SEO glossary and web basics

These are the base terms the rest of this record assumes. Read this first if a later document uses a word without defining it.¹

Niche and domain terms

• Niche — the topic of a website. Example: niche = wireless mic; types of niches within it = "best wireless mic", "buy wireless mic".
• Domain — the address of a website on the internet, like a nameplate that tells people where to find it. Domain name is the unique name itself (google.com, yahoo.com).
• Keyword — a specific word or phrase people type into a search engine. Example: "best running shoes" is a keyword.
• Search volume — how many times a keyword is searched in a search engine within a period, usually monthly. Not the same thing as search traffic, which is how many visits a website actually gets from search — a keyword or niche has a search volume; a website has search traffic.
• SERP (Search Engine Results Page) — the page a search engine shows after a query: websites, pages, images, videos.
• Trend — a general movement in a direction over time (fashion, technology, business, social behaviour). Google Trends shows which niche is trending.
• Keyword difficulty (KD) — how hard it is to rank a keyword; it measures the competition you'll face reaching the top results.
• Search intent / user intent — the goal behind a user's search query; understanding it lets a search engine (and a content writer) return the most relevant result.
• Citation — a mention of a website or source, used as a reference or credibility signal (e.g. a search engine or an AI answer citing a page as where an answer came from).

Types of niches (by intent)

1. Knowledge base intent — factual answers (e.g. exam results, admissions).
2. FMA (First Mover Advantage) — the edge a business gets from being first to a market.
3. Downloadable intent — users want a file (software, e-book, template, music, image) for offline use. Related: e-commerce intent — users want to buy a product online.
4. Affiliate-based intent — users intend to promote or buy through affiliate links, earning a commission on the sale.
5. Service-based intent — users want to buy or promote a service (consulting, legal, marketing, beauty, cleaning, fitness).
6. Local business intent — users want a nearby business (restaurants, shops, local services).
7. Tool-based intent — users want a specific tool or app to complete a task.
8. Event-based intent — users want information about a time-bound event (conference, concert, sports, wedding).

How a search engine works

"Search engine" is no longer only Google, Bing, and Yahoo — an LLM (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini) now also answers search-like questions directly, sometimes citing a page as its source. The mechanics below describe a traditional search engine; a later document covers what changes when the "search engine" is an AI answering directly (see Why SEO matters, and what ranks a page).

A traditional search engine follows three steps to surface relevant pages among billions:

1. Crawling — bots (crawlers/spiders) scan the internet for new and updated pages, following links from page to page.
2. Indexing — a crawled page is stored in a massive database, the index. The engine analyses content, keywords, images and structure; duplicate content or errors can keep a page out of the index.
3. Ranking — when a user searches, the engine ranks indexed pages by relevance and quality.

Networking basics behind every website

• ISP (Internet Service Provider) — a company giving individuals and businesses internet access (fiber, DSL, cable, satellite, dial-up, wireless).
• URL (Uniform Resource Locator) — the web address used to reach a resource, e.g. https://www.example.com/blog/article.html.
• WWW — an optional subdomain prefix before the main domain.
• DNS (Domain Name System) — the internet's phonebook: it translates a domain name (google.com) into an IP address (142.250.130.14) that computers use to identify each other.
• SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) — a security protocol that encrypts the connection between a browser and a server, shown as the padlock icon in the address bar.
• Web hosting — a service that stores a website's files on a server so it is reachable when someone types the domain name.
• HTTPS (Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure) — the encrypted, secure version of HTTP; it protects data moving between a browser and a website from interception.

Footnotes

1. iSkills SEO course notes, compiled 2025. ↩