SEO Glossary – Hack The SEO

ALT text (Alternative text): Text description added to an image’s alt attribute. Improves accessibility and image SEO.
AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages): Google’s stripped-down HTML framework for faster mobile loading. Now less critical since Core Web Vitals.
Anchor text: The clickable, visible text of a hyperlink that tells users (and crawlers) what the linked page is about.
API (Application Programming Interface): Interface that lets software connect. Google Search Console API delivers raw performance data programmatically.
Authority: Perceived trust and expertise of a page or domain (often measured by DA or PA).

Backlink: A link from an external website to yours. Still one of the strongest ranking factors.
Bread-crumb: Navigation element showing the user’s path (Home › Category › Page). Helps users and passes structured-data signals.
Branded query: A keyword that explicitly includes your brand or product name (e.g. “Hack The SEO pricing”).

Canonical tag: <link rel="canonical"> element pointing to the preferred URL when multiple pages share similar content.
Click-Through Rate (CTR): Percentage of impressions that result in a click on the SERP.
Cluster (Content Cluster): Group of related articles linked to a single pillar page to build topical authority.
Cloaking: Showing different content to Google than to users. Violation of Google’s guidelines.
Core Web Vitals: Google performance metrics: LCP (Largest Contentful Paint), FID (soon INP), CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift).
Crawl budget: Approximate number of URLs Googlebot is willing to crawl on a site within a given period.

DA (Domain Authority): Moz metric (0-100) predicting how likely a domain is to rank; not used by Google directly.
Duplicate content: Substantial blocks of identical or near-identical content across URLs. Can dilute ranking signals.

EEAT (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness): Quality framework used by Google raters; strong EEAT signals = higher chance of ranking.
External link: A hyperlink that points to a domain other than the one it exists on.

Featured snippet: Answer-box result at Position 0. Provides quick answers and high CTR if optimized.
Follow / NoFollow: rel="nofollow" tells crawlers not to pass PageRank. rel="sponsored" and ugc are variations.

Google Search Console (GSC): Free Google tool for monitoring indexing status, performance, and site issues.
Google Discover: Mobile feed of personalized content. Requires high EEAT and engaging imagery.

H1 / H2 / Hn: Heading tags that structure a page hierarchically. Only one H1 per page is best practice.
HTTPS: Secure version of HTTP. A confirmed ranking signal since 2014.

Impression: Counted every time a URL appears in search results, regardless of click.
Indexing: Process of adding a web page into Google’s searchable database.

Keyword cannibalization: Multiple pages targeting the same keyword, causing them to compete against each other.
Keyword difficulty: Metric estimating how hard it is to rank for a keyword (0-100 scale varies by tool).

Lighthouse: Open-source tool auditing performance, accessibility, Best Practices, SEO, and PWA.
Link equity (Link Juice): Ranking value passed through hyperlinks.

Meta description: 160-character snippet shown under the title on SERP. Influences CTR, not rankings directly.
Meta title (Title tag): Primary on-page ranking element; ideally 50-60 characters.
Mobile-first indexing: Google primarily uses the mobile version of content for ranking and indexing.

NoIndex: Directive preventing a page from appearing in Google’s index.
NLP (Natural Language Processing): AI techniques Google uses to understand context and semantics of content.

Open Graph (OG) tags: Meta tags (og:title, og:description, og:image) that control preview appearance on social media.

Pillar page: Comprehensive, authoritative article that links to related cluster posts.
Page Experience: Google signal combining Core Web Vitals, HTTPS, mobile-friendliness and intrusive interstitials.
Pagination: Series of pages (page 1, 2, 3) often managed with rel="next/prev" or view-all canonicals.
Passage indexing (Passage ranking): Google can rank a single paragraph from a long page if it best answers a query.

Ranking factor: Variable Google considers when ordering search results (backlinks, content, speed, etc.).
Robots.txt: Text file that instructs crawlers which sections of a site to crawl or not.

Schema Markup: Structured data vocabulary (JSON-LD or Microdata) that helps search engines understand entities.
Search Intent: Motive behind a query: informational, commercial, transactional, or navigational.
SERP (Search Engine Results Page): Page displaying the results returned by a search engine after a query.
Sitemap XML: File listing URLs you want indexed; submitted to Google Search Console for better crawl coverage.
Slug: URL segment after the domain, e.g., /blog/seo-glossary.
SSL Certificate: Cryptographic key enabling HTTPS and encrypting the data transfer.

Thin content: Pages with little or no value to users (duplicate, auto-generated, doorway pages).
Topical authority: Depth and breadth of content on a subject; boosts ranking for semantically related queries.
Topical Map: Visual or tabular plan of semantic clusters around a pillar topic.
Traffic (Organic): Visitors arriving via unpaid search results.

URL Parameter: Values after a ? in a URL (e.g., ?utm_source=). May cause duplicate content if unmanaged.
User-generated content (UGC): Comments, forum posts, reviews created by users. Mark external links with rel="ugc".

WebP: Google image format with superior compression; recommended for performance.

XML-RPC: Legacy protocol used by WordPress for remote publishing; often blocked for security.

YMYL (Your Money Your Life): Content affecting health, finance or safety. Google applies stricter EEAT standards.

Zero-click search: Query that is answered directly on the SERP (e.g., weather, calculations) so users don’t click through.