SEO, AEO & PPC Glossary

Running two versions of a page, advert or email with a single difference, then measuring which performs better. It is how you improve conversion rate with evidence instead of opinion.

Structuring your content, entity and brand signals so AI assistants like ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and Copilot name your business when someone asks for a recommendation. The AEO equivalent of ranking on page one is being the answer itself.

An automated bot that collects content for AI training or live answers, for example GPTBot, ClaudeBot or PerplexityBot. Blocking them in robots.txt removes your business from the answers, which is usually the opposite of what a marketer wants.

Google's AI-generated answer block that sits above the traditional results for many queries, summarising content from around the web. A citation here is one of the highest-value placements in search today because it appears before everything else.

Deciding which channel or touchpoint gets credit for a conversion. Different models produce different answers, so the important thing is to pick one and apply it consistently.

A link from another website to yours. Search engines read it as a trust signal, and a handful of relevant, genuinely earned links beats hundreds of low-quality ones.

The share of sessions that leave without interacting with the page. A high bounce rate on a landing page usually means the promise that earned the click did not match what the visitor found.

A small instruction in a page that names the preferred version when similar or duplicate pages exist. It stops your own pages competing with each other and splitting authority.

A named source that an AI answer links to or references. Being cited means the model treated your content as authoritative enough for the question, and it is the clearest measurable win in AI search.

The percentage of visitors or clicks that complete a valuable action, such as submitting a form, calling or booking. Most accounts have far more upside in conversion rate than in increasing budget.

Recording the actions that carry real value, such as a form submission, a phone call or a purchase. Broken conversion tracking is the most expensive mistake in paid media, because every optimisation decision after it is guesswork.

Google's three page-experience metrics covering loading speed, interactivity and visual stability. Poor scores hurt both rankings and the share of visitors who stay long enough to enquire.

Total campaign spend divided by the number of conversions it produced. This is the number that decides whether a campaign is genuinely viable, because it can be compared directly against what a customer is worth to you.

What you actually pay for one click on your ad. It is driven by how competitive the auction is, how relevant your ad and landing page are, and how tightly your targeting is set.

Clicks divided by impressions, shown as a percentage. A weak CTR usually means the wrong audience is seeing the ad or the copy is not compelling, and it pushes your cost per click up.

The quality signals Google's guidelines use to judge whether content deserves to rank. Demonstrating real experience, such as genuine case studies and named authors, is how you satisfy them.

A distinct, identifiable thing that a search engine or AI model builds knowledge about, such as your business, a person or a place. Consistent naming, matching details across the web and structured data all strengthen your entity.

The current version of Google Analytics, built around events and users rather than sessions. It only tells the truth about performance if the events marking enquiries and sales are set up correctly.

The broader discipline of optimising for generative AI search: making your content easy for large language models to retrieve, understand and quote. It overlaps heavily with AEO and covers the full strategy, including content structure, entity building and citation-worthy formatting.

Your business listing inside Google Search and Maps, covering reviews, photos, categories, opening hours and posts. For local trades it is the strongest single visibility lever available.

The percentage of the impressions your ads were eligible for that they actually received. A low share means you are losing traffic to budget limits, targeting settings or weak ad rank.

Identifying the terms people search for, then judging how valuable and how winnable each one is. It is the step that decides whether everything after it is worth doing.

The page an advert sends its traffic to. Because it decides whether the click turns into an enquiry, improving the landing page often lifts results more than any change to bids or budgets.

The type of AI model behind tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude. Rather than returning a list of links, an LLM reads sources and generates a written answer, which is why being mentioned in the source material matters so much.

A plain-text file placed at your domain root that gives AI models a curated summary of your most important pages. It is an emerging convention, similar in spirit to robots.txt, used to help AI systems describe your business accurately.

Ranking for town-level and near-me searches, which is where most trade and automotive demand exists. It combines your Google Business Profile, reviews, location pages and consistent business details.

The clickable headline shown in search results and browser tabs. It remains the single highest-leverage on-page element for earning the click.

A search term you deliberately exclude so your ads do not show for it. It is the cheapest, fastest way to stop paying for clicks from people who were never going to buy.

Visitors who arrive from unpaid search results. It is the only channel that keeps delivering after you stop paying for it, which is why it is worth the slower build.

Paid advertising where you are charged each time somebody clicks your ad. Google Ads, Microsoft Ads and Meta Ads are the main channels for UK trades and automotive businesses, and results are immediate rather than compounding.

Google's 1 to 10 rating of how relevant your keyword, ad and landing page are to each other and to the searcher. Higher scores earn lower cost per click and better ad positions for the same budget.

The process an AI system uses to fetch live information, such as search results or pages from your site, before writing an answer. If your site is slow, blocked or unclear to crawlers, RAG simply cannot use it.

Showing ads to people who have already visited your site or engaged with your business. Warm audiences like this almost always convert better than cold traffic, and they are usually the first place to add budget.

Revenue generated divided by advertising spend, expressed as a multiple such as 4x. It is the single clearest measure of whether a campaign is profitable, though it only counts tracked revenue.

What the person searching is actually trying to do: buy now, compare options, or learn something. A keyword is only worth targeting when the intent behind it matches what your page offers.

The work of making your site easy to find for the searches your customers actually make, covering content, site structure, technical health and authority. Unlike paid media, the results compound over time.

The page of results a search engine returns for a query. On a commercial query it typically holds AI Overviews, paid ads, a local map pack and organic listings, and your goal is to appear in more than one of them.

How often your brand appears in AI answers across a defined set of buyer prompts, measured against your competitors. It is the AEO equivalent of rank tracking, and the number worth watching month on month.

Google's automated bidding strategies, such as Maximise Conversions or Target CPA, which adjust your bids in real time. They only work properly when conversion tracking is accurate, otherwise they optimise confidently toward the wrong outcome.

Code added to a page, most commonly JSON-LD, that labels its content for machines: a business, a service, an FAQ, a product or a review. It removes ambiguity for search engines, AI models and anything else reading your site.

The non-content side of search: page speed, crawlability, indexing, mobile experience, redirects and structured data. If this is broken, content quality barely matters.

Short tags added to a URL so analytics can identify where a visitor came from and which campaign sent them. Without them, traffic from emails and social posts is all reported as direct.

A query answered directly on the results page, so the user never needs to visit a website. AI Overviews and featured snippets accelerate this, which is why being named inside the answer now matters more than the click.