SEO Glossary
SEO glossary, in plain English.
An SEO glossary from Nashville SEO Company. We provide local SEO, Google Business Profile optimization, AI search visibility, and web design, and these are the terms we use when we talk about it.
Fifty two terms covering classic SEO, local search, and the newer AI visibility vocabulary, defined without the jargon that usually surrounds them.
CH 01 / Local
SEO: a.
- AEO (Answer Engine Optimization)
- Optimizing content so it is selected as the direct answer in AI Overviews, featured snippets, and assistant responses rather than only ranking as a blue link.
- Alt text
- A written description of an image, read by screen readers and used by search engines to understand what the image shows.
- Anchor text
- The visible, clickable words in a hyperlink. Descriptive anchor text helps search engines understand what the linked page is about.
- Authority
- A general measure of how trustworthy and established a site or page appears, built through quality content, links, and consistent signals over time.
SEO: b.
- Backlink
- A link from another website to yours. Links from relevant, trusted sites act as endorsements and remain one of the strongest ranking factors.
- Bounce rate
- The share of visitors who arrive on a page and leave without any further interaction. High bounce rates can signal mismatched intent or a poor experience.
C.
- Canonical tag
- An HTML tag that tells search engines which version of a duplicate or near duplicate page is the primary one to index.
- Citation
- A mention of your business name, address, and phone number on another site. Consistent citations strengthen local ranking.
- Core Web Vitals
- Google's page experience metrics covering loading speed, interactivity, and visual stability.
- Crawl budget
- The number of pages a search engine will crawl on your site in a given period. Large sites waste it on duplicate and low value URLs.
- Crawlability
- How easily a search engine can discover and read the pages on your site.
D.
- Domain authority
- A third party score estimating how likely a domain is to rank. It is an industry metric, not a Google ranking factor.
- Duplicate content
- Substantially identical content appearing at more than one URL, which splits ranking signals and wastes crawl budget.
E.
- E-E-A-T
- Experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trust. The quality framework Google's raters use, weighted most heavily for health, finance, and other high stakes topics.
- Entity
- A distinct person, place, organization, or concept that search engines recognize and connect to other entities in a knowledge graph.
F.
- Faceted navigation
- Filters on a category page, common in e-commerce, that can generate thousands of near duplicate URLs if left uncontrolled.
- Featured snippet
- A short answer pulled from a page and displayed at the top of search results, above the standard listings.
G.
- GBP (Google Business Profile)
- The free business listing that powers your presence in Google Maps and the local map pack.
- GEO (Generative Engine Optimization)
- Building the content, structure, and entity signals that make generative AI systems surface and cite your business by name.
H.
- Headings (H1 to H6)
- The hierarchy of headings on a page. A single, descriptive H1 tells both readers and search engines what the page is about.
I.
- Impression-to-Click Gap
- The widening distance between how often a site appears in search results and how often it is clicked. Rising impressions paired with flat or falling clicks is the normal signature of zero-click growth rather than a sign of a technical problem.
- Indexing
- The process of a search engine storing a page so it can appear in results. A page can be crawled but not indexed.
- Intent
- What a searcher is actually trying to accomplish. Matching intent matters more than matching keywords.
- Internal linking
- Links between pages on your own site. Good internal linking spreads authority and shows search engines how your content relates.
K.
- Keyword cannibalization
- Two or more of your own pages competing for the same query, splitting signals so neither ranks as well as one strong page would.
- Keyword research
- Identifying the searches real customers run, along with their volume, difficulty, and intent.
L.
- Local pack
- The block of three business listings with a map that appears for local searches. Often called the map pack.
- Local SEO
- The practice of ranking a business for geographically bound searches, especially in the map pack.
M.
- Map pack
- See local pack. The three business results shown with a map for a local search.
- Meta description
- The summary shown under your title in search results. It does not directly affect ranking but strongly affects click through rate.
N.
- NAP consistency
- Keeping your business name, address, and phone number identical everywhere they appear online, which supports local ranking.
- Nofollow
- A link attribute that tells search engines not to pass ranking credit through that link.
O.
