SEO is full of jargon. It’s why so many business owners switch off when an “SEO guru” starts rattling off acronyms. This SEO glossary cuts through the noise and explains things in plain UK English. Think of it as the subtitles you wish you had in every agency pitch meeting. Each term links into our wider guides so you can dive deeper when needed.
A
- Algorithm: Google’s recipe for ranking pages. Constantly tweaked, usually right before a bank holiday weekend when you least want it to change. See Future of SEO.
- Alt Text: A description of an image for screen readers and search engines. “Dog in a raincoat” is better than “IMG_203.jpg.” Covered in On-Page SEO.
- Anchor Text: The visible, clickable text of a link. Descriptive beats vague — “Local SEO guide” trumps “click here.”
B
- Backlink: A link from someone else’s website to yours. The backbone of Off-Page SEO. A mention in The Guardian? Gold dust. A comment link on “bestweightlosssecrets.biz”? Bin it.
- Bounce Rate: The percentage of users who land on your page and then leave without doing anything else. High bounce rate? Your content might be slower than the queue at Greggs at lunchtime.
- Black Hat SEO: Shortcuts that break Google’s rules: link farms, cloaking, keyword stuffing. Might work briefly. Long term? Like building a house of cards in a hurricane.
C
- Canonical Tag: A snippet of code telling search engines which version of a page is the “main” one. Saves you from duplicate content penalties. See Technical SEO.
- Click-Through Rate (CTR): The percentage of people who click your result. Improving it can mean rewriting titles, sharpening meta descriptions, or just not being boring.
- Core Web Vitals: Google’s three UX signals: LCP (loading speed), INP (interactivity), CLS (layout stability). Nail these and you’ll pass PageSpeed tests. Covered in Page Speed SEO.
- Crawl Budget: The number of pages Googlebot is willing to crawl on your site. Waste it on endless tag pages and you won’t get your important content indexed.
D
- Duplicate Content: Blocks of identical or near-identical content across your site (or others). Can split ranking signals. Copy-paste jobs don’t impress search engines.
- Dwell Time: How long someone spends on your page before bouncing back to Google. The closest thing to Google measuring whether your content was actually useful.
E
- E-E-A-T: Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness. Google’s quality check for content. In short: show you know your stuff. More in our Content is King guide.
G
- Google Business Profile: Free listing that powers Maps and local pack results. Essential for Local SEO.
- Google Search Console (GSC): Free tool for tracking keywords, clicks, and crawl errors. The real-time CCTV of your SEO efforts. See our GSC guide.
I
- Indexing: When Google stores your page in its database. No indexing = no chance of ranking. Covered in Technical SEO.
- Internal Linking: Linking your own pages together. Think of it as good manners. If you talk about “Page Speed” here, link to it. See On-Page SEO.
K
- Keyword: The search terms people type (or shout into their phones). Choosing the right ones makes or breaks your SEO campaign. See Content is King.
- Keyword Stuffing: Overusing a keyword until the content reads like a broken record. A relic of 2006 SEO. Avoid.
L
- Link Building: The process of getting other websites to link to you. Covered in Off-Page SEO and Local Link Building.
- Local SEO: Optimising to appear in searches within your area. If you’re a barber in Dundee, you don’t need traffic from Dallas. Covered in our Local SEO guide.
M
- Meta Description: A summary under your title in Google. Doesn’t boost rankings directly but can swing clicks. Covered in On-Page SEO.
- Mobile-First Indexing: Google ranks based on your mobile site first. If your site’s rubbish on mobile, you’re already losing.
O
- Organic Traffic: Visits that come from search results, not ads. The holy grail of SEO.
- On-Page SEO: Optimising what’s on your site itself: titles, content, links. Covered in our On-Page SEO guide.
P
- Page Speed: How fast your site loads. A direct ranking factor. Covered in Page Speed SEO.
- Pogo-Sticking: When a user clicks your result, bounces back, and clicks another. A signal your content wasn’t the answer they wanted.
S
- Schema Markup: Code that helps Google understand your content. Covered in Technical SEO.
- Search Engine Results Page (SERP): The page of results you see after a search. Everyone’s fighting for the top spot — or the featured snippet.
- Sitemap: A file listing your site’s pages for search engines. Think of it as your site’s table of contents.
T
- Technical SEO: Optimising crawlability, site speed, sitemaps, and structure. See our Technical SEO guide.
- Title Tag: The blue clickable headline in search. One of the strongest on-page factors you can control.
Final Word
This glossary isn’t every term under the sun — nobody needs to memorise every last acronym. But it covers the essentials that crop up in audits, proposals, and strategy chats. Next time someone tries to dazzle you with jargon, you’ll have the definitions at your fingertips.
At Hot Igloo, we believe SEO works best when it’s clear, simple, and jargon-free. If you want plain-English advice that gets results, this glossary is just the start.
Want more SEO advice, then check out our complete UK SEO guide here.