Glossary

SEO glossary: SEO and AI search terms, explained simply

Plain-English definitions of the SEO and AI search terms used in marketing reports, from canonical URLs and E-E-A-T to AEO, GEO and AI share of voice.

40 terms, each defined in a sentence or two, with sources where a platform defines the term.

A–Z index

Every term, A to Z

How we write these definitions

Each definition says what the term means, what it doesn’t mean, and where it stops being useful. Where a term is a hint a search engine weighs rather than a rule it follows, the definition says so, because that’s where most bad advice starts.

Terms that need more than a paragraph have their own page with sources. Where another page already explains a term, such as technical SEO, Core Web Vitals, AEO and GEO, the entry links there.

Why BOOSTD’s own terms are here. The last group defines the words BOOSTD uses for its own automation. They’re our words, so you should be able to hold us to them.

SEO terms explained

The words most SEO conversations assume you already know. Several get misused, usually by making a hint sound like a rule.

SEO (search engine optimisation): Making your site easy for search engines to find, understand and trust, and worth clicking when it shows up. It covers the technical health of the site, content that answers what people search for, and links from other sites. It builds visibility over time. Nobody can buy or promise a ranking.; How BOOSTD runs SEO
Technical SEO: The part of SEO that makes sure search engines can reach, load and index your pages. It covers status codes, redirects, canonicals, sitemaps, robots rules, JavaScript and speed. It clears the way. It can’t make a weak page worth ranking.; Technical SEO, and where it stops
Canonical URL: The web address a search engine treats as the main one when the same page can be reached at several addresses. You state your choice with a canonical tag or a redirect. The search engine makes the final call, and it can disagree if the rest of your site points elsewhere.; Canonical URLs in full
Internal linking: Links from one page of your site to another. Search engines follow them to find pages, read the link text to learn what a page is about, and use the pattern to judge which pages matter most. A page nothing links to is rarely found.; Internal linking in full
Structured data (schema markup): Code that tells machines what a page contains, usually written in JSON-LD using the schema.org vocabulary. It can make a page eligible for rich results, like review stars or prices. It must match what the page visibly says, and it doesn’t guarantee any search feature.; Structured data in full
Core Web Vitals: Google’s three measures of how a page feels to use. Largest Contentful Paint covers loading, Interaction to Next Paint covers how fast it responds, and Cumulative Layout Shift covers whether things jump around. They use data from real visitors, not a lab test. Passing them helps, but rarely beats relevance.; What LCP, INP and CLS measure
E-E-A-T: Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness: the qualities Google asks its human quality raters to look for. It describes what good content shows, not a score a page carries. Google says trust matters most.; E-E-A-T in full
Search intent: What someone wants when they type a search: an answer, a specific website, a nearby place or something to buy. Google organises results around its best guess at this. A page written for the wrong intent can be well written and still never rank, because it’s answering a question nobody asked.; What search intent is, and how to work it out
Backlink: A link from another website to yours. Search engines read backlinks as one site vouching for another, so relevant links from trustworthy sites help you rank. Google treats buying or trading links to manipulate rankings as a violation, not a shortcut.; How to get backlinks without breaking Google’s rules
Keyword (search term): The words someone types or says into a search engine, such as “plumber near me” or “how much does a new roof cost”. In SEO, a keyword stands for a group of searches with the same meaning. The useful question is not how many people search it, but whether the person searching could become a customer.; How to find the searches worth winning
Organic search result: A result Google shows because it judged the page relevant, not because anyone paid. Ads are labelled “Sponsored” and stop the moment you stop paying. Organic results cost nothing per click, take longer to earn, and nobody can buy a better position in them.; How organic and paid search compare
Crawling and indexing: Crawling is a search engine visiting your pages. Indexing is it storing them so they can appear in results. A page that isn’t indexed can’t rank for anything, however good it is. Google doesn’t promise to crawl or index every page, and Search Console shows which of yours are in and why others aren’t.; When crawling becomes a real problem
Google Search Console: A free Google tool that shows how your site does in Google Search: which searches you appear for, how often people click, which pages are indexed and what errors Google found. It is the only place Google shares this about your own site. Setting it up takes about ten minutes and needs access to your domain or website.; Using Search Console to find why traffic dropped
Impressions, clicks and click-through rate (CTR): An impression is your page appearing in someone’s results. A click is them choosing it. Click-through rate is clicks divided by impressions. A falling CTR with steady rankings usually means something above you changed, such as an AI Overview or a stronger title, not that your page got worse.; Why clicks can fall while rankings hold
Title tag and meta description: Two short pieces of text in a page’s code. The title tag usually becomes the blue headline in search results; the meta description is a suggested summary underneath. Google can rewrite either if it thinks another line describes the page better, so both should say plainly what the page offers and to whom.; Writing pages that search engines and people understand
XML sitemap and robots.txt: Two files that guide search engines around your site. A sitemap lists the pages you want found. robots.txt tells crawlers which parts not to visit. Neither is a command: a page in the sitemap can still be left out, and robots.txt stops crawling, not indexing. To keep a page out of results, use noindex.; What a technical SEO check covers
Noindex: An instruction in a page’s code, or its server response, that tells search engines not to show that page in results. It is right for thank-you pages, drafts and duplicates. Left on a real page by accident, often after a website rebuild, it quietly removes that page from Google.; Catching accidental noindex tags
301 redirect: A permanent forward from an old web address to a new one. Visitors and search engines land on the new page, and most of the old page’s standing in search follows it. Changing addresses without redirects is the most common reason a new website loses traffic.; Changing your website without losing traffic
Domain Authority (and similar scores): A score from 0 to 100 that an SEO tool company calculates to estimate how strong a website’s links are. Each tool has its own version under a different name, and they often disagree. Google doesn’t use any of them. They are a rough guide for comparing sites, not a goal to chase.; What actually makes a link worth having

