Blogging, SEO & AdSense Glossary

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AdSense: Google's program that places ads on your website and pays you when visitors view or click them. Sites must be approved and follow the program policies.
Alt text: A short written description of an image, added in the image's alt attribute. It helps screen-reader users and helps search engines understand what the image shows.

Backlink: A link from another website to yours. Links from relevant, trustworthy sites are a positive signal for search engines.

Canonical URL: The preferred address of a page when the same content is reachable at more than one URL. A canonical tag tells search engines which version to index.
Click-through rate (CTR): The percentage of people who click after seeing something, calculated as clicks divided by impressions. It applies to search results and to ads.
Core Web Vitals: Google's page-experience measurements: loading speed (LCP), responsiveness (INP) and visual stability (CLS). Faster, steadier pages tend to be better for visitors.
Cornerstone content: Your most important, most thorough guides on a topic. Other related posts usually link to them so they carry the most weight on your site.
Cost per click (CPC): The amount an advertiser pays for one click on an ad. In AdSense, your share of that amount is what you earn per click.
Crawling: When search engine bots follow links to discover pages on the web. A page must be crawlable before it can be indexed.

E-E-A-T: Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness: the qualities Google's quality guidelines look for in helpful content. Showing real experience and who wrote the content helps.
Evergreen content: Content that stays useful for a long time, such as how-to guides and explainers, as opposed to news that goes out of date quickly.

Featured snippet: A highlighted answer box that Google sometimes shows at the top of results, pulled from a page that answers the question clearly.

GEO (Generative Engine Optimization): Making your content easy for AI assistants and AI search features to understand, quote and cite. Clear answers, structured headings, FAQs and trustworthy facts all help.

Impressions: The number of times something was shown, whether or not anyone clicked. Search Console counts impressions for your pages in search results.
Indexing: When a search engine stores a page in its database so it can appear in results. Not every crawled page gets indexed.
Internal link: A link from one page of your site to another page on the same site. Internal links help visitors and search engines find and understand your content.

Keyword: A word or phrase people type into a search engine. Good keyword research finds what your audience actually searches for.

Lead magnet: A free resource, such as a checklist, template or toolkit, offered in exchange for an email address or simply as a useful download.
llms.txt: A proposed plain-text file at the root of a site that gives AI assistants a short, clean summary of the site and its key pages. It is a convention, not a guarantee of how any AI uses your site.
Long-tail keyword: A longer, more specific search phrase, such as "how to start a blog in India for free". It usually has less competition and clearer intent.

Meta description: A short summary of a page placed in the HTML. Search engines may show it under your title in results, so it works like a small ad for the page.

Niche: The specific topic or audience your site focuses on. A clear niche makes it easier to build authority and attract the right readers.
Nofollow: A link attribute that tells search engines not to pass endorsement through that link. Often used on sponsored or user-submitted links.

Organic traffic: Visitors who arrive from unpaid search results rather than ads or social posts.

Page RPM: Estimated earnings per 1,000 pageviews, a common way to compare how well a page or site earns from ads.
Pageview: One load of a page. If a visitor opens three pages, that is three pageviews.

Robots.txt: A text file at the root of your site that tells crawlers which areas they may or may not crawl. It is a request, not a security tool.

Schema markup: Structured data added to a page, usually as JSON-LD, that describes its content (such as an article, FAQ or product) in a way machines can read.
Search intent: The goal behind a search: to learn something, find a specific site, compare options, or buy. Content ranks better when it matches the intent.
SERP: Search Engine Results Page: the page you see after you search. It can include ads, snippets, images and AI answers.
Session: A group of interactions by one visitor in a given period. One session can include many pageviews.
Sitemap: A file listing the important URLs of your site so search engines can find them. WordPress SEO plugins usually generate one for you.
Slug: The last part of a page's web address, such as "adsense-guide" in example.com/adsense-guide. Short, descriptive slugs are easier to read and share.

Title tag: The clickable headline of a page in search results, set in the HTML title element. It is one of the most important on-page elements.