The SEO jargon buster
SEO is drowning in acronyms, and the AI era just added a fresh batch. Here is every term you will meet in this tracker (and in every sales pitch you get), explained the way one business owner would explain it to another.
88 of 88 terms
SEOSearch Engine Optimisation
The basicsEverything you do to make your website show up when people search for what you sell. Not a dark art: mostly housekeeping, plus content that actually answers the questions your customers ask.
SERPSearch Engine Results Page
The basicsThe page of results a search engine shows after a search. Position 1 is the top unpaid spot, and most clicks go to the first few results.
Keyword
The basicsA word or phrase you want to be found for, such as "wedding fireworks berkshire". Rank tracking watches where you appear for each one, every day.
Search intent
The basicsWhat the person actually wants when they type a query: to buy, to compare, to learn, or to find a specific site. Pages win when they match the intent, not just the words.
Long-tail keyword
The basicsA longer, more specific phrase with fewer searches but much better odds, like "quiet fireworks for weddings". Less traffic per term, far higher intent to buy.
Read more →Organic traffic
The basicsVisitors who arrive from unpaid search results or AI answers. The opposite of traffic you pay for with ads.
Topic cluster
The basicsA group of pages that each answer one question about a subject, all linked to a central page that covers it broadly. Concentrates your links and relevance on one topic instead of scattering them.
Read more →Bottom-of-funnel keyword
The basicsA search typed by someone ready to buy: service plus town, product plus price, quote, hire, near me. Few searches, most of the revenue, and the right place for a small business to start.
Read more →Exact match domainEMD
The basicsA domain name that is the search phrase itself, like quietfireworks.com. The name alone stopped helping in 2012; a good site on a clear domain still works, as a satellite rather than the main business.
Read more →Position
RankingsWhere your page sits in the results for a keyword. Position 3 means two results sit above you. Positions move daily, which is why we check daily.
Rank tracking
RankingsAutomatically checking your positions for a list of keywords every day, so trends and sudden drops show up on a chart without you searching by hand.
Read more →Striking distance
RankingsKeywords ranked roughly 4 to 15: close enough that one push, like better content or a few good links, can reach the top spots. The easiest wins on the board.
Read more →Cannibalisation
RankingsTwo of your own pages competing for the same keyword, so Google flip-flops between them and neither ranks well. Fixed by merging them or refocusing one.
Read more →Local pack
RankingsThe map box with three local businesses that Google shows for "near me" style searches. For local trades, being in it matters more than position 1 underneath it.
Share of voice
RankingsYour slice of all the visibility available across your tracked keywords, compared with named competitors. One number that answers "are we winning this market?".
Read more →SERP feature
RankingsAnything on the results page that is not a plain link: map boxes, AI Overviews, image packs, "people also ask" questions. They push ordinary results further down the page.
Algorithm update
RankingsGoogle changing how it ranks sites. Big ones, called core updates, can move rankings overnight through no fault of yours. Worth tracking so you can tell an update from a mistake.
Read more →SERP volatility
RankingsHow much the results are churning day to day across your keywords. A spike usually means Google is rolling out an update.
Search volume
RankingsHow many times a keyword is searched per month. Useful for setting priorities, but small volumes still convert: 30 searches for exactly what you sell beat 3,000 for something vague.
KDKeyword Difficulty
RankingsA 0 to 100 estimate of how hard it is to reach page one for a keyword, based on the strength of the sites already ranking there.
Read more →Helpful content update
RankingsGoogle’s 2022 to 2024 ranking change that demoted whole sites whose content was written for search engines rather than people. Folded into core updates in March 2024, so the judgement now happens continuously.
Read more →Thin content
RankingsA page with nothing on it a visitor could not get elsewhere. There is no minimum word count: a short page that answers the question is fine, a long one that says nothing is thin.
Read more →E-E-A-T
RankingsExperience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness: the qualities Google’s human raters look for. Not a ranking factor in itself, but a fair description of what the ranking systems try to reward.
