Half a meeting gets eaten up clarifying whether everyone is talking about the same thing. This glossary defines the terms that come up most often in an automation or SEO project, in two lines each, no detours.
It's organized into two sections. You can link directly to any definition.
Automation and Artificial Intelligence
Process Automation
Process automation is the practice of delegating repetitive tasks to software systems that execute them without human involvement each time. It applies to processes that already exist — it doesn't redesign them on its own.
AI Agent
An AI agent is a system that interprets the context of a request, decides what to do, and takes action in other systems. Unlike a chatbot, it doesn't follow a predefined decision tree — it reasons through each case.
Chatbot
A chatbot is a program that replies to messages following a closed script of rules, menus, or keywords. It works well for a limited set of frequently asked questions and breaks down as soon as the user strays from what was anticipated.
RPA (Robotic Process Automation)
RPA is automation that mimics a person's clicks and keystrokes on a graphical interface. It's used when a legacy system has no API and it's the only way to integrate it — at the cost of being fragile whenever the screen changes.
Workflow
A workflow is a defined sequence of automated steps triggered by a specific event. It consists of a trigger, conditions, and actions.
Trigger
A trigger is the event that kicks off an automated workflow: a form submission, a date being reached, a status change in the CRM, or an incoming message.
API
An API is the entry point a piece of software offers so other programs can read or write its data automatically. Without an API, integrating two tools requires fragile workarounds like RPA.
Webhook
A webhook is an automatic notification one system sends to another the moment something happens. It's the efficient alternative to polling every few minutes to check if something has changed.
iPaaS
An iPaaS (Integration Platform as a Service) is a platform that connects applications to one another without writing code. Make, Zapier, and n8n are the three most widely used.
CRM
A CRM is the system where your contact, company, and sales opportunity data lives, along with the history of every interaction. It's the foundation any sales automation is built on.
Lead
A lead is a contact who has shown interest in what you sell and for whom you have at least one piece of information to follow up with. It's not yet an opportunity or a customer.
Lead Scoring
Lead scoring is the point system that ranks leads by likelihood to buy. The models that actually work separate two axes: fit with the ideal customer and buying intent.
ICP (Ideal Customer Profile)
The ICP is a description of the type of company your product serves best: industry, size, maturity, and context. It defines who you're pursuing, not who happens to buy from you.
Lead Nurturing
Lead nurturing is the sequence of communications that keeps the relationship alive with someone who isn't ready to buy yet. Its goal is to be there when they are, not to force the close.
24-Hour Window
The 24-hour window is the period on WhatsApp Business during which a business can reply freely after a customer's last message. Once it closes, the business can only start a new conversation using templates pre-approved by Meta.
No-Show
A no-show is a booked appointment the customer neither attends nor cancels. It's a direct cost — the fixed costs of that time slot are already paid for.
Baseline
The baseline is a measurement of a process's current state before automating it. Without a baseline you can't demonstrate a return — only claim one.
ROI
ROI is the relationship between what an investment returns and what it costs. In automation, it's calculated as hours saved valued at fully-loaded labor cost, minus the solution's monthly cost.
SEO and Answer Engines
SEO
SEO is the set of techniques that improve a site's visibility in search engines' organic results. Its goal is the click from the results page.
LLMO
LLMO (Large Language Model Optimization) is the discipline of optimizing a brand to be cited in the answers generated by language models like ChatGPT, Perplexity, or Gemini. Its goal is the mention, not the click.
GEO and AEO
GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) and AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) are alternative names for LLMO. The techniques are practically identical across all three, and it's best to treat them as synonyms.
AI Overviews
AI Overviews are the AI-generated summaries Google displays above traditional results. They draw on Google's index, so classic SEO work has a direct influence on appearing in them.
E-E-A-T
E-E-A-T stands for Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness — the framework Google uses to assess a source's quality. It's demonstrated through identifiable authors, original data, and sustained topical consistency.
Citability
Citability is how easily a piece of content can be extracted and reused outside its original context. Precise definitions, lists, and tables are citable; long narrative paragraphs, much less so.
Information Gain
Information Gain is what a piece of content adds that isn't already present in the rest of the results. Original data, verifiable case studies, and well-founded opinion count; rephrasing what others already say doesn't.
llms.txt
llms.txt is a text file at the root of a domain that summarizes what the site does and links to its key pages for language models. It's not yet an established standard, but the cost of implementing it is minimal.
Structured Data (Schema.org)
Structured data is markup in the code that tells machines what each element on a page represents: an organization, an article, a frequently asked question. It's the most direct way for a search engine or a model to understand your entity.
Share of Voice in AI
Share of voice in AI is the percentage of times your brand appears relative to competitors in the answers generated for a set of questions in your industry. It's the equivalent of ranking, applied to answer engines.
How to Use This Glossary
If you're evaluating a project, three terms matter more than the rest: baseline, because without it there's no demonstrable return; ICP, because without it qualification has no criteria; and citability, because it's what separates content the AI mentions from content it ignores.
To go deeper: the process automation guide covers the first section, and the article on LLMO covers the second.
Conclusion
Almost all of these terms get misused in meetings, and none more than calling a chatbot with better marketing an "AI agent." Getting the distinction right changes what you buy and what you pay for it.
Missing a term? Let us know and we'll add it.
