SEO
How pages get found on search engines: crawling, indexing, keywords, links and structured data.
301 redirect
A 301 redirect permanently sends visitors and search engines from an old URL to a new one, passing most of the old page's ranking signals along.
404 error
A 404 error means the server could not find the requested page; it happens when a page is deleted, moved without a redirect or a link is mistyped.
Alt text
Alt text is a written description of an image in the HTML, read aloud by screen readers and used by search engines to understand the picture.
Anchor text
Anchor text is the clickable text of a link; descriptive anchor text tells readers and search engines what the linked page is about.
Backlinks
Backlinks are links from other websites to yours; search engines treat relevant, trusted backlinks as votes of confidence that can raise rankings.
Canonical URL
A canonical URL tells search engines which address is the main version of a page when the same content is reachable at several URLs.
Crawling
Crawling is how search engines discover pages: automated bots follow links and sitemaps, fetch pages and pass them on to be analysed and indexed.
Domain authority
Domain authority is a third-party score estimating how likely a site is to rank based on its backlinks; search engines do not use the score itself.
Duplicate content
Duplicate content is the same or near-identical text at more than one URL, which makes search engines choose one version and can split ranking signals.
E-E-A-T
E-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness, the qualities Google's quality guidelines use to judge whether content deserves trust.
Google Business Profile
Google Business Profile is the free listing that shows a business's details, hours, photos and reviews in Google Search and Maps.
Google Search Console
Google Search Console is Google's free tool for site owners that shows search performance, indexing status and problems, and accepts sitemap submissions.
Indexing
Indexing is when a search engine stores a crawled page in its database so it can appear in results; a page that is not indexed cannot rank.
IndexNow
IndexNow is an open protocol that lets a site notify participating search engines the moment a page is added, updated or deleted, instead of waiting to be recrawled.
Internal linking
Internal linking is linking between pages on your own site, which helps visitors move on and tells search engines how pages relate and which matter most.
Keyword
A keyword is a word or phrase people type into a search engine; SEO matches pages to the keywords their audience uses.
Local SEO
Local SEO is optimising a business to appear in location-based searches and maps, for queries like near me, through its Business Profile, reviews and local pages.
Meta description
A meta description is a short summary of a page set in HTML that search engines may show under the title in results.
Noindex
Noindex is an instruction, set in a meta tag or HTTP header, that tells search engines not to show a page in their results.
Programmatic SEO
Programmatic SEO is generating many pages from structured data and templates, such as one page per city, product or term, to match many specific searches.
Rich results
Rich results are enhanced search listings, with stars, prices, FAQs, breadcrumbs or images, generated from a page's structured data.
robots.txt
robots.txt is a file at a site's root that tells crawlers which paths they may or may not crawl, and where the sitemap is.
Search intent
Search intent is the reason behind a search, whether to learn, to find a specific site, to compare or to buy, and a page ranks best when it serves that reason.
SEO
SEO is the practice of making a website easier for search engines to crawl, understand and rank, so it appears for the searches its audience actually makes.
SERP
A SERP is the page of results a search engine shows for a query, including links, ads, maps, videos, featured snippets and AI-generated answers.
Structured data
Structured data is code, usually JSON-LD using the Schema.org vocabulary, that labels what a page describes, such as a product, business, FAQ or article, for search engines and AI.
Title tag
The title tag is the page title set in HTML that appears as the clickable headline in search results and in the browser tab.
Topical authority
Topical authority is the trust a site earns on a subject by covering it thoroughly and accurately, with many well-linked pages that answer related questions.
XML sitemap
An XML sitemap is a machine-readable file listing a site's URLs, and when each last changed, submitted to search engines to help them discover pages.