The SEO & PPC glossary
Every term we use, defined in plain English — the way we would explain it across a table, not the way a textbook would. If a report or a proposal ever uses a word that is not here, tell us and we will add it.
The search results page, decoded
What you are actually looking at when you search.
SERP
The Search Engine Results Page — everything you see after you search. A modern SERP stacks ads, a map pack, an AI answer and the earned (“organic”) results; where your business appears in that stack decides what a click costs you.
Organic results
The earned listings on a results page — the ones no one can buy. Reaching them is what SEO does; their clicks are free, which is why rankings compound while ads only rent.
Map pack
The block of three local businesses with a map that appears on most local searches. It is won by your Business Profile, reviews and consistency — not by your website — and for urgent local searches it takes most of the calls.
AI Overviews
Google’s AI-written answer above the results, now shown on a large share of searches. It quotes sources the model trusts — being one of them is part of AI search optimization.
Zero-click search
A search that ends without any click — the answer was on the results page itself. A majority of searches now end this way, which is why being IN the answer (map pack, AI answer) matters as much as ranking under it.
Crawl, index, rank
The three stages of getting found: Google’s software reads your page (crawl), stores it (index), and orders it against every other page (rank). A page failing at any earlier stage cannot succeed at a later one.
E-E-A-T
Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trust — the qualities Google’s guidelines say results should demonstrate, weighed heaviest in health, legal and money topics. Real credentials, shown plainly, are ranking work.
The organic side
Keyword
A search phrase you want to be found for. The craft is not collecting thousands of them but matching one page to one intent — the specific thing one searcher wants at that moment.
Search intent
What the searcher actually wants — to learn, to compare, or to hire someone today. Pages fail when their content answers a different intent than the keyword carries.
On-page SEO
Everything on the page itself: titles, headings, content depth, internal links, images. See how we run SEO.
Technical SEO
The plumbing: crawlability, speed, mobile rendering, redirects, sitemaps. Invisible when right, disqualifying when wrong.
Backlinks & authority
Links from other sites to yours — still the closest thing search has to a vote of confidence. Earned steadily from relevant, real sites; bought in bulk, they are a liability.
Local SEO
The discipline of winning searches in your service area: the map pack, Business Profile, reviews and city pages. Our local SEO service covers it end to end.
Google Business Profile (GBP)
Your business listing on Google — the profile behind the map pack, reviews and “open now”. For urgent local searches it IS your storefront; most callers never reach your website.
Citations & NAP
Mentions of your Name, Address and Phone across directories. Consistency here is a trust signal; conflicting versions of your own identity are quiet poison for local rankings.
Schema / structured data
Machine-readable labels that state in code what your page says in English — what you do, where, what it costs. It feeds rich results and gives AI systems clean facts to quote.
Title tag & meta description
The headline and blurb a page presents to the results page. The title influences rankings; the description influences whether a human clicks. Both are written, not left to chance.
Canonical
The tag that tells search engines which version of similar pages is the real one, so duplicates do not split your credit.
301 redirect
A permanent forwarding address for a moved page. Done right in a migration, rankings follow the page; skipped, years of earned authority 404s away.
Long-tail keywords
Longer, more specific searches with less volume and far less competition. They convert better — specificity is intent — and they are where new sites win first.
Doorway pages
Near-identical pages mass-produced for every town or phrase — a spam pattern Google filters. The reason our location and industry pages are each written from their own data rather than templated.
The paid side
PPC
Pay-per-click advertising: you bid to appear above the results and pay each time someone clicks. Instant visibility, meter always running — the honest comparison lives at SEO vs PPC.
CPC
Cost per click — what one visitor costs you at auction. It ranges from cents to hundreds of dollars in legal; knowing your market’s real CPC is where every sane ads budget starts.
Negative keywords
The searches you refuse to pay for — jobs, DIY, free, wrong cities. The fastest savings in most accounts we audit come from what gets excluded, not what gets added.
Match types
How loosely Google may interpret your keywords. Loose matching quietly buys searches you never intended — the single most common leak we find in ad accounts.
Quality Score
Google’s 1–10 rating of how relevant your ad and landing page are to the keyword. Higher scores literally lower your prices — relevance is a discount.
Local Services Ads (LSA)
The pay-per-lead listings above everything else on many local searches, ranked on reviews and responsiveness rather than bids alone. Different economics from regular ads — often the cheapest booked jobs available.
Search terms report
The report showing the actual words people typed before your ads cost you money. The first thing we read in any audit, and the fastest way to see where a budget leaks.
Conversion tracking
The wiring that records which clicks became calls and forms. Set up once, tested, then FROZEN — an account whose tracking changes monthly has no memory, so nothing can be compared or improved.
Landing page
The page a click arrives on. Matching it to the search — one campaign, one page, one obvious next step — often moves results more than anything inside the ad account.
Cost per lead / ROAS
What a lead or a dollar of revenue actually costs from a channel, blended across SEO and ads. The only numbers worth managing to — traffic and impressions are weather.
The new layer, and the proof
GEO / AEO / AI visibility
Generative Engine Optimization, Answer Engine Optimization — names for the same discipline: making your business the answer AI tools give. It sits ON TOP of SEO, not instead of it; see what an AI search optimization agency does.
AI citations
The sources an AI answer names or draws from. Earned by pages that state facts plainly, consistent profiles, and independent mentions a model can check.
Google Search Console (GSC)
Google’s own free report of your search performance — the queries, impressions, clicks and indexing status straight from the source. Every claim in our reporting traces back to it.
Google Analytics (GA4)
What visitors do after they arrive — which pages, which actions, which sources produce enquiries. Paired with GSC, it turns “traffic went up” into “enquiries cost this much”.
Impressions, clicks & CTR
How often you appeared, how often you were chosen, and the ratio between them. CTR is the market grading your title and reputation — a ranking without clicks is a shop window no one enters.
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