Glossary of terms

Gated content is online material that requires a form to be filled out in order for someone to access the content. For example, having access to an exclusive e-book, only after a form requiring your full name and email address.

A gateway page is a type of spam that redirects a website visitor to another website by inserting results for particular keywords and keyword phrases. These pages are designed to increase traffic to a website that has little or no relevancy to the original website.

Geographic modifiers, also known as geo-modifiers, refer to location-specific keywords used to assist and define search queries. For example, 'Gym' is not a geo-modifier, but 'Gym in Manchester' is.

Google Ads (AdWords) is a pay-per-click online advertising platform hosted by Google, that allows advertisers to display and promote their businesses through the search engine results page.

Google Alerts is a free notification service offered by Google that sends emails to users, notifying them with summarised search activity regarding search terms.

Google algorithm is a complex system used to retrieve data from its search index and provide the best possible results for a certain search query. For example. If someone searches 'restaurants near me', the results that show will depend on the location or country of the individual.

Google Analytics is a free analytics platform that allows a user to track and analyse the performance of a website or application. This is capable due to google providing real-time statistics and analysis of user interaction from within the website.

When a user types a letter, word or phrase into the search bar, Google will show a number of search suggestions. The feature is believed to save thousands of seconds every day, mostly on mobile devices. As well as being convenient, SEO professionals can use it as a powerful tool in their keyword research, strategy creation and intent exploration.

Due to Google’s algorithm ranking pages higher for particular keywords, web pages implementing a Google bombing campaign will create large numbers of links with those terms as the anchor text. Almost the exact opposite of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation), the aim of such Google bombing is to make the web pages rank for off-topic - rather than relevant - keywords.

With a Google Business Profile, businesses can manage the information that users find when searching for it online. This information, including address, opening hours and website, can be managed for both Search and Maps, while the tool also allows business owners to read and reply to customer reviews on Google.

The Google Caffeine update allowed the search engine to crawl data more efficiently and add sites to its index quicker. This made fresher information available across a wider range of websites, although it had a very minor impact on rankings. Previously, sites’ content would be reindexed every couple of weeks, but Caffeine made this occur in seconds. 

Google Keyword Planner is a free keyword tool that is part of Google Ads. SEOs use this tool to research keywords, view estimates of the search volumes they receive, and predict how much it will cost to target these words. It also allows users to see how searches change over time, allowing SEOs to identify search trends and target keywords at the right time.

Google My Business, now called Google Business, allows you to list your business on Google so people can find it on Google search and maps. To claim ownership of this business profile, you need to set up an account with Google Business, then you can customise and manage the profile. This is good for local SEO and will help people discover your business in local results.

If Google thinks your website goes against its Webmaster Guidelines, it can institute a Google penalty. This may be because you have used keyword stuffing, hidden text, or another black-hat SEO technique to try to manipulate Google's rankings. Google can issue a penalty for these actions to demote your website's position in search rankings or remove it from listings altogether (de-indexing). This penalty might be for your whole website or just a specific offending URL.

Google Search Console is a free Google tool that allows you to monitor and improve how your website appears in search results. Google Search Console can help you check that Google has crawled your site, request that updated content is re-indexed, identify links to your website from other sites, view which search queries show your site, and receive notifications for issues on the website. Google Search Console can be used alongside other Google tools such as Google Ads, Google Analytics, and Google Trends.

Google Trends is a free tool from Google that can be used to track and compare searches for different keywords. With this tool, you can see the popularity of different search terms in different countries with a history going back to 2004. SEOs can use Google Trends to identify search trends and compare keyword popularity over time.

Googlebot is the name of Google's web crawler which crawls the internet finding pages and adding them to the Google index. Googlebot follows links and gathers information about the content on each page in order to create a detailed index from which the most relevant pages can be presented as search results.

Guest blogging, also sometimes called guest posting, is where a person publishes content on a third party website that promotes and links back to their own site. This is a useful strategy for SEO because it created backlinks, indicating to Google's algorithm that your page is a trusted and useful authority and therefore should be ranked more highly.