Cybersquatting

Registering a domain name that’s identical or similar to a well-known trademark, with the malicious intent to profit from the trademark owner’s reputation.

Customer Journey

The complete path a customer takes when interacting with your brand, from initial awareness through consideration, purchase and post-purchase stages.

Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)

A core web vital that measures the unexpected movement of webpage elements during loading. Large CLS frustrates users and harms SEO.

CTR (Clickthrough rate)

Measures the percentage of people who click on a link or ad after seeing it. It’s calculated by dividing clicks by impressions (views).

CTA (call to action)

A directive that prompts website visitors to take a specific action. It can be a button, text link or image designed to drive conversions.

CSS (Cascading Style Sheets)

The code behind a webpage’s look that instructs browsers on how to display fonts, colors and layout.

CSS (cascading style sheet)

A code that controls a web page’s visual look like fonts, colors and layout. It allows for clean, maintainable design across multiple pages.

CSS

CSS is a language that defines a website’s presentation, separate from its content. It controls layout, fonts, colors and spacing.

Cross Group Negatives

In PPC ads or Google Ads, cross-group negatives are keywords you add to one ad group that you want to exclude from showing in another ad group within the same campaign.

CRM (customer relationship management)

Software used to manage customer interactions. It tracks past purchases, preferences and support issues.

CRM

A CRM system helps businesses manage all customer interactions and data. It tracks leads, sales opportunities and customer service interaction.

Critical rendering path

The steps your visitor’s browser takes to turn website code (HTML, CSS, Javascript) into the web page they see.

Crawling

The process by which search engines discover and index web pages. They analyze the content on each page and add these pages to the search engine’s index.

Crawler directives

Instructions website owners provide to crawlers through files like robot.txt or meta tags.

Crawler (bot, robot, spider)

Automated programs that search engines use to understand and rank websites effectively.

Crawler

Crawlers are automated programs used by search engines to discover and index web pages. Search engines rely on them to populate search indexes and deliver relevant results to users.

Crawl Budget

The estimated number of pages a search engine bot can crawl from a website within a given timeframe.

CPM (Cost Per Thousand impressions)

The price advertiser pays for every one thousand times their ad is displayed. This pricing model is commonly used for brand awareness campaigns.

CPC (Cost Per Click)

A bidding model where advertisers pay each time someone clicks on their ad. It’s a common way to buy ads on Google and social media.

Country code top level domain (ccTLD)

The part of a website address that identifies the country or region associated with the website. Example: “.us” for the United States.

Cost per thousand (CPM)

The cost an advertiser pays for every one thousand impressions or ad views of their advertisements. This model is mainly used for display ad campaigns.

Cost per action (CPA)

A pricing model where advertisers pay a specific fee each time a desired user action occurs. This action can be a purchase, download or any other conversion.

Cost %

it means the percentage of your total advertising budget spent on a particular campaign or keyword. A lower cost % means the campaign has generated more revenue than its ad spend.

Correlation

It measures the relationship between two variables, like website traffic and social media mentions. While a correlation might seem one factor influences the other, it doesn’t prove it.

Core Web Vitals (in Semrush)

Semrush offers tools to analyze your website’s Core Web Vitals metrics. You can track them over time, pinpoint areas for improvement and see how changes impact these metrics.

Core Web Vitals

A set of metrics from Google that measures factors of a web page’s user experience: loading speed (Largest Contentful Paint or LCP), responsiveness (First Input Delay or FID) and visual stability (Cumulative Layout Shift or CLS).

Core Update

Major algorithm changes implemented by Google to improve search results. Core update can impact website rankings.

Cookies

Small data files stored on a user’s device by websites they visit. Cookies remember user preferences (login info, location) and track browsing activity.

Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)

The systematic process of increasing the percentage of website visitors who take a desired action. It analyzes user behavior, pinpointing conversion roadblocks and A/B testing website elements.

Conversion Rate

A key metric that measures the percentage of visitors who complete a desired action out of the total number of visitors to your website or landing page.

Conversion Form

A web form placed on a website to capture visitor information and convert them into leads or customers.

Conversion (Goal)

A specific action you want visitors to take on your website or app is aligned with your marketing objectives.

Conversion

Conversion happens when a visitor takes a desired action on your website or app. It could be purchases, email signups, app downloads, form submission, etc.

Contextual advertising

Contextual advertising displays ads relevant to the content of a webpage or app rather than user data. Keywords, surrounding content and demographics influence which ads are shown.

Content Marketing

A strategic marketing approach that focuses on creating and distributing valuable, relevant content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience.

Content Management System (CMS)

A CMS is a software platform that lets users create, edit and publish website content without needing extensive coding knowledge. Examples are WordPress, Shopify, etc.

