The SEO glossary for buyers
Short, sourced definitions of the terms that come up when you buy search work: SEO, GEO and AI search, conversion rate optimization, analytics and the platforms your site runs on. Each entry opens on a plain answer, says why it matters to you, and links to the deeper guide.
30 minutes. No pitch deck. You leave with a prioritised plan.
Search has picked up a second vocabulary in two years. The old one, rankings, backlinks, Core Web Vitals, never went away, and a new one arrived on top of it: AI Overviews, AI Mode, query fan-out, citations, GEO. Proposals mix the two freely, and it is hard to judge a plan when half of its nouns are unfamiliar.
This glossary is the reference we wish buyers had before a sales call. Every entry opens on a definition short enough to read in one breath, then says two things a generic dictionary does not: why the term should matter to someone paying for the work, and how it is actually measured or applied. Where a claim rests on a search engine's documentation or a piece of research, the source is listed at the foot of the entry.
How is the glossary organised?
Alphabetically, with a filter for five areas: SEO, GEO and AI search, conversion rate optimization, analytics, and the platforms sites are built on. Terms link to their neighbours, so an entry on AI Overviews points on to query fan-out and zero-click searches, and each one links down to the longer guide on the blog when that guide is live.
What will you not find here?
Invented numbers. Where a figure appears it comes from the named source. We also leave out jargon that exists only to sell a tool, and we say plainly when a term is overhyped, as the entry on llms.txt does.
C
- Content delivery network (CDN)
- A content delivery network is a distributed set of servers in different geographic locations that cache and serve a site's static content, such as images, scripts and stylesheets, from a location physically closer to each visitor.
G
- Google Tag Manager (GTM)
- Google Tag Manager is a free tool that lets a site manage tracking and marketing tags, such as GA4, ad conversion pixels and other scripts, through a web interface rather than editing site code directly for every change.
H
- Headless CMS
- A headless CMS is a content management system that stores and manages content through an API, with no built-in front-end templating of its own, so a separate application, such as a Next.js site, fetches the content and controls entirely how and where it is rendered and displayed.
S
- Server-side rendering (SSR)
- Server-side rendering is generating a page's full HTML on the server for each request, before sending it to the browser, rather than sending a mostly empty page and building the content with JavaScript in the visitor's browser.
- Shopify
- Shopify is a hosted ecommerce platform used to build and run online stores, providing built-in checkout, payments and hosting.
W
- WooCommerce
- WooCommerce is a free, open-source ecommerce plugin that turns a WordPress site into an online store.
Questions we get asked
Who writes these definitions?
The two founders, Ibrahem Helal and Jeremy Zava, write and review every entry. Each one names at least one source you can check, usually the search engine's own documentation or the original research, so you are not taking a definition on our word alone.
Why does every entry open with a short paragraph?
Because that paragraph is the answer. It is written to make sense on its own in forty to sixty words, which is also the shape search features and AI assistants quote. The rest of the entry says why the term matters to a buyer and how it is measured or applied.
What is the difference between SEO, GEO and AEO?
SEO gets pages ranked in search results. GEO gets a brand named and cited in answers from assistants such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude and Google's AI features. AEO is the older label for structuring answers so search features can lift them. The work overlaps heavily, and each has its own entry here.
How often are new terms added?
Two a day from 24 September 2026 until the planned list of 120 terms is complete, then as new terms enter common use. Entries are updated when the underlying documentation changes, and the date on each entry says when that last happened.
Can I quote or link to a definition?
Yes. Link to the entry's own page so readers get the source list with it. If a definition is wrong or out of date, email us and we will correct it and change the date on the entry.
Do you sell every service described here?
No. The glossary covers terms buyers meet whoever they hire. Where we do the work, the entry links to the service page; where we do not, it says what the term means and stops there.
Thirty minutes to see where your site is invisible.
Book a free consultation with Ibrahem and Jeremy. We look at your site on search, AI answers and conversion while we talk, and you leave with a prioritised plan.
30 minutes. No pitch deck. You leave with a prioritised plan.