Plain-English definitions for the words that decide whether you get found. Across classic SEO, link building, paid search, analytics and the new world of AI search (AEO, GEO and AI Overviews). It's a living reference, kept current for 2026 as the rules keep changing. No gatekeepers, no f*cking limits.
AEO is the practice of optimising your content so it gets quoted, cited or used as the direct answer by answer engines. AI tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google's AI Overviews. Unlike classic SEO, where you compete for a ranked spot in a list, AEO is about being the answer a machine synthesises and serves. It rewards clear, self-contained answers, structured data and consistent mentions across the web → Learn more
AI Overviews are the AI-generated summaries Google shows at the top of many search results, drawing on multiple web sources to answer the query directly. They replaced the earlier "Search Generative Experience" (SGE) label and often cite the pages they pull from. Appearing inside an AI Overview can win visibility even when you're not the top blue link. But it can also reduce clicks → Learn more
AI Mode is Google's full conversational search experience, where a chat-style interface answers questions and lets you ask follow-ups instead of returning a traditional results page. It uses a technique called "query fan-out". Breaking your question into many sub-searches behind the scenes. For brands, it raises the stakes of being a trusted, citable source rather than just ranking → Learn more
Anchor text is the clickable, visible words of a hyperlink. It gives search engines a clue about what the linked page is about, so descriptive anchors ("damp proofing Newcastle") carry more relevance signal than generic ones ("click here"). Over-optimising with the exact same keyword-rich anchor on lots of links can look manipulative, so a natural mix is safest → Learn more
An answer engine is any tool that returns a single synthesised answer rather than a list of links. Think ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini or Google's AI Overviews. The shift from "search engine" to "answer engine" is why AEO exists: you're no longer just trying to rank, you're trying to be the source the machine trusts and repeats → Learn more
Authority is how much trust and credibility a site or page has earned in the eyes of search engines, built mainly through quality backlinks, strong content and a track record of expertise. It's not a single official Google metric, but third-party scores like Domain Rating and Domain Authority try to estimate it. Higher authority generally makes it easier to rank for competitive terms → Learn more
A backlink is a link from one website to another. Search engines treat them as votes of confidence. Each relevant, trustworthy backlink can lift your authority and rankings. Quality matters far more than quantity: one link from a respected, relevant site outweighs dozens from low-value pages → Learn more
Bounce rate is the share of visitors who land on a page and leave without taking a further action or visiting another page. A high bounce rate can signal a mismatch between what people expected and what they found. Though for some pages (like a quick answer or a contact number) a "bounce" is a satisfied visit. In GA4 the related metric is "engagement rate," its near-opposite.
A canonical tag tells search engines which version of a page is the "master" when several URLs show near-identical content. It consolidates ranking signals onto the preferred URL and helps avoid duplicate-content dilution. Common with tracking parameters, print versions or product variants. It's a strong hint, not an absolute command, so Google may still choose differently.
Keyword cannibalisation happens when two or more of your own pages target the same query, forcing them to compete with each other in the results. This can split link equity and confuse search engines about which page to rank, often weakening both. The fix is usually to consolidate, differentiate the intent, or point internal links and canonicals at the strongest page → Learn more
In AI search, a citation is when an answer engine names or links to your page as a source for its response. Citations are the AI-era equivalent of a ranking. They drive visibility, referral clicks and brand trust. Earning them depends on clear, verifiable, well-structured content that models can confidently attribute → Learn more
Content decay is the gradual loss of traffic and rankings a page suffers over time as it ages, competitors improve, or information goes stale. It's one of the most common causes of a slow, unexplained traffic decline. The cure is usually a refresh: updating facts, dates and examples, and re-aligning the page with current search intent → Learn more
A conversion is a meaningful action you want a visitor to take. A form fill, call, purchase or signup. The conversion rate is the percentage of visitors who complete it (conversions ÷ visitors). It's the metric that ties traffic to revenue: more visits only matter if they convert → Learn more
Core Web Vitals are Google's measurable signals for real-world page experience, covering loading, interactivity and visual stability. The three are LCP (Largest Contentful Paint. How fast the main content loads), INP (Interaction to Next Paint. How quickly the page responds to input), and CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift. How much the layout jumps about). INP replaced the older FID metric in 2024. They're a ranking factor, but a modest one compared with relevance and authority.