Content is King

A popular marketing mantra highlighting the importance of high-quality, valuable content. Content attracts and educates your audience, builds brand authority and drives conversions.

Content Delivery Network (CDN)

A geographically distributed network of servers that stores website content. It delivers content to users from the server closest to them.

Content

Content means the information you create and share to attract and engage your target audience. It could be articles, blog posts, images, infographics, videos, webinars, social media posts or emails.

Conceptual searching

It’s a technique used by search engines to understand the meaning behind searches and return results relevant to the user’s intent. The results are relevant to the broader search concept.

Competitors in Organic Search

Websites vying for visibility in search engine results pages for the same keywords you target are your organic search competitors.

Competitors in Google Ads

Competitors in Google Ads are other advertisers bidding on the same keywords you are.

Competition

Competition in SEO refers to other businesses vying for the same target audience and keywords. Competition, in general, means companies that sell similar products or services as yours.

Common Keywords

Common keywords are general search terms with high search volume but also high competition.

Commercial investigation queries

CIQs are informational searches users conduct to research or compare products/services before buying. Example, “best laptop for students”.

Comment Spam

Irrelevant or promotional comments posted on websites, blogs or social media platforms to drive traffic to their sites or promote unrelated products.

Com.

Com. means competitive density in Semrush. The score (0-1) shows how crowded the competition is for Google Ads keywords.

Code To Text Ratio

The balance between the amount of code and visible text content on a webpage. Search engines prioritize a higher text ratio as it indicates a focus on informative content.

Code

Code refers to the instructions written in a programming language that make a website or app function.

CoCitation

CoCitation happens when two web pages are mentioned by a third party, even if not linked. It shows a natural connection between pages.

Cloaking

Cloaking is a deceptive technique where a website shows different content to search engines and human visitors. It violates search engine guidelines.

Clientside & serverside rendering

Rendering means the place where the code runs. Client-side builds the pages in the user’s browser, and server-side sends a pre-built page.

ClickThrough Rate (CTR)

The percentage of people who see your ad or other online content and click on it. A high CTR means your content is relevant and interesting, grabbing user attention.

Clickthrough rate

Clickthrough rate measures the percentage of people who see your ad or search results and actually click on it.

Clickstream Data

It tracks a user’s journey on your website, recording every click, page view, and interaction to help you understand how they navigate your page.

Click Potential

It predicts how likely users are to click on your website in search results, even if you rank first.

Click Depth

Click depth measures the number of clicks it takes a visitor to reach a specific page on your website, starting from the homepage.

Click Bait

Attention-grabbing headline or content that promises more than it delivers. It uses sensational or misleading language to attract audiences to click, often leading to irrelevant content.

Classes

Classes are labels or categories for website elements that define how things will look. You can assign styles to a class and then apply that class to different parts of your website to get a consistent look.

Citations

Citations are online mentions of your brand or website on other websites. These can be links, articles mentioning your brand, or positive online reviews.

ChatGPT

ChatGPT is a large language model chatbot developed by OpenAI. It can generate text, translate languages, write different creative content, and answer your questions in an informative way.

Channel

Channel is your way to reach your target audience. There are many channels, like social media, email marketing, or search engine ads.

ccTLD (Country Code TopLevel Domain)

It’s an online address with a specific country code. While “.com” is used for commercial websites, ccTLD uses country codes like “.fr” for France and “.uk” for the United Kingdom.

ccTLD

A two-letter abbreviation indicating a website’s country (e.g., .fr for France, .cn for China). Using a ccTLD in a website can target a local audience and improve local SEO.

Cascading style sheet (CSS)

It’s a code that controls the visual design of a website, separate from its content (HTML). CSS determines things like fonts, colors, layout and spacing.

Cart abandon rate

It tracks how many people add items to their online shopping cart but doesn’t complete the purchase. It’s a key metric for e-commerce businesses.

Carousel

Carousel is a SERP feature that showcases multiple results that scroll sideways at once. These are usually used for news articles, images or local business listings.

Canonical URL

If you have similar content on different URLs (like with filter or sorting), a canonical URL tells search engines which version to prioritize for ranking. It helps avoid confusion and ensures the most relevant version gets seen.

Call to Action (CTA)

A clear, concise instruction telling users what specific action you want them to take next. CTAs are often found on websites, emails, and ads. For example, “Download now” or “Buy now”.

Caffeine

Caffeine is Google’s web indexing system, the library storing information on all the webpages Google has found. It allows Google to retrieve relevant results when you search the web.

Caching

The process of storing website data on a user’s device to improve loading speed. Browsers cache things like images, HTML, and JavaScript files.

Cache

A temporary storage area on a computer that holds frequently accessed data. Caches store copies of data to speed up retrieval for future requests.

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