Search marketing has its own vocabulary, and it changes fast. This page collects the terms Terrier’s clients ask about most, across SEO, GEO (AI search) and influencer marketing, with short, plain-English definitions and no filler.
Each definition is one paragraph. Where a term maps to something we do, we link to it.
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Core SEO
SEO (search engine optimisation)
The practice of improving a website so it ranks higher in unpaid search results. It covers technical setup, content, and the external signals search engines use to judge trust and relevance. See our SEO services.
SERP (search engine results page)
The page a search engine shows after a query. A SERP can mix organic listings, ads, maps, images and AI-generated answers, so ranking well now means competing for more than one type of result.
Organic traffic
Visitors who land on a site from unpaid search results, as opposed to ads, email or social. It is the traffic most SEO work is trying to grow.
Domain authority
A third-party score, popularised by tools like Moz and Ahrefs, that estimates how likely a whole domain is to rank, based mainly on its backlink profile. Google does not use it directly, but it is a useful shorthand when comparing sites.
Backlink
A link from another website to yours. Search engines treat backlinks as a vote of trust, so a smaller number of links from relevant, well-regarded sites usually helps more than a large number from weak ones.
Link building
The deliberate work of earning backlinks, typically through original research, digital PR, guest content or partnerships. Good link building targets sites your actual customers already read.
Anchor text
The clickable words in a link. Search engines use anchor text as a small clue about what the linked page is about, so natural, varied phrasing reads better than the same exact phrase repeated everywhere.
Keyword research
The process of finding the words and phrases people actually type into search engines, and how often, so content can be built around real demand rather than guesswork.
Keyword difficulty
An estimate of how hard it would be to rank for a given search term, usually based on the authority of the pages already ranking. High-difficulty terms need stronger content and more backing to compete.
Search intent
What someone actually wants when they type a query: information, a specific site, a comparison, or a purchase. Matching a page to the right intent matters more than matching the keyword itself.
Long-tail keyword
A longer, more specific search phrase with lower individual search volume but clearer intent and less competition. Long-tail terms often convert better because the searcher knows exactly what they want.
Local SEO
Optimising a business’s visibility for searches tied to a place, such as “near me” queries or a specific town. It relies heavily on Google Business Profile, local citations and location-specific content.
E-E-A-T
Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness: the framework Google’s quality raters use to judge content, particularly on topics that affect health, money or safety. It is not a ranking factor you can tick off, but a lens for whether content is genuinely credible.
Algorithm update
A change to how a search engine ranks results. Some updates are broad and affect the whole web; others target a specific problem, such as thin content or manipulative links. Rankings can shift sharply around a confirmed update.
SERP features
Non-standard elements on a results page, such as featured snippets, People Also Ask boxes, image packs or local map results. Winning a SERP feature can bring visibility even without the top organic position.
CTR (click-through rate)
The share of people who see a listing in search results and click it. A strong title and description can lift CTR even without a ranking change, which is why they are worth testing on their own.
Conversion rate
The share of visitors who complete a wanted action, such as a purchase or an enquiry. Traffic growth only matters commercially if conversion rate holds up alongside it.
On-page & content
On-page SEO
Everything you control directly on a page to help it rank and read well: titles, headings, body copy, internal links and images. It sits alongside technical SEO and off-site work as one of the three main pillars.
Title tag
The HTML element that names a page and typically appears as the clickable headline in search results and the browser tab. It is one of the strongest on-page signals and worth writing deliberately rather than auto-generating.
Meta description
A short summary in a page’s HTML that search engines often show under the title in results. It does not directly affect rankings, but a clear, specific one improves click-through rate.
H1 heading
The main on-page heading, usually matching or closely echoing the title tag. It tells both readers and search engines what the page is actually about at a glance.
Header hierarchy
The structure of H1 through H6 headings on a page, used to organise content logically. A clean hierarchy helps readers scan and helps search engines and AI tools pull out the right section for a specific question.
Internal linking
Links between pages on the same site. Good internal linking spreads authority to important pages, helps search engines understand how content relates, and keeps readers moving through a site.
Content cluster
A group of related pages built around one core “pillar” page, all linking back to it. Clusters signal topical depth and make it easier for search engines to see where a site’s genuine expertise lies.
Topical authority
The degree to which a site is seen as a reliable, comprehensive source on a subject, built up over time through consistent, well-linked content on that topic rather than one-off pages.
