AEO and SEO Glossary: 44 Search Terms for Beginners
Co-founder at King’s Cross Labs · ex-LinkedIn PM & Forbes 30 Under 30
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This is a plain-English AEO and SEO glossary: 44 terms you'll run into when you start growing a website through Google and AI search, each defined in one to three sentences. If you're a founder or building a personal brand and learning search on the fly, keep this page open next to Search Console.
I first picked up SEO by osmosis at Parallax, my last startup, because we had someone who really knew it. A lot has changed since then because people now search through AI too. When I ran my first SEO and AEO audit with AI, half the battle was just knowing what the words meant. So here's the cheat sheet I wish I'd had, grouped the way you'll actually meet these terms.
Key insight: Search engines find you, and AI tools quote what search engines find. Learn the SEO words first and most of AEO makes sense on its own.
Jump to a section:
What are the basic SEO and AEO terms?
These are the words for how search works at all: who reads your pages, where they go, and how they show up.
SEO (search engine optimization)
SEO is the work of getting your pages ranked in Google's and Bing's search results. Where you land depends on whether your page answers what someone searched and how much the search engine trusts your site.
AEO and GEO
AEO (answer engine optimization) is the work of getting your pages quoted, or your brand recommended, inside AI answers from tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity. GEO (generative engine optimization) means the same thing, and people use the two names interchangeably. For a starting checklist, see 10 practical ways to start AEO.
SERP
A SERP is the search engine results page: everything you see after you hit enter on Google or Bing. That includes the blue links, ads, AI Overviews, and boxes like "People also ask."
AI Overviews and AI Mode
AI Overviews are the AI-written answers Google shows at the top of some search results, with links to the pages it used. AI Mode is Google's separate chat-style search, where you can ask follow-up questions like you would in ChatGPT.
Query fan-out
Query fan-out is when an AI tool breaks one question into many smaller searches behind the scenes, then combines what it finds into one answer. It's why a page can get cited for a question it never mentions word for word, because it answered one of the smaller searches.
Crawler (bot)
A crawler is the program a search engine or AI company sends to read your pages. The big ones are Googlebot (Google), Bingbot (Bing), GPTBot (OpenAI), and ClaudeBot (Anthropic).
Indexing
Indexing is whether a search engine has actually added your page to its index, the giant list of pages it can show in results. Published doesn't mean indexed, sadly. A page that isn't indexed can't rank, no matter how good it is.
Ranking
Ranking is where your page shows up for a given search, like third on the first page of results. Your page can rank well for one search and not show up at all for another.
What do the Google Search Console metrics mean?
These are the numbers you'll stare at every week in Google Search Console (and its Bing equivalent).
Impressions
Impressions are how often your page showed up in search results. Someone doesn't have to scroll to it or click it for it to count.
Clicks
Clicks are how often people clicked through to your site from those search results. This is the number that turns into actual visitors.
CTR (click-through rate)
CTR is clicks divided by impressions. If your page showed up 1,000 times and got 20 clicks, your CTR is 2%. A low CTR on a page with lots of impressions usually means your title or meta description isn't convincing people to click.
Average position
Average position is your average rank across all the searches you showed up for. Lower is better, and 1 is the top. It's an average, so one page ranking first for a few searches and fortieth for many others can land somewhere in the middle.
"Discovered, currently not indexed"
"Discovered, currently not indexed" is a status in Search Console meaning Google knows the page exists but hasn't crawled or added it yet. It's common for new sites. Internal links to the page and a sitemap that includes it help Google get to it sooner.
What are backlinks and domain authority?
These are the words for trust: who links to you, how much credit those links pass, and whether Google and AI tools believe you.
Backlink
A backlink is another site linking to yours. It's one of the strongest signals that your website is worth trusting, especially when the linking site is trusted itself.
Do-follow vs. no-follow
A do-follow link is a normal link that passes ranking credit to the page it points to. A no-follow link has a "nofollow" tag in its code asking Google not to pass that credit. Most links people post themselves are no-follow, like links in Reddit posts and comments, Wikipedia citations, and posts on X or LinkedIn. They can still send real visitors your way!
Domain ranking (DR and DA)
Domain ranking is a score from SEO tools that estimates how much authority your whole site has, mostly based on backlinks. The common ones are Ahrefs' Domain Rating (DR) and Moz's Domain Authority (DA). Google doesn't use these scores itself, but they're a handy way to track your site's reputation over time.
Anchor text
Anchor text is the clickable words in a link. "Read my SEO audit guide" tells readers and search engines what the linked page is about. "Click here" tells them nothing.
Internal links
Internal links are links between pages on your own site. Crawlers find new pages by following them, and the pages you link to most often look like your most important ones.
Citation vs. mention
A citation is an AI tool linking your page as a source in its answer. A mention is the AI naming your brand, with or without a link. You want both: citations send traffic, and mentions build recognition.
E-E-A-T
E-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trust. It comes from Google's guidelines for the people who rate the quality of search results, and it describes how Google judges whether to believe a page. Showing who wrote a page, what they've actually done, and when it was last updated all help.
What are keywords and search intent?
These are the words for what people type, what they mean by it, and how hard it is to win.
Keyword
A keyword is the word or phrase someone types into a search engine, like "instagram api" or "how to start aeo." Keywords are how you figure out what people are actually searching for in your space.
Search intent
Search intent is what someone actually wants when they search: to learn something, compare options, or buy. A page that matches the intent behind a keyword ranks better than one that just repeats the keyword.
Long-tail keyword
A long-tail keyword is a longer, more specific search, like "how long does meta app review take for instagram" instead of "meta app review." Fewer people search each one, but they're easier to win and closer to how people ask AI tools questions.