Read more →YMYLYour Money or Your Life
RankingsTopics where bad information can harm someone’s health, money or safety. Google demands more evidence of expertise and trust before ranking pages on them.
Read more →People Also Ask
RankingsThe expanding box of related questions in Google results. Each answer is lifted from a page that answers that question directly, and the questions are a ready-made list of what to write next.
Read more →Featured snippet
RankingsThe answer box at the top of results, showing a passage from a page before its link. Chosen automatically, counted as position 1 in Search Console, and one of the places AI answers are drawn from.
Read more →Backlink
Links & authorityA link from someone else’s website to yours. Still one of the strongest trust signals in search: roughly a vote of confidence from another site.
Read more →Referring domain
Links & authorityA website that links to you at least once. Fifty links from one site count for far less than one link each from fifty different sites.
Domain rank
Links & authorityA score of how strong a site’s overall link profile is. Not an official Google number, but a useful shorthand for comparing your site against competitors.
Read more →Anchor text
Links & authorityThe clickable words of a link. "Wedding fireworks in Berkshire" tells search engines far more about your page than "click here".
Read more →Nofollow
Links & authorityA label on a link that tells Google "do not count this as a vote". Links without it (follow links) pass trust. Both kinds can still send you visitors.
Backlink gap
Links & authorityThe sites that link to your competitors but not to you. The warmest possible outreach list, because they already link to businesses like yours.
Spam score
Links & authorityAn estimate of how dodgy a linking site looks. High-spam links from link farms are best ignored, not chased or paid for.
Topical authority
Links & authorityThe pattern where a site that covers one subject thoroughly, and earns links for it, ranks more easily for everything inside that subject. Not a Google score; a useful name for several real signals adding up.
Read more →PageRank
Links & authorityGoogle’s original method of scoring a page by the number and importance of the pages linking to it. The public score is long gone; the principle is still listed among Google’s ranking systems.
Read more →Internal linking
Links & authorityLinks between pages on your own site. How Google finds most of your pages, decides which ones matter and learns what each is about. Free, entirely in your control, and usually neglected.
Read more →Link spam
Links & authorityLinks created to manipulate rankings: bought, swapped in bulk, automated or stuffed into comments. Google mostly stops them counting; a deliberate pattern can earn a manual action.
Read more →Toxic backlinks
Links & authorityLinks an SEO tool has scored as likely spam. The score is the tool’s guess, not Google’s verdict, and Google says it already ignores most such links. Information, not an emergency.
Read more →Disavow tool
Links & authorityA Search Console feature that asks Google to ignore specific links to your site. Google says to use it only for a large number of bad links likely to cause a manual action, which for most sites means never.
Read more →Negative SEO
Links & authorityAn attempt to damage a competitor’s rankings. Spam links rarely work as an attack because Google ignores them; hacking, scraping, fake reviews and click bots are the versions that do harm.
Read more →Crawler
TechnicalSoftware that visits your site and reads its pages: Googlebot for search, GPTBot and friends for AI. If crawlers cannot read your site, as far as they are concerned you do not exist.
Indexing
TechnicalA search engine storing your page in its library so it can appear in results. Not indexed means not findable, no matter how good the page is.
Sitemap
TechnicalA file (sitemap.xml) listing all your pages so crawlers can find everything. Submit it in Google Search Console and keep it up to date.
Read more →robots.txt
TechnicalA small file that tells crawlers what they may and may not read on your site. One wrong line here can hide your whole site from Google, or from every AI assistant.
Read more →Canonical
TechnicalA tag that says "this is the master copy of this page", so near-duplicate pages do not split your ranking strength between them.
Read more →301 redirect
TechnicalA permanent forward from an old web address to a new one. It passes along most of the ranking strength, so use it whenever URLs change.
