SEO Glossary

Plain-English definitions for the SEO terms you'll run into throughout this site.

Backlink: A link from another website to yours. Quality, relevant backlinks are a strong trust and authority signal for Google. Read more about Link Building →
Canonical URL: The version of a page Google should treat as authoritative when duplicate or near-duplicate URLs exist, set via a canonical tag. Read more about Technical SEO →
Core Web Vitals: Google's metrics for real-world page experience: Largest Contentful Paint (loading), Interaction to Next Paint (responsiveness) and Cumulative Layout Shift (visual stability). Read more about Technical SEO →
Crawl budget: The number of pages a search engine will crawl on your site within a given timeframe — mainly a concern for very large websites. Read more about Technical SEO →
Domain authority: A third-party metric (not a Google ranking factor itself) estimating how likely a domain is to rank, based largely on its backlink profile. Read more about Link Building →
E-E-A-T: Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness — the qualities Google's quality raters and systems look for when assessing content credibility. Read more about Content Strategy →
Featured snippet: A highlighted answer box shown above standard results for certain queries, pulled directly from a ranking page's content. Read more about Content Strategy →
Google Business Profile: A free Google listing that controls how a business appears in Google Maps and local search results. Read more about Google Business Profile →
Internal link: A link from one page on a site to another page on the same site, used to distribute authority and help users and search engines navigate. Read more about Link Building →
Keyword difficulty: An estimate of how hard it would be to rank in the top results for a given keyword, based on the strength of currently ranking competitors. Read more about Keyword Research →
Long-tail keyword: A longer, more specific search phrase, typically lower in search volume but higher in intent and easier to rank for than a broad head term. Read more about Keyword Research →
Search intent: What a searcher actually wants when they type a query — informational, navigational, commercial or transactional. Read more about Keyword Research →
SERP: Search Engine Results Page — the page of results Google shows for a given query. Read more about UK SEO →
Schema markup: Structured data (usually JSON-LD) added to a page's code to help search engines understand its content and potentially unlock rich results. Read more about Technical SEO →
Technical SEO: The foundational work that ensures a site can be crawled, rendered and indexed efficiently by search engines. Read more about Technical SEO →
Topical authority: The degree of trust and expertise Google associates with a site on a given subject, typically built through comprehensive, interlinked content over time. Read more about Content Strategy →