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Glossary

Web, SEO & AI search glossary

A

Answer engine optimisation (AEO)
Answer engine optimisation (AEO) is the practice of writing and structuring web content so that tools which answer questions directly, such as AI chatbots, AI summaries in search results and voice assistants, can understand it and use it in their answers. It overlaps heavily with SEO and with generative engine optimisation.

C

Core Web Vitals
Core Web Vitals are three measurements Google uses to describe how a page feels to visitors: how fast the main content loads (LCP), how quickly the page responds to input (INP) and how stable the layout is while it loads (CLS). Each has a published threshold for a good score.

E

E-E-A-T
E-E-A-T stands for experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness, the four qualities Google uses to describe content that people can rely on. It is not a single ranking factor. Google calls trust the most important of the four, and the standard is highest for topics that affect health, money or safety.

G

Generative engine optimisation (GEO)
Generative engine optimisation (GEO) is the practice of improving how visible a website is in answers written by AI search tools such as ChatGPT and Google's AI Overviews. It builds on ordinary SEO: a page still has to be indexed, clear and trustworthy before an AI tool can use it as a source.

H

Headless CMS
A headless CMS is a content management system that stores and manages content but does not build the pages visitors see. A separate front end fetches the content through an API and displays it. This gives more freedom in how a site is built, at the cost of more development work.

L

llms.txt
llms.txt is a proposed Markdown file, placed at /llms.txt on a website, that gives AI language models and agents a short, curated guide to the site's most useful content. It is a proposal, not a formal standard, and it does not replace robots.txt or a sitemap.

S

Schema markup
Schema markup is code added to a web page, using the shared schema.org vocabulary, that labels what the content is, such as a business, a product, an article or a question and answer, so that search engines can read it without guessing. Google calls it structured data.
Staging site
A staging site is a private copy of a website where changes are built and tested before they are made on the live site that visitors use. It is used for new builds, redesigns, software updates and new features, and it is kept hidden from the public and from search engines.

T

Topical authority
Topical authority is an SEO term for how thoroughly and reliably a website covers a subject, so that search engines and readers treat it as a dependable source on that subject. It is a concept, not a score Google publishes, and it is built through focused, connected, well-informed pages.

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