Chykalophia Docs

A plain-English A–Z glossary of search engine optimization vocabulary — every term defined without jargon.

SEO comes with its own vocabulary. This glossary defines the terms you're most likely to encounter when working with us or reading about SEO online — in plain language, no technical background needed.

Quick summary

Use this page as a reference whenever you encounter an SEO term you don't recognize. Each definition is written for a non-technical reader. Alphabetical order, A to Z.

Algorithm

The automated systems Google uses to decide which pages to show in search results and in what order. Google says it improves these systems regularly and gives notice of updates when that would be useful to content creators; the notable ones are listed on the Google Search Status Dashboard. No one outside Google knows the exact rules, but the general principle is: reward genuinely helpful, trustworthy, well-structured websites.

Alt text

A written description of an image, used by screen readers for visually impaired users and by Google to understand what an image contains. Every meaningful image on your site should have descriptive alt text. See: Image SEO & alt text.

Anchor text

The visible, clickable words in a hyperlink. "Click here" is poor anchor text. "Download our SEO checklist" is good anchor text — it tells both the reader and Google what the linked page contains. See: Internal linking explained.

Authority

A general term for how trustworthy and credible a site or page appears. It isn't a score Google publishes. Google describes the qualities it looks for as experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness — see E-E-A-T. Authority in this loose sense is built over time through quality content, earned backlinks, and a history of being a reliable source.

Backlink

A link from another website pointing to a page on your site. Google has systems that analyse how pages link to each other, and they are part of its core ranking systems, so links from respected, relevant sites help. Buying links, and excessive link swapping, both break Google's spam policies. See: Backlinks, explained.

Black-hat SEO

SEO tactics that break Google's spam policies — such as buying links, keyword stuffing, or cloaking (showing Google different content than what users see). They may produce short-term results, but Google says sites that violate its policies "may rank lower in results or not appear in results at all".

Bounce rate

An analytics measure, not something Google has said its ranking systems use. In Google Analytics 4 it is the opposite of engagement rate: the percentage of sessions that were not engaged. GA4 counts a session as engaged if it lasts longer than 10 seconds, records a key event, or includes two or more page or screen views. A high bounce rate is a useful hint to you that a page didn't give visitors what they expected.

Branded search

A search that includes your business name. People searching "Chykalophia" are conducting a branded search. These are relatively easy to rank for because you're the most relevant result for your own name.

Canonical tag

An HTML element that tells Google which version of a page you want treated as the "main" one, when similar content exists at multiple URLs. Google calls this a hint rather than a rule — it can still choose a different page — but it's how you signal your preference and head off duplicate content issues. Usually invisible to you — we manage these technically.

Citation

A mention of your business's name, address, and phone number on another website or directory. Citations are important for local SEO. Consistency across all citations matters. See: Local SEO basics.

Click-through rate (CTR)

The percentage of people who see your page in search results and click on it. A compelling page title and meta description improve your CTR. See: Page titles & meta descriptions.

Cloaking

Showing search engines different content than human visitors see, with the intent of manipulating rankings. Google's spam policies name cloaking specifically, and it can cost a site its place in search results.

Competitor analysis

Examining which keywords your competitors rank for, what content they produce, and where their backlinks come from — in order to identify opportunities for your own SEO strategy.

Content marketing

Creating useful, relevant content (blog posts, guides, videos) to attract your target audience. Content marketing and SEO work closely together — content provides the pages that SEO optimizes. See: SEO & content marketing.

Conversion

A desired action taken by a visitor — filling in a contact form, making a purchase, calling your phone number. SEO drives traffic, but conversions are the actual business outcome you care about.

Core Web Vitals

A set of three specific page-experience metrics Google uses as ranking signals: LCP (loading), INP (responsiveness), and CLS (visual stability). See: Site speed & SEO.

Crawling

The process by which Google's bots visit web pages, follow links, and collect information. If Google can't crawl your pages, they won't appear in search results. See: How search engines work.

De-indexing

When Google removes a page from its index, either because of a "noindex" tag, a policy violation, or a technical error. De-indexed pages don't appear in search results.

Do-follow link

A standard link that passes SEO value (link equity) to the linked page. This is the default for most links. Compare with nofollow.

Domain authority (DA)

A metric created by Moz (not by Google) that estimates how likely a site is to rank well, on a 1–100 scale. Useful as a rough comparative benchmark. It's not a metric Google uses directly.

Duplicate content

When the same or very similar content appears at multiple URLs on your site. Google clusters those pages and picks one — the canonical — to show, so the version you'd have chosen may not be the one that appears. It isn't a penalty: Google's own line is that content accessible under multiple URLs is "inefficient, but it's not something that will cause a manual action". Canonical tags and proper redirects are how you deal with it.

