SEO Jargon Buster
Somebody has used a word at you and you nodded. Everybody does it. Every term the search industry uses is on this page, explained in ordinary words, with a line on whether you should actually care about it.
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Basics
The words that turn up in every conversation about search, starting with what a results page even is now.
SEO
Search engine optimisation. The work of getting a website and a business listing to show up when somebody searches for what you sell. It covers the website, the Google listing, the technical health of the site and the reputation signals around it.
Why it matters. It is the only marketing channel where you stop paying and the customers keep arriving.
SERP
Search engine results page. The page you get after typing something into Google. It is rarely just ten links any more. It might carry a map, a panel, an AI answer, videos, images and adverts before a single website appears.
Why it matters. Knowing what your SERP actually looks like decides where the work has to go.
Organic results
The listings Google shows because it judged them the best answer, rather than because somebody paid. They sit below the adverts and often below the map.
Why it matters. These are the results SEO is trying to win.
Paid results
Adverts at the top and bottom of the results page, marked Sponsored. Advertisers bid for them and pay per click.
Why it matters. They occupy the space above your organic listing, which is why position one is not the top of the page.
Ranking
Where your page appears in the results for a given search. Position one is the first organic listing. Rankings move constantly and differ by location, device and person.
Why it matters. A ranking is a means to an end. Enquiries are the end.
Index
Google's stored copy of the pages it knows about. If a page is not in the index it cannot appear in results at all, no matter how good it is.
Why it matters. Being indexed is the minimum. Plenty of sites have pages Google has never stored.
Crawling
The process of Google's software following links around the internet and reading pages. A crawler is sometimes called a bot or a spider.
Why it matters. If a crawler cannot reach or read a page, nothing else you do to that page counts.
Algorithm
The set of systems Google uses to decide what to show and in what order. It is not one thing. It is hundreds of signals combined plus it changes constantly.
Why it matters. Nobody outside Google knows it in full, so anyone promising to game it is guessing.
Query
The exact words somebody typed or spoke into a search box.
Why it matters. The gap between the query and the words on your page is where most SEO work happens.
Search intent
What the searcher actually wants. Usually split into informational (learning), navigational (going somewhere specific), commercial (comparing) and transactional (buying).
Why it matters. A page that answers the wrong intent will not rank however well it is written.
Impressions
The number of times your listing appeared in front of somebody, whether or not they clicked.
Why it matters. Rising impressions with flat clicks usually means you are ranking on the wrong things.
Clicks
The number of times somebody actually chose your listing and came to your site.
Why it matters. The only search metric that puts a person on your website.
Keywords
What people type, how it gets counted plus why the biggest number on the list is rarely the one worth chasing.
Keyword
A word or phrase people type into a search engine. Despite the name it is usually several words rather than one.
Why it matters. The whole trade is built on knowing which ones your customers use, which is rarely the ones you use.
Keyword research
The process of finding out what people actually search for, how often they do it plus how hard each phrase would be to rank for. The output is a list you can plan pages around.
Why it matters. Without it you are writing pages based on what you assume people call things.
Search volume
The estimated number of times a phrase is searched per month. Always an estimate, always an average across a year.
Why it matters. Averages flatten spikes, so a seasonal phrase can look far smaller than it is in its own month.
Keyword difficulty
A score, usually out of 100, estimating how hard it would be to rank on the first page for a phrase. Lower is easier. It is an estimate rather than a measurement.
Why it matters. Volume without difficulty is half a picture. A big number nobody can win is worth nothing.
Long tail keyword
A longer, more specific phrase with lower volume and usually lower competition. Emergency boiler repair in Weymouth rather than boiler.
Why it matters. Lower volume, far higher intent. Long tail phrases are where small businesses win.
Head term
A short, high volume, usually single word phrase. Boiler. Florist. Asbestos. Almost always dominated by national brands.
Why it matters. Attractive on a report and close to useless for a local business.
Seed keyword
The starting phrase used to generate a keyword export. Everything in the resulting file relates to that seed.
