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SEO jargon you keep hearing: what actually matters

August 20, 2026·5 min read

You paid for a website, and now the internet will not stop naming things you are supposedly missing. An influencer says you need JSON-LD. A commenter says your HTML is not semantic. An email warns that your meta keywords are wrong. Most of it sounds technical and urgent, and it is hard to tell what deserves your attention and what is just noise.

Here is a plain-English verdict on the terms you actually hear, sorted by how much each one changes whether Google ranks you and whether AI cites you. Nothing is left undefined. Where a term matters, we say so. Where it is something we generate for you as part of a fix, we say that too. And where it is a myth someone is still charging for, we say that plainly.

SEO terms ranked by how much they actually affect youThe terms people name most, sorted into what matters a lot, what helps in proportion, what barely moves the needle, and dead myths still being sold.The terms people throw at you, ranked by what they doMatters a lotJSON-LD / schematitle & metacanonicalsitemapSomeOpen Graphimage alt textpage speedA littlesemantic HTMLheading orderDead mythsmeta keywordskeyword density
Which SEO terms actually move the needle

The ones that matter a lot

If someone tells you your site is missing one of these, they have a point. These are the terms worth your time, and several are things we build for you automatically.

  • JSON-LD, also called schema or structured data: invisible code that tells Google and AI exactly what a page is, a product, an article, a business, so they do not have to guess. It is one of the highest-value things on a page, and it is what earns rich results like star ratings and prices. We generate it for you.
  • Title tag and meta description: the headline and summary shown when you appear in results. A vague pair gets scrolled past, a clear one earns the click. We write these for you.
  • Canonical tag: when the same page is reachable at more than one address, this names the real one so your ranking does not split across copies. We set it for your homepage.
  • robots.txt and sitemap: the file that lets crawlers in (a crawler is the automated reader a search engine or AI sends to fetch your pages), and the map that lists your pages. Get these wrong and nothing else you do can be seen. Both are in the fix.

The ones that help, in proportion

Real, but secondary. Worth doing well, not worth losing sleep over.

  • Open Graph tags: they control the title, blurb and image shown when your link is shared on social media or in a chat. A nice touch that lifts clicks, not something that decides your ranking.
  • Image alt text: a short description of each image, first for people using screen readers, and secondarily for image search. Do it because it is the right thing to do, and take the small SEO bonus as a side effect.
  • Page speed, sometimes called Core Web Vitals: a fast site helps a little, and a genuinely slow one can hurt. Fix it if it is bad. If it is already fine, move on.

The ones that barely move the needle

You will hear these a lot, often from people who want the work to sound harder than it is.

  • Semantic HTML, using tags like header, nav, main and article instead of plain divs: it helps screen readers and tidies your code, and it can help the tools that pull your text for AI a little. For where you rank, the effect is close to nothing, and no study has shown it wins citations. Do it for cleanliness and accessibility, not for traffic.
  • Heading order, having one clear H1 and sensible H2s below it: genuinely useful for readers, mild for ranking. Worth a quick tidy, not worth a project.

The myths still being sold to you

These are not low-value, they are zero-value, and someone charging you for them is a warning sign.

  • The meta keywords tag: a hidden list of keywords in your code. Google confirmed it ignores this for ranking back in 2009. Anyone selling to optimise your meta keywords is charging for a corpse.
  • Keyword density: repeating a target phrase a set number of times to hit a magic percentage. Modern search and AI read meaning, not counts, and stuffing now reads as spam that can work against you.
  • Submit your site to 500 search engines: there are effectively two worth naming, and both find you on their own. This line lives almost entirely in scam emails.

How to actually use this list

You do not need to memorise any of this. The next time someone says your site is missing something, find the term on this list. If it sits in the top group, it is worth doing, and it may already be part of a fix we generate. If it sits at the bottom, you can nod politely and carry on.

The goal is not to chase every word people throw at you. It is to spend your limited time on the handful of signals that actually decide whether you get found, and to recognise the ones that are decoration, or worse, a sales hook. That is exactly what a scan is for: it checks the signals that matter and skips the noise.

See which ones you are missing

Paste your URL and get two scores, one for Google and one for AI, plus the exact signals you are missing on both. No jargon to decode, only what is worth fixing. The scan is free.

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