SEO & AI Search Glossary | Alvin John Ferias

01

Fundamentals

The vocabulary every conversation about search starts with.

10 terms

Algorithm: The set of rules a search engine uses to decide which pages to show and in what order.
Crawler / Bot: Automated software, such as Googlebot, that visits and reads web pages so they can be indexed.
Keyword: A word or phrase people type into search that you want a page to be found for.
Keyword Research: The process of finding and prioritizing the search terms your audience uses, weighed by demand, difficulty, and intent.
Long-Tail Keyword: A longer, more specific phrase with lower search volume but clearer intent and less competition.
Organic Traffic: Visitors who reach your site by clicking unpaid search results, as opposed to ads or referrals.
Ranking: The position your page holds for a given query in search results.
Search Intent: The reason behind a query — whether the person wants information, a specific site, a comparison, or to buy.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization): The practice of improving a website so it earns more visibility in unpaid search results, bringing in relevant traffic without paying for each click.
SERP (Search Engine Results Page): The page a search engine returns after a query, combining organic results, ads, and features like maps, images, and AI answers.

02

On-Page SEO

Everything you control on the page itself.

10 terms

Alt Text: A written description of an image that helps screen readers and search engines understand it.
Anchor Text: The visible, clickable words of a link, which give context about the destination page.
Content Optimization: Refining a page's wording, depth, and structure so it answers the query fully and clearly.
Header Tags (H1–H6): HTML headings that structure content and signal hierarchy to both readers and search engines.
Internal Link: A link from one page on your site to another, used to guide users and pass relevance.
Keyword Cannibalization: When multiple pages target the same keyword and compete with each other, weakening all of them.
Meta Description: A short summary shown under the title in results; it influences clicks but is not a direct ranking factor.
On-Page SEO: Optimizing elements on the page itself — content, titles, headings, links, and structure — to match intent and rank better.
Title Tag: The clickable headline a page shows in search results, defined in the HTML title element.
URL Slug: The readable part of a web address that identifies a specific page.

03

Technical SEO

The infrastructure that lets engines reach and read your site.

15 terms

301 Redirect: A permanent redirect that sends users and engines from an old URL to a new one, passing most ranking value.
404 Error: The response shown when a page cannot be found at the requested URL.
Canonical Tag: HTML that names the preferred version of a page to prevent duplicate-content issues.
Core Web Vitals: Google's metrics for loading speed, interactivity, and visual stability that measure page experience.
Crawl Budget: The number of pages a search engine will crawl on your site within a given time.
Crawling: The process by which search engines discover pages by following links.
HTTPS: A secure version of HTTP that encrypts data between a site and its visitors; a trust and ranking signal.
Indexing: Storing and organizing crawled pages so they can appear in search results.
Mobile-First Indexing: Google's practice of using the mobile version of a site as the primary basis for ranking.
Page Speed: How quickly a page loads — a factor in both rankings and user experience.
Rendering: How a search engine processes a page's code, including JavaScript, to see it the way a user would.
Robots.txt: A file that tells crawlers which parts of a site they may or may not access.
Structured Data / Schema Markup: Code that labels page content — reviews, FAQs, products, definitions — so engines can show rich results.
Technical SEO: Work on a site's infrastructure — speed, crawlability, indexing, and structure — so search engines can access and understand it.
XML Sitemap: A file listing your important pages to help search engines find and crawl them.

04

Off-Page & Link Building

Authority you earn beyond your own domain.

10 terms

Anchor Text Diversity: A natural mix of link wording across a profile, which reads more organic than repeated exact-match anchors.
Backlink: A link from another website to yours; a key signal of credibility and authority.
Dofollow: A standard link that passes ranking value to the destination page.
Domain Authority / Domain Rating: A third-party score from tools like Moz or Ahrefs that estimates a site's strength. It is not a Google metric.
Guest Posting: Writing content for another site, usually to earn a relevant backlink and reach a new audience.
Link Building: The practice of earning or acquiring backlinks to improve authority and rankings.
Link Equity: The ranking value passed from one page to another through links, sometimes called link juice.
Nofollow: A link attribute telling search engines not to pass ranking value through that link.
Off-Page SEO: Activities outside your site — mainly earning links and mentions — that build authority and trust.
Referring Domain: A unique website that links to yours; many links from one site still count as a single referring domain.