Why it matters. A file seeded on one term will not show demand that lives under different words, which is a limitation people forget.
Keyword cannibalisation
When two or more of your own pages target the same phrase and compete with each other, so Google cannot tell which one to show.
Why it matters. Common on sites that added pages over years without a plan. Usually fixed by merging or redirecting.
Keyword mapping
Assigning one primary phrase to one page across the whole site, so nothing overlaps.
Why it matters. The document that prevents cannibalisation before it happens.
Keyword cluster
A group of closely related phrases that all deserve the same page, because they mean the same thing to the searcher.
Why it matters. Stops you building five thin pages where one strong one would do.
Keyword gap
Phrases your competitors rank for and you do not.
Why it matters. Usually the fastest way to find work worth doing.
Branded keyword
A search containing your business name.
Why it matters. The cheapest traffic you will ever get. Most businesses never check whether they own it.
Keyword stuffing
Repeating a phrase unnaturally often in the hope of ranking for it. A tactic from twenty years ago that now does harm.
Why it matters. It reads badly to people and it is treated as spam by Google.
Zero volume keyword
A phrase a tool reports as having no searches. Often it does have searches, they are simply below the tool's reporting threshold.
Why it matters. Zero in a tool means unmeasured rather than unwanted.
On-page
Everything that lives on the page itself. Titles, headings, links, images plus the bits people never see.
Title tag
The clickable headline of your listing in the results. Written in the page code rather than shown on the page itself.
Why it matters. The single most influential piece of text on a page and the one most often left as the default.
Meta description
The short summary under your listing in the results. It is not a ranking factor directly, though it heavily affects whether anyone clicks.
Why it matters. Google rewrites it when it does not fit the query, which is a sign yours needs work rather than a reason to skip it.
H1
The main visible heading on a page. There should be one per page and it should say what the page is about.
Why it matters. Confusing your H1 with your logo or your slogan is a common and costly mistake.
Heading structure
The hierarchy of headings on a page, H1 down through H2, H3 and so on. It should read like an outline of the content.
Why it matters. It tells Google how the page is organised and it makes the page usable on a screen reader.
URL slug
The readable part of a web address after the domain. /seo-weymouth rather than /page-id-4471.
Why it matters. Short, descriptive and permanent. Changing one later means setting up a redirect.
Alt text
A written description of an image, held in the page code. Read aloud by screen readers and used by Google to understand the picture.
Why it matters. An accessibility requirement first and a search benefit second.
Internal link
A link from one page on your site to another page on your site.
Why it matters. Free, entirely within your control and neglected on almost every site we audit.
Anchor text
The visible clickable words of a link. Click here is weak anchor text. Asbestos survey costs is strong.
Why it matters. It tells Google what the page being linked to is about.
Canonical tag
A line of code telling Google which version of a page is the real one, when several versions exist at different addresses.
Why it matters. Prevents your own duplicate pages from splitting their strength between them.
Breadcrumbs
The trail near the top of a page showing where it sits, such as Home then Services then Boiler Repair.
Why it matters. Helps people navigate and helps Google understand your site structure.
Above the fold
Whatever is visible on screen before somebody scrolls.
Why it matters. On a phone that is a very small space, so what goes in it matters more than most people allow for.
Call to action
The instruction telling somebody what to do next. Call now, get a quote, book a table.
Why it matters. A page that ranks and asks for nothing is unfinished work.
Content freshness
How recently a page was genuinely updated. Genuinely is the important word, since changing a date fools nobody.
Why it matters. Matters far more on topics that change than on topics that do not.
Readability
How easy a page is to read. Sentence length, paragraph length, vocabulary and layout.
Why it matters. Not a direct ranking factor. It heavily affects whether anybody stays long enough to buy.
Technical
The plumbing. Nothing here wins a customer on its own. Any one of them can quietly stop everything else working.
Robots.txt
A small file at the root of a site telling crawlers which areas they may and may not visit.
