Glossary

Digital marketing, in plain English.

Marketing vocabulary is often used to make simple ideas sound expensive. These definitions are written plainly, and where a term is commonly used to obscure something, the definition says so.

AI Overview
The AI-generated answer Google places above the classic results on many queries. It cites sources, so being one of those sources is now a visibility goal in its own right.
AEO / GEO
Answer Engine Optimisation and Generative Engine Optimisation: shaping content and entity signals so AI systems cite you. It builds on conventional SEO rather than replacing it.
Attribution
Deciding which marketing touchpoint gets credit for a conversion. Every model is wrong in a different way, which is why blended reporting beats arguing about models.
Bounce rate
A legacy metric largely replaced in GA4 by engagement rate. It was always misleading, since a visitor who read your answer and left may have been perfectly satisfied.
Canonical tag
A signal telling search engines which version of similar pages is the original. Misconfigured canonicals are a common cause of pages that mysteriously will not index.
Cannibalisation
Two or more of your pages competing for the same keyword, so neither ranks as well as one would. Fixed by consolidation and clear keyword-to-page mapping.
Conversion rate
The share of visitors who take the action you want. Improving it raises the return on every channel simultaneously, which is why it is usually cheaper than buying more traffic.
Core Web Vitals
Google's page experience metrics: LCP for loading, INP for responsiveness, CLS for visual stability. Measured on real users, not lab tests.
CPA
Cost per acquisition: total spend divided by conversions. The number most paid campaigns should be judged on, ahead of clicks or impressions.
CPC
Cost per click. Useful as a diagnostic, dangerous as a target, since the cheapest clicks are often the least valuable ones.
Crawl budget
The resource search engines allocate to crawling your site. Only a real constraint on large sites, where wasting it on duplicates and parameters has genuine cost.
CRO
Conversion Rate Optimisation: research-led improvement of the share of visitors who convert. Distinct from redesign, because it is driven by evidence rather than taste.
CTR
Click-through rate: clicks divided by impressions. In organic search it is heavily influenced by your title and description, which makes it one of the faster things to improve.
E-E-A-T
Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trust. Not a direct ranking factor but a description of what Google's systems try to reward, and it matters most in health and finance.
GA4
Google Analytics 4, the event-based analytics platform. Powerful and easy to configure incorrectly, which is why so many properties report numbers nobody can reconcile.
GTM
Google Tag Manager: a container for deploying tracking without a developer for every change. Excellent when maintained, a liability when nobody knows what is in it.
hreflang
A tag telling search engines which language and region version of a page to show. Notoriously easy to break with missing return tags.
Impressions
How often your pages appeared in search results. An early indicator, not an outcome, and the metric most often used to make flat performance look like progress.
Indexation
Whether a page is stored in a search engine's index and therefore eligible to rank at all. Pages can be crawled and still not indexed.
Intent
What a searcher actually wants: to learn, to compare, or to buy. Matching intent matters more than matching keywords, and mismatched intent explains most content that ranks briefly then fades.
KPI
Key Performance Indicator: the small number of metrics a decision genuinely depends on. If everything is a KPI, nothing is.
Landing page
A page built for one traffic source and one action, with distractions removed. Sending paid traffic to a homepage instead is one of the most common budget leaks.
Lookalike audience
An audience built by a platform to resemble your existing customers. Only as good as the source list you feed it.
Meta description
The summary shown under your title in search results. Not a ranking factor, but a significant influence on whether anyone clicks.
Negative keyword
A term you tell an ad platform to exclude. The single most effective waste-reduction tool in paid search, and the most neglected.
Organic traffic
Visitors arriving from unpaid search results. Slower to build than paid and considerably cheaper to sustain.
Performance Max
Google's automated campaign type spanning all its inventory. Effective with a good feed and firm exclusions, wasteful without them.
Pixel
A tracking snippet from an advertising platform, such as Meta's. Increasingly supplemented by server-side APIs as browsers restrict what pixels can see.
Redirect
Sending one URL to another. A 301 is permanent and passes ranking signals; a 302 is temporary and should not be used for migrations.
Remarketing
Advertising to people who have already interacted with you. Usually the cheapest conversions in an account, and the easiest to overdo.
ROAS
Return on ad spend: revenue divided by ad cost. Meaningful only alongside margin, since a 4x return on a thin margin can still lose money.
Schema markup
Structured data that tells search engines what your content means rather than just what it says. Enables rich results and helps AI systems quote you accurately.
Search Console
Google's free tool showing how your site performs in search: queries, clicks, indexation and technical issues. The most honest source of SEO data you have.
Server-side tracking
Sending analytics and ad events through your own server rather than the browser. Recovers data lost to blockers and browser restrictions, at the cost of setup complexity.
SERP
Search Engine Results Page. Increasingly full of features, ads and AI answers, which is why ranking position alone no longer describes your visibility.
Technical SEO
The crawlability, indexation, speed and structure work that determines whether your content can rank at all. Unglamorous and load-bearing.
Topic cluster
A group of related pages linked around a central pillar page, which concentrates authority instead of scattering it across unconnected posts.
UTM parameters
Tags added to a URL so analytics can attribute the visit to a campaign. Only useful with a naming convention everyone actually follows.
YMYL
Your Money or Your Life: topics affecting health, finance or safety, where search engines apply stricter quality standards. Expect slower SEO and higher content requirements.

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