A/B test
Two versions, a coin flip, a winner.
Showing half your visitors one version of a page and half another, then keeping whichever converts better.
Ad assets
The extra bits under your ad.
Phone numbers, sitelinks, callouts and images attached to a search ad. Used to be called extensions.
Ad rank
Where your ad lands in the auction.
Google's formula combining your bid, Quality Score and ad assets to decide ad position.
AEO
SEO for the robots that answer questions.
Answer engine optimization. Making your pages easy for ChatGPT, Gemini and Google's AI to quote when someone asks a question.
AI Overviews
Google's robot summary at the top of the results.
The AI-written answer Google puts above the normal results. It cites a few sources and often means nobody needs to click.
Algorithm update
Google changed the rules and didn't send a memo.
A change to how Google ranks pages. Small ones happen daily. Big ones get names and ruin agency weekends.
Alt text
Describing an image for people who can't see it.
Text describing an image, read by screen readers and search engines.
Anchor text
The clickable words in a link.
The visible text of a link. Tells Google what the linked page is about.
API
How two pieces of software talk.
Application programming interface. A defined way for one app to send data to or request data from another.
Attribution
Who gets credit for the sale.
The rules that decide which ad or channel gets credit when a customer touched several before buying.
Average position
Roughly where you rank. Roughly.
Search Console's average of every position you appeared at. Blends good and bad rankings into one number.
Backlinks
Other sites linking to you.
Links from other websites to yours. Still one of Google's biggest trust signals.
Bid strategy
Telling the ad platform what you're trying to buy.
The setting that decides how the platform spends your budget — clicks, conversions, value, or a target cost.
Bounce rate
They came, they looked, they left.
The share of visits where someone leaves without a second interaction. In GA4 it's the inverse of engagement rate.
Branded search
People searching your name.
Searches that include your business or product name.
Broad match
'Show my ad for anything vaguely related.'
A keyword setting that lets Google match your ad to loosely related searches.
Cache
Saving a copy so it loads faster next time.
Storing pages or files temporarily so they don't have to be rebuilt for every visitor.
Cannibalization
Two of your pages fighting over one search.
When multiple pages on your site compete for the same query and split the rankings.
Canonical tag
'This is the real version of this page.'
A tag telling Google which URL is the main one when several show the same content.
CDN
Copies of your site parked closer to visitors.
Content delivery network. Serves images and files from servers near whoever's visiting.
ChatGPT Ads
Ads inside the AI's answer.
Sponsored placements inside ChatGPT conversations, targeted by location and context rather than keywords.
Citations
Your business info listed around the internet.
Mentions of your name, address and phone on directories like Yelp, BBB and industry sites.
Clicks
Somebody actually picked you.
The number of times someone clicked your result in Google. The first number that means a human chose you.
CMS
The dashboard you edit your site in.
Content management system. WordPress, Shopify, Wix, Squarespace and friends.
Content decay
A page slowly losing traffic.
A page whose clicks decline over months as newer or better content outranks it.
Conversion
A visitor becoming a customer. Or at least a lead.
Any action that matters to the business: call, form, sale.
Conversion bidding
Let the platform chase buyers instead of clickers.
A bid strategy (like tCPA or oCPC) where the platform spends to find people likely to convert. You still pay per click.
Conversion rate
The percentage who actually do the thing.
Conversions divided by visitors. If 1,000 people visit and 20 call, that's 2%.
Conversion tracking
Proving the ad did something.
Code and setup that records when a click turns into a call, form or sale, and sends it back to the ad platform.
Core update
A big, broad Google reshuffle, a few times a year.
A major change to Google's ranking systems. Not a penalty — it re-evaluates everybody at once.
Core Web Vitals
Google's speed and stability grades.
Three measurements of how fast a page loads, how quickly it responds, and whether it jumps around while loading.
CPA
What one customer cost you.
Cost per acquisition. Spend divided by conversions — the number that actually matters.
CPM
What a thousand views of your ad cost.
Cost per mille — per thousand impressions. How awareness ads like streaming TV and display are priced.
Crawl budget
How much of your site Google bothers to read.
The number of pages Google will crawl in a given time. Matters mostly for big sites.
Crawling
Google's robot reading your site.
Googlebot visiting pages and following links to discover what exists.
CRO
Getting more out of the visitors you already have.
Conversion rate optimization. Changing pages so a bigger share of the people already arriving actually call, book or buy.
CSS
What makes it look like anything.
The code that controls layout, colors, fonts and spacing.
