A
A/B test (split test)
Showing two versions of a page or element to similar audiences to determine which performs better. Requires statistical significance — small differences over small sample sizes are usually noise, not signal.
AI Overview
Google's AI-generated summary that appears at the top of some search results, replacing the traditional featured snippet for many queries. Pulls from multiple sources, often without sending clicks to the underlying pages.
Attribution
Identifying which marketing channels and touchpoints contributed to a conversion. Critical for understanding what's actually working — but technically difficult because customers often interact with multiple channels before converting.
B
Backlink
A link from another website pointing to yours. Backlinks are one of Google's top ranking factors because they signal that other sites consider your content credible. Quality of the linking site matters more than quantity — a link from the LA Times is worth more than 100 links from random directories.
Bounce (email)
An email that fails to deliver. Hard bounces (invalid addresses) hurt your sending reputation; soft bounces (temporary issues) are less serious.
Bounce rate
The percentage of visitors who leave your site after viewing only one page. A high bounce rate can indicate that visitors aren't finding what they expected, but interpretation varies — a bounce rate of 70% might be normal for a blog post that fully answers a question, while 70% on a homepage is usually a problem.
Bounce rate
Already defined above — listed here because it commonly appears in analytics reports.
C
Canonical URL
The official, preferred version of a webpage when multiple URLs could show similar content. Canonical tags tell search engines which URL to treat as the original, preventing duplicate content issues.
Citation
Any mention of your business's Name, Address, and Phone (NAP) on the web — directories, social profiles, press mentions. Citation consistency is a local SEO ranking factor.
Cold email
Email sent to people who haven't opted in to receive communications. Heavily regulated under CAN-SPAM (US) and GDPR (EU). Best practice: only with explicit business justification.
Content gap analysis
Identifying topics your competitors rank for that you don't, then creating content to fill those gaps. A core SEO research methodology.
Conversion
Any desired action by a website visitor — purchase, form submission, phone call, appointment booking. Conversion tracking is essential for measuring marketing ROI.
Core Web Vitals
Google's official metrics for measuring page experience: Largest Contentful Paint (loading speed), Cumulative Layout Shift (visual stability), and Interaction to Next Paint (responsiveness). Sites that fail Core Web Vitals can lose rankings.
CPA (Cost Per Acquisition)
How much it costs to acquire a customer through paid advertising. Calculated as total ad spend divided by customers acquired. The single most important paid advertising metric for most businesses.
CPC (Cost Per Click)
How much you pay each time someone clicks your ad. Varies dramatically by category — legal CPCs can exceed $100; some retail CPCs run under $0.50.
Crawl budget
The number of pages search engines like Google will crawl on your site within a given time period. Large sites need to manage crawl budget by directing search engines to important pages and away from low-value pages.
CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization)
The discipline of improving the percentage of visitors who complete desired actions. Often produces better ROI than acquiring more traffic.
CTR (Click-Through Rate)
The percentage of people who see an ad and click on it. Higher CTR generally indicates relevant ads, which Google rewards with lower CPCs and higher ad position.
Customer Lifetime Value (LTV)
The total revenue a typical customer generates over their entire relationship with your business. Higher LTV justifies higher acquisition costs. Critical for sustainable marketing economics.
D
Display ads
Banner, image, or video ads shown across the Google Display Network or third-party sites. Generally lower CPCs but lower intent than search ads. Best for retargeting and brand awareness.
Domain authority (DA)
A score from 1-100 developed by Moz that estimates how likely a domain is to rank in search results, based primarily on backlink quality and quantity. DA is not a Google metric — it's a third-party prediction. Useful for comparing sites but not a direct ranking factor.
Drip campaign
An automated email sequence sent over time, typically triggered by a customer action (signup, purchase, abandoned cart). Workflows can run for days or months.
E
E-E-A-T
Google's quality framework: Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness. Google evaluates content through these lenses, especially for topics affecting health, finances, or safety (called YMYL — Your Money or Your Life).
