sameAs
A Schema.org property linking an entity to other pages that identify the same thing, such as a company profile on LinkedIn or Wikipedia. It is how an identity gets corroborated outside a site.
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Scaled Content Abuse
Google’s spam policy against producing many pages, by any method, mainly to manipulate rankings. The policy targets the intent and the scale, not the use of AI to write the pages.
We work on this: On-Page SEO Services
Schema Markup
Structured data describing what a page is about in a vocabulary machines already understand. The most direct way to tell an engine what it is looking at.
Schema Markup Validator
Schema.org’s own tool for checking that markup is well formed and uses the vocabulary correctly. It validates syntax and types without saying anything about rich result eligibility.
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Schema.org
The shared vocabulary of types and properties used to describe things on a web page. JSON-LD, Microdata and RDFa are three different ways of writing that same vocabulary into a page.
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Search Intent
What someone is trying to do, not what they typed: learn, compare, buy, or reach a specific place. The same query can carry different intent on Google, in a paid auction, and inside an AI answer.
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Semantic Search
Matching on meaning rather than on words. It is why a page can rank for a question it never literally contains, and why synonyms stopped being a tactic.
Semantic SEO
Organizing content around topics and the entities inside them rather than around isolated keywords, so a search engine can place a whole site within a subject instead of page by page.
We work on this: On-Page SEO Services
SEO Funnel
Mapping content to the stages of a buying decision: TOFU to learn, MOFU to compare, BOFU to choose. The framework that stops a site publishing only what it wants to sell. Full definition, examples and application
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SERP
Search Engine Results Page. Increasingly a misnomer: on many queries it is an answer with links attached rather than a page of results.
Sitelinks
The extra links shown beneath a result, chosen by Google from a site’s structure. Not configurable, but a clear hierarchy makes useful ones more likely.
Sitemap
A file listing the URLs a site wants crawled. It is a suggestion rather than an instruction, and it is only as useful as it is accurate.
SKU
Stock keeping unit. A store’s own code for a product or variant, used to track inventory. It is internal, unlike a GTIN, so two retailers can use different SKUs for the same item.
We work on this: eCommerce SEO Services
Speakable
A Schema.org property marking the parts of a page best suited to being read aloud by a voice assistant. Google’s support for it is limited to news publishers rather than open to any site.
We work on this: Answer Engine Optimization (AEO)
Structured Data
Machine-readable markup describing a page’s content. Not a ranking factor in itself, but the thing that makes a page eligible for most enhanced results.
Read more: From Zero to Hero: Boosting SEO with Strategic Glossary Pages
Back to the full glossary, or read how we build them in From Zero to Hero.