E-E-A-T

Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. Google says E-E-A-T itself is not a specific ranking factor, but its systems use a mix of factors that identify content showing these qualities — and they weigh them especially heavily for topics that can affect someone's health, financial stability or safety. Google's search quality raters are trained against the same ideas, in its published quality rater guidelines. Building E-E-A-T means demonstrating real expertise, being transparent about authorship, and earning trust through quality and accuracy.

External link

A link from your website to another website. Linking to authoritative external sources can support your credibility. Compare with internal link.

Featured snippet

A result where Google reverses the usual layout and shows the descriptive snippet first, in its own box. Featured snippets can also appear inside the "People also ask" group. You can't mark a page as one: Google's systems decide whether a page would make a good featured snippet and elevate it. You can opt out using the nosnippet rule.

Fresh content

New or recently updated content. Google has "query deserves freshness" systems that show newer content for searches where people would expect it — a film that has just been released, an earthquake that has just happened — and not for evergreen topics. Keeping your content accurate and updated is still good practice.

Google Business Profile

A free Google service that lets you manage how your business appears in Google Search and Google Maps. Essential for local SEO. See: Google Business Profile for SEO.

Google Search Console

A free Google tool that shows how your site performs in search results — what searches show your pages, how many clicks you receive, and technical issues Google has found. See: How to measure SEO results.

Google Search Central

Google's official documentation and guidance for website owners and SEO practitioners. The most authoritative source of SEO information.

H1, H2, H3

HTML heading levels used to structure page content. H1 is the main page title; H2 and H3 are sub-sections. Proper use of headings helps Google understand your content's organization. See: Headings & content structure for SEO.

Helpful content

Google's term for content written primarily to benefit people, not primarily to rank in search engines. The separate "helpful content system", announced in 2022, no longer exists on its own: Google says that in March 2024 it became part of the core ranking systems. So there's no single switch to flip — helpful content is now judged alongside everything else.

Impression

A count of the times a link to your page was on a results page someone was shown — whether or not they clicked. Google's general rule is that an impression counts whenever your link is in the current page of results, whether or not it was ever scrolled into view. A high impression count means your pages are showing up in searches; low clicks relative to impressions suggest your titles and descriptions need work.

Indexing

The process by which Google stores information about a crawled page in its database. Only indexed pages can appear in search results. See: How search engines work.

Internal link

A link from one page on your site to another page on the same site. Essential for helping Google discover all your pages and for passing ranking strength between pages. See: Internal linking explained.

Keyword

A word or phrase that people type into a search engine. Targeting the right keywords means writing content that matches what your audience is actually searching for. See: Keywords, explained.

Keyword cannibalization

When two or more pages on your site target the same keyword, so they compete against each other. It isn't a penalty: Google clusters near-identical pages and usually shows only the one it judges most complete and useful. The practical cost is that the page it picks may not be the one you wanted, and your Search Console data splits across both. Each keyword should have one dedicated page.

Keyword density

The percentage of times a keyword appears in a piece of content relative to the total word count. Obsessing over keyword density is outdated; write naturally instead.

Keyword research

The process of finding which words and phrases your target audience searches for. See: Keyword research basics.

Keyword stuffing

Unnaturally overusing a keyword in an attempt to rank higher — in Google's words, "filling a web page with keywords or numbers in an attempt to manipulate rankings in Google Search results". It's named in Google's spam policies, and sites that break those policies may rank lower in results or not appear at all.

Landing page

The page a visitor arrives on after clicking a link — often from a search result or an ad. Good landing pages match exactly what the searcher expected to find.

Link building

The practice of earning or creating backlinks from other websites. See: Backlinks, explained.

Link equity

The SEO value passed from one page to another through a link. Also called "PageRank" (historically) or "link juice" (informally).

Local Pack

The SEO world's name for Google's local results — the map and the nearby business listings shown with it. It isn't Google's own term, and how many listings appear varies by search and device. Appearing here needs a complete, accurate Google Business Profile. See: Local SEO basics.

Local SEO

SEO focused on improving visibility for geographically relevant searches. Especially important for businesses serving specific cities or areas. See: Local SEO basics.

Long-tail keyword

A specific, multi-word search phrase with lower search volume but also lower competition. Usually easier for smaller businesses to rank for than short, broad terms. See: Keywords, explained.

Manual action

Google's own term for action taken against a site after a human has reviewed it, rather than by its automated systems alone. Google says it detects policy-breaking practices "both through automated systems and, as needed, human review that can result in a manual action", and that sites which violate its policies may rank lower in results or not appear at all. Recoverable, but it requires fixing the issue and filing a reconsideration request.

Meta description

A short text summary of a page's content. Google may use it as the snippet shown below your page title, when it describes the page better than text taken from the page itself — so a good one earns clicks. See: Page titles & meta descriptions.

Mobile-first indexing

Google uses the mobile version of your content, crawled with its smartphone agent, for indexing and ranking. That's mobile-first indexing. Because Google sees your site through the mobile version, anything missing there is effectively missing from Google's view of your site. See: Mobile-friendliness & SEO.

