The words people use when they talk about this.
Defined plainly, without the marketing layer. If a term here is doing work in a sales conversation, it should be one you can check.
AEO — answer engine optimisation
Being the source an AI assistant quotes when it answers a question directly, rather than ranking in a list of blue links. It rewards pages that answer one question cleanly, state the answer early, and cite their sources. It matters because for a growing share of questions the answer is delivered before anyone sees a list of results.
SEO — search engine optimisation
Getting a page to rank in search results. Still the larger channel, and still built on the same foundation: a page that genuinely answers a question, on a site a crawler can read, linked from elsewhere.
E-E-A-T
Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness — the framework Google's quality guidelines use to judge content, especially in health and finance. The first E, experience, is the one most content fails: it asks whether the writer has actually done the thing. It cannot be fabricated and it is the hardest for a competitor to copy.
Voice profile
A derived model of how a specific person writes and explains things — sentence length, vocabulary, structure, the analogies they reach for, and the things they refuse to say. Built from a recorded conversation and any existing writing. One per author, because flattening several people into a house style is noticeable to anyone who knows them.
Query gap
A question your buyers search for that your site has no page answering. The list of query gaps is usually the most honest content plan available, because every item is demand that already exists.
Topical authority
The idea that a site covering a subject thoroughly ranks better across that subject than one covering it once. It is why a set of related posts usually outperforms the same effort spread across unrelated topics.
Structured data / schema
Machine-readable markup describing what a page contains — that this is an FAQ, this is an article, this is the organisation behind it. It does not change what a reader sees; it changes how confidently a search or answer engine can use the page.
Back catalogue
Work you have already produced that never reached your website — podcast episodes, webinars, newsletters, talks. Usually the highest-value untapped asset on an account, because the thinking is done and only the format is wrong.
Review gate
The requirement that a human approves a draft before it can publish. Distinct from approval-and-publish being one action, which is how batches get pushed live by accident.
Sub-processor
A third party that processes your data on a provider's behalf — for example an AI model provider handling your content. Normally has to be disclosed, and named, in a privacy policy.
Hallucination
A model stating something false with the same confidence as something true. The practical defence is not a better model but a rule that every claim traces to a source, and a human who checks before publishing.
First-party data
Information you collect directly from your own audience and site, as opposed to bought or inferred. Increasingly the only durable input as third-party tracking disappears.