Basic SEO terms

How search engines crawl, index and rank pages, and the kinds of SEO. 29 terms, each with what it means, why it matters for SEO and what to do about it.

Bing SEO

Bing SEO is optimising a site to rank in Microsoft Bing, whose index also feeds other search services and AI tools.

Crawling

Crawling is how search engines discover pages: automated bots fetch URLs and follow the links on them to find more pages.

E-E-A-T

E-E-A-T stands for experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness: the qualities Google’s quality raters look for in content.

Ecommerce SEO

Ecommerce SEO is optimising an online shop’s category and product pages to rank in search, while controlling filters, duplicates and stock changes.

Enterprise SEO

Enterprise SEO is SEO for very large sites and organisations, where scale, templates, many teams and governance shape the work.

Google algorithm update

A Google algorithm update is a change to how Google ranks results. Big ones, like core and spam updates, are announced and can move rankings sharply.

Google core update

A Google core update is a broad change to Google’s main ranking systems, released several times a year, that can move rankings for many sites.

Googlebot

Googlebot is Google’s web crawler. It fetches pages so Google Search can index them, using a smartphone crawler for most sites.

Helpful content

Helpful content is Google’s term for people-first content made to help readers, not to rank. Since 2024 it is assessed by Google’s core systems.

Indexing

Indexing is when a search engine analyses a crawled page and stores it in its index, so it becomes eligible to appear in search results.

International SEO

International SEO is optimising a site to rank in several countries or languages, using the right URL structure, hreflang and localised content.

Off-page SEO

Off-page SEO is everything done outside your own site to build its reputation and rankings, mainly earning backlinks, mentions and reviews.

On-page SEO

On-page SEO is optimising the content and HTML of each page, such as text, title tag, headings, images and internal links, to rank and earn clicks.

Organic search

Organic search is the unpaid part of search results, where pages appear because the search engine judged them relevant, not because someone paid.

Organic traffic

Organic traffic is the visitors who reach your site by clicking an unpaid search result rather than an ad, link or social post.

Programmatic SEO

Programmatic SEO is creating many pages from templates and data to target large sets of similar searches, such as “X in [city]” queries.

Ranking factors

Ranking factors are the signals search engines use to decide how high a page appears, such as relevance, content quality, links and page experience.

Rendering

Rendering is when a search engine runs a page’s HTML, CSS and JavaScript to build the page as a browser would, so it can see the final content.

Search algorithm

A search algorithm is the set of systems a search engine uses to decide which indexed pages to show for a query and in what order.

Search engine

A search engine is a system that finds pages on the web, stores them in an index and returns the most relevant ones for each query.

Search engine marketing (SEM)

Search engine marketing (SEM) is promoting a website in search engines. It usually means paid search ads, and sometimes means SEO plus ads together.

Search Quality Rater Guidelines

The Search Quality Rater Guidelines are Google’s public handbook for human raters who assess the quality of search results.

SEO (search engine optimization)

SEO (search engine optimization) is the work of making your website easier to find, understand and choose in unpaid search results.

SEO audit

An SEO audit is a review of a website’s technical health, content and links to find what holds it back in search and what to fix first.

SEO strategy

An SEO strategy is a plan for which searches to win, which pages to create or improve, and how to earn the authority to rank for them.

SERP (search engine results page)

A SERP (search engine results page) is the page a search engine shows after a query: organic links, ads, and features like snippets and maps.

Technical SEO

Technical SEO is making sure search engines can crawl, render and index your site, covering speed, redirects, canonicals, sitemaps and mobile.

Web crawler

A web crawler is an automated program that visits web pages, downloads them and follows their links, used by search engines and SEO tools.

YMYL (Your Money or Your Life)

YMYL (Your Money or Your Life) means topics that could affect someone’s health, finances, safety or wellbeing, where Google applies higher standards.