CTR
Of the people who saw you, how many clicked.
Click-through rate. Clicks divided by impressions.
Digital PR
Getting press so you get links.
Pitching stories and data to journalists so coverage links back to you.
DNS
The internet's phone book.
Domain name system. Points your domain to the server where your site and email live.
Domain
Your address on the internet.
The name people type to reach your site, like unvertise.llc.
Domain authority
A made-up score that's still useful.
A third-party estimate (from tools like Moz or Semrush) of how strong a site's backlinks are. Google doesn't use it.
Doorway pages
Pages that exist only to funnel you somewhere else.
Near-identical pages built to rank for many locations or terms, all pushing to one destination.
Duplicate listings
Two of you on the map. Neither wins.
Extra copies of your business on Google or directories, usually from old addresses or old owners.
E-E-A-T
Proof you know what you're talking about.
Experience, expertise, authoritativeness, trustworthiness. How Google's raters judge whether content deserves to rank.
FAQ schema
The markup Google stopped rewarding.
Structured data marking questions and answers on a page. Google stopped showing FAQ rich results on May 7, 2026.
Featured snippet
The answer box Google pulls from one page.
A highlighted excerpt Google shows above the normal results, quoting one site directly.
Form abandonment
They started filling it in and gave up.
People who begin your contact or checkout form and leave before submitting.
GA4
What people did after they showed up.
Google Analytics 4. Tracks visits, where they came from, and whether they did anything useful like calling or buying.
GEO
AEO with a more expensive name.
Generative engine optimization. Mostly the same as AEO. Mostly the same as good SEO, honestly.
Google Ads
Paying Google to be on top.
Google's advertising platform for search, Maps, YouTube and display ads.
Google Business Profile
Your listing on Google Maps.
The free business profile with your hours, reviews, photos and phone number. Used to be called Google My Business.
H1
The main headline on the page.
The top heading of a page. Tells readers and Google what the page is about.
Halo effect
Ads you didn't click still worked.
When paid media makes people search your name later, which shows up as organic traffic.
Heatmap
A picture of where people click and stop.
A visual of clicks, scroll depth and mouse movement on a page.
Hosting
Where your site actually lives.
A server that stores your website and sends it to visitors.
HTML
The skeleton of a web page.
The markup that says what's on a page: headings, paragraphs, links, images.
Impressions
How many times Google showed you. Not how many people cared.
A count of how often your page appeared in results. Doesn't mean anyone saw it, scrolled to it, or clicked.
Indexing
Google deciding to keep your page.
After crawling, Google decides whether to store the page so it can appear in results.
Internal links
Links from your pages to your other pages.
The links that connect your own site together and tell Google which pages matter most.
JavaScript
What makes the page do stuff.
The code for interactive features: menus, sliders, forms, tools.
JSON-LD
The format schema is usually written in.
A block of code in the page that lists facts about it in a way machines read perfectly.
Key event
The thing you actually wanted them to do.
GA4's name for a conversion: a call, a form, a booking, a purchase.
Keyword
The words people type into Google.
The search terms you want to show up for. Really just the customer's own words.
Landing page
Where the ad sends people.
The page someone lands on after clicking an ad. Built to get one action.
Lazy loading
Only load images when they're needed.
Delaying images and videos until the visitor scrolls near them.
Link building
Earning other sites' links.
Getting relevant sites to link to yours through outreach, content and PR.
llms.txt
A map of your site for AI.
A plain-text file listing your key pages with descriptions, meant to help AI tools understand your site.
Local grid ranking
Where you rank, block by block.
A map showing your ranking from dozens of points around your area instead of one average.
Local Services Ads
The 'Google Guaranteed' boxes up top.
Pay-per-lead ads for service businesses that sit above normal Google Ads, with a verified badge.
Long-tail keyword
A longer, pickier search. Fewer people, better people.
Specific searches like 'tankless water heater cost Louisville' instead of 'water heater.'
Manual action
A human at Google flagged your site.
A penalty applied by a real reviewer, not the algorithm. It shows up in Search Console with a reason.
Map pack
The three businesses on the map.
The local results with a map that show up for 'near me' style searches.
Meta ads
Ads on Facebook and Instagram.
Advertising across Meta's apps, targeted by interests, location and behavior rather than searches.
Meta description
The little blurb under the headline.
The summary Google may show under your title. Google rewrites it often.
Mobile-first indexing
Google judges your phone version.
Google ranks based on how your site works on mobile, not desktop.
NAP
Name, address, phone.
