SEO and GEO Glossary: 100 Terms, Plainly Defined
The language of search and AI visibility, without the jargon. One clear definition per term, written for B2B SaaS and AI teams.
AI Crawler→
A bot that fetches web pages for an AI company, either to train models or to retrieve sources for live answers.
AI SearchAI Mode→
Google's conversational search experience, where a Gemini-powered assistant answers the query and handles follow-up questions.
AI SearchAI Overviews→
Google's AI-generated summary at the top of a results page, built from several sources and shown with links to the pages it drew on.
AI SearchAlt Text→
A short written description of an image, read by screen readers and used by search engines to understand what the image shows.
TechnicalAnchor Text→
The clickable words in a link. Search engines read them as a description of the page being linked to.
LinksAnswer Engine Optimization (AEO)→
The practice of structuring content so search and AI engines can lift it directly as the answer to a question.
AI SearchBacklink→
A link from another website to yours. Still one of the strongest signals of authority for both Google and AI engines.
LinksBOFU Content→
Bottom-of-funnel content aimed at buyers close to a decision: comparisons, alternatives, pricing and use-case pages.
ContentBounce Rate→
The share of sessions where the visitor left without engaging: no second page, no conversion, and under ten seconds on site.
AnalyticsBrand Mentions→
References to your brand on other sites, linked or not. AI models lean on them to decide which vendors to name.
AuthorityBranded Search→
Searches that include your company or product name. A direct measure of how many people already know you.
SearchBreadcrumbs→
A row of links showing where a page sits in the site hierarchy, such as Home, Glossary, then the term.
TechnicalBroken Link→
A link that leads to a page that no longer exists, usually returning a 404 error.
TechnicalCanonical Tag→
An HTML tag that tells search engines which version of a page is the original when several URLs show similar content.
TechnicalChatGPT Search→
The web search built into ChatGPT, which retrieves live pages and answers with linked sources.
AI SearchChunking→
Splitting a page into smaller passages so a search or AI system can retrieve the one passage that answers a question.
AI SearchCitation (AI)→
A source an AI engine names or links when it answers. Being cited is the AI-search equivalent of ranking.
AI SearchClick-Through Rate (CTR)→
The percentage of people who see your result and click it: clicks divided by impressions.
AnalyticsCo-Citation→
When two brands or pages are mentioned together by a third source, which teaches search engines and AI models to associate them.
AuthorityComparison Page→
A page that sets two or more products side by side, built for buyers searching "X vs Y" or "X alternatives".
ContentContent Brief
A document that tells a writer what a page must cover, who it is for, and which query it has to win.
ContentContent Decay
The gradual loss of rankings and traffic a page suffers as it ages, competitors update, and search intent shifts.
ContentContent Gap
A topic or query your buyers search for that competitors cover and you do not.
ContentContent Pruning
Removing, merging or redirecting weak pages so the rest of the site performs better.
ContentConversion Rate
The percentage of visitors who take the action you want, such as starting a trial or booking a demo.
AnalyticsCore Web Vitals
Google's three page-experience metrics: loading speed (LCP), responsiveness (INP) and visual stability (CLS).
TechnicalCrawl Budget
The number of pages a search engine will crawl on your site in a given period. Waste it and important pages go unseen.
TechnicalCrawlability
How easily a search engine or AI bot can reach and read the pages on a site.
TechnicalCustomer Acquisition Cost (CAC)
What it costs in sales and marketing spend to win one new customer.
SaaS MetricsDigital PR
Earning coverage, links and mentions from publications by giving them something worth writing about.
AuthorityDomain Authority
A third-party score estimating how likely a site is to rank, based mostly on its backlink profile. Not a Google metric.
AuthorityDuplicate Content
The same or near-identical content appearing at more than one URL, which splits ranking signals between them.
TechnicalE-E-A-T
Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trust: the qualities Google's quality raters look for in content and its authors.
ContentEmbeddings
Numerical representations of text that let a system compare meaning rather than matching exact words.
AI SearchEntity
A distinct thing a search engine or model recognises, such as a company, person or product, along with its known attributes.
AI SearchEvergreen Content
Content on a topic that stays relevant for years, so it keeps earning traffic with light updates.
ContentExternal Link
A link from your page to a different website. Used well, it supports your claims with a source.
LinksFeatured Snippet
A boxed answer Google lifts from one page and shows above the regular organic results.
SearchGenerative Engine Optimization (GEO)→
The practice of making a brand visible in AI-generated answers, so engines like ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews name and cite it when buyers ask.
AI SearchGoogle Search Console
Google's free tool showing how your site performs in search: queries, clicks, impressions and indexing problems.
AnalyticsGrounding
When an AI model backs its answer with retrieved web sources instead of relying on training data alone.
AI SearchGuest Post
An article you write for another site, usually in exchange for exposure and a link back.
LinksHallucination
When an AI model states something false with confidence, including wrong facts about your brand.
AI SearchHeading Tags
HTML tags from H1 to H6 that give a page its outline. One H1 states the topic and the rest organise the sections.
TechnicalHreflang
An HTML attribute that tells search engines which language or regional version of a page to show each user.
TechnicalIndexation
The process of a search engine storing a page in its index. A page that is not indexed cannot rank.
TechnicalInformation Gain
What a page adds that the other results for the same query do not already say.
ContentInternal Linking
Links between pages on the same site. They pass authority and show search engines which pages matter most.
