Canonical URL

The version of a URL you tell Google to treat as the ‘primary’ when multiple URLs have similar content. Critical on ecommerce stores with faceted filters and variant URLs.

Category Page

A page that lists multiple products in a category or collection. Often the highest-converting URL on an ecommerce store and the primary ranking target for commercial queries.

Core Web Vitals

Google’s set of user-experience metrics: Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), Interaction to Next Paint (INP) and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS). Used as ranking signals.

Crawl Budget

The number of URLs Google will crawl on your site in a given period. Large catalogs with bad faceted nav waste it on low-value URLs.

CTR (Click-Through Rate)

The percentage of search impressions that result in a click. A leading indicator of title and meta description quality.

DR (Domain Rating)

Ahrefs’ 0–100 measure of the strength of a domain’s backlink profile. Similar to Moz’s Domain Authority.

E-E-A-T

Google’s rater guidelines for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness. Especially important for YMYL niches like health, finance and legal.

Faceted Navigation

Filters on category pages (size, colour, brand, price). Powerful for users; if not handled with SEO rules, generates thousands of low-value URLs.

Hreflang

An HTML or sitemap tag that tells Google which language and country version of a page to show to which user. Foundation of international SEO.

Indexation

Whether Google has stored a URL in its search index. URLs can be crawled but not indexed, or indexed but not ranked.

KD (Keyword Difficulty)

Ahrefs’ estimate of how hard it is to rank in the top 10 for a keyword. 0–100 scale; relative within a niche.

Long-Tail Keyword

A specific, low-volume keyword with higher intent. ‘Buy 14k gold engagement ring’ vs ‘jewelry’. Most ecommerce revenue comes from long-tail.

Meta Description

The summary text below the title in a search result. Doesn’t directly affect rankings but heavily influences CTR.

Open Graph (OG)

Meta tags that control how a URL renders when shared on social media (title, description, image).

PDP (Product Detail Page)

The page for a single product. The unit of conversion in ecommerce SEO.

Product Schema

Structured data markup describing a product (name, image, price, availability). Powers Google rich results and Knowledge Graph signals.

Redirect (301 / 302)

An HTTP response that sends a user from one URL to another. 301 = permanent (passes SEO signals); 302 = temporary.

Rich Results

Enhanced search results (ratings, prices, FAQ snippets) powered by structured data.

Schema Markup

Standardized structured data (JSON-LD) that tells search engines what a page is about. Foundation of rich results.

SERP

Search Engine Results Page. The page Google shows for a query.

Sitemap.xml

A machine-readable list of URLs you want indexed. Submitted to Google Search Console.

SSR (Server-Side Rendering)

Rendering HTML on the server before sending to the browser. Critical for SEO on headless / SPA storefronts.

Topical Authority

The signal that your site is a credible source on a topic, built through breadth and depth of relevant content.

URL Slug

The human-readable portion of a URL after the domain (e.g., /collections/winter-coats/). Affects rankings and CTR.

Variant URL

A separate URL for a product variant (size, colour). Can cause duplicate-content issues if not canonicalized properly.

YMYL (Your Money or Your Life)

Google’s designation for topics that affect users’ health, finances or safety. Higher quality bar for content.