Glossary: SEO & Search

SEO & Search Terms.

How search engines find, rank, and recommend your site — and what's probably holding you back.

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SEO & Search

Anchor Text — Definition

Anchor text is the clickable, visible text of a hyperlink — the words that are highlighted and underlined when someone links to a page. Fro…

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SEO & Search

Backlinks — Definition

A backlink is a link from another website to yours. When an external site links to your page, it's passing some of its authority and credib…

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SEO & Search

Canonical URL — Definition

A canonical URL is the version of a page you want search engines to treat as the official, definitive version. It's specified using a canon…

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SEO & Search

Citations (Local Citations) — Definition

A local citation is any online mention of your business's name, address, and phone number — collectively called NAP. Citations appear on di…

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SEO & Search

Crawlability — Definition

Crawlability refers to how easily search engine bots can navigate and access your website. A crawler — like Google's Googlebot — moves thro…

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SEO & Search

Domain Authority — Definition

Domain Authority (DA) is a score — typically on a scale of 1 to 100 — developed by Moz that predicts how likely a website is to rank in sea…

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SEO & Search

Featured Snippet — Definition

A featured snippet is the highlighted answer box that appears at the top of some Google search results — above the regular organic listings…

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SEO & Search

Google Analytics — Definition

Google Analytics is a free web analytics platform that tracks who visits your website, where they come from, what they do while they're the…

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SEO & Search

Google Business Profile — Definition

Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business) is the free listing Google gives every local business — the information panel that sh…

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SEO & Search

Google Search Console — Definition

Google Search Console (GSC) is a free tool from Google that shows you how your website performs in Google Search. It tells you which querie…

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SEO & Search

Indexing — Definition

Indexing is the process by which search engines add your pages to their database — the massive catalog they search through every time someo…

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SEO & Search

Keyword Cannibalization — Definition

Keyword cannibalization happens when multiple pages on your own website compete against each other for the same keyword or search query. In…

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SEO & Search

Keywords — Definition

Keywords are the words and phrases people type into search engines when they're looking for something. In SEO, keywords are the bridge betw…

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SEO & Search

Link Building — Definition

Link building is the active practice of acquiring backlinks from other websites to your own. It's an off-page SEO strategy that involves ou…

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SEO & Search

Local SEO — Definition

Local SEO is the discipline of optimizing your online presence so you show up when people nearby search for what you offer. It includes you…

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SEO & Search

Long-Tail Keywords — Definition

Long-tail keywords are longer, more specific search phrases — usually three or more words — that target a narrower audience. Instead of "de…

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SEO & Search

Meta Description — Definition

The meta description is the short paragraph of text that appears below your page title in search results — typically two to three sentences…

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SEO & Search

Meta Title (Title Tag) — Definition

The meta title, also called the title tag, is the clickable headline that appears in search engine results for your page. It's one of the m…

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SEO & Search

NAP Consistency — Definition

NAP stands for Name, Address, and Phone number. NAP consistency means your business's name, address, and phone number appear exactly the sa…

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SEO & Search

Off-Page SEO — Definition

Off-page SEO covers everything that happens outside your website that affects your search rankings. The biggest factor is backlinks — other…

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SEO & Search

On-Page SEO — Definition

On-page SEO refers to everything you control directly on your website — the content, headings, meta titles, meta descriptions, image alt te…

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SEO & Search

Organic Traffic — Definition

Organic traffic is the visitors who arrive at your website through unpaid search results — the people who found you by searching on Google,…

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SEO & Search

Page Authority — Definition

Page Authority (PA) is a score that predicts how well a specific page — not your entire domain — will rank in search results. Like Domain A…

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SEO & Search

Robots.txt — Definition

Robots.txt is a simple text file that lives at the root of your website and instructs search engine crawlers which pages or sections they'r…

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SEO & Search

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) — Definition

SEO is the practice of making your website more visible in search engine results — specifically in the unpaid, organic listings. It covers …

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SEO & Search

SERP (Search Engine Results Page) — Definition

SERP stands for Search Engine Results Page — it's the page Google (or any search engine) shows you after you type in a query. A modern SERP…

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SEO & Search

Schema Markup (Structured Data) — Definition

Schema markup is code you add to your website that gives search engines explicit, structured information about your content — what type of …

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SEO & Search

Search Intent — Definition

Search intent is the reason behind a search query — what the person actually wants when they type something into Google. There are four mai…

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SEO & Search

Sitemap (XML Sitemap) — Definition

An XML sitemap is a file that lists every important page on your website and gives search engines a clear map of your site's structure. It …

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SEO & Search

Technical SEO — Definition

Technical SEO is the infrastructure layer of search optimization — the behind-the-scenes work that makes your site crawlable, indexable, fa…

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