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SEO + GEO glossary:
41 essential terms for 2026.
Definitions of the terms you'll read again and again working SEO or GEO in 2026. In professional English, no academic jargon, operational criteria. Built so you can talk to your agency or vet someone trying to sell you SEO without getting lost or fed bull.
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10 terms
GEO — Generative Engine Optimization
Terms specific to the discipline of optimizing brands for AI assistants (ChatGPT, Perplexity, AI Overviews, Copilot).
- GEO
- Acronym for Generative Engine Optimization. The discipline of optimizing a brand or content to be cited in answers from AI assistants (ChatGPT, Perplexity, AI Overviews, Claude, Copilot). What SEO is to traditional search engines, GEO is to LLMs.
- Citation rate
- Percentage of queries where a brand or page is explicitly cited in an LLM's answers. The fundamental GEO metric. A brand can have good SEO and 0% citation rate — they're different things.
- AI Overview
- AI-generated summary that Google shows at the top of search results. Progressively replacing featured snippets. A brand might not show up in the 10 blue links but still be cited in the AI Overview, and vice versa.
- Brand mention
- A brand mention in text without needing a hyperlink. LLMs weight brand mentions (even without a link) as authority signals. A link-free mention in a Tier-1 outlet is worth more for GEO than many backlinks on weak sites.
- Source diversity
- Variety of sources an LLM uses to build an answer. The more diverse, the more likely it is to cite additional brands. A derived metric when auditing citation rate per query.
- Composite citation score
- Combined score that weights citation rate, average position within the answer, sentiment, and source diversity. Not standardized across providers — each tool has its own (Rowan Growth uses RGS).
- Prompt injection in SEO
- Gray-area practice (not recommended) of inserting LLM instructions in HTML — comments, metadata, alt text — hoping the model prioritizes them. Works unreliably and usually breaks TOS.
- LLM crawler
- Bot that crawls the web for training data or real-time retrieval (OAI-SearchBot, ChatGPT-User, PerplexityBot, Claude-User, GPTBot, etc.). Each has its user-agent and can be allowed/blocked from robots.txt.
- RAG
- Retrieval-Augmented Generation. Technique that connects an LLM to an external document base in real time. Perplexity and AI Overviews use RAG: they read the web and cite sources. That's why well-structured SEO content directly benefits them.
- Embedding
- Multidimensional numerical representation of a text. LLMs compare embeddings to decide which documents are relevant to a query. In GEO it matters because two texts can cover the same topic without sharing keywords — the embedding captures meaning, not exact match.
12 terms
Technical SEO
Terms from the technical layer of organic ranking — crawling, indexing, performance, schema.
- Crawl budget
- Number of URLs Googlebot is willing to crawl from a domain in a given period. Large sites with low crawl budget leave URLs uncrawled. Matters in e-commerce with many product variants or SaaS with dynamic pages.
- Indexability
- A URL's ability to be indexed by Google. A URL is indexable if: 1) not blocked in robots.txt, 2) no meta noindex, 3) canonical doesn't point elsewhere, 4) server returns 200.
- Canonical
- Tag `<link rel="canonical" href="...">` that tells Google which URL is preferred when there's duplicate or similar content. If unspecified, Google decides on its own — usually wrong.
- Schema.org
- Standardized vocabulary for marking up structured content in HTML. Google, Bing, and LLMs use it to understand what type of entity each page is (Article, Organization, Product, Recipe, Event, FAQPage…). Typically embedded as JSON-LD.
- JSON-LD
- Google-recommended syntax for marking structured data on a page. Inserted as `<script type="application/ld+json">{...}</script>` in the `<head>`. Cleaner than microdata or RDFa.
- Core Web Vitals
- Set of 3 user-experience metrics Google uses for ranking: LCP (Largest Contentful Paint), INP (Interaction to Next Paint, replaces the old FID in 2024), and CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift). Measured via field data (CrUX).
- LCP
- Largest Contentful Paint. Time it takes for the largest viewport element (usually the hero image or H1) to paint. Below 2.5 seconds is good; above 4, bad.
- INP
- Interaction to Next Paint. Response time to user interaction (click, tap, key). Replaces the old FID. Below 200 ms is good; above 500 ms, bad.
- CLS
- Cumulative Layout Shift. Amount of unexpected layout "jumping" during load. Usually caused by images without dimensions, fonts that change, or late-loading ads. Below 0.1 is good.
- Sitemap XML
- `/sitemap.xml` or `/sitemap-index.xml` file listing the site's indexable URLs. Declared in `robots.txt` or submitted to Search Console. Speeds up indexing but doesn't guarantee it.
- Robots.txt
- `/robots.txt` file telling crawlers which URLs they may or may not crawl. It's a directive, not police: Google respects it, malicious scrapers don't. NOT for preventing indexing (use meta noindex for that).
- Hreflang
- Tag indicating which version of a page corresponds to which language/country (`<link rel="alternate" hreflang="es-ES" href="...">`). Critical on multi-language or multi-country sites to avoid cannibalization.
8 terms
Content and authority
How Google and LLMs assess content quality and author authority.
