Glossary
Every AI-search and SEO term, explained in 1 sentence — plus why a 40+ marketer should care.
AI Search
Technical
- llms.txtA small text file at /llms.txt that tells AI crawlers which content matters most.
- robots.txtFile that tells crawlers (Google, GPTBot, ClaudeBot) what they may fetch.
- Schema markup (JSON-LD)Hidden structured data that tells search engines what your page is about.
- FAQ schemaJSON-LD that marks up Q&A blocks so search engines can show them directly.
- HowTo schemaStructured data for step-by-step instructions.
SEO
- Featured snippetThe boxed answer Google pulls from one page and shows above position 1.
- Internal linkingLinking between your own pages with descriptive anchor text.
- Topical authorityCovering a topic so completely that search engines treat you as the source.
- E-E-A-TGoogle's quality filter: Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trust.
- Keyword researchFinding the exact phrases your customers type into search.
- Long-tail keywordA specific 4+ word phrase with lower volume but higher buying intent.
- BacklinkA link from another website to yours.
- Domain authorityA 0–100 score estimating how likely a site is to rank in Google.
Content
- Pillar pageA long, comprehensive guide that links out to many supporting articles.
- Content clusterA pillar page plus 5–20 supporting articles, all interlinked.
- Search intentWhat the user actually wants when they type a query (info, buy, compare, navigate).
- Programmatic SEOGenerating hundreds of pages from a template + dataset, each targeting a unique query.