Read more →CWVCore Web Vitals
TechnicalGoogle’s three measurements of real-world page experience: LCP for loading speed, INP for responsiveness and CLS for visual stability. Measured from real Chrome visitors, so a site with little traffic gets no verdict at all. A ranking factor at the margins; a customer-experience factor always.
LCPLargest Contentful Paint
TechnicalHow long the biggest thing on the page, usually a hero image or headline, takes to appear. Google wants it under 2.5 seconds. The usual culprits are oversized images and slow hosting.
CLSCumulative Layout Shift
TechnicalHow much the page jumps about while it loads: the button that moves just as you tap it. Scored from 0 upwards, and Google wants it under 0.1. Nearly always caused by images or adverts loading without a reserved space.
INPInteraction to Next Paint
TechnicalHow quickly the page responds when someone taps or clicks. Under 200 milliseconds is good. Only measurable from real visitors, so the lab test cannot give you one, and small sites often see it blank.
FCPFirst Contentful Paint
TechnicalThe moment the first text or image shows up, which is when a visitor stops looking at a blank screen. Under 1.8 seconds is good. Not one of the Core Web Vitals, but an early sign of whether the page is slow.
TTFBTime to First Byte
TechnicalHow long the server takes to start sending the page at all. Under 800 milliseconds is good. Everything else waits on it, so a slow TTFB drags every other timing down; it usually means cheap hosting or a bloated plugin.
TBTTotal Blocking Time
TechnicalHow long scripts keep the page frozen during loading, so taps do nothing. Under 200 milliseconds is good. A lab-only stand-in for INP, and the number to watch if you have a lot of tracking or chat widgets.
Lab vs real-user data
TechnicalA lab test loads your page once on a simulated mid-range phone and slow connection, so it is repeatable and available for any site. Real-user data comes from actual Chrome visitors over 28 days and is what Google ranks on, but only exists once a site has enough traffic. The two often disagree; trust the real-user figures where you have them.
Structured dataschema.org markup
TechnicalMachine-readable labels in your page code that spell out the facts: business name, prices, reviews, opening hours. It helps search engines and AI quote you accurately instead of guessing.
Read more →Title tag
TechnicalThe page title shown as the clickable headline in search results. The single most influential line of on-page SEO.
Read more →Meta description
TechnicalThe short blurb under the headline in search results. Not a ranking factor, but it is your ad copy for earning the click.
H1
TechnicalThe main heading on a page. One per page, saying plainly what the page is about, for readers and crawlers alike.
Site audit
TechnicalAn automated crawl of your own site that flags technical problems: broken links, thin pages, missing titles, slow pages. Ours runs monthly.
Discovered, currently not indexed
TechnicalSearch Console’s way of saying Google knows a page exists but has not fetched it yet. On a small site it means nothing has told Google the page matters. Fixed by links, not by resubmitting.
Read more →Crawled, currently not indexed
TechnicalGoogle fetched the page and chose not to keep it, for now. A judgement about the page or the site rather than a queue, usually down to duplication, thinness or overall site quality.
Read more →URL slug
TechnicalThe last part of a web address that names the page. Google wants readable words with hyphens, and says the keywords in it alone barely affect ranking. Changing one creates a new URL, so do it rarely.
Read more →Duplicate content
TechnicalThe same content reachable at more than one address. There is no penalty; Google picks one version and folds the rest into it, which costs you when it picks the wrong one or splits your links.
Read more →Crawl budget
TechnicalHow much of your site Google can and wants to fetch. Google says it matters for sites with a million pages, or ten thousand that change daily. A small site has a crawl demand problem, not a budget one.
Read more →AI Overview
The AI eraThe AI-written answer Google sometimes shows above the normal results. Being cited in it is the new position 1. Being absent means someone else got quoted.
Read more →AEOAnswer Engine Optimisation
The AI eraThe industry buzzword for getting your business into AI answers from ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity, the way SEO gets you into search results. Same idea, new destination.