AI search

AI search and answer engine terms

These words are still settling down. Where a term is disputed, or different tools measure it differently, the definition tells you.

AEO (answer engine optimisation): Writing and laying out content so a search engine or AI tool can lift a direct answer from it. That means a clear question, a plain answer in the first sentence or two, then the detail. It aims at featured snippets, voice answers and AI summaries, and overlaps a lot with good SEO.; Answer engine optimisation explained
GEO (generative engine optimisation): Making it more likely that AI tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity or Google’s AI Overviews use and cite your content in their answers. The term comes from a 2023 research paper. The practice is young, and nobody controls what the AI says.; Generative engine optimisation explained
AI visibility: Whether, and how, AI tools and AI search features mention your business when people ask about what you do. You measure it by running a fixed set of questions again and again, because the answers change each time. Any AI visibility figure is a sample and should say so.; AI search visibility work
LLM visibility: AI visibility in large language model tools such as ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Copilot. That includes answers drawn from what the model learned in training, as opposed to a live web search. The trained part changes slowly and nobody can edit it directly.; LLM visibility in practice
AI Overviews: Google’s AI-written summaries shown above the search results for some searches, with links to the pages they used. They can answer a question without a click, which is why their effect on traffic is debated. You can improve your chances of being cited in one, but never guarantee it.; How much traffic AI Overviews take
Citation: This word means two different things. A local citation is a listing on another website that shows your business name, address and phone number. An AI citation is a source link shown in an AI answer. They share a name, and you earn them in completely different ways.; What a citation means in SEO
AI share of voice: How much of the AI conversation is about you. Across a set of questions you choose, it’s your share of all the brands named or linked. Change the questions, the AI tools or what you divide by, and the figure changes too. So it only means something next to its method.; How AI share of voice is measured

Local

Local search terms

The terms that decide most of what a local business sees in Google Maps and the map pack.

