#
- 301 redirect
A permanent redirect that sends visitors and search engines from an old URL to a new one. It passes most of the old page’s ranking value to the new page.
Related: Technical SEO
A
- AI Overviews
Google’s AI-generated summaries shown at the top of some search results, with links to the pages they draw on.
Related: AI search
- Alt text
A short written description of an image, read out by screen readers and used by search engines to understand what the image shows.
Related: On-page SEO
B
- Backlink
A link from another website to yours. Links from relevant, trusted sites are one of the strongest signals search engines use to rank pages.
Related: Link building
C
- Canonical tag
A line of code that tells search engines which URL is the main version of a page, so similar or duplicate URLs don’t compete with each other.
Related: Technical SEO
- Click-through rate
The share of people who click your result after seeing it in search. A better title and description can raise it without changing your ranking.
Related: On-page SEO
- Core Web Vitals
Three measures Google uses for page experience: how fast the main content loads (LCP), how quickly the page responds to taps and clicks (INP), and how much the layout shifts while loading (CLS).
Related: Technical SEO
- Crawler
The program a search engine uses to visit web pages and read their content. Google’s is called Googlebot.
Related: Technical SEO
D
- Digital PR
Getting your business covered by news and industry sites, usually by offering data, stories or expert comment, to earn links and mentions.
Related: Link building
- Disavow
Asking Google to ignore certain links pointing to your site. It’s only worth doing in serious cases, such as a history of paid links.
Related: Link building
F
G
- Generative engine optimisation (GEO)
Work that makes a website a clear, trustworthy source for answers generated by AI tools such as ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google’s AI Overviews.
Related: AI search
- Google Business Profile
Your free business listing on Google Search and Maps, with your address, hours, photos and reviews. It’s central to showing up in local searches.
Related: Local SEO
- Google Search Console
A free tool from Google that shows how your site performs in search: which searches you appear for, which pages are indexed, and any problems found.
Related: Technical SEO
I
- Indexing
When a search engine stores a page in its index so it can appear in results. A page that isn’t indexed can’t rank at all.
Related: Technical SEO
- Internal links
Links from one page of your site to another. They help visitors move around and show search engines which pages matter most.
Related: Technical SEO
K
- Keyword cannibalisation
When several pages on your site target the same search, so they compete with each other and none ranks as well as one strong page would.
Related: On-page SEO
M
- Meta description
The short summary written for a page that search engines often show under its title in results. It doesn’t affect ranking directly but can win more clicks.
Related: On-page SEO
N
- NAP
Short for name, address and phone number. Keeping them identical everywhere your business is listed helps you rank locally.
Related: Local SEO
- Noindex
An instruction in a page’s code or headers telling search engines not to include that page in their results.
Related: Technical SEO
R
- Rich results
Search listings with extras such as star ratings, prices, FAQs or breadcrumbs, made possible by structured data.
Related: Technical SEO
- robots.txt
A file at the root of your site that tells crawlers which parts of the site they may or may not visit.
Related: Technical SEO
S
- Search intent
What a searcher actually wants: to learn, compare, buy or find a particular site. Pages rank best when they match it.
Related: On-page SEO
- Server-side rendering
Building a page’s HTML on the server before sending it, so crawlers see the full content without having to run JavaScript.
Related: Technical SEO
- Structured data
Code that describes a page’s content in a standard format (Schema.org), so search engines understand it and can show rich results.
Related: Technical SEO
T
- Title tag
The page title shown as the blue headline in search results and in the browser tab. It’s one of the strongest on-page ranking signals.
Related: On-page SEO
X
- XML sitemap
A file listing the pages on your site that you want search engines to find and index.
Related: Technical SEO