Why it matters. One wrong line here can hide an entire website from Google. It happens more often than you would think.
XML sitemap
A machine readable list of the pages on your site that you want Google to know about.
Why it matters. Not a magic ranking device. It is a way of making sure nothing important is missed.
Noindex
An instruction telling Google not to store a page in its index, so it never appears in results.
Why it matters. Useful on thank you pages and internal search results. Catastrophic if left on a page you want found.
Nofollow
An attribute on a link telling Google not to pass credit through it.
Why it matters. Originally for untrusted links. Now a hint rather than an instruction.
Crawl budget
The rough amount of crawling Google will do on your site in a given period.
Why it matters. Only a real concern on very large sites. On a small business site it is almost never the problem.
Redirect
An instruction sending anybody who visits one address to a different one.
Why it matters. The tool that stops old links breaking when pages move.
301 redirect
A permanent redirect. Tells Google the page has moved for good and the credit should move with it.
Why it matters. The correct choice almost every time you change a URL.
302 redirect
A temporary redirect. Tells Google the move is short term and the original address should stay in the index.
Why it matters. Frequently used by mistake where a 301 was meant, which loses the value of the old page.
404 error
The response when a page does not exist.
Why it matters. A few are normal. A lot, especially from your own internal links, is a sign nobody is looking after the site.
Redirect chain
A redirect that points to another redirect, which points to another. A leads to B leads to C.
Why it matters. Slows the page down and dilutes the value being passed. Always point straight at the destination.
Soft 404
A page that says nothing is here but returns a success code instead of an error code.
Why it matters. Confuses Google, which then wastes time crawling pages with nothing on them.
Core Web Vitals
Google's three measures of page experience: how fast the main content loads, how quickly the page responds to a tap plus how much the layout jumps about while loading.
Why it matters. A tiebreaker rather than a trump card. Worth fixing because slow sites lose enquiries regardless of rankings.
Largest Contentful Paint
LCP. How long it takes for the biggest visible thing on the page, usually an image or heading, to appear.
Why it matters. Usually the easiest of the three to fix, most often by compressing images properly.
Interaction to Next Paint
INP. How quickly the page reacts when somebody taps or clicks something.
Why it matters. Usually a scripts problem. Often caused by tracking and chat widgets nobody uses.
Cumulative Layout Shift
CLS. How much the page jumps around as it loads.
Why it matters. The reason people tap the wrong button. Fixed by telling the browser how big images will be before they load.
Page speed
How quickly a page becomes usable. Not one number, several.
Why it matters. On a phone on a weak signal, this is the difference between a call and a bounce.
Mobile first indexing
Google looks at the mobile version of your site to decide how to rank it, even for people searching on a desktop.
Why it matters. If your mobile site hides content your desktop site shows, Google may never see the hidden part.
Rendering
The step where Google runs the page's code to see the finished result, rather than just reading the raw file.
Why it matters. Content that only appears after scripts run may be seen late or not at all.
JavaScript SEO
The work of making sure content built by scripts can still be found and read by search engines.
Why it matters. A common cause of invisible content on modern site builders.
Hreflang
Code telling Google which language and region a page is intended for.
Why it matters. Only relevant if you publish in more than one language or country. Frequently added where it is not needed.
Orphan page
A page with no internal links pointing at it, reachable only if you know the address.
Why it matters. Google struggles to find it and gives it very little weight.
Duplicate content
The same or near identical content appearing at more than one address, either on your site or across sites.
Why it matters. Not usually a penalty. It splits your strength and makes Google pick a winner for you.
Thin content
A page with very little of substance on it. Often produced in bulk to chase locations or keywords.
Why it matters. Hundreds of thin pages can drag down a site that would have done better with twenty good ones.
Site architecture
How the pages of a site are organised and linked. How many clicks it takes to get anywhere.
Why it matters. A flat, logical structure helps both people and crawlers. Deep buried pages get forgotten.
