Marketing Glossary
Plain-English definitions for the terms agencies use — including the ones used to make simple things sound complicated. 52 entries.
A
A/B test
Running two versions of a page or ad at the same time to see which produces more of the outcome you want. Useful only when there is enough traffic for the result to mean something.
Ad extensions
Extra pieces of information attached to a Google ad — phone number, links, location, callouts. They make the ad bigger, push competitors down, and usually improve results at no extra cost.
Ad rank
Google’s calculation of where your ad appears. Bid matters, but so does relevance and landing page quality, which is why a better ad can beat a bigger budget.
Algorithm
The set of rules a platform uses to decide what to show. It changes constantly, which is why anyone guaranteeing a permanent ranking is guessing.
Alt text
A written description of an image, used by screen readers and by search engines. Improves accessibility and gives search engines context.
Attribution
Deciding which marketing touchpoint gets credit for a sale. Most people touch several channels before buying, so single-channel attribution always overstates one and understates another.
B
Backlink
A link from another website to yours. Treated by search engines as a vote of confidence. Quality and relevance matter far more than quantity.
Bounce rate
The share of visitors who leave without further interaction. High bounce is not always bad — someone who found your phone number and called has bounced.
C
Call tracking
Using unique phone numbers so calls can be traced back to the campaign, keyword or page that produced them. Essential for any business where enquiries come by phone.
CASL
Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation. Governs commercial electronic messages, requiring consent, identification and a working unsubscribe. Penalties are significant.
Citation
A mention of your business name, address and phone number on another site — a directory, an association, a supplier listing. Consistency across citations supports local rankings.
Click-through rate (CTR)
The share of people who saw something and clicked it. Useful as a diagnostic for ads and search listings, useless as a business goal on its own.
Conversion
A visitor doing the thing you wanted — calling, submitting a form, booking, buying. The only marketing metric that connects to revenue.
Conversion rate
The share of visitors who convert. Improving it is usually cheaper than buying more visitors.
Core Web Vitals
Google’s measures of loading speed, interactivity and visual stability. They influence rankings and, more importantly, whether visitors stay.
Cost per acquisition (CPA)
What it costs in marketing spend to acquire one customer. Compare it to what a customer is worth and most budget arguments resolve themselves.
Cost per click (CPC)
What you pay each time someone clicks an ad. Varies hugely by category — a few dollars in niche B2B, twenty or more in competitive services.
Cost per lead (CPL)
What it costs to generate one enquiry. The number most local businesses should be managing to.
Crawling
How search engines discover pages by following links. A page that cannot be crawled cannot rank, regardless of how good it is.
CRM
Customer relationship management software — where enquiries, contacts and deals are tracked. Even a simple one beats a shared inbox.
CTA (call to action)
The specific thing you are asking a visitor to do. Vague calls to action are one of the most common reasons pages underperform.
D
Domain authority
A third-party score estimating how strong a site is in search. Useful for rough comparison, not an actual Google metric.
E
E-E-A-T
Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trust — the qualities Google’s guidelines describe for content quality. Matters most in health, finance and legal topics.
Engagement rate
The share of people who interacted with a post. Useful for judging content, not a substitute for enquiries.
F
Featured snippet
The answer box at the top of some search results. Winning one means writing a direct answer to a specific question.
Funnel
The path from first awareness to purchase. Useful as a planning device, provided you remember real customers move through it messily.
G
GEO (generative engine optimisation)
Making a business easy for AI assistants to describe and cite correctly. Overlaps heavily with structured data, entity consistency and clear answer-shaped content.
Google Business Profile
Your free listing on Google Search and Maps. For most local businesses it produces more calls than the website does.
I
Impressions
How many times something was shown. The least meaningful number in marketing when used alone.
Indexing
A search engine storing a page so it can appear in results. Crawled and indexed are different things; plenty of pages are one but not the other.
K
Keyword
A word or phrase people type into a search engine. What matters is not volume but what the phrase signals about readiness to buy.
L
Landing page
A page built for one campaign and one action. Sending paid traffic to a homepage instead wastes a predictable share of every budget.
Lead magnet
Something useful offered in exchange for contact details — a checklist, a guide, a calculator. Works when it solves a real problem, not when it is a brochure.
Local citations consistency (NAP)
Name, address and phone details matching everywhere they appear online. Inconsistency confuses search engines and costs local visibility.
Local pack / map pack
The block of three business listings shown above ordinary results for local searches. Driven mainly by proximity, relevance, reviews and profile completeness.
Lookalike audience
An audience a platform builds by finding people similar to your existing customers. Usually outperforms interest-based targeting.
M
Meta description
The summary text under a search result. It does not directly affect rankings but strongly affects whether anyone clicks.
N
Negative keyword
A term you tell Google not to show your ads for. The single most neglected lever in local advertising accounts.
O
Organic traffic
Visitors arriving from unpaid search results. Slower to build than paid traffic and far cheaper once established.
P
Page speed
How quickly a page becomes usable. Test on a phone on mobile data, not office wifi — that is the condition most visitors are in.
Performance Max
A Google campaign type that places ads across all its networks automatically. Powerful with good data and conversion tracking; wasteful without them.
PIPEDA
Canada’s federal private-sector privacy law, governing how businesses collect, use and disclose personal information. Alberta also has its own act, PIPA.
Pixel
A small piece of code that records visitor actions for a platform, enabling conversion tracking and remarketing.
Q
Quality Score
Google’s rating of ad relevance, expected click-through and landing page experience. Higher scores mean lower costs for the same position.
R
Remarketing
Advertising to people who already visited your site. Consistently the cheapest source of enquiries in most accounts.
Retainer
An ongoing monthly engagement rather than a one-off project. Suits work that compounds, like SEO, ads and social.
ROAS
Return on ad spend — revenue divided by advertising cost. Useful for e-commerce, less so for service businesses where the sale happens offline.
S
Schema / structured data
Code that tells search engines what things on a page are — a price, an opening time, a review, an event. Enables richer search listings.
SERP
Search engine results page. Increasingly filled with ads, map packs, answer boxes and AI summaries rather than ten blue links.
Session
One visit to a website, including everything the visitor did before leaving or timing out.
Sitemap
A file listing your pages so search engines can find them. Also useful as a human-readable page for visitors.
U
UTM parameters
Tags added to a link so analytics can record exactly where a visitor came from. Essential for measuring email, social and print campaigns.
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