The three facts that must match everywhere your business is listed.
Negative keywords
Searches you refuse to pay for.
Terms you tell the ad platform to never show your ad for, like 'free' or 'jobs'.
Orphan page
A page nothing links to.
A page on your site with no internal links pointing at it. Google finds it late or never.
OTT
TV ads on streaming.
Over-the-top advertising: commercials on streaming services like Hulu or Roku, bought without a cable company.
Page speed
How long they wait.
How fast your page loads, especially on a phone on a bad connection.
Performance Max
Google's 'trust me' campaign.
A Google Ads campaign type that runs across Search, YouTube, Display, Gmail and Maps from one budget, mostly on autopilot.
Pixel
A tiny snippet that reports back.
Tracking code from an ad platform (Meta, Google, OpenAI) placed on your site to record visits and conversions.
Plugin
An add-on that does one thing.
Extra software added to a CMS like WordPress for forms, SEO, caching and more.
PPC
Paying every time someone clicks your ad.
Pay-per-click advertising. You bid to show up in search, social or AI results and pay when someone clicks.
Programmatic
Robots buying ad space for you.
Automated buying of display, video and streaming ads across thousands of sites at once.
Programmatic SEO
Building lots of pages from a template.
Generating many pages from data, like one page per service per city.
Quality Score
Google grading your ad before it charges you.
Google Ads' 1–10 rating of how relevant your ad, keyword and landing page are.
Redirect (301)
A forwarding address for a moved page.
Sends visitors and Google from an old URL to a new one, and passes most of the ranking value along.
Remarketing
Google's word for retargeting.
Same idea as retargeting: re-reaching past visitors, often through Google's ad network or email.
Render-blocking
Code that makes the page wait.
Scripts or styles that must load before anything appears on screen.
Responsive design
One site that fits every screen.
Layouts that adapt to phones, tablets and desktops automatically.
Retargeting
Ads that follow people who already visited.
Showing ads to people who've been to your site but didn't call or buy.
Rich results
Search results with extras.
Stars, prices, event dates and other enhancements Google adds to a result using schema.
ROAS
Dollars back for every dollar in.
Return on ad spend. Revenue from ads divided by what the ads cost.
robots.txt
The bouncer at the door.
A file telling crawlers which parts of your site they're allowed to visit.
Schema markup
A cheat sheet for search engines, hidden in your code.
Structured data that tells Google exactly what's on a page: this is a business, this is its phone number, this is a product.
Search Console
Google telling you what it thinks of your site. For free.
Google's free tool showing which searches you appear for, how often people click, and what's broken.
Search intent
What the person actually wants.
The goal behind a search: learn something, compare, buy, or find a place.
SEO
Getting found on Google without paying for the click.
Search engine optimization. Making your site easy for Google to read, trust and show to people searching for what you sell.
SERP
The page of Google results.
Search engine results page. Ads, maps, AI answers, snippets, then the actual results.
Sitemap
A list of your pages, for Google.
A file (sitemap.xml) listing the URLs you want indexed.
Spam update
Google taking out the trash.
An update aimed at sites breaking Google's rules — link schemes, scaled junk, hacked pages.
SSL / HTTPS
The padlock in the address bar.
Encryption between the visitor and your site. Shows as https:// and a lock.
Staging site
A private copy to break things on.
A duplicate of your website where changes get tested before going live.
Striking distance
Almost on page one.
Queries where you rank roughly 4th to 15th. Close enough that small changes move them.
Title tag
The blue headline in Google.
The page title that appears as the clickable link in search results.
Topical authority
Being the obvious expert on a subject.
Covering a topic thoroughly enough that Google trusts you for everything related to it.
Unassigned traffic
GA4 shrugging.
Visits GA4 couldn't match to a channel. Usually untagged directories, review sites or email tools.
UTM parameters
Tracking tags on a link.
Bits added to a URL (like ?utm_source=gmb) so analytics knows where a visit came from.
UX
How using the site feels.
User experience. Whether people can find what they need and do the thing they came to do.
White-label SEO
SEO done by someone else, under your agency's name.
An agency resells SEO work that another company actually does, with no outside branding.
Wireframe
The sketch before the design.
A simple layout plan showing what goes where on a page, without colors or images.
WordPress
The CMS behind a huge chunk of the internet.
A free, open-source website platform extended with themes and plugins.
Zero-click search
They got the answer and left.
A search that ends on Google because the answer was already on the results page.
Link straight to a term: unvertise.llc/wtf-is-seo/?=orphans
Keep going.
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