Anchor Text
The visible, clickable text in a hyperlink that provides context about the content of the linked page.
SEO Glossary
There is nothing most comprehensive in this world, but we've tried to cover whatever makes sense in our SEO and Google Search Console glossary.
A
Annotations
Notes or markers added to analytics charts to document important events, changes, or campaigns that may affect website performance.
Average Position
The average rank at which a web page appears in search engine results pages (SERPs) for a given keyword.
Alt Text
The text attribute on an <img> tag (alt="...") that describes the image for screen readers and search engines.
Accessibility (a11y)
The practice of making websites usable by people with disabilities, including those using screen readers, keyboard navigation, or other assistive technologies.
B
Backlink
A link from one website to another, viewed as a vote of confidence and a key ranking factor in SEO.
Black Hat SEO
Aggressive SEO tactics that violate search engine guidelines, risking penalties or bans from search results.
Brand Keywords
Search queries that include your company name, product names, or other branded terms that indicate direct brand interest.
C
Content Decay
The gradual decline in organic traffic and rankings for a piece of content over time as it becomes outdated or loses relevance.
Core Web Vitals
A set of Google metrics measuring real-world user experience for loading performance, interactivity, and visual stability.
Crawling
The process by which search engines discover and scan web pages to index their content.
Click-Through Rate (CTR)
The percentage of users who click on a link after seeing it in search results or advertisements.
Crawl Budget
The limited number of URLs a search engine bot will crawl on your site within a given timeframe, determined by crawl rate and crawl demand.
D
F
G
H
I
Image SEO
The practice of optimizing images on a webpage for search engines and Google Images, including alt text, file names, compression, and structured data.
Indexing
The process by which search engines store and organize content discovered during crawling.
Internal Linking
Links that connect one page of a website to another page on the same website.
Indexability
The ability of a web page to be stored in a search engine's index and shown in search results, determined by technical factors and rules.
K
Keyword
Words or phrases that users enter into search engines to find information, products, or services.
Keyword Cannibalization
When multiple pages on the same website compete for the same keywords, potentially hurting rankings for all affected pages.
Keyword Difficulty
A metric that estimates how difficult it would be to rank for a specific keyword in organic search results.
Keyword Density
The percentage of times a keyword appears in content compared to the total word count, calculated as (count / total words) × 100.
Keyword Stuffing
The practice of overloading a webpage with a target keyword or phrase in an attempt to manipulate search rankings.
L
M
AI Overview
The AI-generated answer block that Google surfaces at the top of many search results — also the generic industry shorthand for the AI-synthesized answers now returned by ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini, and Copilot.
Meta Description
An HTML element that provides a brief summary of a web page's content, displayed in search results.
O
P
Q
R
Readability Score
A numerical score, typically Flesch Reading Ease (0–100) or Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level (US school grade), that estimates how easy a piece of text is to understand based on sentence length and word complexity.
Robots.txt
A text file that tells search engine crawlers which pages or sections of a website they can or cannot access.
S
SERP (Search Engine Results Page)
The page displayed by search engines in response to a user's search query.
Stop Words
Common English words (the, a, and, of, to) that are typically filtered out before keyword analysis because they carry little SEO relevance on their own.
Search Intent
The underlying goal or purpose behind a user's search query.
Striking Distance
Keywords where a website ranks on positions 11-20 (page 2) that could potentially reach page 1 with optimization effort.
Structured Data
Code added to webpages that helps search engines understand and display content in rich, enhanced ways.