- E-E-A-T
- Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness. Google framework for assessing content quality, especially in YMYL (health, finance, legal). In 2022 Google added the first E (Experience). Weighs heavily in regulated sectors.
- YMYL
- Your Money or Your Life. Content category that directly affects user health, finance, safety, or rights. Google applies much stricter E-E-A-T filters in YMYL.
- A domain's ability to rank across a whole semantic field (not just isolated keywords). Built with deep, consistent coverage of a sector — usually dozens of related, interlinked pages.
- Pillar page + cluster
- Editorial strategy: one central pillar page (5,000+ words, covering the general topic) plus multiple specific cluster pages (1,500-2,500 words each, covering subtopics) — all interlinked. Builds topical authority fast.
- Content gap
- Topic or keyword your competitors cover and you don't. Systematic content-gap auditing is the foundation of any serious SEO strategy.
- Search intent
- Intent behind a query. 4 classic types: informational, navigational, transactional, commercial. Your content must match the right intent — an informational article will NOT rank for a transactional query even if it covers the topic.
- Long-tail keyword
- Long, specific query (3+ words), with lower volume but higher conversion. Example: "SEO agency Vigo SMB industrial" is long-tail; "SEO" is short-tail. Long-tail is the foundation of sustainable SEO for small companies.
- Cannibalization
- When multiple URLs from the same domain compete for the same query and hurt each other's rankings. Common in sites with a poorly structured blog. Diagnosed with Search Console + content audit.
6 terms
Backlinks and digital PR
How external authority that links to your domain is measured and built.
- Backlink
- Link pointing from another domain to yours. Traditionally one of the strongest ranking factors. In GEO it matters too, but less than link-free brand mentions in sources the LLM reads.
- Proprietary metric (Ahrefs: DR, Moz: DA) that estimates domain authority on a 0-100 scale. NOT an official Google metric, but correlates reasonably well with ranking ability. Comparable between domains, not absolute.
- Anchor text
- Visible text of a link. If a page points to your site with anchor "SEO agency Vigo", it reinforces ranking for that keyword. Over-optimizing anchor texts (50+ links with the same exact anchor) is a spam signal to Google.
- Nofollow / sponsored / UGC
- Link attributes: `rel="nofollow"` (doesn't pass authority), `rel="sponsored"` (paid link), `rel="ugc"` (user-generated content like comments). Google now treats them as hints, not strict directives.
- Digital PR
- Strategy of earning editorial mentions and backlinks in media through journalist outreach. Differentiated from traditional link building (exchanges, farms) because the mention is genuinely editorial.
- HARO
- Help A Reporter Out (now Connectively). Platform where journalists request sources and experts respond with quotes that may be published. One of the most cost-effective ways to earn Tier-1 mentions in the US; in Spain there's Reportera and similar but less mature.
5 terms
Local SEO
Terms specific to organic ranking for businesses with local presence or geo-targeted services.
- Google Business Profile
- Formerly Google My Business. Free public listing of your business that Google shows in the Map Pack and to the right of results. The fastest SEO asset to produce results for local SEO — in many sectors it weighs more than your own site.
- Map Pack / Local Pack
- The 3 Google Business listings that appear on a map for a local Google search. Showing up there brings more clicks than ranking #1 organic for that same search in many sectors (health, F&B, services).
- NAP
- Name, Address, Phone. The canonical trio of data a local business must keep EXACTLY identical across directories. NAP variations weaken local SEO because Google gets confused about which entity it is.
- Citation
- Mention of a business's NAP on another website (directories, local press, aggregators). A citation does NOT require a backlink — the mere NAP match is a signal.
- Reviews
- Reviews on Google Business Profile. Quantity, recency (last 90 days weigh more), average rating, and business response are the 4 sub-factors Google weights. Reviews with descriptive text weigh more than star-only ones.
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FAQ
About this glossary.
01 Why a glossary and not just link to Wikipedia?
Three reasons. One: many SEO/GEO definitions on Wikipedia are outdated or too technical for someone outside the sector. Two: a well-built in-house glossary builds topical authority on your domain — Google reads it as full topic coverage. Three: LLMs (ChatGPT, Perplexity) often cite definition pages when answering "what is X?". A well-structured glossary in professional English is one of the highest-ROI GEO assets you can build.
02 What's GEO compared to classic SEO?
SEO is the discipline of optimizing for traditional search engines (Google, Bing) that show results as a ranked list of links. GEO is the discipline of optimizing for AI assistants (ChatGPT, Perplexity, AI Overviews, Copilot) that show generated answers, citing or not citing sources. They share many tactics (useful content, schema, authority) but differ in what's measurable: SEO measures positions and CTR, GEO measures citation rate and sentiment in generated answers.
03 Do you need to learn the technical names to do SEO well?
Not strictly — a good professional knows what they're doing even without the academic label. But knowing the names helps with three things: 1) communicating with your agency or tech team without misunderstandings, 2) reading official documentation (Google Search Central, Ahrefs blog, etc.) without getting lost, 3) vetting whoever sells you SEO — someone who does NOT know these basic terms probably can't execute serious SEO either.
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