05

Local SEO

Winning searches tied to a place you serve.

8 terms

Citation: An online mention of a business's NAP details, such as in a directory, that supports local rankings.
Geo-Targeting: Tailoring content and pages to the specific locations you serve.
Google Business Profile (GBP): The free Google listing that controls how a business appears in Maps and local search.
Local Pack / Map Pack: The block of map results and listings shown for local queries.
Local SEO: Optimizing to appear for location-based searches and in map results — vital for businesses serving a specific area.
NAP (Name, Address, Phone): A business's core contact details, which must stay consistent across the web for local trust.
Review Signals: The quantity, quality, and recency of customer reviews, which influence local rankings and trust.
Service-Area Business: A business that serves customers at their location rather than from a storefront.

06

Analytics & Metrics

The numbers that tell you whether any of it is working.

9 terms

Bounce Rate: The share of visitors who leave after viewing only one page; GA4 redefines this around engagement.
Conversion: A desired action a visitor completes, such as a call, form fill, or purchase.
Dwell Time: How long a visitor stays on a page after clicking from search before returning.
Impressions: How many times your page appeared in search results.
Index Coverage: A Search Console report of which pages are indexed and which have issues.
Keyword Difficulty: An estimate of how hard it is to rank for a term, based on competition.
Organic CTR (Click-Through Rate): The share of searchers who click your result after seeing it.
ROI (Return on Investment): The financial return earned relative to what was spent on SEO.
Search Volume: The average number of times a keyword is searched in a given period.

07

Essential Terms for AI Search

The new layer of search — where being cited matters as much as being ranked.

21 terms

AEO (Answer Engine Optimization): Optimizing content so AI answer engines and assistants surface and cite it directly in their responses.
AI Overviews: Google's AI-generated summaries at the top of some results, synthesizing an answer from multiple sources. Formerly SGE.
Brand Mention: A reference to your brand online, even without a link; increasingly a signal AI models use to gauge authority.
Chunking: Splitting content into self-contained passages that AI systems can retrieve and cite individually.
Citation / Source Attribution: The sources an AI answer credits — and the core goal of AEO and GEO: being the source the AI names.
Conversational Search: Searching through natural, back-and-forth questions instead of short keyword queries.
Entity: A distinct, recognizable thing — a person, place, brand, or concept — that search engines understand and connect.
Entity SEO: Optimizing so search engines clearly recognize and associate your brand as a known entity.
Generative Search: A search experience that produces a written answer rather than only a list of links.
GEO (Generative Engine Optimization): Optimizing to appear and be referenced inside AI-generated answers from tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, and AI Overviews.
Grounding: Anchoring an AI's response in verifiable sources to reduce errors and enable citation.
Hallucination: When an AI generates confident but false or unsupported information.
Knowledge Graph: A network of entities and their relationships that search engines use to understand the world.
LLM (Large Language Model): An AI system trained on vast amounts of text that generates human-like responses and increasingly powers search.
llms.txt: A proposed text file that tells AI systems how to access and use a site's content. An emerging standard.
Prompt: The instruction or question a user gives an AI system to get a response.
Query Fan-Out: A technique where an AI splits one query into several related sub-searches to assemble a fuller answer.
RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation): A method where an AI retrieves relevant documents and uses them to ground its generated answer in real sources.
Semantic Search: Search that interprets meaning and context rather than matching exact keywords.
Vector Embedding: A numeric representation of meaning that lets AI compare how related two pieces of content are.
Zero-Click Search: A search resolved on the results page itself — via an answer box or AI summary — with no click to any site.

The SEO & AI Search Glossary

Fundamentals

On-Page SEO

Technical SEO

Off-Page & Link Building

Local SEO

Analytics & Metrics

Essential Terms for AI Search

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