Engagement rate
Google Analytics 4's replacement for bounce rate — the percentage of sessions where users actively engaged (stayed 10+ seconds, viewed multiple pages, or converted). Generally more useful than bounce rate.
Evergreen content
Content that remains relevant for years rather than going stale quickly. Investing in evergreen content compounds traffic over time.
F
Featured snippet
A summarized answer that appears at the top of Google search results, usually pulled from a page that ranks on page 1. Featured snippets often steal clicks from #1 organic results — sometimes called 'position zero.'
First-party data
Data collected directly from your customers — email lists, CRM data, on-site behavior. Increasingly valuable as third-party cookies disappear.
G
Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)
Optimizing content to be cited by AI search engines like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Gemini. Requires different tactics than traditional SEO — clear claims, structured information, authoritative voice.
Geographic modifier
Adding a city, neighborhood, or region to a keyword to capture local intent. 'Plumber' is a head term; 'plumber Marina Del Rey' adds a geographic modifier.
Google Ads
Google's paid advertising platform. Includes Search Ads, Display Ads, Performance Max, YouTube Ads, Shopping Ads, and Demand Gen campaigns.
Google Business Profile (GBP)
Google's free business listing platform, formerly called Google My Business. Controls how your business appears in Google Maps, the local pack, and Knowledge Panel. The single most important local SEO asset for most businesses.
H
Heatmap
A visualization showing where users click, hover, and scroll on a page. Tools like Hotjar and Microsoft Clarity provide free heatmaps. Useful for diagnosing why pages underperform.
I
Indexing
When Google adds a page to its database so it can appear in search results. A page must be indexed before it can rank. New sites often have indexing delays of days to weeks.
K
Keyword cannibalization
When multiple pages on your site target the same keyword, causing them to compete with each other in search results. Often dilutes ranking — better to consolidate into one strong page than split between weak ones.
L
Landing page
A dedicated page designed for a single marketing campaign or audience. Generally outperforms sending paid traffic to homepages because the content matches the visitor's specific intent.
Lead
A person or business who has expressed interest in your offering but hasn't yet purchased. Quality varies enormously — a lead from someone who specifically requested a quote is worth far more than someone who downloaded a generic guide.
Lead magnet
Free content (guide, template, calculator, audit) offered in exchange for contact information. Used to capture email leads from visitors who aren't ready to buy yet.
LLM (Large Language Model)
The AI technology behind ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and similar tools. Trained on massive text datasets to generate human-like text in response to prompts.
Local pack
The map result with 3 business listings that appears for local-intent searches in Google. Drives substantial percentages of local search traffic, especially on mobile.
Local Service Ads (LSAs)
Pay-per-lead ads from Google for specific service categories (home services, legal, healthcare, real estate, financial). Show at the very top of search results with Google Screened or Google Guaranteed badges. Typically lower acquisition cost than traditional Search Ads.
Long-tail keyword
A specific, multi-word search phrase with lower search volume but higher conversion intent. 'Marina Del Rey waterfront restaurant with parking' is long-tail; 'restaurants' is a head term. Long-tail keywords are easier to rank for and often produce better ROI for SMBs.
M
Marketing funnel
The journey from a stranger's first awareness of your business to becoming a customer (and ideally a repeat customer). Common stages: awareness, consideration, decision, retention. Different content and channels serve different funnel stages.
Marketing qualified lead (MQL)
A lead that's shown enough interest to be worth sales follow-up but hasn't been verified as ready to buy. Distinguished from a Sales Qualified Lead (SQL), which has been verified.
Meta description
The short summary that appears under your page title in Google search results. Doesn't directly affect ranking but affects click-through rate. Should be 150-160 characters and include your primary keyword.
N
NAP
Name, Address, Phone. The three pieces of business information that must be consistent across all online citations for local SEO.
Near me search
Searches that include 'near me' or have implicit local intent (like 'coffee shop' searched from a phone). Google interprets these as requests for nearby businesses.
Negative keyword
A keyword you specify to prevent your ads from showing. Critical for filtering out irrelevant traffic. 'Free' is a common negative for paid services.