CPC is the amount an advertiser pays each time someone clicks their paid ad, common in Google Ads and other PPC platforms. The actual price you pay is set by an auction and your Quality Score, so a more relevant ad can win cheaper clicks. As a metric it also helps estimate the commercial value of a keyword → Learn more
Crawling is how search engines discover pages: automated bots (like Googlebot) follow links and read content across the web. A page has to be crawlable before it can be indexed and ranked. You can guide crawlers with internal links, an XML sitemap and a robots.txt file. And accidentally block them the same way.
CTR is the percentage of people who click a result after seeing it (clicks ÷ impressions). In SEO it tells you how compelling your title and meta description are at a given ranking; in PPC it's a core driver of Quality Score and cost. Improving titles to lift CTR is one of the fastest organic wins, especially for pages already on page one.
Digital PR is using PR tactics. Data studies, stories, expert commentary, newsworthy campaigns. To earn coverage and links from journalists and high-authority publications. It's one of the most durable ways to build backlinks and brand mentions at the same time, which is exactly what both Google and AI answer engines reward → Learn more
Disavowing is telling Google to ignore specific backlinks when assessing your site, via a file uploaded in the disavow tool. It's a last resort for genuinely harmful, spammy or paid links you can't get removed. Usually relevant if you face a manual penalty. Google ignores most low-quality links automatically now, so disavowing should be used sparingly → Learn more
A dofollow link is an ordinary link that passes ranking signals ("link equity") to the page it points to. It's the default state of any link with no special rel attribute. These are the links that most directly help rankings. The term only exists to contrast with nofollow; there is no actual "dofollow" attribute in HTML → Learn more
Domain Authority is a 1-100 score created by Moz that predicts how well a whole domain is likely to rank, based largely on its backlink profile. It's a third-party estimate, not a Google metric, and is best used for comparing sites rather than as an absolute target. Higher DA broadly correlates with stronger ranking potential → Learn more
Domain Rating is Ahrefs' 0-100 score of a website's backlink strength relative to others, based on the quantity and quality of sites linking to it. Like DA, it's a third-party metric, not Google's own. Marketers often use DR as a quick filter for the quality of a potential link source → Learn more
Duplicate content is substantially identical content appearing on more than one URL, either within your site or across the web. It rarely triggers a "penalty," but it can force search engines to pick one version to rank and split signals between the rest. Canonical tags, redirects and consolidation are the usual fixes.
E-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness. The qualities Google's human quality raters use to judge content, especially on "Your Money or Your Life" topics like health and finance. It's not a direct ranking score, but it shapes the algorithms Google builds. Demonstrating first-hand experience, named authors, credentials and citations all strengthen it → Learn more
An entity is a distinct, identifiable thing. A person, business, place, product or concept. That search engines and AI models recognise and connect to facts about it. Modern search is increasingly entity-based rather than keyword-based: clarifying who you are and how you relate to other entities helps both Google and AI tools confidently recommend you. This "entity clarity" is central to AEO → Learn more
FAQ schema is structured data that marks up a list of questions and answers so search engines understand them explicitly. It once produced expandable FAQ rich results in Google, though those are now limited mainly to authoritative government and health sites. It still helps machines. Including AI answer engines. Parse and reuse your Q&A content cleanly → Learn more
A featured snippet is the boxed answer Google sometimes shows above the normal results, pulled from a page it judges to answer the query concisely. Often called "position zero." Winning one boosts visibility and is strong preparation for AI answers, because the same clear, direct formatting that earns snippets also gets lifted by answer engines. Format the answer in 40-60 words right after the question → Learn more
GEO is optimising your content to be surfaced and cited by generative AI engines such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity. It overlaps heavily with AEO. Both target AI answers. But GEO is often used to describe the broader work of shaping how generative models represent and recommend your brand. The core levers are authoritative content, structured data, and consistent mentions across credible sources → Learn more
A guest post is an article you write for another website, usually including a link back to your own. Done well. On relevant, genuinely read publications. It builds backlinks, referral traffic and authority. Done badly, on spammy networks purely for links, it breaches Google's guidelines and can backfire → Learn more
An impression is counted each time your page appears in search results for a query, whether or not it's clicked. In Google Search Console, impressions show how often you're being seen and for which queries. High impressions with low CTR usually means you're ranking but your title and snippet aren't winning the click.
