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Glossary
You do not need to become an SEO. You only need to know what the words on the invoice mean, so here they are in plain language.
Quick note. SEO analysis services range from a free crawl to a paid monthly suite, and both produce words you may not know.
Words first. The terms below are grouped by where you meet them: on your site, in a dashboard, and in a link order. Where we use a number, it is an example or a fact about our own marketplace. Skim it once, then keep the page open next to your next quote or invoice, and tick off every word you now understand.
| Term | Plain meaning |
|---|---|
| Title tag | The headline Google may show for your page in results. |
| Meta description | The summary under it; it does not rank, but it can earn clicks. |
| Core Web Vitals | Google's speed and stability measures for a page. |
| Sitemap | A file that lists your pages for crawlers. |
| Canonical | The tag that says which version of a page is the main one. |
| Term | Plain meaning |
|---|---|
| Impression | Your page appeared in a search result. |
| Click-through rate | Clicks divided by impressions. |
| Average position | Where you appeared on average, which hides a lot. |
| Keyword difficulty | A tool's estimate of how hard a phrase is; each vendor computes it differently. |
| Crawl | A robot visiting pages to read them. |
| Term | Plain meaning |
|---|---|
| Dofollow | A link that does not carry the nofollow tag, so it may pass authority. |
| Domain Rating (DR) | A 0 to 100 score from Ahrefs; Moz has its own called Domain Authority. |
| Referring domains | The count of different sites linking to a page. |
| Donor | The site that hosts the link to you. |
| Anchor text | The clickable words of the link. |
| Tool | What owners usually use it for |
|---|---|
| Google Search Console | Free: impressions, clicks, indexing problems |
| Google Analytics | Visits and what visitors do on the site |
| Screaming Frog | Crawling your own site for broken pages |
| Semrush | Suite: tracking, audits, keyword research |
| Ahrefs | Suite with a large link index and DR |
| Moz | Domain Authority and local listings tools |
DR, Domain Authority and keyword difficulty are tool-made numbers. Google does not use them. They help you compare options, nothing more.
Take one example, an invented one: a quote offers fifty dofollow links with DR 40 plus. Ask which donors, in which niche, and at what price per link.
Compare the answer with our price bands and timeline. If the vendor cannot name the donors, treat the quote as a mystery box.
Backlink and referring domain are not the same. Ten links from one site count as one referring domain.
Nofollow, sponsored and UGC are attributes Google introduced in September 2019 to mark links by type, and it treats them as hints rather than strict rules. Dofollow is simply the lack of those tags.
Organic traffic is visitors who arrive from unpaid search results. Local pack traffic is a different bucket again, and Search Console shows both mixed unless you segment them.
If a quote uses a word that is not here, ask the vendor to explain it in one sentence. A good one can, and a vague answer tells you something too.