Terms this site uses without stopping to explain them. Definitions are mine, written the way I would say them to a client rather than the way a textbook would.
- AEO
- Answer Engine Optimization. Writing so that an answer engine can lift a specific, attributable claim from your page. Distinct from ranking: you are optimizing to be quoted, not to be clicked.
- GEO
- Generative Engine Optimization. The same discipline aimed at generative models that synthesize rather than cite. Thin content has nothing to synthesize from.
- Blueprint
- A single document covering positioning, channels, measurement and sequence, produced before media spend. The deliverable of a marketing engagement, not a by-product of one.
- Cost to serve
- What it actually costs to deliver one unit of your service, including the work nobody logs. Most pricing disputes are really cost-to-serve disputes.
- Fractional CSO
- Ongoing chief-strategy work at a fraction of a full-time hire. Useful when the decisions are senior but not daily.
- Operational audit
- A mapping exercise: what the company does, in what order, with what handoffs. Precedes any software purchase.
- Referral constraint
- The condition of taking work only through people who vouch for you. It caps growth rate and raises the cost of failure — deliberately.
- Handoff
- The moment work passes between people or systems. Where most operational cost hides, and the first thing an audit looks at.
- Thin content
- Pages written to occupy a keyword rather than to say something. Formerly a tactic; now a liability in answer-engine results.
- Topical authority
- The accumulated credibility of covering one subject properly and repeatedly, rather than covering many subjects once.
- Cannibalization
- Two pages of your own competing for the same intent, so neither wins. Fixed by differentiating purpose, not by rewording.
- Vouch
- The standing a person spends when they recommend you. The actual currency of a referral business.