The SEO, AEO and EEAT glossary.

Forty terms every modern marketing team should know. Short definitions, deeper explanations, and how each one affects rankings and AI citations.

Search engine optimisation

Foundational concepts that get your pages indexed, ranked and clicked.

301 RedirectA permanent redirect from one URL to another that passes ranking signals.
Anchor TextThe clickable text inside a hyperlink.
BacklinkA link from another website to yours.
Canonical TagAn HTML tag that tells search engines which URL is the master version of duplicate or similar pages.
Core Web VitalsGoogle's set of page experience metrics: LCP, INP and CLS.
Crawl BudgetThe number of pages a search engine will crawl on your site within a given period.
Crawl ErrorAn issue that prevents a search engine from accessing a page on your site.
CrawlerAn automated program that discovers and indexes web pages (also called a spider or bot).
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)A measure of how much visible page content unexpectedly shifts during loading.
Domain AuthorityA third party score (Moz, Ahrefs, Semrush) that estimates how well a domain may rank.
Featured ImageThe primary image associated with a page, used in cards, social previews and rich results.
hreflangAn HTML attribute that tells search engines which language and region a page targets.
Interaction to Next Paint (INP)The latency between a user interaction and the next visual update on the page.
Internal LinkingThe practice of linking from one page on your site to another to distribute authority and guide crawlers.
JSON-LDThe JSON based syntax recommended by Google for adding schema markup.
Keyword ResearchThe process of finding and prioritising search terms users use to find content.
Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)The time it takes for the largest visible element on a page to render.
Meta DescriptionA short summary of a page used by search engines as the snippet under the title.
noindexA meta tag directive that tells search engines not to include a page in their index.
Rich ResultA search result enhanced with extra visual elements like ratings, FAQs, or images.
robots.txtA file that tells crawlers which parts of a site they may or may not access.
Schema MarkupStructured data added to a page to help search engines understand its content.
Search IntentThe reason behind a user's query (informational, navigational, commercial, transactional).
SitelinksAdditional links shown under a brand's main result in search.
Time to First Byte (TTFB)The time between a request and the first byte of response from the server.
Title TagThe HTML element that defines the title of a page, shown in search results and browser tabs.
Topical AuthorityA site's perceived expertise and depth of coverage on a specific topic.
XML SitemapA file that lists the URLs of a site to help search engines discover and crawl them.

Answer engine optimisation

How content is extracted, quoted and cited inside AI answer surfaces.

Experience, expertise, authority, trust

The signals search and AI engines use to judge whether a source deserves to be cited.