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SEO Glossary

Resources

SEO Terms Glossary:
Prerender.io

Keep up to speed with what’s new in SEO and AI-driven search. This SEO and AIO glossary defines the latest concepts to fuel your optimization strategy.

A

The practice of making websites usable for all people, including those with disabilities.

Optimizing content to appear as direct answers in search features like featured snippets, knowledge panels, and Google’s AI Overviews.

Specialized bots used by AI platforms like ChatGPT and Claude to gather web content for training or real-time information retrieval.

Optimizing content for visibility and performance on AI-powered search and content platforms.

AI-generated summaries that appear at the top of search results, synthesizing information from multiple sources.

A web development technique that allows web pages to update content dynamically without reloading the entire page.

A set of rules that allows different software applications to communicate with each other.

B

Software programs that automatically browse the web to collect information.

Temporary storage of web page resources on a user’s device to speed up subsequent visits.

C

The process of storing copies of files in a cache, or temporary storage location, for faster access.

The preferred version of a web page when multiple similar versions exist.

A network of servers distributed globally to deliver web content faster to users based on their location.

When a browser uses JavaScript to generate HTML content, rather than receiving it directly from the server.

Google’s metrics for measuring user experience, including LCP, FID, and CLS, and are part of Google’s ranking factors.

The number of pages a search engine will crawl on your site within a given timeframe.

The maximum number of requests a search engine crawler will make to a website within a given period.

How quickly search engines crawl your website’s pages.

The process of search engines discovering and scanning web pages.

A Core Web Vital measuring visual stability by quantifying how much page elements unexpectedly move during loading.

D

The programming interface for HTML documents that represents the page as a tree structure.

Content that changes based on user behavior, preferences, locations, or other variables. For example, product recommendations and stock availability.

Serving different versions of content to users versus search engines.

E

Processing and delivering content from servers closest to the user’s location.

Google’s expanded quality evaluation framework that now includes “Experience” alongside the original E-A-T factors.

Indexing API
Tools provided by search engines allowing direct notification when content is added or updated, accelerating the indexing process.

Optimization focused on how search engines understand concepts, people, places, and things rather than just keywords.

F

A Core Web Vital measuring the time it takes for the first piece of content to appear on screen.

G

A content optimization technique for AI search engines focuses on providing comprehensive, contextually relevant information that AI can easily understand and add to its generated responses.

Search experiences that produce AI-generated answers rather than traditional links, incorporating information from multiple sources.

H

A content management system that handles content creation and storage but not presentation.

Standard response codes given by web servers to indicate the status of requests.

An approach that uses different rendering methods for different parts of a website based on content type and performance needs.

The process where client-side JavaScript adds interactivity to server-rendered HTML, making static content dynamic after initial load.

I

The process of storing and organizing web pages in a search engine’s database.

A Core Web Vital measuring how quickly a page responds to user interactions.

A technique where the same JavaScript code runs on both server and client, combining benefits of server-side and client-side rendering.

J

External resources and libraries required for JavaScript functionality that can impact rendering performance and search visibility.

Libraries and structures used to build web applications (React, Vue, Angular, etc.).

L

A Core Web Vital measuring the time it takes for the largest content element to become visible.

A technique that defers loading of non-critical resources until they’re needed, improving initial page load performance.

Distributing network traffic across multiple servers.

A content optimization technique focused on making information easily understandable and extractable for large language models (LLMs) used in AI-powered search and content generation.

An emerging standard file (similar to robots.txt) that specifies how AI models and large language models should interact with website content.

M

HTML elements that provide metadata about a webpage.

Google’s practice of primarily using the mobile version of content for indexing and ranking.

O

Meta tags that control how URLs are displayed when shared on social media.

P

How quickly a webpage loads and becomes interactive.

Search engines’ ability to rank specific passages or sections of a page independently from the whole page.

Generating HTML content in advance instead of at request time.

Web applications that can function like native mobile apps.

R

How search engines order search results.

The process of converting website code into the visual elements users see.

The percentage of content successfully rendered compared to what’s available, indicating rendering efficiency for search engines.

Enhanced search results with additional information beyond the standard title and description.

A text file that tells search engines which pages they can or cannot crawl.

S

Code added to a website to describe its content to search engines, helping them understand and display it more effectively in search results, e.g., in rich snippets.

Tailoring content to match the specific goals behind user searches rather than just matching keywords.

Using HTML elements that clearly convey their meaning to both browsers and search engines, improving accessibility and SEO.

Crawlers used to analyze a website’s structure, content, and technical elements for SEO issues and opportunities.

The page displayed by search engines in response to a query.

Generating HTML content on the server rather than in the browser.

A web application that loads a single HTML page and dynamically updates content.

A file that lists important pages on your website to ensure search engines can find them.

An advanced server-side rendering technique that sends HTML in chunks as it’s generated rather than waiting for the entire page.

T

How long it takes for a browser to receive the first byte of response from a server.

How AI models process and “understand” content by breaking it into smaller units (tokens), affecting how content is interpreted and presented.

Meta tags that control how URLs are displayed when shared on Twitter.

Z

Search results that provide answers directly in SERPs, eliminating the need for users to click through to websites.

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