SEO and AI search, in plain English
Plain-English definitions of the SEO and AI-search terms small business owners actually meet — schema markup, canonical URLs, long-tail keywords, Core Web Vitals and more.
Answer engine optimisation (AEO)
Answer engine optimisation (AEO) is the practice of structuring a website so AI assistants like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Google's AI Overviews can quote it accurately when someone asks a question.
Read the definitionSchema markup
Schema markup is a block of machine-readable data added to a web page — usually as JSON-LD — that tells search engines and AI assistants exactly what the page is about: a business, a product, an article, a review, a set of questions.
Read the definitionCanonical URL
A canonical URL is the single address you declare as the official version of a page, using a rel="canonical" tag, so search engines consolidate ranking signals on one URL instead of splitting them across near-identical copies.
Read the definitionMeta description
A meta description is a short summary in a page's HTML — best kept under about 155 characters — that search engines often display beneath the page title, acting as the advert for the click.
Read the definitionllms.txt
llms.txt is a plain-text file at the root of a website that gives AI assistants a curated, markdown-formatted map of its most important pages, so a model can find the substance without crawling and parsing the whole site.
Read the definitionLocal SEO
Local SEO is the work of getting a business found by people searching nearby — in the Google map pack, in "near me" queries and on maps apps — and depends mostly on a complete Google Business Profile, consistent business details across the web, and location-specific pages.
Read the definitionGoogle Business Profile
A Google Business Profile is the free listing that puts a business on Google Maps and in local search results, showing its name, hours, photos, reviews, services and website link.
Read the definitionLong-tail keyword
A long-tail keyword is a longer, more specific search phrase with lower search volume but clearer intent and far less competition — for example "repair a leaking radiator valve in Leeds" rather than "plumber".
Read the definitionTopic cluster
A topic cluster is a group of related pages built around one broad "pillar" page, all interlinked, which signals to search engines that a site covers a subject in depth rather than mentioning it once.
Read the definitionXML sitemap
An XML sitemap is a file listing the URLs on a site that you want search engines to crawl, along with when each was last changed, submitted through Search Console so new and updated pages are found quickly.
Read the definitionrobots.txt
robots.txt is a plain-text file at a site's root that tells crawlers which paths they may or may not request. It controls crawling, not indexing, and it is a public request rather than a security measure.
Read the definitionAlt text
Alt text is a short written description of an image in its alt attribute, read aloud by screen readers, shown when an image fails to load, and used by search engines to understand what the image shows.
Read the definitionBacklink
A backlink is a link from another website to yours. Search engines treat it as a vote of confidence, so links from relevant, trusted sites remain one of the strongest ranking signals.
Read the definitionCore Web Vitals
Core Web Vitals are Google's three measured page-experience metrics: Largest Contentful Paint (loading speed), Interaction to Next Paint (responsiveness) and Cumulative Layout Shift (visual stability), all assessed on real visits, mostly mobile.
Read the definitionKeyword difficulty
Keyword difficulty is an estimated score, usually 0–100, of how hard it would be to rank on the first page for a search phrase, based mainly on the authority and backlink profiles of the pages already ranking there.
Read the definition