Resources / Glossary
The marketing glossary.
145 terms across paid advertising, SEO, conversion, and tracking — defined in plain English, with the formula, an example, and where each one fits.
A/B Testing
A method of comparing two versions of a page or element by splitting traffic between them to see which one converts better.
Above the Fold
The part of a web page a visitor sees before scrolling — the first screen of content, where attention is highest.
Ad Assets (Ad Extensions)
Extra pieces of info attached to a search ad, like sitelinks, callouts, phone, and location, that expand it and lift clicks.
Ad Rank
The score Google uses to decide whether your ad shows and in what position, combining your bid, quality, and context.
The All-In Standard
The terms behind our market-exclusive Cornerstone plan: all-in, no refund clause — exclusivity only works with committed partners.
Alt Text
Text that describes an image for accessibility and image search — important for project-photo-heavy contractor sites.
Anchor Text
The visible, clickable words of a link — a signal to search engines about what the page being linked to is about.
Answer Engine Optimization (AEO)
Optimizing your content to be cited by AI answer engines like Google's AI Overviews and ChatGPT, not just ranked in classic search.
Audience Segmentation
Dividing your market and customers into distinct groups so your messaging, offers, and ad bids fit each one instead of treating everyone the same.
Backlink
A link from another website to yours, which search engines read as a vote of confidence that helps your pages rank.
The Blueprint
Our free, by-hand marketing audit — we show you where your funnel leaks, what we'd fix first, and the booked-consultation number we'd guarantee.
Booked Consultation
An exclusive, pre-qualified homeowner with a real project, booked onto your calendar with a time on it — not a shared 'lead.'
Bounce Rate
The percentage of visitors who land on a page and leave without taking any further action or visiting another page.
Branded Search
Searches that include your business name — the highest-intent, lowest-cost traffic there is, and a recurring strategy debate.
Call to Action (CTA)
The prompt that tells a visitor exactly what to do next, like a button or link reading 'Get a Free Quote' or 'Call Now.'
Call Tracking
Assigning trackable phone numbers to campaigns so phone leads can be tied back to the ad, keyword, or page that produced them.
Canonical Tag
An HTML signal that tells search engines which version of a page is the master, so duplicate copies don't split your ranking strength.
Case Study
A documented account of how you solved a real customer's problem and the results they got — proof that turns claims into evidence.
Churn Rate
The rate at which customers stop buying from you — the leak that drains any contractor with recurring or maintenance revenue.
Click Fraud (Invalid Traffic)
Clicks with no real interest — bots, scripts, or competitors burning your budget — which Google filters but never fully eliminates.
Click-Through Rate (CTR)
The percentage of people who click your ad after seeing it, calculated by dividing clicks by impressions.
Close Rate
The percentage of qualified leads or consultations that turn into signed jobs — the bridge between marketing and revenue.
Cohort Analysis
Grouping customers by a shared starting point — like signup month — to see how their behavior and value differ over time.
Consent Mode
Google's framework that adjusts how your tracking tags behave based on each visitor's cookie and privacy choices — measuring while respecting consent.
Conversion Rate
The percentage of visitors who complete a desired action, calculated by dividing conversions by total visitors.
Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)
The practice of systematically improving the percentage of visitors who take a desired action, like submitting a form or booking a call.
Conversion Tracking
The setup that records when a visitor takes a valuable action, like a purchase or a form fill, and ties it back to the ad or channel that drove it.
Conversion Window
The time span after a click or impression in which a resulting conversion still gets credited back to the ad.
Conversions API (CAPI)
A server-side connection that sends conversion data directly from your server to an ad platform, so tracking survives browser and cookie loss.
Core Web Vitals
A set of Google metrics measuring real-world page experience: how fast a page loads, how quickly it responds, and how stable it stays while loading.
Cost Per Acquisition (CPA)
The average cost to win one paying customer or completed conversion from a campaign, calculated by dividing ad spend by the number of acquisitions.
Cost Per Booked Consultation (CPBC)
What it costs to put one qualified consultation on your calendar — total spend divided by booked consultations. The metric our guarantee rides on.
Cost Per Click (CPC)
The amount you pay each time someone clicks your ad, calculated by dividing total ad spend by the number of clicks.
