# SEO Glossary – Hack The SEO

URL: https://hacktheseo.com/documentation/seo-glossary-hack-the-seo/
Date: 2025-07-03
Last modified: 2025-07-03
Author: Eric Ibanez

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**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.

**JSON-LD**
Preferred structured-data format for Schema.org markup.

**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.

**Query**
The text a user types (or speaks) into a search engine.

**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".

**Voice search**
Search queries spoken aloud—often longer and question-based.

**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.

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Source: https://hacktheseo.com/documentation/seo-glossary-hack-the-seo/
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