GEO & SEO Glossary

Plain-language definitions of the terms behind AI search optimization.

GEO (Generative Engine Optimization)

Optimizing a website so AI answer engines (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity) can read, understand and cite its content.

LLM (Large Language Model)

An AI model trained on large amounts of text that generates answers. Examples include GPT, Claude and Gemini.

JSON-LD

A JSON-based format for embedding structured data in a page using schema.org vocabulary, letting machines extract facts reliably.

Schema.org

A shared vocabulary of types (Organization, Article, FAQPage, HowTo…) used to describe content so search engines and LLMs understand it.

llms.txt

A plain-text file at a site’s root that gives AI crawlers a concise summary of the site and its most important content.

robots.txt

A file at a site’s root that tells crawlers which paths they may access. It can allow or block specific AI bots by user-agent.

SSR (Server-Side Rendering)

Generating a page’s HTML on the server so content is present in the initial response — essential because most AI crawlers do not run JavaScript.

Semantic HTML

Using meaningful HTML5 elements (article, section, nav, header, footer) instead of generic divs so machines understand page structure.

E-E-A-T

Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trust — signals (named authors, citations, freshness) that increase a source’s credibility.

Machine readability

How easily a bot can parse a page: clean heading hierarchy, semantic markup, and server-rendered text all improve it.