Cost Per Lead (CPL)
What you pay, on average, to generate one lead from an ad campaign, found by dividing total ad spend by the number of leads.
Cost Per Mille (CPM)
The price you pay for every 1,000 times your ad is shown, the standard currency for awareness and display buys.
Crawl Budget
How many pages a search engine will crawl on your site in a given window; it mostly matters once a site gets large.
Crawling & Indexing
How search engines discover your pages (crawling) and store them (indexing) so they can show up in results at all.
CRM (Customer Relationship Management)
The system that stores every lead, customer, and conversation in one place — the backbone of follow-up and honest attribution.
Customer Lifetime Value (LTV)
The total profit you expect from an average customer across the entire time they do business with you, not just their first purchase.
Data Layer
A structured JavaScript object on a website that holds data in a consistent place for tracking tags and tools to read reliably.
Data-Driven Attribution (DDA)
An attribution model that uses your real conversion data to spread credit across every touchpoint, instead of a fixed rule like giving it all to the last click.
Dayparting (Ad Scheduling)
Choosing which hours and days your ads run — so spend lines up with when homeowners actually call and when someone can answer.
Digital PR
Earning high-authority backlinks and brand mentions by creating newsworthy stories and data that journalists actually want to cite.
Domain Authority
A third-party score from 1 to 100 that estimates how likely a website is to rank in search, based largely on its backlink profile.
Dwell Time
How long a searcher stays on your page before heading back to results — a signal that your page answered the question.
E-E-A-T
Google's quality framework — Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trust — for judging whether content deserves to rank.
Enhanced Conversions
A Google Ads feature that sends hashed first-party data, like emails, back to Google to recover conversions that tracking would otherwise miss.
Event Tracking
Recording specific visitor actions — clicks, form submits, phone taps — as named events in analytics so you can measure what actually happens on your site.
The 5-Minute First-Call
Our guarantee for emergency trades: every emergency lead reached in under five minutes — or that lead is on us.
Featured Snippet
The boxed answer Google pulls to the top of results to respond to a query directly — often called position zero.
First-Party Data
Information a business collects directly from its own customers and audience, with consent, rather than buying it from an outside source.
Form Abandonment
When a homeowner starts your quote or contact form but never submits it — a near-miss lead, and one of the most fixable leaks on a page.
The Founding Crew
Our first five founding clients — founding pricing and our most aggressive guarantee, in exchange for a case study when you win.
Frame, Finish & Cornerstone
Our three plans, named for how you build: Frame (the guaranteed monthly engine), Finish (the full owned-channel program), and Cornerstone (market exclusivity).
Geofencing
Drawing a virtual boundary on a map so your ads only target — or deliberately exclude — people inside specific areas.
Google Ads
Google's advertising platform — the dominant way to put your business in front of homeowners actively searching to hire a contractor.
Google Analytics 4 (GA4)
Google's current free analytics platform, which tracks website and app activity as a stream of events and is built around privacy and cross-device measurement.
Google Business Profile (GBP)
The free Google listing that controls how your business appears in Maps and local search — your hours, reviews, photos, and contact details.
Google Keyword Planner
The keyword research tool inside Google Ads that shows search volume ranges and bid estimates to help plan paid search campaigns.
Google Search Console (GSC)
A free Google tool that shows how your site performs in search results — the queries, clicks, impressions, and indexing issues behind your rankings.
Google Tag (gtag.js)
The single base tag, gtag.js, that sends data from your site to Google Ads and GA4 — the foundation of Google measurement.
Google Tag Manager (GTM)
A free Google tool for deploying and managing tracking tags on a website through one interface, without editing the site's code each time.
Google Verified
A Google verification badge for vetted local pros — Google screens your license, insurance, and background, then marks your Local Services Ads with a check. Formerly "Google Guaranteed."
Impression Share
The percentage of the impressions your ads actually received out of the total they were eligible to receive.
Impressions
The number of times your ad or listing was shown, regardless of whether anyone clicked or interacted with it.
In-Market Audiences
Google audience segments of people actively researching or shopping for something right now — like a kitchen remodel or a new home.
Inbound Pipeline Engine
The paid side of your marketing — Local Services Ads, Google Search, and paid social — that delivers booked consultations fast and carries the guarantee.
Internal Linking
Linking your own pages to each other to guide visitors, spread ranking authority, and show search engines how your content fits together.
