The SEO Glossary Every Business Owner Should Bookmark
SEO has its own vocabulary, and most of it sounds like jargon when you first encounter it. But every term refers to a real, concrete thing that affects whether your business shows up in search.
This glossary covers the 15 SEO terms every business owner should understand before hiring an agency or evaluating proposals.
Essential SEO terminology
- Crawlability — whether search engines can reach your pages
- Indexability — whether search engines will store your pages in their database
- SERP — search engine results page, the page Google shows after a search
- E-E-A-T — Experience, Expertise, Authority, Trust (Google quality signals)
- Schema markup — structured code that tells search engines what your content means
- Backlink — another website linking to yours
- Anchor text — the clickable text of a link
- Domain authority — a third-party score estimating ranking strength
- Core Web Vitals — Google measurements of loading speed and stability
- Featured snippet — the answer box at the top of some search results
- Local pack / map pack — the 3-listing map results for local searches
- Long-tail keyword — specific multi-word search phrases
Why this matters when hiring an agency
Agencies that cannot explain these terms in plain English are usually hiding either inexperience or bad practices. Ask any prospective SEO partner to define five of these from memory, and you will quickly separate the experienced from the rest.
For agency-grade help across the Dallas, Frisco, and Colorado Springs markets, https://fasthippomedia.com/seo/ offers the full range of services this guide describes — from technical SEO to local rankings to conversion-focused web design.
Bottom line
Bookmark this page and refer back when you read SEO proposals or audit reports. Every credible SEO discussion uses these terms.
Further reading: Moz's SEO learning center.