Content marketing glossary
SEO, GEO and content marketing terms explained simply.
- SEO
- Search Engine Optimization. Set of techniques to make a webpage appear in Google's organic results. Includes technical structure, content, and link networking.
- GEO
- Generative Engine Optimization. Optimizing content so it is cited by generative answer engines like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews or Bing Copilot.
- AEO
- Answer Engine Optimization. Variant of GEO centered on direct answers: structuring content so a question receives an immediately extractable answer.
- AI Overviews
- AI-generated summaries displayed at the top of Google results. Formerly called SGE (Search Generative Experience). They cite web sources and redirect to the cited sites.
- Semantic cocoon
- Structure of linked articles covering the same theme from different angles. A pillar article is surrounded by satellite articles that reinforce each other through internal linking. Builds topical authority.
- Pillar content
- Main article of a semantic cocoon. Covers a broad subject and references more specific articles. Often a comprehensive guide or foundational article on the theme.
- Search intent
- Intent behind a user's Google query. Four main types: informational, navigational, transactional, commercial.
- Featured snippet
- Answer box highlighted by Google at position 0, above classic results. Often extracted from a FAQ or a structured paragraph.
- Internal linking
- Network of links between pages of the same site. Good internal linking helps Google understand site structure and distribute authority between pages.
- Schema.org
- Structured vocabulary added to page code to help engines (Google, AI) understand content. Includes types like Organization, FAQPage, Article, Service.
- RAG
- Retrieval Augmented Generation. AI technique where the model relies on source documents to generate an answer, rather than only on its pre-trained knowledge.
- E-E-A-T
- Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness. Quality criteria used by Google to evaluate pages, particularly important since the Helpful Content Updates.