Key Performance Indicator (KPI)
A specific, measurable number that shows whether you're making progress toward a goal that actually matters to the business.
Keyword Difficulty
An estimate of how hard it is to rank for a search term, used to pick winnable targets instead of fights you can't win.
Keyword Match Types
The settings — broad, phrase, and exact — that control how closely a search must match your keyword before your ad can show.
Keyword Research
The process of finding the actual words and phrases people search for, then mapping them to pages you can realistically rank and convert.
Landing Page
A standalone page built for a single goal, usually where ad or campaign traffic 'lands' to convert into a lead or sale.
Lead Aggregator
A marketplace like Angi, HomeAdvisor, or Thumbtack that sells homeowner leads — usually the same lead to several contractors at once.
Lead Magnet
A valuable free offer — a guide, checklist, or price estimate — given in exchange for contact info to capture homeowners not ready to call yet.
Lead Nurturing
Staying in front of leads who aren't ready yet — through email, text, and follow-up — so they choose you when the time finally comes.
Lead Scoring
Ranking incoming leads by how likely they are to become customers, so sales and ad budget focus on the ones that count.
Local Citations
Mentions of your business name, address, and phone on directories and listings that reinforce your local relevance and trust.
Local SEO
The practice of optimizing a business to show up in local searches and the Google map pack for customers in a specific area.
Local Services Ads (LSA)
Google's pay-per-lead ads for local pros, shown above search results with a Google Verified badge — you pay for leads, not clicks.
Long-Tail Keyword
A longer, more specific search with lower volume but higher intent — like 'kitchen remodel cost in Tucson' — that converts better.
Lookalike Audience
A new audience the ad platform builds to resemble your best existing customers, used to find more people likely to buy.
Looker Studio
Google's free reporting tool, formerly Data Studio, that turns analytics and ad data into live, shareable dashboards.
Map Pack
The block of three local business listings with a map that Google shows at the top of results for location-based searches.
Marketing Attribution
The practice of assigning credit for a conversion to the marketing touchpoints that influenced it, so you know which channels and campaigns actually drove results.
Marketing Funnel
A model of the stages a buyer moves through, from first becoming aware of you to becoming a customer, with fewer people at each step down.
Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL)
A lead that fits your ideal customer and has shown enough interest to be worth a salesperson's time — not just a random click.
Meta Ads Manager
Meta's platform for creating, targeting, and measuring advertising across Facebook and Instagram from one interface.
Meta Description
The snippet of text under your title in search results — it doesn't directly affect rankings, but it heavily influences clicks.
Meta Pixel
A snippet of code on your site that lets Meta measure Facebook and Instagram ad conversions and build audiences from site visitors.
Micro-Conversion
A small yes on the way to a lead — a video view, a gallery scroll, a financing-tab click — that shows whether a page is working.
Microsoft Advertising (Bing Ads)
The ad platform for Bing and the Microsoft search network — lower volume than Google, often cheaper clicks, and an older, more affluent homeowner skew.
The Moat
The owned side of your marketing — SEO, content, and reviews — that compounds over months and lowers your blended cost per job.
Multivariate Testing (MVT)
Testing several page elements at once to find the best combination — powerful on high-traffic pages, but it needs far more visitors than A/B testing.
NAP (Name, Address, Phone)
Your core business contact info; keeping the name, address, and phone identical everywhere is foundational for local SEO.
Negative Keywords
Search terms you tell Google to ignore so your ads never show for them, used to block irrelevant clicks and protect your budget.
Net Promoter Score (NPS)
A loyalty metric from one question — how likely are you to recommend us — that predicts referrals and repeat work.
Off-Page SEO
Signals from beyond your own site — links, citations, reviews, and mentions — that build your authority and trust with Google.
Offline Conversion Import
Feeding real-world outcomes — a signed job, a closed deal — from your CRM back into the ad platforms so bidding optimizes for revenue, not just raw leads.
On-Page SEO
Optimizing the content and HTML on your own pages — titles, headings, copy, and links — so search engines understand and rank them.
Online Reviews
Public customer ratings and feedback on Google, Facebook, and industry sites that shape both buying decisions and local rankings.
Organic Traffic
Visitors who arrive from unpaid search results; it's the compounding payoff of doing SEO well over time.