Nofollow link
A link with a rel='nofollow' attribute, telling search engines not to pass authority through it. Comments, paid links, and untrusted user-generated content typically use nofollow.
O
Open rate
The percentage of recipients who open an email. Industry averages range 18-25% for small business email. Apple Mail Privacy Protection has made open rates less reliable since 2021.
P
Page speed
How fast your pages load. A direct Google ranking factor and a major conversion factor. Sites loading slower than 3 seconds on mobile lose substantial traffic and conversions.
Performance Max
Google Ads campaign type that uses AI to run ads across all Google inventory — Search, Display, YouTube, Gmail, Maps. Best for businesses with strong conversion tracking and clear audience signals.
Pillar content
Comprehensive, in-depth content (typically 2,500+ words) that thoroughly covers a topic. Pillar content anchors topical authority and attracts backlinks.
Prompt
The text input a user provides to an AI tool. Quality of prompts dramatically affects quality of AI outputs.
Proximity (local ranking factor)
How close a business is to the searcher's physical location. One of the three official Google local pack ranking factors, alongside relevance and prominence.
Q
Quality Score
Google's 1-10 rating of your ad's relevance to its keyword and landing page. Higher Quality Scores produce lower CPCs and better ad positions.
R
RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation)
AI systems that combine language models with real-time information retrieval from search engines. How Perplexity, ChatGPT search, and Google AI Overview work — they search for current information before generating answers.
Retargeting
Showing ads to people who previously visited your site. Generally cheaper and higher-converting than cold ads because the audience already knows you.
Review filter (Yelp)
Yelp's algorithm that decides which reviews to display publicly versus hide in 'not currently recommended' status. Filtered reviews don't count toward your visible star rating.
Review gating
The prohibited practice of asking customers to rate you privately first, then only requesting public reviews from satisfied customers. Violates Google's policy and can cause profile suspension.
Review velocity
The rate of new reviews over time. Sustained velocity (consistent new reviews each month) is a stronger ranking signal than total review count without recency.
ROAS (Return on Ad Spend)
Revenue generated per dollar of ad spend. A 4x ROAS means every $1 spent generates $4 in revenue. Critical metric for evaluating campaign profitability.
Robots.txt
A file at yoursite.com/robots.txt that tells search engine crawlers which parts of your site to crawl or ignore. Used to keep search engines out of admin areas, staging environments, and duplicate content.
S
Schema markup
Structured data code added to a webpage that helps search engines understand the content. Enables rich results like star ratings, FAQ accordions, recipe cards, event listings. Doesn't directly affect ranking but affects visibility in search results.
Search intent
What a user is actually trying to accomplish with a search query. Major types: informational (learning), navigational (finding a specific site), commercial (researching products), transactional (ready to buy). Matching content to intent matters more than keyword optimization.
Segmentation
Dividing your email list into smaller groups based on shared characteristics, then sending different content to each. Segmented campaigns typically outperform broad sends by significant margins.
SERP (Search Engine Results Page)
The page Google returns after a search. Modern SERPs include 10 organic results plus ads, local pack, knowledge panels, featured snippets, video carousels, and other elements that compete for clicks.
Service Area Business (SAB)
A business that serves customers at their location rather than from a fixed storefront — plumbers, electricians, mobile services. SABs can hide their address in Google Business Profile while declaring their service area.
Sitemap
An XML file listing all important pages on your site. Submitted to Google Search Console to help search engines discover and index pages efficiently. Required for any site with more than a handful of pages.
T
Title tag
The clickable headline that appears in Google search results. One of the most important on-page SEO elements. Should include your primary keyword and be under 60 characters to avoid truncation.
Topic cluster
A pillar piece linked to several related sub-pieces on the same broad topic. Demonstrates topical authority to search engines and creates internal linking structure.
U
UTM parameters
Code added to URLs to track which marketing source generated traffic. UTM_source, UTM_medium, UTM_campaign tags help attribution.
Missing a term? Email mike@simpleadvertisings.com and we'll add it. This glossary is updated as the industry changes.