NAP

Name, Address, Phone number. The core local business information that should be consistent across your website, Google Business Profile, and all online directories. See: Local SEO basics.

Nofollow

A value you add to a link's rel attribute to tell Google about your relationship with the linked page. Links marked this way generally won't be followed, although Google may still find the page another way, such as through a sitemap. Google has separate values for paid placements (rel="sponsored") and user-generated content (rel="ugc").

Noindex

An instruction (placed in code on a page) that tells Google not to add the page to its index. Useful for pages you don't want in search results — login pages, thank-you pages, etc. Accidentally adding this to important pages is a serious SEO error.

Off-page SEO

SEO work done outside your website — primarily building backlinks and your online reputation.

On-page SEO

SEO optimizations made directly on your pages — content, headings, titles, images, internal links, and URLs. See: On-page SEO explained.

Organic traffic

Visitors who arrive at your site from unpaid search results. Distinct from paid traffic (Google Ads), social media traffic, or direct visitors.

Orphan page

A page with no internal links pointing to it. Orphan pages are hard for Google to discover and often rank poorly. See: Internal linking explained.

PageRank

Google's original algorithm, which scored pages based on the number and quality of links pointing to them. Still a core component of ranking, though Google no longer publishes PageRank scores publicly.

Page speed

How quickly a page loads for visitors. Google's ranking systems do use Core Web Vitals, which measure loading, responsiveness and visual stability. Speed isn't the whole picture — Google still aims to show the most relevant content even when the experience is sub-par — but slow pages lose visitors either way. See: Site speed & SEO.

Page title (title tag)

The title element on a page, and Google's main input for the clickable headline in search results. Google assembles that headline automatically and may use other text from the page instead, so treat your title as a strong preference rather than a guarantee. One of the most important on-page SEO elements. See: Page titles & meta descriptions.

Penalty

The industry's word for losing rankings over a policy violation. Google doesn't use it: its own terms are its automated systems and, where a human has reviewed the site, a manual action. Either way, recovering means fixing the violation. See manual action.

Position

Your page's ranking in search results for a specific keyword, where 1 is the topmost position, 2 the next, and so on. Search Console reports it as an average: it takes the topmost position your link reached and averages that across every query your page appeared in. The further down the list, the fewer people see you.

Rank / Ranking

Where your page appears in search results for a specific keyword. Higher rank = closer to the top = more visibility and clicks.

Redirect (301)

A permanent redirect that sends visitors and search engines from an old URL to a new one. Essential when pages are moved or removed — without redirects, you lose the SEO value attached to old URLs.

Rich result

An enhanced search result that displays additional information — star ratings, prices, recipe details, images — directly in the search listing. Earned through structured data markup, and Google decides which pages get one.

Robots.txt

A file on your website that tells search engine crawlers which URLs they may access. Google is explicit that it "is not a mechanism for keeping a web page out of Google" — a "noindex" rule is what does that. A misconfigured robots.txt can accidentally block your whole site. See: Sitemaps & robots.txt explained.

Schema markup

Code added to your site that gives Google structured, machine-readable information about your content — like marking up a business address, a review, an event, or a product. It can make a page eligible for a rich result; Google decides whether to show one.

Search engine

A tool people use to find information online. These guides concentrate on Google, because that's where most of the search traffic our clients see comes from. Bing, DuckDuckGo and the rest work on the same principles.

Search intent

The reason behind a search — why the person is searching, and what kind of result would satisfy them. Matching your content to search intent is essential for ranking. See: Keywords, explained.

Search volume

How many times a keyword is searched per month. Used in keyword research to gauge whether a topic has enough demand to be worth targeting.

SERP

Search Engine Results Page — the page Google shows after a search. Contains organic results, paid ads, local listings, featured snippets, and other result types.

Sitemap

A file listing the pages, images and videos on your site that you want search engines to know about. Submitting it helps Google discover your content, though Google says a sitemap "doesn't guarantee that all the items in your sitemap will be crawled and indexed". See: Sitemaps & robots.txt explained.

Slug

The part of a URL that comes after the domain name. For example, in yoursite.com/blog/seo-tips, the slug is seo-tips. Google recommends real words rather than long ID numbers, in the language your audience searches in, with hyphens between words rather than underscores. See: SEO-friendly URLs.

Structured data

See Schema markup.

Technical SEO

The behind-the-scenes optimization of your site's code, structure, and server configuration to help search engines crawl and index it effectively. See: Technical SEO basics.

Title tag

See Page title.

Traffic

Visitors to your website. Organic traffic specifically refers to visitors from unpaid search results.

URL

Uniform Resource Locator — the web address of a page. Google recommends a simple URL structure that people and search engines can understand, using words rather than long ID numbers; a crawlable structure is what matters most, so that Google can reach your pages at all. See: SEO-friendly URLs.

If you're stuck, email support@chykalophia.com and we'll help. Include your website address and a screenshot if you can.

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