Glossary

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.

Breadcrumbs

Navigation showing page hierarchy.

Canonical URL

The preferred URL for a page.

Cloaking

Showing different content to crawlers vs users.

Core update

Broad change to Google's ranking algorithm.

Crawl budget

How many pages Google will crawl per visit.

Domain authority

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

E-E-A-T

Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trust.

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.

H1

The main page heading.

Helpful Content Update

Google's 2022 content quality update.

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.

JSON-LD

Schema markup format.

Keyword

A search query target.

Keyword density

% of page text that's a target keyword.

Keyword stuffing

Over-using keywords unnaturally.

Long-tail keyword

Specific, low-volume search queries.

Meta description

Page summary shown in search results.

Meta title

Page title shown in SERPs.

NoFollow

Tells search engines not to follow/credit a link.

OG image

Image shown in social share cards.

Open Graph

Meta tags controlling social share cards.

Page authority

A single page's ranking strength.

PageRank

Google's original link-based ranking algorithm.

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.

SEO

Search engine optimization.

SERP

Search engine results page.

Structured data

Machine-readable page info.

Title tag

HTML element for the page title.

Twitter card

Twitter's social share card format.

XML sitemap

List of site URLs for crawlers.

YMYL

Your Money, Your Life topics.

Content calendar

Schedule of planned content.

Content gap analysis

Finding topics competitors rank for but you don't.

Content pruning

Deleting or improving low-performing content.

Editorial calendar

Content calendar for a publication.

Evergreen content

Content that stays relevant for years.

How-to content

Step-by-step instructional content.

Listicle

A numbered list article.

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.

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.

Decoupled CMS

Separated backend + presentation.

Git-based CMS

CMS where content lives in a git repo.

Headless CMS

CMS with API, no front-end rendering.

Hybrid CMS

Combines headless + traditional rendering.

Jamstack

Modern web architecture (JavaScript, APIs, Markup).

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

Builds HTML files at deploy time.

WYSIWYG

What You See Is What You Get editor.

Bounce rate

Percentage of single-page visits.

Cookieless analytics

Analytics without browser cookies.

CTR

Click-through rate.

Impressions

Number of times content was shown.

Page views

Number of times a page was loaded.

Sessions

A user's visit to your site.

AI overview

Google's AI-generated answers in SERPs.

ChatGPT

OpenAI's flagship AI chatbot.

Claude

Anthropic's AI assistant.

Context window

How much text an LLM can process at once.

Embedding

Numerical vector representing text meaning.

GEO

Generative engine optimization.

Hallucination

AI making up incorrect information.

LLM

Large language model.

llms.txt

Spec for giving LLMs structured site info.

Perplexity

AI-powered search engine.

Prompt engineering

Writing effective prompts for LLMs.

RAG

Retrieval-augmented generation.

Semantic search

Search based on meaning, not keywords.

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.

Edge computing

Compute at the network edge, close to users.

Incremental static regeneration

Rebuild individual pages on-demand.

INP

Interaction to next paint — responsiveness metric.

LCP

Largest contentful paint — page load metric.

Markdown

Lightweight markup language.

MDX

Markdown + JSX components.

ProseMirror

Editor toolkit underlying Tiptap.

React Server Components

React components that run only on the server.

Server-side rendering

Render HTML on the server per request.

Static site generation

Pre-build all pages as HTML.

Tiptap

Rich-text editor framework for React/Vue.

TTFB

Time to first byte — server response speed.

Webhooks

HTTP callbacks for events.

Content marketing

Creating content to attract customers.

Conversion rate

% of visitors who take a desired action.

CTA

Call to action.

Funnel

Path from visitor to customer.

Inbound marketing

Attract customers via helpful content.

Lead magnet

Free offer in exchange for an email.

Product-led growth

Product itself drives adoption.