Thin content
A page that adds little value beyond what already exists elsewhere: short, generic or duplicated text. Thin content rarely ranks and can drag down trust in the rest of a site if there is a lot of it.
Content decay
The gradual drop in traffic or rankings a page suffers as its information ages or competitors publish something better. Refreshing decaying pages is often cheaper than creating new ones from scratch.
Keyword cannibalisation
When two or more pages on the same site compete for the same search term, splitting ranking signals between them instead of concentrating them on one strong page.
Readability
How easy a piece of writing is to follow, based on sentence length, structure and plain word choice. Readable content performs better with both human readers and AI systems trying to lift a clear answer from the page.
Evergreen content
Content written to stay useful and accurate for a long time, rather than tied to a passing trend or date. It keeps earning traffic and links long after it is published.
Content brief
A working document that sets out a page’s target keyword, intent, structure, competing pages and any facts or sources to include, written before a draft starts so the writer isn’t guessing.
Digital PR
Earning press coverage and backlinks through newsworthy campaigns, original research or expert commentary, rather than through direct outreach for links alone. It sits between traditional PR and link building.
Technical SEO
Technical SEO
The behind-the-scenes work that makes a site easy for search engines to crawl, render and index, covering everything from site speed to structured data. Without it, even excellent content can struggle to rank. See our SEO services.
Crawling
The process by which a search engine’s bots discover pages by following links and sitemaps. A page that is never crawled cannot be indexed or ranked, however good it is.
Indexing
The step after crawling, where a search engine stores a page in its database so it can be shown in results. Pages can be crawled but not indexed if they are judged low-value or duplicated.
Crawl budget
The number of pages a search engine’s bots will crawl on a site within a given period. On very large sites, wasted crawl budget on low-value pages can delay important pages getting noticed.
Robots.txt
A text file at the root of a domain that tells search engine crawlers which parts of a site they may or may not access. It is a request, not a lock, and well-behaved bots respect it.
XML sitemap
A file listing a site’s important URLs, submitted to search engines to help them find and prioritise pages, particularly useful on large or newer sites.
Canonical tag
An HTML tag that tells search engines which version of a page is the definitive one when near-duplicate content exists at more than one URL, so ranking signals consolidate on the right page.
301 redirect
A permanent redirect from one URL to another. It passes on most of the ranking value the old URL held and tells both users and search engines the move is intentional and permanent.
Noindex tag
An instruction that tells search engines not to include a page in their index, while still allowing it to be crawled. Used for pages that should exist for users, such as internal search results, but not compete in search.
Core Web Vitals
Google’s set of page experience metrics covering loading speed, responsiveness and visual stability. They are one input into ranking, and a genuinely useful measure of whether a page frustrates real visitors.
Page speed
How quickly a page loads and becomes usable. Slow pages lose visitors before they read anything, so speed is as much a conversion issue as a ranking one.
Mobile-first indexing
Google’s practice of using the mobile version of a page, not the desktop version, as the primary basis for indexing and ranking, reflecting how most searches now happen on a phone.
Structured data
Code added to a page, usually as schema markup, that describes its content in a format search engines can parse directly, such as a product’s price or an article’s author.
Schema markup
The specific vocabulary (from schema.org) used to write structured data. Correctly implemented schema can unlock rich results, though it never guarantees one.
Duplicate content
Identical or near-identical text appearing at more than one URL, whether on the same site or across different domains. It confuses search engines about which version to rank and can dilute both.
Site migration
Any major change to a site’s domain, URL structure, platform or design. Migrations are the single biggest risk point for sudden traffic loss if redirects and technical checks aren’t handled carefully.
GEO & AI search
GEO (generative engine optimisation)
The practice of improving how often and how accurately a brand is mentioned inside AI-generated answers, such as ChatGPT, Gemini or AI Overviews, rather than in a traditional list of blue links. See our GEO services.
AI Overviews
Google’s AI-generated summary that can appear above standard organic results, answering a query directly using information drawn from multiple sources, with citations.
Large language model (LLM)
An AI model trained on huge amounts of text to understand and generate human-like language. LLMs power tools like ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude, and increasingly sit between a brand and the customer.
AI visibility
How often and how favourably a brand appears or is cited inside AI-generated answers, across tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google’s AI Overviews. Track it with our AI visibility score tool.