Local SEO: Showing up when people search for something nearby: the map pack, Google Maps and "near me" results. Google says relevance, distance and prominence decide these. That’s why a complete Business Profile, reviews and matching business details matter more here than in ordinary results.; Local SEO as BOOSTD runs it
NAP (name, address, phone): The details that identify your business on your website, your Business Profile and the directories that list you. When they don’t match, search engines are less sure two listings are the same business. A service-area business hides its address from the public, but keeps everything else identical.; The local SEO checklist, in order
Local pack (map pack): The block of up to three local businesses, with a map, that Google shows above the ordinary results for a search with local intent. Google says it’s decided by relevance, distance and prominence. It’s a separate competition from the links below it, so a business can rank in one and not the other.; Local SEO and the map pack
Google Business Profile: The free listing that controls how your business shows up on Google Maps and in local search: name, address, phone number, hours, category and reviews. Google says relevance, distance and prominence all draw on it, so missing or wrong details are a common reason a business doesn’t show up.; The Business Profile fields that matter

Growth

Growth and lifecycle marketing terms

Words from email, tracking and measurement that show up across the growth services on this site.

Conversion rate: The share of visits, clicks or leads that end in the outcome you wanted, such as a purchase, a booking or a submitted form. There’s no universal “good” number: it depends on the traffic source, the offer and what counts as a conversion, so industry benchmarks rarely tell you much about your own site.; Why conversion rate benchmarks don’t help
UTM parameters: Short tags added to the end of a link, such as utm_source and utm_campaign, that tell your analytics which campaign, channel or email sent the click. They don’t change where the link goes. They only get read correctly if every campaign tags its links the same way, which is the part most teams get wrong.; Tag your campaign links with a free UTM builder
Email authentication (SPF, DKIM, DMARC): Three DNS records that prove a marketing email really came from you. SPF lists which servers can send for your domain, DKIM signs each message so a change in transit is detectable, and DMARC tells inboxes what to do when either check fails. Get them wrong and your mail is more likely to land in spam.; Email deliverability basics: SPF, DKIM and DMARC
Key event (GA4): An action in Google Analytics 4 you’ve marked as meaningful to the business, such as a completed purchase, a booked call or a submitted form. GA4 used to call these conversions. Marking an event doesn’t make it accurate: it still has to fire at the right moment for the right reason.; How key events and call tracking fit together

BOOSTD

How BOOSTD works

Our own terms, defined the way our software uses them. The linked pages say what is running today.

Growth Score: A single BOOSTD number from 0 to 100 that brings together eleven checks, from search and AI answers to local presence, trust and conversion. The weights change with the type of business, so an online shop and a clinic aren’t judged on the same mix. A check that doesn’t apply is left out, and never counted as a fail.; How the Growth Score is built
Small fixes on their own: “BOOSTD automatically handles low-risk improvements and asks before material changes.” This is the recommended mode. Low-risk work that can be undone in one step, such as titles, alt text, structured data and safe internal links, runs by itself. Copy changes, new pages and redirects wait for you.; The three automation modes compared
Ask me first: “BOOSTD prepares work for your approval.” BOOSTD watches your site, looks for improvements and prepares changes. Nothing goes live until you approve it. It suits businesses that want to see every change first, however small.; What each mode runs without asking
Go ahead, show me after: “BOOSTD can execute broadly within your rules. Critical actions still remain protected.” For teams that have written down which pages, types of change and dates are allowed. Protected pages such as checkout, login and legal pages stay protected in every mode.; Where approval sits in each mode
Rollback: Putting back the version that existed before a change. BOOSTD saves the previous version first, so undoing takes one step. If the check after a change fails, such as errors, a wrong canonical or noindex, or a broken form, the change is undone automatically.; Rollback, audit and the security model
Entitlement and capacity: Entitlement is what your plan covers: every feature, for one website, up to its limits on pages, locations and searches. Capacity is how much work can run in a set period. BOOSTD still finds and shows you work beyond either. It queues it or offers it to you, and never does less without telling you or charges more.; How plans are sized

References

Sources

The official documents behind these definitions. Where a platform defines a term, we use that platform's own documentation.

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