TechnicalJavaScript SEO
Making sure content rendered by JavaScript can still be crawled, rendered and indexed by search engines and AI bots.
TechnicalKeyword Cannibalization
When several pages on one site compete for the same query, splitting signals so none of them ranks well.
ContentKeyword Clustering
Grouping related queries that one page can rank for, so you plan pages around topics instead of single keywords.
ContentKeyword Difficulty
A tool-generated estimate of how hard it is to rank on page one for a query, based mainly on competitors' links.
SearchKnowledge Graph
Google's database of entities and the relationships between them, which powers knowledge panels and feeds its AI answers.
SearchLarge Language Model (LLM)
An AI model trained on vast amounts of text to understand and generate language. The engine behind ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude.
AI SearchLink Building
The work of earning links from other websites to raise your authority and rankings.
LinksLink Equity
The ranking value a link passes from one page to another.
LinksLLM Visibility
How often and how favourably large language models mention your brand when answering questions in your category.
AI Searchllms.txt
A proposed plain-text file that points AI crawlers to the most useful content on a site. Adoption is still early.
TechnicalLog File Analysis
Reading server logs to see exactly which pages search and AI bots request, and how often.
TechnicalLong-Tail Keyword
A longer, more specific query with lower volume and clearer intent, which usually converts better.
SearchMeta Description
The short page summary that can appear under your title in search results. It influences clicks, not rankings.
TechnicalMOFU Content
Middle-of-funnel content for buyers who know their problem and are weighing ways to solve it.
ContentNofollow Link
A link marked to tell search engines not to pass ranking credit to the destination.
LinksNoindex
An instruction telling search engines to keep a page out of their index.
TechnicalOff-Page SEO
Everything done away from your own site to build authority: links, mentions, reviews and digital PR.
AuthorityOn-Page SEO
Optimising what is on the page itself: content, headings, title, internal links and markup.
ContentOrganic Traffic
Visits that arrive from unpaid search results.
AnalyticsOrphan Page
A page with no internal links pointing to it, which makes it hard for users and crawlers to find.
TechnicalPageRank
Google's original algorithm for scoring a page's importance by the quantity and quality of links pointing to it.
LinksPeople Also Ask
The expandable box of related questions Google shows in results, each with a short answer pulled from a page.
SearchPerplexity
An AI answer engine that searches the web in real time and cites its sources beside every answer.
AI SearchPillar Page
A broad page covering a core topic that links out to detailed pages on each subtopic, and receives links back from them.
ContentProduct-Led Content
Content that solves the reader's problem by showing the product doing the job, rather than mentioning it at the end.
ContentProgrammatic SEO
Publishing many pages from one template and a dataset to capture long-tail queries at scale.
ContentPrompt Tracking
Monitoring how AI engines answer a fixed set of buyer questions over time, and which brands they name.
AI SearchQuery Fan-Out
When an AI search system breaks one question into many related searches and combines the results into one answer.
AI SearchRedirect (301)
A permanent redirect that sends users and search engines from an old URL to a new one, carrying most of its ranking value.
TechnicalRetrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)
A method where an AI model first retrieves relevant documents, then writes its answer from them.
AI SearchRich Results
Search listings enhanced with extras such as star ratings, FAQs or prices, usually powered by structured data.
SearchRobots.txt
A file at the root of a site telling crawlers which areas they may and may not request.
TechnicalSchema Markup
Structured data added to a page so search engines and AI systems can read its meaning, not just its text.
TechnicalSearch Intent
What the searcher is trying to get done. Match it or the page will not rank, however good the writing is.
ContentSearch Volume
The estimated number of times a query is searched each month.
SearchSemantic Search
Search that matches the meaning of a query rather than its exact words.
SearchSERP
Search engine results page: everything shown for a query, including ads, AI answers, organic links and other features.
SearchSERP Features
Any element on a results page beyond the standard blue links, such as AI Overviews, snippets, videos and maps.
SearchShare of Voice (AI)
The percentage of AI answers in your category that mention your brand, compared with competitors.
AI SearchTechnical SEO
The work that lets search engines crawl, render and index a site: speed, structure, rendering and markup.
TechnicalTitle Tag
The HTML title of a page, shown as the clickable headline in search results. One of the strongest on-page signals.
TechnicalTOFU Content
Top-of-funnel content for people who are just starting to explore a problem and are not yet looking for a product.
ContentTopic Cluster
A pillar page and its supporting pages, linked together to cover one subject in depth.
ContentTopical Authority
The depth of trust a site earns on a subject by covering it thoroughly and being referenced by others for it.
AuthorityUnlinked Mention
A reference to your brand on another site that does not link to you.
AuthorityURL Structure
How a site's addresses are organised. Short, readable, logically nested URLs help users and crawlers alike.
TechnicalUser-Generated Content (UGC)
Content created by users rather than the brand: reviews, forum threads, comments and community posts.
ContentVector Search
Retrieval that finds the passages closest in meaning to a query by comparing embeddings.
AI SearchWhite-Hat SEO
SEO that follows search engine guidelines and earns rankings by being useful, not by gaming the system.
SearchXML Sitemap
A file listing the URLs you want search engines to crawl and index.
TechnicalYMYL
"Your Money or Your Life": topics that can affect health, finances or safety, which Google holds to a higher quality bar.
ContentZero-Click Search
A search that ends without a click because the results page or AI answer already gave the user what they needed.
SearchNo terms match that search.
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