SEO Dictionary

Use this dictionary to understand common SEO and website-performance terms used in Firefly Sky SEO Suite.

Numbers

404 — An HTTP “file not found” response returned when the server cannot retrieve the requested page.

A

Alt text — Alternative text that describes an image when it cannot be displayed and helps search engines understand the image.

Audit — A structured examination of the factors affecting a website’s visibility. An SEO audit identifies strengths, issues, and recommended improvements.

B

Baidu Webmaster Tools — A platform for monitoring and optimizing a website’s visibility on Baidu.

Bing Webmaster Tools — Microsoft’s platform for monitoring indexing and search performance on Bing.

Breadcrumb — A navigation trail showing the current page’s position in the website hierarchy.

C

Competition — A keyword-difficulty measure indicating how hard it may be to rank for a specific search query.

F

Favicon — The small website icon displayed in browser tabs and sometimes alongside search results.

G

Google Analytics — A Google tool for understanding visitors, traffic sources, engagement, and website performance.

Google Search Console — A Google tool for monitoring indexing, search queries, crawling issues, and organic search performance.

Google Structured Data — Standardized markup that gives search engines additional context and can enable rich results.

Google Tag Manager — A tool for deploying and managing tracking tags without repeatedly editing website code.

H

HTML sitemap — A human-readable page that lists important site pages and helps visitors navigate the website.

I

Indexing — The process by which a search engine analyzes a page and stores information about it in its search index.

Instant Page — A performance technique that preloads a likely next page so it can open faster after a click.

Internal link — A hyperlink connecting one page of a website to another page on the same website.

J

JavaScript — A programming language used to add interactivity and dynamic behavior to webpages.

K

Keyword density — The frequency or percentage of a keyword appearing within a piece of content.

Knowledge Graph — Google’s database of facts about people, places, organizations, and things.

L

Lazy loading — Loading images or other resources only when they are needed, reducing the initial page load.

Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) — A Core Web Vital measuring how long it takes the largest visible page element to render.

Local business — Business information associated with a physical location and eligible for location-aware search experiences.

M

Meta description — A short description that may appear beneath a page title in search results.

Meta title — The title used to represent a webpage in search results and browser tabs.

Minification — Removing unnecessary characters and whitespace from code to reduce file size.

N

Nofollow link — A link carrying an attribute that tells search engines not to pass normal ranking signals through it.

Noindex — A directive asking search engines not to include a page in search results.

O

Open Graph tags — Metadata controlling how a page appears when shared on social networks.

Outbound link — A link from your website to a different domain.

P

Page response time — The time a page or server takes to respond to a request.

R

Robots.txt — A file telling search-engine crawlers which parts of a site may or may not be crawled.

S

SEO score — A summary metric showing how well a page or website follows selected search-optimization checks.

SEO checklist — A prioritized list of tasks generated from an audit to improve search visibility.

Speed score — A measure summarizing how quickly and smoothly a webpage loads.

Stop word — A common word such as “and,” “the,” or “what” that search engines may treat as less meaningful.

T

Title tag — The HTML element defining a webpage’s search-result headline.

Transition word — A word or phrase connecting ideas, such as “however,” “similarly,” or “finally.”

U

URL slug — The readable part of a URL identifying a specific page.

User-agent — The name identifying a browser or crawler, such as Googlebot, in requests and robots.txt rules.

V

Variable — A placeholder replaced with real information when a rule or workflow runs, for example {{collection name}}.

Search volume — The number of searches for a keyword within a given period.

Y

Yandex Webmaster Tools — A platform for monitoring and optimizing a website’s presence on Yandex.