Glossary

Clear definitions of 198+ terms in SEO, CMS, content marketing, and AI. The definitive glossary for modern publishers.

SEO

301 redirect

Permanent redirect.

302 redirect

Temporary redirect.

Alt text

Image description for accessibility + SEO.

Anchor text

The clickable text of a link.

Backlink

A link from another site to yours.

BERT

Google's NLP model for understanding queries.

Breadcrumb

Navigation showing page hierarchy.

Breadcrumbs

Navigation showing page hierarchy.

Canonical URL

The preferred URL for a page.

Cloaking

Showing different content to crawlers vs users.

Core update

Major change to Google's ranking algorithm.

Crawl budget

How many pages Google will crawl per visit.

CTR

Click-through rate on a SERP.

Domain authority

A site's overall ranking strength (Moz metric).

Dwell time

How long a user stays on a page from search.

E-E-A-T

Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness.

Entity SEO

Optimizing for entities, not just keywords.

Faceted navigation

Filters that create URL parameters.

Favicon

Small icon shown in browser tabs.

Featured snippet

Answer box at top of Google.

Google Panda

2011 update targeting low-quality content.

Google Penguin

2012 update targeting spammy links.

Google Search Console

Google's webmaster tools.

The main page heading.

Helpful Content System

Google's ongoing quality signal.

Helpful content update

Google update targeting unhelpful content.

Hreflang

Tells Google which language a page is in.

Indexation

Getting pages into Google's index.

Internal link

A link between pages on the same site.

International SEO

Targeting users in different countries/languages.

JSON-LD

Schema markup format.

Keyword

A search query target.

Keyword cannibalization

Multiple pages competing for the same keyword.

Keyword density

% of page text that's a target keyword.

Keyword difficulty

How hard a keyword is to rank for.

Keyword stuffing

Over-using keywords unnaturally.

Knowledge graph

Google's database of entities and relationships.

Local SEO

Ranking for location-based queries.

Long-tail keyword

Specific, low-volume search queries.

Meta description

Page summary shown in search results.

Meta title

Page title shown in SERPs.

Mobile-first indexing

Google indexes the mobile version of your site.

MUM

Google's multimodal AI for complex queries.

NoFollow

Tells search engines not to follow/credit a link.

Off-page SEO

Signals from outside your site.

OG image

Image shown in social share cards.

On-page SEO

Optimizations on the page itself.

Open Graph

Meta tags controlling social share cards.

Page authority

A single page's ranking strength.

Page experience

Ranking signal combining UX metrics.

PageRank

Google's original link-based ranking algorithm.

Pogo-sticking

User clicks a result and bounces back fast.

RankBrain

Google's machine-learning ranking signal.

Rich results

Enhanced SERP listings.

Robots.txt

File telling crawlers what to access.

Schema markup

Structured data for rich results.

Search intent

What the user is trying to do.

Search volume

How many times a keyword is searched per month.

SEO

Search engine optimization.

SERP

Search engine results page.

Sitelinks

Sub-page links shown in Google results.

Soft 404

Page that says "not found" but returns 200.

Structured data

Machine-readable page info.

Technical SEO

Crawlability, indexability, performance.

Title tag

HTML element for the page title.

Topical authority

Recognition as a domain expert on a topic.

Twitter card

Twitter's social share card format.

XML sitemap

List of site URLs for crawlers.

YMYL

Your Money or Your Life topics.

Content Marketing

Buyer guide

Educational content helping users choose a product.

Case study

Detailed analysis of a specific success.

Content audit

Reviewing existing content for performance.

Content calendar

Schedule of planned content.

Content gap analysis

Finding topics competitors rank for but you don't.

Content pruning

Deleting or merging low-value content.

Content repurposing

Reusing content in different formats.

Content syndication

Republishing content on third-party sites.

Editorial calendar

Content calendar for a publication.

Evergreen content

Content that stays relevant for years.

How-to article

Step-by-step instructional content.

How-to content

Step-by-step instructional content.

Listicle

Article structured as a numbered list.

Pillar page

In-depth guide on a broad topic.

Pillar-and-cluster

Content strategy built on topic authority.

Skyscraper content

Longer, better version of top-ranking content.

Topic cluster

Group of related pages linked to a pillar.

White paper

In-depth report on a specific topic.

