There's a moment in almost every marketing sales call where the vendor says something like "we'll improve your domain authority through strategic link acquisition while optimizing your crawl budget," and the business owner nods, because nodding feels better than asking what any of that means.
Stop nodding. Most SEO jargon describes simple ideas, and some of it describes ideas so simple that the jargon exists mainly to justify the invoice. Here's the cheat sheet: the terms you're most likely to hear, roughly alphabetical, each in plain English. Keep it open during your next sales call. When a vendor can't explain a term as simply as this page does, that tells you something too.
A through C
Algorithm
The set of rules a search engine uses to decide which pages show up first. Google adjusts it constantly, which is why anyone promising a permanent ranking is promising something they don't control.
Alt text
A short written description attached to an image so search engines (and screen readers for blind users) know what the picture shows. "Technician replacing a water heater" is good alt text; stuffing it with keywords is not.
Anchor text
The visible, clickable words in a link. If a local newspaper links to you with the words "Wilmington roofing company," that text gives Google a hint about what your site is about.
Backlink
A link from someone else's website to yours. Search engines treat good ones as votes of credibility, which is why people try to sell you bad ones in bulk; we covered which ones are worth having in our backlinks guide.
Bounce rate
The percentage of visitors who look at one page and leave without doing anything else. A high number can mean the page didn't match what they wanted, or it can mean they found your phone number and called, so treat it as a clue, not a verdict.
Citation
In local SEO, any online mention of your business name, address, and phone number, like a directory listing. Consistency matters: the same name and number everywhere beats being listed in 200 directories with three different phone numbers.
CMS (content management system)
The software you use to edit your website without writing code. WordPress is the most famous one; if your vendor says "we'll build it on a CMS," they mean "you'll be able to edit it yourself."
Conversion
The moment a visitor does the thing you wanted: calls, fills out a form, books an appointment. Traffic is people walking past the shop; conversions are people walking in, and they're the number that pays your bills.
Core Web Vitals
Google's measurements of whether your site loads fast and behaves smoothly on real devices. They matter, but modestly; a fast site with no useful content still ranks behind a decent site that answers the question. The technical details live at web.dev if your developer wants them.
Crawling
Search engines constantly send automated programs to read pages across the web. "Crawling your site" just means Google's robot visited and read your pages.
Crawl budget
How much attention Google's robot gives your site per visit. Vendors love this term, but it's a genuine concern for sites with hundreds of thousands of pages, not for a 20-page local business site. If someone selling to a small business leads with crawl budget, be suspicious.
D through K
Domain authority
A score (usually 1 to 100) invented by SEO software companies, not by Google, to estimate how strong a site's reputation is. It's a rough third-party guess, useful for comparison, but it is not a number Google uses, and "we'll raise your domain authority" is not a deliverable that pays your bills.
Duplicate content
The same text appearing on multiple pages or multiple sites. Google mostly just picks one version to show rather than punishing you, but copying a manufacturer's product descriptions word-for-word means competing against everyone else who pasted the same paragraph.
Featured snippet
The boxed answer Google sometimes shows at the top of results, pulled from a page that answered the question directly. You can't pay for it or apply for it; you earn it by answering questions clearly, as Google explains in its own documentation.
Google Business Profile (GBP)
Your free business listing on Google: the panel with your hours, phone, reviews, and map pin. For most local businesses this single free listing drives more calls than everything else combined, and you manage it through Google's business tools.
Google Search Console
Google's free dashboard showing how your site performs in search: what people searched, what they clicked, and what's broken. If your SEO vendor hasn't set up Search Console and given you access, ask why, and don't accept a fuzzy answer.
Heading tags (H1, H2, H3)
The headlines and subheadlines on a page, in order of importance. They help readers skim and help search engines understand the page's structure; the H1 is the page's main title, and there should generally be one of it.
Impressions
How many times your site appeared in someone's search results, whether or not they clicked. Lots of impressions and few clicks usually means you're showing up for the wrong searches or your title isn't compelling.
Indexing
After Google crawls a page, it decides whether to store it in its giant library of search results. A page that isn't indexed cannot rank, period, no matter how good it is, which is why "is it indexed" is the first question to ask about any page that's getting no traffic.
Keyword
The word or phrase someone types (or says) into a search engine. "Emergency plumber Wilmington" is a keyword; everything in SEO ultimately comes back to matching real pages to real searches.
Keyword stuffing
Cramming a phrase into a page over and over ("best Wilmington plumber, our Wilmington plumbers, plumber Wilmington services...") in hopes of ranking. It stopped working years ago and now reads as spam to both Google and human beings.
L through R
Landing page
Any page built to receive visitors from a specific source, like an ad or a search, and get them to take one action. The key idea: the page should match what the visitor was promised, so an ad about drain cleaning should not land on your generic homepage.
Link building
The practice of getting other sites to link to yours. Done honestly, it's sponsorships, associations, suppliers, and press; done dishonestly, it's buying links from spam networks, which Google treats as cheating.
