Semantic SEO
Optimisation built on meaning, entities and relationships rather than keyword matching. A pre-existing phrase with no single originator, and the direct ancestor of most current AI-search vocabulary.
What it actually means
Semantic SEO reads a query as an intent about things in the world rather than a string to match, and optimises for topics, entities and their relationships rather than for phrases.
It became practical when search engines began maintaining entity graphs, and it has been the correct answer for over a decade in a field that periodically rediscovers it under new names.
Why it has no owner
The phrase was in use across academic information retrieval and practitioner writing well before it became a marketing category, and no dated first use in the SEO sense can be established.
This site records it as pre-existing, which is a different status from contested: not disputed between claimants, simply older than the field trying to claim it.