As a companion piece to the Search Engine Optimisation Best Practice Guide, we present this glossary of SEO terms, which aims to demystify some of the most commonly used terms in SEO while illustrating how the fundamentals fit together.

Hopefully what follows will convince you that a lot of SEO is about pleasing the user, who must come first. The search engines may (largely) run on robots, but these robots are becoming increasingly human-like in their preferences with every algorithm update, and they know when they’re being manipulated.

If you’re a complete beginner to the world of SEO, check out What SEO beginners need to know: a basic skills guide on the Econsultancy blog for a good primer. If that whets your appetite, read SEO Best Practice Guide: The Fundamentals of Search Engine Optimisation to take it further.