This glossary explains the SEO, AEO and GEO terms you are most likely to meet, in plain language. SEO is about being found in search results, AEO about being the answer search engines and AI assistants quote, and GEO about AI tools describing and recommending your brand accurately. The terms are listed alphabetically.
SEO, AEO and GEO glossary
301 redirect
A permanent redirect that sends visitors and search engines from an old URL to a new one, passing on most of the old page's ranking signals.
AEO (answer engine optimisation)
Structuring content so search engines and AI assistants can lift a clear, direct answer from it, for example in AI Overviews or featured snippets.
AI Overviews
AI-generated summaries that Google shows at the top of some search results, with links to the pages they draw from.
Alt text
A short text description of an image in the page code. It helps people using screen readers and tells search engines what the image shows.
Anchor text
The clickable words in a link. Descriptive anchor text helps people and search engines understand the page being linked to.
Backlink
A link from another website to yours. Links from relevant, trusted sites are one of the signals search engines use to judge authority.
Canonical tag
A tag that tells search engines which version of a page is the main one when similar or duplicate versions exist.
Core Web Vitals
Google's measures of real-world page experience: loading (Largest Contentful Paint), responsiveness (Interaction to Next Paint) and visual stability (Cumulative Layout Shift).
Crawling
The process of search engine bots following links and fetching pages so they can be considered for the index.
E-E-A-T
Experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trust: the qualities Google's quality rater guidelines use to judge whether content is reliable.
Entity
A distinct, well-defined thing, such as a business, person, place or product, that search engines and AI systems recognise and connect facts to.
Featured snippet
A highlighted answer shown near the top of Google results, taken from a page that answers the question clearly.
GEO (generative engine optimisation)
Making your brand accurate, consistent and trustworthy across the web so generative AI tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity describe and recommend it correctly.
Google Business Profile
Google's free listing for local businesses, shown in Maps and local results, with details such as services, hours, photos and reviews.
Google Search Console
Google's free tool for website owners. It shows indexing status, search queries, clicks, impressions and technical issues.
H1 and headings
The heading structure of a page. Each page should have one H1 that states its main topic, with H2 and H3 headings for the sections beneath it.
Impressions
The number of times a page appeared in search results, whether or not anyone clicked it.
Indexing
Adding a crawled page to a search engine's database so it can appear in results. A page that is not indexed cannot rank.
Internal links
Links between pages on the same website. They help visitors move around and help search engines understand which pages matter.
JSON-LD
The format Google recommends for adding structured data (schema markup) to a page, written as a script in the page code.
Keyword
A word or phrase people type or say when searching. Modern SEO focuses on the intent behind a search rather than exact keywords.
llms.txt
A proposed text file that gives AI tools a short guide to a website's content. Support from the major AI companies is still limited.
Local SEO
Improving visibility in local searches and Google Maps, mainly through a strong Google Business Profile, consistent business details and local pages.
Meta description
A short summary of a page in its code. Google may show it under the title in results, so it should encourage the click.
Noindex
A tag that tells search engines not to include a page in their index. Useful for thank-you pages, harmful if left on important ones.
Organic traffic
Visits that come from unpaid search results, as opposed to ads.
Robots.txt
A file at the root of a site that tells search engine bots which areas they may or may not crawl.
Schema markup
Structured data added to a page that states facts in a machine-readable way, such as your organisation, services, FAQs or articles.
Search intent
What a person actually wants from a search: information, a specific website, to compare options, or to buy or book.
SEO (search engine optimisation)
Improving a website so it can be crawled, indexed and ranked by search engines, and so it earns more relevant traffic from them.
SERP
Search engine results page: everything shown after a search, including organic results, ads, maps, AI Overviews and other features.
Technical SEO
The work that lets search engines crawl, render and index a site properly: speed, structure, redirects, canonicals, sitemaps and mobile performance.
Title tag
The page title in the code, usually shown as the clickable headline in search results. One of the strongest on-page signals.
XML sitemap
A file that lists the pages you want search engines to find and index, usually submitted through Google Search Console.
If a term on your site or in an SEO report doesn't make sense, ask us. We explain things in plain language.
What is the difference between SEO, AEO and GEO?
SEO gets your pages found in search results. AEO makes your content the clear answer search engines and AI assistants quote. GEO helps AI tools describe and recommend your brand accurately.
What are the most important SEO terms for a business owner?
Start with indexing, title tags, Google Business Profile, Google Search Console and organic traffic. Those cover whether you can be found, how you appear and how you measure results.
Is schema markup the same as structured data?
In practice, yes. Structured data is the general idea of describing a page in a machine-readable way, and schema markup is the shared vocabulary (from schema.org) used to write it, usually as JSON-LD.