Digital Marketing Glossary
Definitions of key terms in AI marketing, design, and organic search strategy.
- AEO (Answer Engine Optimisation)
- The practice of optimising content to be cited by AI-powered answer engines such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews. AEO extends traditional SEO by focusing on entity authority, structured data, and direct-answer content formats.
- Core Web Vitals
- A set of metrics defined by Google to measure user experience on web pages. The three core metrics are Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), Interaction to Next Paint (INP), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS). Core Web Vitals are a confirmed Google ranking factor.
- Crawl Budget
- The number of pages Googlebot will crawl on a website within a given timeframe. Sites with large numbers of low-quality or duplicate pages may have their crawl budget reduced, limiting how quickly new content is indexed.
- E-E-A-T
- Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. Google's quality rater guidelines framework for evaluating the credibility of web content. Particularly important for YMYL (Your Money or Your Life) topics including health, finance, and legal content.
- Entity Authority
- The degree to which an entity (a person, organisation, or concept) is consistently and accurately described across multiple authoritative sources on the web. Strong entity authority increases the likelihood of being cited by AI search systems.
- Generative AI
- Artificial intelligence systems capable of generating new content — text, images, code, audio — based on patterns learned from training data. In marketing, generative AI is used for content creation, personalisation, and campaign automation.
- JSON-LD
- JavaScript Object Notation for Linked Data. A method of encoding structured data using the Schema.org vocabulary, embedded in a web page's HTML. JSON-LD helps search engines and AI systems understand the content and context of a page.
- Local SEO
- The practice of optimising a website and online presence to rank for geographically specific search queries. Key components include Google Business Profile optimisation, local citation building, and location-specific content.
- NAP Consistency
- Name, Address, Phone number. The consistency of these three pieces of business information across all online directories, citations, and the business website. NAP consistency is a foundational local SEO signal.
- Programmatic SEO
- The practice of generating large numbers of web pages at scale using templates and structured data, targeting long-tail keyword variations. Effective when each generated page provides genuine value for a specific search query.
- RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation)
- A technique used by AI search systems that combines a language model's trained knowledge with real-time retrieval from indexed web content. RAG is why optimising for AI citations requires many of the same signals as traditional SEO.
- Schema.org
- A collaborative vocabulary for structured data markup on web pages, supported by Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Yandex. Schema.org markup helps search engines and AI systems understand the content, context, and relationships within a page.
- Technical SEO
- The practice of optimising the technical infrastructure of a website to improve its crawlability, indexability, and performance in search engines. Includes site architecture, page speed, structured data, and Core Web Vitals optimisation.
- YMYL (Your Money or Your Life)
- A category of web content that could significantly impact a user's health, financial stability, safety, or wellbeing. Google applies heightened E-E-A-T scrutiny to YMYL content, making credibility signals particularly important for sites in these sectors.