Search volume
Search volume is roughly how many times a month a keyword gets searched. It's an estimate from SEO tools, so treat it as a rough guide, and expect different tools to give different numbers.
Keyword difficulty
Keyword difficulty is an SEO tool's estimate of how hard a keyword is to rank for, usually based on how strong the pages already ranking for it are. New sites do best starting with low-difficulty keywords.
Topic cluster (hub and spoke)
A topic cluster is one main page on a broad topic (the hub) plus many specific posts on related questions (the spokes) that all link back to it. It shows search engines you cover a topic in depth, not just once.
What are the technical SEO terms to know?
These are the files, tags, and settings that help crawlers find, read, and trust your pages. If you can't edit your site's code, this is the section to hand to whoever can, or to an AI agent like Claude Code.
Sitemap
A sitemap is a file that lists every page on your site you want indexed. Search engines use it as a map, and accurate "last updated" dates in it tell them which pages to re-check.
robots.txt
robots.txt is a file at the root of your site that tells crawlers what they're allowed to read. It's worth checking that yours isn't accidentally blocking AI crawlers like GPTBot or ClaudeBot.
llms.txt
llms.txt is a plain-text file at the root of your site that summarizes your best pages for AI tools. It's a new and unofficial convention, and not every AI engine reads it yet, but it takes minutes to add.
IndexNow
IndexNow is a quick ping that tells Bing and other search engines the moment a page is added or changed. Google doesn't use it, so you still need Google Search Console for Google.
Canonical tag
A canonical tag is a line of code that tells search engines "this is the one true URL for this page." It stops copies of the same page, like a version with tracking tags on the end, from competing with the original.
301/308 vs. 302/307 redirect
A redirect sends visitors and crawlers from an old URL to a new one. A permanent redirect (301 or 308) tells Google the page has moved for good, so its ranking credit moves with it. A temporary redirect (302 or 307) tells Google to keep the old URL, so the new one doesn't take its place.
Title tag
A title tag is the headline of your page as it shows up in search results and browser tabs. Around 60 characters is a safe length, because Google cuts off or rewrites long ones.
Meta description
A meta description is the short blurb under your title in search results, about 155 characters. Think of it as a free ad: Google doesn't always use it, but a good one gets more clicks.
Header tags (H1, H2, H3)
Header tags are the headings that make up a page's outline. Use one H1 for the page title, then H2s and H3s for sections. Phrasing H2s as questions matches how people actually search and ask AI.
Open Graph (OG) tags and images
Open Graph tags control what a link preview shows when someone shares your page in Slack, iMessage, or LinkedIn: the title, the description, and the image. The og:url tag tells those apps which address to point the preview to.
Structured data (schema, JSON-LD)
Structured data is labels in your page's code that tell machines what the page is: an article, an FAQ, a product, a person. Schema.org is the shared vocabulary for those labels, and JSON-LD is the format Google recommends for writing them.
Alt text
Alt text is a written description of an image. Crawlers can't see pictures, so alt text is how they know what your screenshots show. It also makes your page readable for people using screen readers.
Server-side rendering
Server-side rendering means your server sends the full page text in the HTML, instead of building it in the browser with JavaScript. Many AI crawlers don't run JavaScript, so if your text only appears after scripts load, they see an empty page.
Core Web Vitals
Core Web Vitals are Google's measures of how a page feels to use: how fast the main content loads, how quickly the page responds when you tap something, and how much the layout jumps around while it loads. Slow pages can rank lower and lose clicks, and you can check yours for free with Google's PageSpeed Insights.
noindex
noindex is a tag that tells search engines not to add a page to their index. Use it for pages you don't want in search, like thank-you pages or empty "coming soon" pages, and don't put those pages in your sitemap.
How do you track where visitors come from?
These are the tools and tags that tell you whether your work is paying off.
UTM
A UTM is a tag added to the end of a link that tells your analytics where a visitor came from, like "utm_source=newsletter." It's how I knew one of our earliest signups came from ChatGPT.
Referral traffic
Referral traffic is visitors who arrived by clicking a link on another site, including AI tools like chatgpt.com and perplexity.ai. In your analytics, AI referrals are the clearest sign that AI answers are sending people your way.
Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools
Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools are free dashboards that show how each search engine sees your site: what's indexed, what you show up for, and how many people click. Set up both, because Bing's index also feeds Microsoft Copilot and ChatGPT search.
What should you do after learning these terms?
Run an audit on your own site. Once you know the words, an AI-powered SEO and AEO audit will read like a brief instead of a wall of jargon, and you can hand the fixes to AI agents. Then pick up the habits in 10 practical ways to start AEO so every new page is ready for AI search from day one.
Additional reading
Here are some related guides to check out:
Frequently asked questions
- What's the difference between SEO and AEO?
- SEO gets your pages ranked in Google and Bing results. AEO, answer engine optimization, gets your pages quoted or your brand recommended inside AI answers from tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity. Most of the foundations overlap, because AI tools run their own searches on those same engines.
- Which SEO and AEO terms should I learn first as a beginner?
- Start with indexing, impressions, clicks, backlinks, and the difference between a citation and a mention. Those five tell you whether search engines can find you, whether people see you, and whether AI tools are using your pages as sources.
- Does Google use Domain Rating or Domain Authority to rank my site?
- No. Domain Rating comes from Ahrefs and Domain Authority comes from Moz. They are third-party estimates of how much authority a whole site has, mostly based on backlinks. They are useful for tracking your progress, but Google does not use them.
- Do I need an llms.txt file for AI search?
- It helps, but it is not required. An llms.txt file is a plain-text summary of your best pages written for AI tools. It is a new and unofficial convention that not every AI engine reads yet, but it only takes a few minutes to add.
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