Read more →GEOGenerative Engine Optimisation
The AI eraAnother name for AEO. The industry has not picked a winner yet; they mean the same thing.
Read more →LLMLarge Language Model
The AI eraThe technology behind ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude. It writes answers from what it has read, which ideally includes your website.
llms.txt
The AI eraA proposed convention: a plain-text file on your site that gives AI systems a clean summary of what you do. No major AI platform has said it reads one yet. Cheap to add, and the readiness scan notes it without scoring it.
Read more →Citation
The AI eraWhen an AI answer links to your site as a source. Stronger than a mention, because the customer can click straight through to you.
Read more →Mention rate
The AI eraOut of all the times an AI was asked a question you care about, how often it named your business in the answer. The headline AI-visibility number.
Read more →Agent readiness
The AI eraHow easy your site is for AI crawlers and agents to read and act on: bot access, structured data, clean machine-readable content. We score it 0 to 100, daily, for free.
Read more →MCPModel Context Protocol
The AI eraA standard that lets AI assistants plug into tools and data securely. It is how you can ask Claude questions about your own SEO stats straight from this tracker.
Read more →Training bot vs search bot
The AI eraSome AI crawlers collect pages to train future models (GPTBot). Others fetch pages to answer live questions (OAI-SearchBot). Blocking trainers is an editorial choice; blocking search bots removes you from AI answers.
Read more →SPFSender Policy Framework
SecurityA DNS record listing which servers are allowed to send email for your domain. Without it, anyone can send mail pretending to be you, and your genuine mail is more likely to land in spam.
DKIMDomainKeys Identified Mail
SecurityA cryptographic signature added to your outgoing email, proving it really came from your domain and was not altered on the way. Inboxes trust signed mail more.
DMARC
SecurityThe policy record that tells receiving inboxes what to do with mail that fails SPF or DKIM checks: deliver, quarantine or reject. Major providers now junk mail from domains without one.
SSL certificatealso called a TLS certificate
SecurityThe certificate behind the padlock in the browser bar. It expires on a schedule, and when renewal quietly fails, visitors get a full-screen security warning instead of your website.
Security headers
SecurityInstructions your website sends browsers about how it may be used, protecting visitors from common attacks. Missing ones mark your site as risky to browsers, scanners and AI systems deciding whom to trust.
Domain registration
SecurityYour domain name is rented, not owned. If the renewal fails, perhaps a card expired at the registrar, your website and your email die together. Registration health is worth watching continuously.
GSCGoogle Search Console
MeasuringGoogle’s free dashboard showing the real searches you appeared for, the clicks you got, and any indexing problems. The ground truth for your organic traffic.
Impressions
MeasuringHow many times your site appeared in someone’s search results, whether or not they clicked. Rising impressions usually come before rising clicks.
CTRClick-Through Rate
MeasuringClicks divided by impressions. A low CTR on a good position usually means your title and description need work: you are being seen but not chosen.
Read more →Average position
MeasuringYour typical ranking across all the queries you appeared for, from Search Console. Take it with a pinch of salt: one high-volume outlier can drag it around.
Annotation
MeasuringA dated note of what you changed ("rewrote homepage titles"), drawn on your ranking charts. When rankings move later, you know exactly what to credit or blame.
Pogo-sticking
MeasuringClicking a result, coming straight back, clicking the next one. Google says it does not rank on it; the antitrust trial showed aggregate click behaviour is used somewhere. Either way, the fix is a page that keeps its promise.
Read more →Dwell time
MeasuringHow long a searcher stays before returning to the results. An industry idea, not a Google metric, and bounce rate cannot be one because Google’s ranking systems never see your analytics. Useful for diagnosis, not appeasement.
Read more →Branded search
MeasuringSearches that include your business name. Split them from everything else: branded traffic measures whether people already know you, non-branded measures whether search is finding you new customers.
Read more →