Indexing is when a search engine stores and organises a crawled page so it can appear in results. Crawling finds the page; indexing files it away for retrieval. If a page isn't indexed. Because of a noindex tag, a block, or low perceived value. It simply can't rank, no matter how good it is.
Internal linking is connecting your own pages to each other with hyperlinks. It helps search engines discover pages, understand how they relate, and pass link equity to the ones that matter most. A smart internal-linking structure can lift important pages and rescue "orphan" pages that nothing else points to → Learn more
Search intent is the underlying goal behind a query. What the searcher actually wants. It's usually grouped into informational ("how to fix damp"), navigational (a specific brand or site), commercial ("best damp proofing company") and transactional ("book damp survey"). Matching your page to the dominant intent is the single biggest factor in whether it ranks → Learn more
A keyword is the word or phrase people type (or speak) into search to find something. And the term you're trying to rank for. Modern SEO treats keywords as expressions of intent and topics, not strings to repeat, so it's about covering a subject thoroughly rather than stuffing exact phrases. Long, specific phrases are called long-tail keywords → Learn more
Keyword difficulty is a score (usually 0-100) from SEO tools estimating how hard it would be to rank on page one for a given keyword, based mainly on how strong the current ranking pages' backlink profiles are. It's a guide, not gospel. A high-authority, relevant page can sometimes beat a "difficult" score. Pairing low-difficulty terms with strong intent is the fast lane for newer sites → Learn more
The Knowledge Graph is Google's vast database of entities. People, places, businesses, things. And the relationships between them. It powers knowledge panels and feeds richer, fact-based answers (and increasingly AI answers). Being correctly represented in it helps Google and AI tools understand and confidently surface your brand → Learn more
Link building is the work of earning backlinks from other websites to grow your authority and rankings. Modern, sustainable link building focuses on genuinely link-worthy content, digital PR, relationships and relevant placements. Not bulk-buying low-quality links. It remains one of the highest-leverage SEO activities → Learn more
Link equity (once called "link juice") is the ranking value passed from one page to another through a link. The amount depends on the linking page's authority, relevance and how many links it shares it across. You distribute it deliberately with internal links and earn it externally through backlinks → Learn more
Link velocity is the rate at which a site gains (or loses) backlinks over time. A steady, natural pace looks healthy; a sudden, unexplained spike of low-quality links can look manipulative. There's no magic "safe" number. What matters is that growth looks organic for a site of your type → Learn more
An LLM is an AI model trained on huge amounts of text to understand and generate human-like language. The technology behind ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity. LLMs power answer engines, so understanding how they pick and trust sources is the foundation of AEO and GEO. They can also "hallucinate," which is why verifiable, well-attributed content matters → Learn more
llms.txt is a proposed plain-text file placed at the root of a site to give AI models a clean, curated guide to your most important content. The idea is to help LLMs find and understand your key pages, much as robots.txt and sitemaps help search crawlers. It's an emerging, not-yet-universal standard, but easy to add and increasingly adopted as an AEO best practice → Learn more
Local SEO is optimising to be found by people searching for products or services in a specific area ("plumber near me," "damp proofing Newcastle"). It centres on your Google Business Profile, consistent NAP details, local reviews, and location-relevant content and citations. For service businesses, it's often the highest-return SEO of all → Learn more
The Map Pack is the block of (usually three) local business listings with a map that Google shows for location-based searches. Appearing in it can capture more clicks than the top organic result for local intent. Ranking there depends on relevance, distance and prominence. Driven heavily by your Google Business Profile, reviews and consistent NAP → Learn more
A meta description is the short summary in a page's HTML that often appears as the snippet under your title in search results. It isn't a direct ranking factor, but a compelling one can lift click-through rate. Google frequently rewrites it to match the query, so write it as a persuasive invitation rather than keyword filler.