HTTPS
The secure version of a web address, shown with a padlock. Requires an SSL certificate.
Why it matters. A basic requirement now. A site without it is flagged as not secure to every visitor.
Log file analysis
Reading the server's own records of what crawlers actually visited and when.
Why it matters. The only way to see what Google really did rather than what you assume it did.
Lazy loading
Delaying the loading of images until somebody scrolls near them.
Why it matters. Speeds up the first view. Done badly it hides images from Google entirely.
Content
How pages are planned, grouped plus judged, including the acronyms that get quoted at you most often.
Content cluster
A group of related pages built around one main topic, all linking to each other and to a central page.
Why it matters. How a small site builds enough authority on a subject to outrank bigger ones.
Pillar page
The central page of a cluster. Covers the whole topic broadly and links out to the detail pages.
Why it matters. Gives Google an obvious front door for the subject.
Hub page
A page that indexes and links to every guide in a cluster.
Why it matters. Makes a large set of pages navigable for people and crawlable for Google.
Landing page
A page built to convert rather than to inform. Usually the page you send paid traffic to. Sometimes it is the main page for a service.
Why it matters. It sells. Informational pages explain. Mixing the two produces something that does neither.
EEAT
Experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trust. The qualities Google's human raters are asked to look for.
Why it matters. Not a score you can measure. It is why named authors, real credentials and genuine detail matter.
YMYL
Your money or your life. Topics that could affect somebody's health, finances or safety.
Why it matters. Held to a far higher standard. Medical, legal and financial content needs real expertise behind it.
Topical authority
The degree to which a site is treated as a serious source on a subject, built by covering it thoroughly rather than once.
Why it matters. Why one deep cluster beats forty scattered blog posts.
Content audit
A review of every page on a site to decide what to keep, rewrite, merge or delete.
Why it matters. Usually finds that a third of a site is earning nothing and costing credibility.
Content decay
The slow decline of a page that once performed well, as it ages and competitors update theirs.
Why it matters. The reason a page that worked two years ago has quietly stopped.
Content gap
A subject your audience searches for that you have not covered.
Why it matters. Where the next page should come from, rather than from whatever occurred to somebody on a Friday.
Evergreen content
Content that stays relevant for years rather than dating quickly.
Why it matters. Worth more per hour spent than news style content, which is dead within a month.
Word count
The number of words on a page. Frequently quoted as a ranking factor. It is not one.
Why it matters. Length is a symptom of covering a subject properly rather than a cause of ranking.
Links
The most misunderstood part of the trade, plus the part where bad practice does the most damage.
Backlink
A link from another website to yours. Also called an inbound link.
Why it matters. Still one of the strongest signals Google uses, which is why so much bad practice grew up around it.
Link building
The work of earning links from other sites.
Why it matters. Earning is the operative word. Buying them at scale is against Google's rules and carries real risk.
Link equity
The value passed from one page to another through a link. Sometimes called link juice.
Why it matters. Passed by internal links as well as external ones, which is why internal linking is free value.
Domain authority
A score out of 100 invented by a third party tool to estimate how strong a site is. Google does not use it.
Why it matters. Useful for rough comparison. Meaningless as a target, since agencies who report on it are reporting on somebody else's guess.
Follow link
A normal link that passes credit to the page it points at.
Why it matters. The default. Most links are follow links unless somebody has changed them.
Sponsored attribute
A tag marking a link as paid for, whether by money, goods or services.
Why it matters. Required by Google's rules. Leaving it off a paid link is what turns a legitimate placement into a violation.
UGC attribute
A tag marking a link as user generated, such as one in a forum post or a comment.
Why it matters. Stops your site vouching for links you did not place.
Toxic backlink
A link from a site so poor or spammy that it may do harm rather than good.
Why it matters. The term is oversold by tools that want to sell you a clean-up. Most bad links are simply ignored by Google.
Disavow
Telling Google to ignore specific links pointing at your site.
Why it matters. A last resort for sites with a manual action. Used casually it can do more harm than the links did.
