Someone mentioned "SEO," "SERP," or "keywords," and you just nodded without really understanding? You're not alone. Search optimization has its own vocabulary, and nobody is born knowing it. This glossary explains the most common terms, simply, with no jargon — so you can follow an SEO conversation, or even have one, without feeling lost.
What is SEO, in one sentence?
If you're wondering "SEO, what is it?" — here's the simplest answer. SEO (Search Engine Optimization) covers everything that makes a website appear in Google's results, without paying for advertising. If your site shows up when someone searches for something related to your business, that's SEO at work. Some people also search for a straightforward SEO definition: in short, it's the practice of helping search engines understand and recommend your content.
The words you keep hearing
Keyword — What people actually type into Google. Example: "web agency marrakech."
Content — The text on a page (an article, a service page, a product description). Google reads this content to understand what the page is about.
Backlink — A link from another website pointing to yours. The more links you have from trustworthy sites, the more Google trusts you back.
Internal linking — The links between pages on your own site. It helps visitors navigate, and it also helps Google understand your site's structure.
Title and meta description — The title and short text that show up in Google before someone even clicks your page. This is often what decides whether they click at all.
Indexing — The fact that a page is known and recorded by Google. A page that isn't indexed has no chance of appearing in a search, no matter how good its content is.
Authority — An informal measure of the trust a site has built up in Google's eyes, mostly through backlinks and age. A young site starts with little authority, and that builds over time.
What is a SERP?
SERP stands for "Search Engine Results Page" — the page Google shows after a search. When people talk about a "SERP position," they simply mean where your site appears on that page: near the top, further down, or on page 2 (where almost nobody ever goes).
Understanding the SERP helps set realistic expectations: ranking on a highly competitive SERP (like "restaurant") takes longer than one with little competition. The SERP also contains more than just classic blue links: expandable questions ("people also ask"), rich snippets with stars or a price, or a direct answer box at the top of the page. These elements take up space and can capture attention before the first organic result even appears.
GEO, the new term to know
GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) is SEO's younger sibling. It's no longer just about showing up in Google — it's about being cited when someone asks ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Google AI a question. The principle stays similar: clear, well-structured content is more likely to be picked up by these tools, the same way good content is more likely to rank well in Google.
Terms not to confuse
Organic vs. paid search — Organic (SEO) is free but slow to build. Paid (Google Ads) is fast but stops the moment you stop paying.
Traffic vs. conversion — Traffic is how many visitors show up. Conversion is what they do next (fill out a form, make a purchase). A lot of traffic with no conversion doesn't help much.
Local SEO vs. national SEO — Local SEO targets a specific geographic area (a city, a neighborhood), often through a Google Business Profile listing. National SEO targets a broader audience, with no notion of proximity.
A few more technical terms, if you want to go further
Crawl — The automatic process by which Google's bots explore a site's pages to discover them and update them in the index.
Core Web Vitals — A set of measurements evaluating a page's speed and visual stability. A slow page, or one that "jumps around" while loading, gets a lower score.
Structured data (schema) — An invisible markup added to a page's code to help Google precisely understand its content (a review, a recipe, a Q&A), which can make enriched information appear in the results.
This vocabulary keeps evolving over time
SEO has existed since the early days of Google, but its vocabulary has never been fixed. Some terms nearly disappear (people talk much less about "keyword density" than they did ten years ago), while others show up as Google itself evolves,"GEO" is the most recent example, a word that simply didn't exist before AI assistants became part of everyday search habits. This isn't a sign of instability: it's actually proof that SEO keeps adapting to how people genuinely search for information, year after year.
A concrete example tying all these words together
Take a simple case: a restaurant that never shows up in Google for "restaurant Marrakech center." The owner first checks whether the page is indexed. Then they check their position in the SERP : page 4, so nearly invisible. They notice the content never explicitly mentions the target keyword, and no other site links to the page. They fix the content, add some internal linking from the homepage, and wait. A few weeks later, the position moves up to page 2. That's exactly the kind of step-by-step reasoning, term by term, this glossary is meant to make clearer.
FAQ
Do you need to be technical to understand SEO?
No. The basics (keyword, content, link) can be understood in a few minutes. The technical side exists, but it mostly concerns the people implementing it, not those who just want to understand what's happening.
Do SEO and GEO use the same keywords?
Largely yes — both start from the real questions your potential customers are asking. GEO simply adds an extra requirement for clarity, which also helps real human readers.
Where can I actually see my SERP position?
By typing your keyword into Google and checking where your site appears, or through dedicated tools that track this position over time.
How long does it take to remember all this vocabulary?
No need to memorize it all at once. Most people who work with SEO day to day picked up these terms gradually, through real situations, not by memorizing them ahead of time.
Want to go further? Discover our SEO & GEO agency in Marrakech.