- On page SEO
- Everything you control on the page itself, including titles, headings, content, internal links, and structured data.
- Open Web Click
- A click from a search result to a website that is not owned by the search engine. Of every 1,000 US Google searches, roughly 276 now produce an open web click, down from 374 in 2024. The remaining clicks go to Google properties such as Maps and YouTube, or to paid ads.
- Organic traffic
- Visitors who arrive from unpaid search results.
P.
- PAA (People Also Ask)
- The expandable question boxes in search results. Ranking inside them wins visibility above many standard listings.
- Prominence
- A local ranking factor covering how well known and well reviewed a business is, both online and off.
R.
- Redirect (301)
- A permanent instruction that a URL has moved, passing most ranking signals to the new address.
- Rich result
- A search listing enhanced with extra detail such as star ratings, prices, or FAQs, generated from structured data.
- Robots.txt
- A file that tells crawlers which parts of a site they may or may not request.
S.
- Schema markup
- Structured data added to a page in a format search engines read, used to power rich results and clarify entities.
- Search Everywhere Optimization
- The practice of optimizing for every place people run queries, including Amazon, YouTube, Bing, social networks, and AI assistants, rather than for traditional search engines alone. Roughly one in five searches now happens somewhere other than a traditional search engine.
- Search intent
- See intent. Whether a searcher wants to learn, compare, find a location, or buy.
- SERP
- The search engine results page, including ads, AI Overviews, map packs, snippets, and organic listings.
- Share of Search
- The percentage of total search activity a platform receives when search is measured as a behavior rather than a channel. Across 41 major destinations, traditional search engines hold about 80%, commerce sites about 10%, social networks about 5.5%, and AI tools about 3.2%.
- Sitemap
- A file listing the URLs on your site that you want search engines to discover and crawl.
T.
- Technical SEO
- The work that makes a site crawlable, indexable, fast, and structurally sound so its content can rank at all.
- Title tag
- The clickable headline in search results and the single strongest on page signal of what a page is about.
- Topical authority
- Depth and breadth of quality coverage on a subject, which makes search engines more likely to trust your pages on it.
U.
- URL structure
- How your addresses are organized. Clean, readable, keyword relevant URLs help users and search engines alike.
Y.
- YMYL (Your Money or Your Life)
- Content that can affect health, safety, or finances. Google holds it to the strictest quality standard on the web.
Z.
- Zero-Click Search
- A search that ends without the searcher clicking any result, because the answer appears on the results page itself in an AI Overview, featured snippet, map pack, or knowledge panel. In the first four months of 2026, 68.01% of US Google searches ended without a click, up from 60.45% in 2024.
CH 02 / Services
Go deeper
Where these terms show up in practice.
CH 04 / Services
What we provide
Services we provide.
Every service we offer, stated plainly, so search engines and answer engines can read exactly what we provide and who we provide it for.
- Local SEO
- We provide map pack ranking, proximity grid rank tracking, and a real page for every area you serve.
- SEO Services we provide
- We provide technical fixes, site architecture, keyword mapping, and content built around how Middle Tennessee searches.
- Google Business Profile Optimization
- We provide category selection, service lists, photo and post cadence, review strategy, and response writing.
- AI Search Visibility
- We provide entity grounding so ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews name your business.
- Answer Engine Optimization
- We provide structured, citable content written to be quoted in AI Overviews and featured snippets.
- Generative Engine Optimization
- We provide consistent descriptions, schema, and directory records so models describe you accurately.
- Ecommerce SEO
- We provide category architecture, faceted navigation control, and product schema for Shopify, Woo, and custom stores.
- Shopify SEO
- We provide collection page structure, app bloat removal, and the product schema Shopify leaves undone.
- National SEO
- We provide topic clusters, digital PR, and link acquisition for businesses selling past the county line.
- Web Design
- We provide hand coded static HTML, schema that matches the visible text, and clean URLs from day one.
The short version
In one line
Nashville SEO Company provides a plain English SEO glossary for Nashville and Middle Tennessee businesses, covering local SEO, technical, ecommerce, and AI search terms defined without jargon. Every price is published, from $399 a month, month to month.
CH 03 / Approach
Get started
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