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SEO & AI Search Glossary

The vocabulary of search, defined without the padding. 44 terms covering the technical foundations, the structured data that makes a page legible to a machine, and the newer set of ideas that decide whether an assistant cites you.

Foundations

6 terms

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) The practice of making a site easier for search engines to find, understand and rank for the questions its buyers actually ask. SERP (Search Engine Results Page) The page a search engine returns for a query, now assembled from ads, AI summaries, packs and features rather than ten blue links. Search Intent What a person is actually trying to accomplish with a query, which decides what format of page can rank for it at all. Keyword Research Finding the language a market uses for its problem, and deciding which of those phrases are worth building a page around. Crawling The process by which a search engine discovers URLs and fetches them, which has to happen before a page can rank for anything. Indexing Storing a crawled page in the engine’s searchable database, the step between being fetched and being eligible to rank.

Technical SEO

8 terms

robots.txt A file at the root of a domain that tells compliant crawlers which paths they may request. It controls fetching, not indexing. XML Sitemap A machine-readable list of the URLs on a site that its owner considers worth indexing, used by crawlers as a discovery hint. Canonical Tag A link element naming the preferred URL for a page, used to consolidate duplicates so ranking signals land on one address. 301 Redirect A permanent server-side redirect from one URL to another, which moves both visitors and accumulated ranking signals. Core Web Vitals Google’s field-measured metrics for loading, interaction and visual stability: LCP, INP and CLS, taken from real visitor data. JavaScript Rendering The extra step an engine takes to execute a page’s scripts before it can see content that is not in the initial HTML response. Crawl Budget The number of URLs a search engine will fetch from a site in a given period, set by its capacity and its appetite. Site Architecture How pages are organised and linked to each other, which determines what gets found, what looks important, and what gets buried.

On-page & content

8 terms

Title Tag The HTML element naming a page, used as its headline in results and as one of the strongest on-page signals of what it covers. Meta Description A short summary of a page that engines may use as its results-page snippet. Not a ranking factor, but it decides clicks. Heading Hierarchy The nested structure of H1 to H6 elements that gives a page an outline, used by assistive technology and by parsers alike. Internal Linking Links between pages on the same site, which drive discovery, spread ranking signals, and tell an engine what a page is about. Anchor Text The visible, clickable words of a link, which describe the destination page to both the reader and the engine following it. Topical Authority An engine’s assessment that a site covers a subject comprehensively enough to be trusted on it, rather than ranking page by page. Keyword Cannibalisation Several pages on one site competing for the same query, splitting signals so none of them ranks as well as one page would. Content Cluster A broad pillar page plus a set of linked pages covering its subtopics, structured so the group ranks better than the parts would.

Structured data

5 terms

Structured Data Machine-readable markup that states what a page’s content means, so an engine does not have to infer it from prose. Schema.org The shared vocabulary, maintained by the major search engines, that defines the types and properties structured data uses. JSON-LD The recommended format for structured data: a JSON block in a script tag, kept separate from the HTML it describes. Rich Result A search listing enhanced with extra detail — ratings, prices, FAQs, images — drawn from a page’s structured data. Knowledge Graph A search engine’s database of entities and the relationships between them, used to answer queries about things rather than strings.

Authority & off-page

5 terms

Backlink A link from another site to yours, treated by engines as a third-party vote and still among the strongest ranking signals. Domain Authority A third-party score estimating a domain’s ranking strength. Useful for comparison, but not a metric any search engine uses. nofollow A link attribute signalling that a site does not vouch for the destination, now treated as a hint rather than a directive. Digital PR Earning coverage and links from publications by giving journalists something genuinely worth writing about. E-E-A-T Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trust: the framework Google’s quality raters use to judge content, especially on consequential topics.

Measurement

5 terms

Organic Traffic Visits arriving from unpaid search results, conventionally the headline measure of whether SEO is working. Impressions The number of times a site’s listing appeared in search results, counted whether or not anyone scrolled far enough to see it. Click-Through Rate (CTR) Clicks divided by impressions: the share of people who saw a listing and chose it over everything else on the page. Average Position The mean ranking of a site’s listings across the queries it appeared for, and the most easily misread metric in search reporting. Conversion Rate The share of visitors who take the action a page exists to produce, and the only search metric that connects to revenue.

AI search & GEO

7 terms

Generative Engine Optimisation (GEO) Making a company findable and citable inside AI-generated answers, rather than only inside ranked lists of links. Answer Engine A system that responds to a question with a synthesised answer rather than a list of documents to read. AI Overview Google’s generated summary at the top of a results page, which answers the query directly and links to a few sources. LLM Citation A reference to a source inside a generated answer, which is the AI-search equivalent of a ranking position. Entity Optimisation Making a company legible as a distinct thing — with consistent naming, stated relationships and outside corroboration — rather than as a set of keywords. Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) The technique behind cited AI answers: fetch relevant documents first, then have the model compose a response from them. llms.txt A proposed file at a site’s root that gives language models a curated, plain-text summary of what the site contains.