposed during Google's core updates.