Seo agencies glossary

Short, plain-English definitions of the terms you'll meet when choosing a SEO Agency provider in Malaysia.

Canonical tag: A canonical tag is an HTML link element, written as rel="canonical", that tells search engines which URL is the preferred version of a page when several URLs show the same or very similar content. It helps consolidate ranking signals onto one address.
Search intent: Search intent is the goal a person has when they type a query into a search engine, such as learning something, finding a specific site, comparing options, or completing a purchase. Search engines aim to match each results page to the intent behind the query.
What are Core Web Vitals?: Core Web Vitals are Google's set of three user-experience metrics for web pages: Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) for loading speed, Interaction to Next Paint (INP) for responsiveness, and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS) for visual stability.
What is a backlink?: A backlink is a hyperlink on one website that points to another website. Search engines use backlinks as one signal of how much other sites trust and reference a page, and links marked nofollow tell them not to pass that credit.
What is a Google Business Profile?: A Google Business Profile is a free listing that lets a business appear in Google Maps and local search results. It holds details such as the business name, address, phone number, opening hours, categories, photos, and customer reviews.
What is a Google penalty (manual action)?: A Google penalty (manual action) is a ranking sanction applied by a Google reviewer after finding that a site breaks the spam policies, such as unnatural links or thin content. It is reported in Google Search Console under Security & Manual Actions, which separates it from ranking drops caused by automated algorithms.
What is a local citation?: A local citation is any online mention of a business's name, address, and phone number (NAP) on another website. Structured citations sit in formal directory listings, while unstructured citations appear in articles, blogs, or social posts without a set format.
What is a local pack?: The local pack is the block of three business listings with a map that Google often shows near the top of results for searches with local intent, such as "SEO agency Kuala Lumpur." Placement depends mainly on relevance, distance from the searcher, and the prominence of the business profile.
What is a SERP?: A SERP (search engine results page) is the page a search engine returns after a user enters a query. It mixes organic listings with features such as snippets, the local pack, and ads.
What is an XML sitemap?: An XML sitemap is a structured file, usually named sitemap.xml, that lists the URLs on a website a owner wants search engines to find and crawl. It helps search engines discover pages faster and understand which content is current.
What is anchor text?: Anchor text is the clickable words in a hyperlink. Search engines read it as a hint about what the linked page is about, so its wording affects how that page is understood.
What is black hat SEO?: Black hat SEO is the use of search engine manipulation tactics, such as paid link schemes, cloaking, and keyword stuffing, that violate Google's spam policies. Sites caught using them can lose rankings or be removed from search results.
What is crawl budget?: Crawl budget is the number of URLs Googlebot is willing and able to crawl on a website within a given period. It is shaped by how much crawling the site can handle and how much Google wants to crawl it.
What is domain authority?: Domain authority (DA) is a 1 to 100 score created by Moz that estimates how likely a website is to rank in search engine results, based on its link profile. It is a third-party metric and is not used by Google to rank pages.
What is E-E-A-T?: E-E-A-T is a framework from Google's Search Quality Rater Guidelines for judging how much a page or site shows first-hand experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trust. It is a rating concept used by human evaluators, not a direct ranking score.
What is Google Search Console?: Google Search Console is a free tool from Google that reports how a website performs in Google Search, including impressions, clicks, indexing status, and errors that block pages from appearing. Site owners and SEO providers use it to check and fix search visibility.
What is hreflang?: Hreflang is an HTML attribute or sitemap entry that tells search engines which language and regional version of a page is meant for which audience. It helps sites serving the same content in several languages, such as English, Malay and Chinese, show the right version to the right searcher.
What is keyword cannibalization?: Keyword cannibalization happens when two or more pages on the same website target the same search query, so they compete with each other instead of one page ranking clearly. It can weaken rankings and confuse search engines about which page should appear.
What is keyword research?: Keyword research is the process of finding the words and phrases people type into search engines, then judging each term by how often it is searched (volume) and how hard it is to rank for (difficulty). It guides which pages a website should be built around.
What is NAP consistency?: NAP consistency is the practice of listing a business's exact name, address, and phone number the same way on every website and directory where it appears. Mismatched details across listings can confuse search engines and weaken local search visibility.
What is organic traffic?: Organic traffic is the visits a website receives from unpaid listings in search engine results, such as Google. It differs from paid traffic, which comes from ads that advertisers pay for on each click.
What is robots.txt?: Robots.txt is a plain text file placed at the root of a website that tells search engine crawlers which URLs or folders they should not crawl. It guides well-behaved bots only and is not a security measure, since anyone can still open the blocked pages directly.
What is schema markup?: Schema markup is a standardized vocabulary from Schema.org that is added to a web page as structured data, usually in JSON-LD format, so search engines can read facts like business names, reviews, and FAQs. When the markup is valid and eligible, it can trigger rich results such as star ratings and expandable questions in search listings.
What is SEM (search engine marketing)?: Search engine marketing (SEM) is the practice of buying advertising placements on search engines, such as Google Ads, so that a business's ads appear when people search for related terms. Advertisers usually pay each time someone clicks an ad.