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SEO, AEO, GEO & Link Building Glossary
A quick A-Z reference for modern search visibility terms, including answer engines, generative discovery, and contextual link authority.
Glossary terms
- AEO (Answer Engine Optimization)
- The practice of optimizing content to appear as direct answers in AI-generated responses from tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity.
- Anchor Text
- The visible, clickable text of a hyperlink. Natural, varied anchor text that reflects the target page's topic is preferred by search engines over exact-match or over-optimized anchors.
- Contextual Backlink
- A backlink placed naturally within the body of a relevant article, surrounded by topically related content. Contextual backlinks pass stronger authority signals than links placed in footers, sidebars, or directories. SEO Boost Link uses the term editorial backlinks to describe this approach.
- A third-party metric developed by Moz that estimates how likely a domain is to rank in search results. DA is one signal among many. Topical relevance and traffic quality matter equally in modern SEO.
- E-E-A-T
- Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness is Google's framework for evaluating content quality. Strong E-E-A-T signals are built through authoritative backlinks, author credentials, and consistent brand mentions.
- Entity Signal
- A signal that helps AI and search engines identify and classify a brand, person, or concept as a recognized entity within a topic area. Entity signals come from consistent mentions, backlinks, and schema markup.
- GEO (Generative Engine Optimization)
- The practice of optimizing content and brand signals so that generative AI systems cite, recommend, or surface a brand in AI-generated answers.
- Guest Post
- An original article written for and published on another website, typically in exchange for a backlink. Guest posts give full content control and are effective for building topical authority.
- Link Insertion
- Also called a niche edit, a link insertion places a backlink inside an existing published article that already has traffic and search engine authority.
- The degree to which search engines recognize a domain as an expert source on a specific subject. Strong topical authority allows domains to rank faster and more consistently for related keywords.