NAP stands for Name, Address and Phone number. The core business details that need to be identical everywhere they appear online. Consistent NAP across your site, Google Business Profile and directories builds trust and helps local rankings; inconsistencies confuse search engines about which details are correct. It's a small thing that quietly underpins local SEO → Learn more
A nofollow link carries a rel="nofollow" attribute telling search engines not to pass ranking signals through it. It's commonly used for paid, sponsored or user-generated links (which also have their own rel="sponsored" and rel="ugc" values). Since 2019 Google treats nofollow as a hint rather than a strict rule, and nofollow links can still bring traffic and brand exposure → Learn more
Organic traffic is the visitors who reach your site through unpaid search results, rather than ads, social or direct visits. It's the prize SEO is built to win because it's compounding and doesn't cost per click. As AI answers grow, organic traffic increasingly includes. And competes with. Clicks from AI Overviews and answer engines → Learn more
On-page SEO is everything you optimise within a page itself: content quality, titles, headings, internal links, images, structure and keyword/topic coverage. It's the half of SEO you fully control, as opposed to off-page factors like backlinks. Strong on-page work makes a page relevant and easy for both people and machines to understand → Learn more
People Also Ask is the expandable list of related questions Google shows within results, each revealing a short answer pulled from a web page. Earning a spot brings extra visibility and reveals the exact follow-up questions your audience has. Answering those questions clearly on your page is also great preparation for AI answers → Learn more
PPC is a paid advertising model where you bid for placement and pay each time someone clicks your ad. Google Ads is the best-known example. Unlike SEO, it buys instant visibility but stops the moment you stop paying. Used well alongside SEO, it covers high-intent terms quickly while your organic rankings build → Learn more
Quality Score is Google Ads' 1-10 rating of how relevant and useful your keywords, ads and landing pages are. A higher score lowers your cost per click and improves ad position, so better relevance literally buys cheaper clicks. Its three inputs are expected CTR, ad relevance and landing-page experience → Learn more
RAG is a technique where an AI model fetches relevant, up-to-date documents from a source (like the live web) and uses them to ground its answer, rather than relying only on training data. It's how tools like Perplexity and AI Overviews cite real pages. For marketers, RAG is why fresh, crawlable, citable content can get pulled directly into AI answers → Learn more
Referring domains is the number of unique websites linking to you, regardless of how many individual links each one sends. It's often a more meaningful authority signal than raw backlink count, because 100 links from one site count less than links from 100 different trusted sites. Growing your spread of quality referring domains is a core link-building goal → Learn more
ROAS measures the revenue earned for every pound (or dollar) spent on advertising. Revenue ÷ ad spend, often shown as a ratio like 4:1. It's the headline efficiency metric for PPC: a 4:1 ROAS means $4 back for every $1 spent. What counts as "good" depends on your margins → Learn more
robots.txt is a plain-text file at the root of your site that tells crawlers which areas they may or may not crawl. It manages crawl traffic but does not reliably keep a page out of the index. For that you need a noindex tag. A single misplaced "Disallow" line can accidentally hide an entire site, so handle it with care.
