The SEO Glossary: 25 Terms Explained Like You Are Five

SEO people love their jargon. Crawling, indexing, canonical tags, E-E-A-T. It can feel like everyone is speaking a language you were never taught.

So let’s fix that. Here are 25 SEO and GEO terms, explained so simply that a five-year-old could (mostly) understand them. Bookmark this page. You are going to need it.

If you are brand new to SEO, start with our intro post on what SEO is and why your small business needs it. Then come back here when you hit a word that makes your brain hurt.

The Glossary

1. SERP (Search Engine Results Page) The page you see after you type something into Google and hit enter. That is the SERP. All the links, ads, maps, and boxes on that page? All part of the SERP.

2. Backlink When another website links to yours. Think of it like a recommendation. The more (quality) recommendations you get, the more Google trusts you.

3. Crawling Google sends little robot programs (called crawlers or spiders) to visit your website and read all your pages. That process is crawling. If Google cannot crawl your site, it does not know you exist.

4. Indexing After Google crawls your site, it decides whether to save your pages in its giant library. Getting saved in that library is called indexing. If your page is not indexed, it will never show up in search results.

5. Domain Authority A score (usually 1 to 100) that predicts how likely your website is to rank in search results. It is not an official Google thing. It was created by Moz, but everyone uses it as a general measure of how “strong” a website is.

6. Anchor Text The clickable words in a link. If someone links to your bakery with the words “best cupcakes in Austin,” that phrase is the anchor text. It helps Google understand what the linked page is about.

7. Canonical Tag A way to tell Google, “Hey, I know there are multiple versions of this page floating around, but THIS one is the real one.” It prevents confusion when similar content exists at different URLs.

8. Schema (Structured Data) Extra code you add to your website that helps Google understand your content better. It is like putting labels on everything. “This is a recipe.” “This is a business address.” “These are our hours.” It can earn you those fancy rich results in Google.

9. GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) The new kid on the block. GEO is about optimizing your content so it gets picked up and referenced by AI-powered search tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google’s AI Overviews. Think of it as SEO’s younger, cooler sibling.

10. AI Overviews Those AI-generated answer boxes that now appear at the top of some Google searches. Google’s AI reads a bunch of web pages and writes a summary for the user. Getting your content cited in an AI Overview is the new “position zero.”

11. E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness) Google’s framework for evaluating content quality. Basically: does the person writing this have real experience? Are they an expert? Is the site authoritative? Can people trust it? It is especially important for health, finance, and legal content.

12. Core Web Vitals Three specific measurements Google uses to judge your website’s user experience: how fast it loads (LCP), how quickly it responds to clicks (INP), and how much stuff jumps around while loading (CLS). Want more detail? Our on-page SEO checklist covers the practical side.

13. Local Pack The box of three business listings (with a map) that appears in Google when you search for something local, like “plumber near me.” Getting into the local pack is gold for small businesses.

14. NAP (Name, Address, Phone Number) Your business name, address, and phone number. These need to be consistent everywhere they appear online: your website, Google Business Profile, Yelp, directories, all of it. Inconsistencies confuse Google and hurt your local rankings.

15. Long-Tail Keyword A longer, more specific search phrase. Instead of “shoes,” a long-tail keyword would be “comfortable running shoes for flat feet.” They get less traffic individually, but the people searching them are way more likely to buy.

16. Bounce Rate The percentage of visitors who land on your site and leave without clicking anything else. A high bounce rate usually means people did not find what they were looking for (or your site scared them away).

17. CTR (Click-Through Rate) The percentage of people who see your listing in search results and actually click on it. If 100 people see your result and 5 click, your CTR is 5%. Higher is better.

18. Meta Description The short summary that appears under your page title in search results. Google does not always use the one you write, but when it does, a good meta description can be the difference between a click and a scroll-past.

19. Alt Text A short description you add to images on your website. It helps visually impaired users understand the image, and it helps Google understand what the image shows. “Golden retriever playing fetch in a park” beats “IMG_4392.jpg” every time.

20. Sitemap A file (usually XML) that lists all the important pages on your website. It is like giving Google a map of your site and saying, “Here is everything worth looking at.” You submit it through Google Search Console.

21. Robots.txt A file on your website that tells search engine crawlers which pages they are allowed to visit and which ones they should ignore. Think of it as a bouncer for your website.

22. 301 Redirect A permanent redirect from one URL to another. If you change a page’s address, a 301 tells Google (and visitors), “This page moved permanently. Go here instead.” It passes most of the original page’s ranking power to the new one.

23. Nofollow A tag you can add to a link that tells Google, “Do not count this as a recommendation.” It is commonly used for paid links, user-generated content, and links you do not want to vouch for.

24. Organic Traffic Visitors who find your website through unpaid search results (not ads). This is the traffic SEO is designed to grow. It is free, it is sustainable, and it tends to convert better than paid traffic.

25. Keyword Cannibalization When multiple pages on your site compete for the same keyword. Instead of one strong page ranking well, you end up with two mediocre pages fighting each other. Google gets confused, and neither page wins.

You Are Officially Smarter Now

There you go. Twenty-five terms, zero jargon headaches. Next time someone throws “canonical tags” or “E-E-A-T” at you in a meeting, you can nod knowingly instead of Googling under the table.

Want to put this knowledge to work? Our on-page SEO checklist walks you through the practical steps to optimize your pages using the concepts you just learned. And if you want someone to handle all of this for you (no judgment, running a business is hard enough), we are here to help.