Page Speed
How fast a page loads and becomes usable — a slow page bleeds leads on mobile, where most homeowners find you.
Paid Search
Buying ads against what homeowners type into search engines, so you appear at the exact moment someone is looking to hire your trade.
Paid Social
Running ads on social platforms like Facebook and Instagram to create demand and stay top-of-mind with homeowners in your service area.
Pay-Per-Click (PPC)
An advertising model where you only pay when someone actually clicks your ad, not when it's merely shown.
Payback Period
How many months a customer's margin takes to repay what you spent to win them — the speed at which marketing pays for itself.
Performance Max
A Google Ads campaign type that runs across all of Google's inventory from a single campaign using automated targeting and bidding toward a goal.
Ranking Factors
The signals search engines weigh to order results; knowing which ones move the needle is what makes local SEO pay off.
Reputation Management
Actively shaping how your business looks online — earning reviews, replying well, and handling the occasional bad one.
Responsive Search Ads (RSA)
Google's default search ad format: you supply multiple headlines and descriptions, and Google mixes them to fit each query.
Retargeting
Showing ads to people who already visited your site or engaged with you, to bring them back and nudge them toward converting.
Return on Ad Spend (ROAS)
The revenue you earn for every dollar spent on advertising, calculated by dividing revenue from ads by the ad spend that produced it.
Return on Investment (ROI)
The profit you earn relative to what you spent — the ultimate scoreboard for whether a marketing dollar was worth it.
Review Gating
Screening customers so only happy ones get routed to public review sites — a practice that violates Google's policy.
Review Velocity
The pace and consistency of new reviews over time — a steady trickle of fresh reviews beats a one-time pile.
Sales Qualified Lead (SQL)
A lead your sales process has vetted as ready for an estimate or quote — one confirmed step past a marketing qualified lead.
Schema Markup
Structured code added to a page that helps search engines understand its content and can unlock rich results like stars, FAQs, and prices.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
The practice of improving a website so it ranks higher in unpaid search results for the terms your customers actually type into Google.
Search Intent
The goal behind a search: what the person actually wants when they type a query, whether to learn, find a site, compare, or buy.
SERP (Search Engine Results Page)
The page Google shows after a search, including the organic links plus ads, maps, snippets, and other features competing for attention.
Server-Side Tracking
Sending conversion data to platforms from your own server instead of the browser, for more durable, accurate measurement as cookies fade.
Show Rate
The percentage of booked appointments where the homeowner actually shows up — no-shows are the gap between a full calendar and real jobs.
Smart Bidding
Google Ads automated bidding strategies that use machine learning to set bids for each auction based on the likelihood of a conversion.
Social Proof
The psychological pull of seeing that others trust you — reviews, ratings, testimonials, and client logos that make choosing you feel safe.
Speed-to-Lead
How fast you respond to a new inquiry — responding within minutes dramatically lifts how many leads you actually reach and book.
Star Rating
Your average review score on a 1-to-5 scale — the single number homeowners judge you by before they click.
Technical SEO
The site plumbing — crawlability, speed, structure, and indexing — that lets search engines access, read, and trust your pages.
Testimonial
A short endorsement from a real customer vouching for your work — social proof that lowers a prospect's perceived risk.
Third-Party Cookie
A tracking cookie set by a domain other than the one you're visiting — the fading backbone of cross-site ad tracking.
Title Tag
The clickable headline of a search result and a real ranking factor — the single most important piece of on-page SEO.
Topic Cluster
A content structure where one broad pillar page links to many focused articles on related subtopics, building topical authority around a theme.
Tracking Pixel
A tiny, invisible snippet or image on a web page or email that records an action — a view or conversion — for analytics or ad platforms.
Trust Signals
On-page cues — reviews, licenses, warranties, real project photos, badges — that lower a homeowner's risk and lift conversions.
Usability Testing
Watching real people try to use your site so you catch the friction that's quietly costing you leads — before it costs you more.
User-Generated Content (UGC)
Content created by your customers — reviews, photos, videos, social posts — that doubles as authentic, trust-building social proof.
UTM Parameters
Short tags added to the end of a link that tell your analytics exactly which campaign, source, and medium sent a visitor to your site.
No terms match that search — try another word.
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