Schema (structured data) is standardised code. Usually JSON-LD using the schema.org vocabulary. That labels what your content means: an article, a product, a review, an FAQ, a business. It helps search engines display rich results and helps AI engines understand and reuse your content accurately. It doesn't directly boost rankings, but it makes your pages machine-readable, which matters more every year → Learn more
SEO is everything you do to earn visibility in a search engine's unpaid results. It rests on three pillars: relevance (your page answers the query), authority (trusted sites link to you), and experience (the page is fast and usable). It's still the workhorse of online visibility, even as AI search adds a second game to play → Learn more
The SERP is the page a search engine returns for a query. Modern SERPs are far more than ten blue links. They mix organic results, ads, featured snippets, People Also Ask, the Map Pack, images and now AI Overviews. Understanding what features show up for your keywords tells you what you actually have to compete for → Learn more
An XML sitemap is a file listing the URLs you want search engines to know about, helping them discover and prioritise your pages. It's especially useful for large sites, new sites or pages that aren't well linked internally. It aids discovery but doesn't guarantee indexing. Quality and crawlability still decide that.
Striking distance keywords are terms where you already rank just off the prize. Typically positions 11-20, or the bottom of page one. Because you're already close, small improvements to the page, title or internal links can push them up fast, making them the best "quick win" in SEO. They're the first place to look when you want results without starting from scratch → Learn more
Technical SEO is the behind-the-scenes work that helps search engines crawl, render and index your site properly: site speed, mobile-friendliness, crawlability, structured data, HTTPS, sitemaps and clean architecture. It rarely wins rankings on its own, but technical problems can quietly cap everything else you do. Think of it as the foundations the content sits on → Learn more
The title tag is the HTML element that sets a page's title, shown as the clickable headline in search results and in the browser tab. It's one of the strongest on-page relevance signals and a major driver of click-through rate. Google may rewrite it, so make it accurate, compelling and front-load the key term → Learn more
Toxic links are low-quality or manipulative backlinks. From spam sites, link farms or paid schemes. That could harm your site's standing. In practice Google ignores most of them automatically, so they're rarely the disaster some tools imply. They only need active attention (and possibly disavowing) when tied to a manual penalty or an obvious negative-SEO attack → Learn more
A zero-click search is one where the user gets their answer on the results page itself. From a featured snippet, knowledge panel or AI Overview. And never clicks through to a website. They're a growing share of all searches, which reshapes SEO goals: visibility and brand exposure on the SERP can matter as much as the click. Being the cited source is the new win → Learn more
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Quick answers
SEO (search engine optimisation) is about ranking in a search engine's list of results. AEO (answer engine optimisation) is about being the single answer an AI tool like ChatGPT or Google's AI Overviews quotes or cites. They share the same fundamentals. Useful content, authority and a clean site. But AEO adds a focus on clear self-contained answers, structured data and consistent mentions.
Core Web Vitals are Google's three measures of real-world page experience: LCP (loading speed of the main content), INP (how quickly the page responds to interaction, which replaced FID in 2024), and CLS (how stable the layout is as it loads). They're a ranking factor, but a relatively minor one next to relevance and authority.
A backlink is a link from another website to yours. Search engines treat them as votes of confidence, so quality backlinks lift your authority and rankings. One link from a respected, relevant site is worth far more than dozens from low-value pages. Which is why modern link building prizes quality over quantity.
A zero-click search is one where the searcher gets their answer directly on the results page. From a featured snippet, knowledge panel or AI Overview. Without clicking through to any website. They're a rising share of searches, which means SERP visibility and being the cited source increasingly matter as much as winning the click.
E-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness. The qualities Google's quality raters use to judge content, especially on health and money topics. It's not a direct ranking number, but it guides the algorithms Google builds. Named authors, real credentials, first-hand experience and citations all strengthen it.
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