Your comprehensive guide to SEO, GEO, and digital marketing terminology used throughout SEOMA's content and services. Understanding these terms will help you navigate the evolving landscape of search engine optimization and AI-driven search.
The practice of optimizing websites and content to rank higher in traditional search engine results pages (SERPs) like Google, Bing, and Yahoo. Involves technical improvements, content creation, and link building strategies.
Optimization techniques applied directly to website pages, including title tags, meta descriptions, header tags, internal linking, content quality, and keyword placement.
Activities performed outside of your website to improve search rankings, primarily focused on building high-quality backlinks, brand mentions, and social signals.
Optimization of website infrastructure to help search engines crawl and index your site effectively. Includes site speed, mobile-friendliness, XML sitemaps, robots.txt, structured data, and Core Web Vitals.
Strategies to optimize your online presence for local search results, including Google Business Profile optimization, local citations, reviews management, and location-specific content.
Ethical SEO practices that comply with search engine guidelines and focus on providing value to users. Contrasts with black-hat techniques that attempt to manipulate rankings.
The practice of optimizing content to appear in AI-generated search results, including ChatGPT, Google's AI Overviews, Perplexity, Claude, and other LLM-powered search experiences. Also known as LLM-GEO.
Advanced AI systems trained on vast amounts of text data to understand and generate human-like responses. Examples include GPT-4, Claude, Gemini, and other models powering AI search engines.
Google's AI-powered search feature that generates comprehensive answers at the top of search results, synthesizing information from multiple sources to answer user queries directly.
Search experiences where AI models generate unique, contextual answers rather than simply retrieving and ranking existing web pages. Represents a fundamental shift from traditional link-based search.
Search platforms powered by AI that provide direct answers instead of lists of links. Examples include Perplexity AI, ChatGPT with web browsing, and Google's Gemini-powered search.
Strategies to ensure your content is cited and referenced by AI models when generating answers, establishing your brand as an authoritative source in generative search results.
The process of creating and refining website content to rank well in both traditional search engines and AI-powered search results. Includes keyword research, topic clustering, and user intent alignment.
The process of identifying and analyzing search terms that people enter into search engines to discover content opportunities and understand user intent.
Longer, more specific keyword phrases that typically have lower search volume but higher conversion rates. Essential for capturing qualified traffic and niche audiences.
The underlying purpose behind a user's search query, categorized as informational, navigational, transactional, or commercial. Understanding intent is crucial for creating relevant content.
Optimizing content based on meaning and context rather than just exact keyword matches. Focuses on topic authority, entity relationships, and natural language understanding.
Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. Google's quality guidelines for evaluating content, especially important for YMYL (Your Money or Your Life) topics.
Code added to web pages that helps search engines understand content context and relationships. Enables rich results like FAQs, reviews, and organization information in search results.
Google's metrics for measuring user experience: Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), First Input Delay (FID) or Interaction to Next Paint (INP), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS).
The process by which search engine bots discover and scan web pages to index content. Effective crawling is essential for search visibility.
The process of storing and organizing discovered web pages in a search engine's database, making them available to appear in search results.
A file that lists all important pages on your website, helping search engines discover and index your content more efficiently.
A text file that tells search engine crawlers which pages or sections of your site should not be accessed or indexed.
The preferred version of a web page when duplicate or similar content exists across multiple URLs, preventing duplicate content issues.
Website visitors who arrive through unpaid search engine results rather than paid advertisements or direct links.
The percentage of website visitors who complete a desired action, such as making a purchase, filling out a form, or subscribing to a newsletter.
The percentage of visitors who leave a website after viewing only one page without taking any action or navigating to other pages.
The ratio of users who click on a specific link to the number of total users who view it, commonly used to measure the effectiveness of search result snippets.
The number of times your website appears in search results, regardless of whether users click on it.
The page displayed by search engines in response to a user's query, showing both organic results and paid advertisements.
A metric (developed by Moz) that predicts how well a website will rank on search engines, scored from 1-100 based on factors like backlink profile and content quality.
Links from other websites pointing to your site. High-quality backlinks from authoritative sources are a crucial ranking factor in SEO.
The process of acquiring backlinks from other websites to improve search engine rankings and establish authority in your industry.
The clickable text in a hyperlink. Strategic use of descriptive anchor text helps search engines understand the context of linked pages.
Links between pages within the same website. Helps distribute page authority, improve navigation, and establish content hierarchy.
Link attributes that tell search engines whether to pass authority (DoFollow) or not (NoFollow). DoFollow links contribute to SEO value, while NoFollow links don't.
The value or authority passed from one page to another through hyperlinks. Pages with more link equity typically rank higher in search results.
Enhanced search results that include additional information beyond the standard title, URL, and description, such as star ratings, images, FAQ answers, or pricing.
A highlighted answer box that appears at the top of Google search results (position zero), pulling content directly from a web page to answer a user's query.
An information box that appears on the right side of Google search results, displaying key facts about entities like businesses, people, or organizations.
Structured data markup that enables frequently asked questions to appear directly in search results, increasing visibility and click-through rates.
Structured data that provides search engines with comprehensive information about a business, including name, logo, contact details, and social profiles.
The map and business listings that appear in local search results, typically showing three businesses relevant to a local query.