CMS & Publishing

API-first

API is the primary interface.

Block editor

Editor where content is in blocks.

CMS

Content management system.

Content federation

Combining content from multiple sources.

Content modeling

Defining content structure.

Coupled CMS

Traditional CMS where backend and frontend are tied.

Decoupled CMS

Backend and frontend are separated.

Git-based CMS

CMS where content lives in a git repo.

Headless CMS

CMS with API, no front-end rendering.

Hybrid CMS

Headless CMS that also offers a frontend layer.

JAMstack

JavaScript, APIs, Markup architecture.

Monolith CMS

Tightly coupled CMS + frontend.

Multi-site

One installation manages multiple websites.

Multi-tenant

One app serves multiple isolated customers.

RBAC

Role-based access control.

Static site generator

Tool that builds HTML at build time.

WYSIWYG

What You See Is What You Get editor.

Analytics

Bounce rate

Percentage of single-page visits.

Cookieless analytics

Analytics without browser cookies.

Direct traffic

Visitors who arrive without a referrer.

Engagement rate

% of sessions with meaningful interaction.

First-touch attribution

Crediting the first touchpoint with the conversion.

Goal

A defined conversion event in analytics.

Heatmap

Visual map of where users click/scroll.

Impressions

Number of times content was shown.

Last-touch attribution

Crediting the last touchpoint with the conversion.

Multi-touch attribution

Crediting multiple touchpoints in a conversion.

Page views

Number of times a page was loaded.

Referral traffic

Visitors arriving from links on other sites.

Session replay

Recording of a user's session.

Sessions

A user's visit to your site.

Time on page

How long a user stays on a single page.

AI & LLMs

AI agent

LLM-powered system that takes actions.

AI citation

When an AI answer references your content.

AI Overview

Google's AI-generated answer at the top of SERPs.

AI referrer

Traffic coming from AI assistants.

AI search

Search engines powered by LLMs.

ChatGPT

OpenAI's consumer AI assistant.

Claude

Anthropic's AI assistant.

Context window

How much text an LLM can process at once.

Embedding

Vector representation of text.

Fine-tuning

Adapting a pretrained model to a specific task.

Function calling

LLMs invoking tools/APIs.

Gemini

Google's AI assistant.

GEO

Generative engine optimization.

Hallucination

When an LLM invents incorrect facts.

LLM

Large language model.

llms.txt

File telling AI crawlers what your site is about.

MCP

Model Context Protocol — standard for AI tool use.

Perplexity

AI-powered search engine.

Prompt engineering

Crafting prompts to get good LLM outputs.

RAG

Retrieval-augmented generation.

RLHF

Reinforcement learning from human feedback.

Semantic search

Search based on meaning, not keywords.

Vector database

Database optimized for embedding similarity search.

Technical

404 error

Page not found.

AMP

Accelerated Mobile Pages.

CDN

Content delivery network.

Client-side rendering

JavaScript renders HTML in the browser.

CLS

Cumulative layout shift — visual stability metric.

Core Web Vitals

Google's user experience metrics.

Critical CSS

Above-the-fold CSS inlined for fast render.

CSR

Client-side rendering.

Edge computing

Compute at the network edge, close to users.

Edge rendering

Rendering at CDN edge nodes.

HTTPS

Encrypted HTTP.

Incremental static regeneration

Rebuild individual pages on-demand.

INP

Interaction to next paint — responsiveness metric.

ISR

Incremental static regeneration.

Lazy loading

Deferring image/iframe loading until visible.

LCP

Largest contentful paint — page load metric.

Markdown

Lightweight markup language.

MDX

Markdown + JSX components.

Prefetch

Hint browser to fetch resources for likely-next pages.

Preload

Tell browser to fetch a resource early.

ProseMirror

Editor toolkit underlying Tiptap.

PWA

Progressive web app.

React Server Components

React components that run only on the server.

Reverse proxy

Server sitting in front of your app.

Server-side rendering

Render HTML on the server per request.

Service worker

Browser background script for caching/offline.

SSG

Static site generation.

SSL

Older name for TLS.

SSR

Server-side rendering.

Static site generation

Pre-build all pages as HTML.

Tiptap

Rich-text editor framework for React/Vue.

TLS

Transport layer security.

TTFB

Time to first byte — server response speed.

Webhooks

HTTP callbacks for events.