Private blog network
A group of sites owned by one person, built purely to link to their own money site.
Why it matters. Against Google's rules and a common way for a business to inherit a penalty it did not know it bought.
Guest post
Writing an article for another site, usually including a link back to your own.
Why it matters. Legitimate when the article is genuinely useful and the audience is real. Spam when it is bought in bulk.
Anchor text distribution
The mix of wording used across all the links pointing at your site.
Why it matters. A natural mix is varied. Hundreds of links all using the same exact phrase looks bought, because it usually is.
Local
The map, the listing plus everything that decides whether a nearby business gets found.
Local SEO
Getting a business found by people searching in or for a specific area. Covers the Google listing, the map, citations, reviews and location pages.
Why it matters. For most local businesses this is where the majority of the demand is settled.
Local pack
The box showing three businesses on a map in the results. Also called the map pack.
Why it matters. In many trades most people never scroll past it. Being in it matters more than ranking first below it.
Google Business Profile
The free listing that controls how your business appears in Google Maps and the local pack. Formerly Google My Business.
Why it matters. The highest return work available to a local business and the most often neglected.
NAP
Name, address and phone number. The three details that must match everywhere your business is listed.
Why it matters. Inconsistency here quietly stops businesses breaking into the map and nobody ever guesses why.
Citation
A mention of your business name, address and phone number on another website, such as a directory or trade body.
Why it matters. Confirms to Google that your business exists where you say it does.
Service area business
A business that travels to customers rather than receiving them, such as a plumber or a mobile groomer.
Why it matters. Set up wrongly, a service area business either hides its own address or claims an area it cannot serve.
Proximity
How close the searcher is to your business. One of the three main local ranking factors.
Why it matters. The one you cannot change, which is why the other two get all the work.
Prominence
How well known and well regarded your business appears to be, judged from reviews, citations, links and mentions.
Why it matters. The local factor you have most influence over.
Relevance
How well your listing and site match what was searched.
Why it matters. Mostly a categories and services problem, so mostly fixable in an afternoon.
Local landing page
A page on your site built for one town or area you serve.
Why it matters. Valuable when written properly for that place. Worthless when it is the same page with the town name swapped.
Google Business Profile categories
The primary and secondary categories describing what your business does.
Why it matters. The primary category has more effect on local rankings than almost anything else on the listing.
Justifications
The lines Google adds under a local listing quoting your site, a review or a post, to explain why it matched.
Why it matters. Free extra text in the map result, earned by having the right words in the right places.
Local finder
The expanded list you get after clicking More places under the local pack.
Why it matters. Ranking eleventh here is not the same as ranking eleventh in organic results, though it is often reported as if it were.
Geo grid
A way of measuring local rankings across a grid of points around a business rather than from one location.
Why it matters. Shows how far your visibility actually reaches, which one ranking figure cannot.
Near me search
A search containing the words near me. Google reads it as a location request rather than as literal words.
Why it matters. You do not need the phrase near me on your page to rank for it.
Duplicate listing
More than one Google listing for the same business, usually created by accident over the years.
Why it matters. Splits reviews and confuses Google. Merging them is often an instant improvement.
Listing suspension
Google removing a business listing, usually for a guideline breach such as a fake address or a keyword stuffed name.
Why it matters. Recovering one is slow and uncertain, which is why shortcuts on a listing are never worth it.
Schema
Code that describes your page to a machine. Increasingly the difference between being quoted and being ignored.
Schema markup
Code added to a page that describes what is on it in a format machines read. A business, a service, an FAQ, a review, an event.
Why it matters. It turns your content from words a machine has to interpret into facts it can simply read.
Structured data
The general term for information formatted so machines can use it reliably. Schema markup is the common way of doing it.
Why it matters. Increasingly the difference between being quoted by an AI answer and being ignored by it.
JSON-LD
The format Google prefers for schema markup. A block of code in the page that describes the page.
Why it matters. Cleaner than the older methods because it sits separately from the visible content.