Local pack
The block of three map results, with stars and phone numbers, that Google shows for searches like "electrician near me." For local businesses it's the most valuable real estate on the page, and it's driven mostly by your Google Business Profile, reviews, and proximity to the searcher.
Long-tail keyword
A longer, more specific search like "tankless water heater installation cost Wilmington" instead of just "water heater." Fewer people search it, but they're far closer to buying, and the competition is far thinner.
Meta description
The snippet of text under your page title in search results. It doesn't directly affect ranking, but it's your ad copy for the click, so "Family-owned HVAC, same-day service in Wilmington" beats an auto-generated sentence fragment.
NAP (name, address, phone)
The trio of facts that must match everywhere your business appears online. Mismatched NAP across your site, Google profile, and directories makes search engines less confident about showing you.
Organic traffic
Visitors who found you through unpaid search results, as opposed to ads. It's the traffic SEO is trying to grow, and it's the traffic that keeps arriving after you stop paying for clicks.
Page speed
How fast your pages load. It matters most on phones with weak signals, which is where your customers actually are; test-at-your-desk speed always flatters the real number.
PPC (pay-per-click)
Paid search ads, like Google Ads, where you pay each time someone clicks. The honest comparison: PPC starts fast and stops the moment you stop paying, SEO starts slow and compounds; most established businesses eventually want some of both.
Ranking
Where your page appears in search results for a given search. There's no such thing as "ranking number one" in general, only ranking for specific searches, so always ask "ranking for what, searched by whom?"
Redirect
An automatic forward from one web address to another, used when pages move. They matter most during a site redesign: skip them and every link and ranking the old pages earned dies with the old addresses.
Responsive design
A website that automatically reshapes itself for phones, tablets, and desktops. In 2026 this is the bare minimum, not a feature worth a line item; most of your visitors are on phones.
S through Z
Schema markup (structured data)
Invisible labels in your site's code that tell search engines exactly what things are: "this is our address," "these are FAQs," "these are reviews." It helps you qualify for richer-looking search results, and Google documents the formats it reads in its structured data guides.
SERP
Search Engine Results Page, the page of results you see after searching. When a vendor says "SERP features," they mean the maps, snippets, videos, and other boxes that appear alongside the ten traditional links.
Sitemap
A file on your site listing every page, so search engines can find them all efficiently. Any properly built site generates one automatically; submitting it to Google and Bing is a five-minute, one-time task.
Title tag
The clickable headline of your page in search results, and one of the strongest signals about what the page covers. "Water Heater Repair in Wilmington, NC | Your Company" works; "Home" repeated across every page does not.
Technical SEO
The plumbing of search visibility: site speed, indexing, redirects, sitemaps, mobile behavior, structured data. For a small business site it's mostly a checklist done right once during the build, not an ongoing monthly battle, which is worth remembering when it shows up as a recurring fee.
UX (user experience)
How easy and pleasant your site is to actually use: can a visitor find your phone number, prices, and service area in seconds, on a phone, with one thumb? Google increasingly rewards sites people don't bounce off of, so UX and SEO are converging into the same job.
How to use this in a sales call
Three habits will save you more money than any individual definition.
First, ask for the plain-English version of everything. A competent vendor can explain any of these terms the way this page does, in a sentence or two, connected to your business. Evasion or condescension is a pricing strategy, not expertise.
Second, ask what each deliverable means in customer terms. "We'll improve your technical SEO" should cash out as "your pages will load fast, all of them will be indexed, and your service pages will be eligible for map and snippet results." If it can't be cashed out, it shouldn't be invoiced.
Third, ask which items are one-time fixes and which are genuinely ongoing. Sitemaps, redirects, schema, and speed are mostly built-once. Content, reviews, and links are genuinely ongoing. A retainer that charges monthly for built-once items is the oldest trick in this industry, and we wrote a whole piece on it in our cheap SEO warning signs and our breakdown of agency retainers.
None of this means SEO vendors are crooks. Plenty do honest, valuable work. The jargon just makes it hard to tell the honest ones from the rest, and the entire purpose of this page is to take that advantage away.
Or skip the vocabulary quiz entirely
At Omnyra, the deal is simple enough that you don't need a glossary to evaluate it. We're a veteran-owned shop in Wilmington, NC. We've built 1,500+ small business sites in the last 90 days, including portfolio clients like airsupporthvac.com, sanosteam.com, and ramartrans.com, and every term on this page that matters for a local business is handled in the build, not sold back to you monthly.
We build done-with-you websites live on a call with you: first draft in 24 hours, live in 7 days, guaranteed. Minimal starts at $500. Standard is $2,000 plus $200/mo with SEO and AI-search optimization included. Max is $3,500 plus $400/mo and adds a 24/7 AI receptionist. Super Max starts at $6,000. Pay-in-4 and Klarna financing available.
Book a call and bring your hardest questions, jargon or otherwise. Or read the pricing first; it's written in the same plain English as this page, on purpose.