Key terms used across SEO and GEO — plain definitions, no jargon.
- URL slug
- The human-readable segment of a URL that identifies a specific page. In sluggenius.com/blog/seo-tips, the slug is seo-tips. Slugs should be lowercase, hyphen-separated, and keyword-focused. Avoid stop words and special characters.
- Meta description
- An HTML attribute that provides a short summary of a page's content. Google may display it as the snippet below your title in search results, though it frequently rewrites it. Aim for 140–155 characters. A good meta description is a direct, answer-first summary of the page — not a sales pitch.
- Canonical tag
- A link element that tells search engines which version of a URL is the authoritative one. Use it to prevent duplicate content issues when the same content is reachable at multiple URLs (for example, with and without trailing slashes, or with different UTM parameters).
- JSON-LD
- A format for embedding structured data in an HTML page using a script tag with type application/ld+json. It is Google's preferred format for Schema.org markup and is used to enable rich results (FAQ dropdowns, review stars, breadcrumbs, etc.) and to signal content structure to AI systems.
- Open Graph (OG) tags
- HTML meta tags originally developed by Facebook to control how a URL appears when shared on social platforms. The og:title, og:description, and og:image tags determine the headline, description, and preview image used by Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter/X, Slack, and most other platforms.
- 301 redirect
- A server response that permanently redirects one URL to another, passing virtually all link authority (PageRank) to the destination. Use it whenever you change a URL permanently or consolidate pages.
- robots.txt
- A plain text file hosted at the root of your domain (yoursite.com/robots.txt) that tells search engine crawlers which paths they are allowed or disallowed from crawling. It does not block access for users — only for well-behaved bots. Disallowing a URL in robots.txt does not remove it from the index if other pages link to it.
- GEO (Generative Engine Optimization)
- The practice of structuring content so AI answer engines are more likely to quote or cite it. Key signals include FAQPage JSON-LD, question-style headings (H2/H3 that start with who, what, how, why, when, is), answer-first opening paragraphs, short average sentence length (under 25 words), and the presence of lists or tables.