Rich result
A search listing with extra features attached, such as star ratings, prices, FAQs or images.
Why it matters. Takes up more space on the results page, which usually means more clicks.
Featured snippet
An answer box at the top of the results, pulled from a page, sometimes called position zero.
Why it matters. Wins visibility. Often costs the click, since the answer is already on screen.
Knowledge panel
The information box about a specific business, person or thing, usually on the right of the results or at the top on a phone.
Why it matters. In some towns it appears on half of all searches, which makes it the shop window rather than the website.
Entity
A thing Google recognises as a distinct object in the world. A business, a person, a place, a product.
Why it matters. Modern search is largely about entities rather than keywords. Being a recognised one is the goal.
FAQ schema
Markup identifying questions and answers on a page.
Why it matters. Helps machines lift your answers cleanly. Never mark up questions that are not visibly on the page.
Review schema
Markup describing genuine reviews of your business or product.
Why it matters. Only ever applied to reviews you actually received. Inventing them is fraud dressed up as marketing.
LocalBusiness schema
Markup describing a business, its address, hours, phone number and services.
Why it matters. The foundation piece for any local business and the one most sites are missing.
Breadcrumb schema
Markup describing where a page sits in the site structure.
Why it matters. Replaces the raw address in your search listing with a readable trail, which reads better and clicks better.
AI search
The newest vocabulary on the list, covering AI answers plus what they change about the work.
AI Overview
An answer written by Google at the top of the results, assembled from several sources, with links to them alongside.
Why it matters. In some sectors it now appears on most searches, which changes the job from ranking to being the source it quotes.
Generative engine optimisation
GEO. The work of getting your content used and cited by AI answers rather than only by traditional search results.
Why it matters. A new label for something that mostly comes down to clear facts, clean structure and good markup.
Large language model
LLM. The type of system behind tools like ChatGPT and Google's AI answers. It predicts text based on patterns in what it has read.
Why it matters. It does not look things up the way a search index does, which is why it can be confidently wrong.
Semantic search
Search based on meaning rather than exact word matching. A search for cheap dentist can return a page that says affordable dental care.
Why it matters. Why writing naturally beats repeating the exact phrase over and over.
Chunking
Breaking a page into sections that can be understood and quoted on their own.
Why it matters. A page written as one long block is harder for a machine to lift a useful answer from.
Zero click search
A search where the person gets what they needed on the results page and never visits a website.
Why it matters. Rising every year. It is why visibility and clicks now have to be measured separately.
Answer engine
Any tool that responds with a direct answer rather than a list of links.
Why it matters. Being absent from these is becoming as costly as being absent from Google was twenty years ago.
BERT
A Google system from 2019 that improved understanding of how words relate to each other in a sentence.
Why it matters. Notable because it was the point at which writing for machines and writing for people stopped being different jobs.
Passage ranking
Google's ability to rank one section of a long page for a query, rather than the page as a whole.
Why it matters. Means a well written section inside a long guide can win on its own.
Measurement
The numbers in your reports, including several that are routinely misread.
Google Search Console
Google's free tool showing what your site appears for, what people clicked plus what technical problems Google found.
Why it matters. The only source of real search data about your own site. Everything else is an estimate.
Google Analytics
Google's free tool showing what people did once they arrived on your site.
Why it matters. Search Console tells you how they found you. Analytics tells you what happened next.
Click through rate
CTR. The share of people who saw your listing and clicked it.
Why it matters. A low rate at a high position usually means the title and description are the problem rather than the ranking.
Average position
The mean position your listing appeared at across all the times it was shown.
Why it matters. An average across hundreds of different searches, so it hides more than it reveals.
Bounce rate
The share of visits where somebody left without doing anything else.
Why it matters. Frequently misread. A visitor who found your phone number and rang you counts as a bounce.
Engagement rate
The share of visits that lasted a meaningful length of time or involved an action.
Why it matters. The modern replacement for bounce rate and a more useful one.
