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Glossary

SEO and AI glossary

SEO, marketing and AI terms explained in one sentence and then in depth. 24 terms so far, more coming.

AI and LLMs

AEOOptimizing content for systems that assemble a direct answer, such as AI Overviews or voice and conversational assistants.AI OverviewsAI summaries Google shows for selected queries, with links to sources for further reading.GEOA name for work on brand and content visibility in generative answers, including mentions, citations, links and the accuracy of the information.LLMA large language model trained on huge amounts of data. It predicts the next tokens from context and can generate, summarize or analyze text.LLMOA name for work on making language models and the products built on them find a brand, describe it accurately and possibly use it as a source.llms.txtA proposed Markdown file in the site root that gives AI tools a short overview of the important content. It isn't a widely adopted standard or a Google requirement.Query fan-outA process in which a system breaks a complex question into several related searches and builds the answer from multiple sets of sources.RAGAn architecture that retrieves relevant source material from an external source before generating an answer and puts it into the language model's context.Semantic searchSearch that looks beyond the words at the meaning of the query, the relationships between concepts and the user's likely intent.Zero-clickA search after which the user clicks no result. They may get the answer in the SERP, change the query or end the search for another reason.

SEO basics

EntityA uniquely identifiable thing or concept, such as a person, company, place or product, that can be told apart by its properties and relationships.SERPThe results page a search engine builds for a specific query. It contains organic links, ads and various special features.

Technical SEO

CanonicalA signal that marks the preferred URL among duplicate or very similar pages. Google can pick a different canonical based on other signals.Core Web VitalsThree user experience metrics: how fast the main content loads (LCP), how quickly the page responds to interaction (INP) and how visually stable it is (CLS).Crawl budgetHow much and how often Google crawls a site. In practice it comes down to the server's capacity for Googlebot and Google's demand for specific URLs.CrawlingThe process in which search engine bots discover URLs and download their content. Crawling comes before processing and possible indexing of a page.GooglebotGoogle's web crawler. It discovers URLs, downloads pages and passes them on for processing. A separate Google service renders the JavaScript.IndexingProcessing a page and possibly adding it to a search engine's index. Only an indexed URL can be selected for regular search results.Structured dataMachine-readable data in a page's code, most often using the schema.org vocabulary in JSON-LD format, that describes the content and its relationships.

Content

E-E-A-TA framework from Google's quality rater guidelines: experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trust. It isn't a single measurable score or a standalone ranking factor.KeywordA word or phrase people use when searching. In SEO it helps describe demand, the users' vocabulary and the intent a page should answer.Long-tailThe large number of less frequently searched queries at the long end of the distribution curve. They tend to be more specific, but they aren't always longer, easier or better at converting.

Link building

BacklinkA link from another domain to your site. It helps with page discovery and can signal relevance or authority, but its value depends on context.Internal linkingLinks between pages of the same site. They help visitors navigate, help bots discover URLs and help the search engine understand relationships and importance.