Here’s an SEO dictionary to help you understand all the key SEO terms. Don’t miss any more SEO discussions and discover concepts that can help you strengthen your SEO strategy.

I. SEO fundamentals

  • Algorithm: Set of rules used by search engines to rank web pages in their results.
  • SEO audit: Complete evaluation of a website to identify where improvements can be made to optimize SEO.
  • SEO (Search Engine Optimization): The process of optimizing a website to improve its visibility in the organic results of search engines.

II. Site Content and Structure

  • Alt tag: Alternative text for images, helping them to be understood by search engines.
  • Hx tag (H1, H2, H3…) / Hx semantics: HTML tags used to structure the content of a page by hierarchical importance. Works as title (H1), subtitle (H2, H3…).
  • Duplicate content: Content that appears in more than one place on the Internet. It is considered copy-paste and can affect a site’s ranking.
  • Semantic cocoon (see also Siloing): Organization of site content into closely related thematic categories to improve SEO.
  • Landing Page: Page designed specifically to receive traffic from a marketing campaign.
  • Meta tags: HTML tags providing information about web pages to search engines and visitors.
    • Meta description: Short description of the page displayed below the title in search results.
    • Meta title: Title of the page displayed in search results.
  • Pagination: Technique for dividing content into several pages to improve navigation.
  • Siloing (See also Semantic Cocoon): Organization of site content into closely related thematic categories to improve SEO.
  • Canonical URL: preferred URL of a page, used to avoid duplicate content.

III. SEO Techniques and Strategies

  • Black Hat SEO (See also White Hat SEO): SEO practices that are unfair or contrary to search engine guidelines.
    • Keyword stuffing: Excessively inserting keywords into content in an attempt to manipulate rankings.
    • Cloaking: Presenting different content to search engines and users.
    • Link obfuscation: Hiding or manipulating links to mislead search engines or users.
  • EEAT (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness): Criteria used by Google to evaluate content quality.
  • On-page SEO: Optimizing the site’s internal elements for SEO.
  • Off-page SEO: Techniques used off-site to improve SERP ranking.
  • SXO (Search Experience Optimization): Search experience optimization, combining SEO and user experience.
  • White Hat SEO (See also Black Hat SEO) : SEO techniques that respect search engine guidelines.

IV. Links and backlinks

  • Backlinks: Incoming links to a site, indicating its popularity or importance.
  • Do Follow / No Follow: Link attributes that tell search engines whether or not to follow links.
  • Internal link: Links from one page to another within the same domain.
  • Internal linking: Strategic organization of internal links to improve navigation and referencing.
  • Netlinking: Strategy aimed at increasing the number and quality of backlinks to a site.
  • SEO juice / Link juice: Metaphor for the value imparted by links to a web page.

V. Performance and safety

  • Core Web Vitals: A set of real-world measures of user experience, critical to overall website success.
  • HTTPS / HSTS: Secure protocols for data transfer over the Internet.
  • Page Speed: The speed at which a web page loads, an important factor in SEO.

VI. Indexing and browsing

  • Crawl budget: Amount of resources a search engine is willing to spend to crawl a site.
  • Site crawl: The process by which a search engine crawls a website.
  • Indexing: The process by which search engines store and organize content found during exploration.
  • No index: Directive preventing search engines from indexing a page.
  • Robots TXT: File used to tell search engine robots how to crawl the site.
  • Sitemap: XML file containing a site’s URLs to inform search engines of the site’s structure.

VII. Errors and redirections

  • Error 301: Permanent redirection from one URL to another.
  • Error 302: Temporary redirection from one URL to another.
  • Error 404: Indicates that a page was not found.
  • Error 500: Internal server error indicating a problem with the website.
  • Redirection: The process of redirecting from one URL to another.
  • www redirection: Redirects users and search engines from the non-www version to the www version of a site.

VIII. Analysis and measurement

  • Google Analytics / Google Search Console: Tools provided by Google to analyze site traffic and performance in search results.
  • Impressions: Number of times an ad or link is displayed.
  • Position: Ranking of a web page in search results.
  • Click-through rate (CTR): Percentage of people who click on a link in relation to the total number of impressions.
  • Conversion rate: Percentage of visitors who achieve a desired objective on the site.