Conversion
Somebody doing the thing you wanted. A call, a form, a booking, a purchase.
Why it matters. The only number that pays wages. Rankings are a step towards it.
Conversion rate
The share of visitors who convert.
Why it matters. Doubling this is usually cheaper than doubling your traffic.
Attribution
Deciding which marketing activity gets the credit for a sale, when somebody touched several before buying.
Why it matters. Nobody has solved it. Be suspicious of anyone claiming certainty about it.
UTM parameter
Tags added to a link so analytics can record where a visitor came from.
Why it matters. How you tell your own newsletter traffic apart from everything else.
Direct traffic
Visits where no source was recorded. Often assumed to be people typing your address in.
Why it matters. In practice it is a bucket for anything untracked, so treat large direct numbers with suspicion.
Risks
What can go wrong, what a penalty actually is plus why most drops are not one.
Google penalty
Loosely used to mean any drop in rankings. Properly it means a manual action taken by a person at Google.
Why it matters. Most drops are not penalties. Confusing the two leads to the wrong fix entirely.
Manual action
A human reviewer at Google deciding your site broke the rules and applying a restriction. Reported in Search Console.
Why it matters. The only kind you can see, appeal and get lifted.
Core update
A broad change to how Google assesses quality, released several times a year.
Why it matters. You do not recover from one by undoing something. You recover by becoming a better answer than you were.
Black hat SEO
Techniques that deliberately break search engine rules to gain an advantage.
Why it matters. Works until it does not. The bill then arrives on the client rather than the agency.
Cloaking
Showing search engines different content from the one people see.
Why it matters. One of the oldest violations and one of the fastest routes to being removed entirely.
Doorway page
A page built only to catch a search and funnel somebody elsewhere, with no value of its own.
Why it matters. The reason mass produced town pages with the name swapped are a risk rather than a shortcut.
Negative SEO
Attempts to harm a competitor's rankings, usually by pointing spam links at them.
Why it matters. Far rarer than the industry suggests. Frequently used as an excuse for a self inflicted drop.
Scraped content
Content copied from another site and republished.
Why it matters. Adds nothing, risks a copyright complaint and tells Google you have nothing of your own.
Reconsideration request
The formal appeal you submit after fixing whatever caused a manual action.
Why it matters. Only relevant for manual actions. Submitting one for an algorithmic drop achieves nothing.
Working with an agency
The commercial vocabulary. Worth knowing before you sign anything.
SEO audit
A structured review of a site covering technical health, content, links and local presence.
Why it matters. Only worth anything if somebody then does the work. An audit is a list, not a service.
Technical audit
The technical half of an audit. Crawl errors, speed, indexing, redirects, structure.
Why it matters. Should be run regularly rather than once. Sites break quietly.
Retainer
An ongoing monthly arrangement rather than a one-off project.
Why it matters. SEO is maintenance as much as building, which is why almost all of it is sold this way.
White label SEO
One agency delivering the work while another agency puts its own name on it for the client.
Why it matters. Common and legitimate. Worth knowing about so you can ask who is actually doing your work.
KPI
Key performance indicator. The measures agreed as proof the work is doing something.
Why it matters. Pick ones tied to enquiries. An agency reporting only on rankings is choosing what to be judged on.
Deliverable
A specific thing you receive. A page, a report, a fixed fault, an updated listing.
Why it matters. Ask what the deliverables are before signing. Vagueness here is the warning sign.
Tie-in
A contract term making it hard or costly to leave.
Why it matters. There is a difference between a minimum term that lets work bed in and a clause designed to trap you.
Site migration
Moving a site to a new address, platform or structure.
Why it matters. The single highest risk event in SEO. Most traffic disasters trace back to one done without a plan.
Ask Us Anything On This List.
This page exists so you can hold your own in a meeting with anybody, including us. If you want to know which of these actually apply to your business, ask. We will tell you what matters for your trade plus what is somebody else's filler.
The ones that usually matter most:
