20 clear definitions to understand the vocabulary of web, design, SEO, GEO and digital marketing.
GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) refers to all the techniques aimed at getting your site cited as a source by generative AI engines (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Claude, Gemini). Unlike traditional SEO which aims to rank on Google, GEO aims to be extracted and cited in AI-generated answers.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) encompasses all the techniques that improve a website's position in the organic results of Google and other search engines. It relies on three pillars: technical, content, and popularity (backlinks).
SEA (Search Engine Advertising) refers to paid advertising on search engines, mainly through Google Ads. You pay to appear at the top of results for targeted keywords. SEA complements SEO: fast but costly, whereas SEO is slow but lasting.
A landing page is a web page designed for a single specific action: converting a visitor into a lead or customer. Unlike a homepage that presents the whole business, a landing page focuses on a single offer, with one message and one call-to-action.
Copywriting is the art of writing text that sells. Unlike traditional web writing which informs, copywriting aims to persuade and drive action. It relies on proven frameworks (AIDA, PAS, FAB) and on a deep understanding of the target audience's needs and objections.
UX (User Experience) refers to the overall experience a user has when interacting with a site or application. It covers usefulness, ease of use, accessibility, performance and emotional satisfaction. Good UX reduces friction and increases conversions.
UI (User Interface) refers to the visible and interactive part of a digital product: colors, typography, buttons, icons, spacing. UI is the visual and aesthetic aspect that serves UX. Good UI is consistent, readable, hierarchical and aligned with the brand identity.
The conversion rate is the percentage of visitors who complete the desired action on your site (purchase, signup, contact). It's calculated by dividing the number of conversions by the total number of visitors. A good conversion rate varies by industry, typically between 2% and 5% for a B2B site.
The funnel (or conversion funnel) represents a visitor's journey from their first visit to the final conversion. It typically consists of 4 stages: awareness, interest, decision, action. Optimizing each stage of the funnel increases overall conversion rate.
A CTA (Call to Action) is a visual element (button, link, banner) that prompts the user to take a specific action: buy, sign up, download, book a meeting. A good CTA is visible, clear, action-oriented and placed at a strategic moment in the user journey.
The bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who leave a site after viewing only one page, without any interaction. A high rate may indicate issues with relevance, speed or user experience. It's generally considered high above 70%.
Core Web Vitals are three metrics defined by Google to measure the quality of a web page's user experience: LCP (loading), INP (responsiveness) and CLS (visual stability). They've been an official SEO ranking factor since 2021.
An A/B test compares two versions of a page or element (A and B) to determine which performs better on a defined metric (click rate, conversion, engagement). Traffic is split randomly between the two versions, and results are analyzed statistically.
A CRM (Customer Relationship Management) is a software that centralizes the management of relationships with prospects and customers: contact history, sales pipeline, marketing automation. The most common CRMs are HubSpot, Salesforce and Pipedrive.
A CMS (Content Management System) is a tool that allows you to create and manage the content of a website without coding. The best-known CMS are WordPress, Webflow, Framer and Shopify. Each CMS has its strengths: WordPress for flexibility, Webflow for design, Shopify for e-commerce.
Schema.org is a standardized vocabulary of semantic tags that helps search engines and AIs understand the content of a page: article, product, price, review, business, event. This structured data is essential for SEO and GEO as it makes information extraction easier.
The meta description is the short text (150-160 characters) that appears below a page's title in Google search results. While it doesn't directly influence ranking, it plays a crucial role in click-through rate (CTR) by making the user want to click.
A sitemap is an XML file that lists all important pages of a website to help search engines discover and index them. It typically contains the URL, last modification date, update frequency and priority of each page.
The hreflang tag tells Google in which languages and regions a page is available. It ensures that the right version of a multilingual site is shown to users based on their language and location. A bad hreflang implementation can lead to duplicate content issues.
A backlink is a link pointing from another website to yours. Backlinks are one of the most important ranking factors in SEO: they're seen by Google as votes of trust. Quality (authority of the source site, thematic relevance) matters more than quantity.
