The words we actually use.

Optimising content to be cited by answer engines like Google's AI Overviews, Perplexity, and ChatGPT.

AI Overviews

Google's AI-generated summary panel at the top of many SERPs.

Alt text

Text alternative for images, used by screen readers and search engines.

Anchor text

Off-Page

The visible, clickable text of a hyperlink.

Backlink

Off-Page

A link from another site to yours.

Canonical tag

An HTML tag that tells search engines which URL is the master version of a page.

Citation (local)

A mention of a business's NAP on a third-party site.

CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift)

How much visible layout shifts during a page's lifetime.

Content cluster (pillar & spokes)

Content

A pillar page plus supporting pages, all internally linked around a single entity.

Conversion

A user action of business value: purchase, lead form, phone call, booking.

Core Web Vitals

Google's field-measured page-experience metrics: LCP, INP, and CLS.

Crawl budget

The number of URLs a search engine will crawl on a site in a given window.

CTR (Click-Through Rate)

The percentage of impressions that result in a click.

DR / DA (Domain Rating / Domain Authority)

Off-Page

Third-party estimates of a domain's overall backlink strength.

E-E-A-T

Content

Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness — Google's quality-rater signals.

Entity

A distinct, unambiguous thing (a person, organisation, product, place) that search systems can identify.

Featured snippet

A summarised answer shown at the top of the classical SERP, drawn from a single source.

GA4 (Google Analytics 4)

Google's event-based analytics platform.

GEO (Generative Engine Optimization)

Optimising for large-language-model-powered search surfaces.

Google Business Profile

A free business listing that drives visibility in Google Maps and the local pack.

Google Search Console

Google's free reporting and diagnostic tool for organic search performance.

H1

The primary heading of a page.

Impression

A count of times a page URL appeared in search results for a user.

INP (Interaction to Next Paint)

The Core Web Vitals metric that measures how quickly a page responds to user interactions.

Internal linking

Links between pages on the same domain — a primary lever for ranking and crawl distribution.

JSON-LD

The recommended syntax for embedding structured data in a page's <head>.

LCP (Largest Contentful Paint)

The time until the largest visible content element is rendered.

Map pack (Local pack / 3-pack)

The block of local business results shown for geo-intent queries.

Meta description

A short HTML attribute summarising a page, often used as the snippet in search results.

NAP (Name, Address, Phone)

The core business identity data that must be consistent across citations.

robots.txt

A plain-text file at the site root that tells crawlers which paths they may or may not crawl.

Schema (structured data)

Standardised markup that describes page content to search engines.

SERP (Search Engine Results Page)

The page shown in response to a search query.

Title tag

The HTML element that provides the title of a page — one of the strongest on-page signals.

Topical authority

Content

The perceived expertise of a domain in a specific topic area, measured across many related pages.

XML sitemap