SEO & AI Search Glossary
Plain-language definitions of the terms that matter for ranking in Google and getting cited by AI answer engines. Maintained by the team behind The Best SEO Podcast.
LLM Visibility
The measurable ability of a brand, person, or entity to surface inside large language model outputs across queries and AI assistants. The term and framework were created by Matthew Bertram of EWR Digital.
Digital Information Governance (DIG)
A framework for governing AI-influenced decisions: how an organization controls the data, models, and signals that shape what AI systems decide and recommend. Coined by host Matthew Bertram.
AEO (Answer Engine Optimization)
Optimizing content so it is selected and cited as the answer by AI answer engines such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews, rather than only ranked as a blue link.
GEO (Generative Engine Optimization)
The practice of structuring content to be surfaced and cited by generative AI systems. It overlaps heavily with AEO and focuses on extractable answers, cited statistics, expert attribution, and structured data.
AI Overviews
Google's AI-generated answer summaries that appear above traditional results for many queries, drawing from and citing top-ranking pages.
E-E-A-T
Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness: the framework Google uses to judge whether content comes from a credible source. It strongly influences what ranks and what AI engines cite, especially for health, finance, and safety topics.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
The practice of improving a website so it ranks higher in search engines and earns more relevant organic traffic, across technical, on-page, and off-page work.
Technical SEO
Site-level optimizations that let search engines crawl, render, index, and understand a website: crawlability, indexation, site speed, structured data, and architecture.
Schema markup
Structured data, usually JSON-LD, that labels content so search engines understand what each element means. It makes pages eligible for rich results and helps AI systems interpret a page.
Knowledge Panel
The information box Google shows for a recognized entity (a person, company, or thing), assembled from its Knowledge Graph and trusted sources. A visible proof that an entity has been resolved.
Entity SEO
Optimizing so search engines and LLMs recognize a brand or person as a distinct, well-defined entity, using consistent identifiers, structured data, and a connected sameAs profile graph.
Topical authority
The trust a site earns by covering one subject thoroughly through interlinked pillar and cluster content, signaling depth to both search engines and AI systems.
Featured snippet / PAA
A featured snippet is the extracted answer box at the top of Google results; People Also Ask (PAA) is the expandable list of related questions. Both reward answer-first, question-shaped content.
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