Citation (AI search)
A reference to a brand, page or source that an AI system includes in its generated answer, sometimes as a clickable link and sometimes as plain text with no link at all.
Prompt
The question or instruction a person types into an AI tool. Understanding the real prompts people use around a topic is the GEO equivalent of keyword research.
Query fan-out
The set of related sub-questions an AI system generates internally when answering one prompt, so it can pull together a fuller response. Content that answers the likely fan-out, not just the headline question, is more likely to get lifted.
Answer engine
Any tool, such as ChatGPT, Perplexity or an AI Overview, that gives a direct conversational answer instead of a list of links to click through. GEO exists because answer engines change how visibility is earned.
Generative search
A search experience that produces a written, synthesised answer using AI rather than a ranked list of pages, blending several sources into one response.
llms.txt
A proposed text file, similar in idea to robots.txt, that some sites publish hoping AI systems will read it to understand their content. Google does not consume it, and there is no reliable evidence any major AI crawler treats it as authoritative either, so it is not something we recommend as a real optimisation lever.
Entity
A distinct, identifiable thing, such as a brand, person or product, that search engines and AI systems recognise and connect information to, rather than treating every mention as an isolated string of text.
Entity coverage
How completely a site’s content addresses the topics, sub-topics and related entities around a subject. Strong entity coverage helps AI systems understand a brand’s genuine area of expertise.
Context wrapping
Consistently pairing a brand name with the same descriptive language across a site and its press coverage, so AI systems learn to associate the brand with a specific area rather than a vague, generic one.
Brand descriptor
A short, repeatable phrase used consistently to describe what a brand does, reinforced across a site and external coverage so it becomes the shorthand an AI system reaches for.
Citation share
The proportion of AI-generated answers on a topic that mention your brand compared with competitors, used as a rough measure of relative AI visibility.
Data freshness
How recently a page’s information was verified or updated. AI systems, like search engines, favour current sources when the topic is time-sensitive, so stale pages lose ground even if nothing else about them changes.
AI crawler
A bot operated by an AI company, such as OpenAI’s or Anthropic’s, that visits and reads web pages, sometimes to train a model and sometimes to answer a live query. Access can be allowed or blocked per crawler in robots.txt.
Hallucination
When an AI system generates a confident-sounding answer that is factually wrong or entirely made up. It is one reason clear, well-sourced content matters: it gives the model less room to invent.
Natural language query
A search phrased the way someone would actually speak or ask a question, rather than a short string of keywords. AI search has pushed more queries in this direction, changing what content needs to answer directly.
Zero-click search
A search where the user gets what they need directly on the results page, from an AI Overview, snippet or knowledge panel, without clicking through to any website.
Influencer marketing
Influencer marketing
Paying or partnering with people who have an engaged audience to promote a brand, product or message, trading on the trust that audience already has in them. See our influencer marketing services.
Micro-influencer
A creator with a smaller but highly engaged following, typically valued for niche relevance and higher trust rather than sheer reach.
Engagement rate
The proportion of an audience that actively interacts with a post, through likes, comments, shares or saves, relative to follower count. It is usually a better sign of real influence than follower count alone.
Influencer brief
The document a brand gives a creator setting out campaign goals, key messages, mandatory mentions and disclosure requirements, while leaving room for the creator’s own voice.
UGC (user-generated content)
Content created by customers or fans rather than the brand itself. It is often repurposed in paid or organic campaigns because it reads as more credible than brand-made content.
Sponsored content disclosure
The clear labelling, such as “#ad” or a platform’s paid-partnership tag, required when a creator is paid or given free product to promote something. It is a legal requirement in the UK and Ireland, not an optional courtesy.
Creator economy
The broader ecosystem of independent creators building an audience and income across platforms, and the tools, agencies and brand deals that have grown up around them.
Whitelisting (creator content)
Giving a brand permission to run paid ads through a creator’s own social account, so the ad appears to come directly from the creator rather than the brand’s page.
Affiliate marketing
A performance-based arrangement where a creator or publisher earns a commission for sales generated through their own tracked link, rather than a flat fee for the content itself.
Brand safety
The practice of checking a creator’s content history and audience before a partnership, to avoid a brand being associated with something that damages its reputation.
Paid amplification
Putting ad spend behind organic influencer content to extend its reach beyond the creator’s own followers, usually to a more precisely targeted audience.