Marketing glossary
A plain-language reference for the marketing, AI-search, analytics, and operations terms that show up in audits, dashboards, and engagement conversations. Published by Veriqo Studio.
Search engine optimization
SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
The practice of making a website more visible in unpaid search results through technical fixes, content quality, and inbound links.
Organic traffic
Visitors who land on a site from unpaid search results, as opposed to ads, social posts, or direct visits.
Keywords
The words and phrases people type or speak into a search engine.
Keyword ranking
Where a page appears in search results for a specific keyword. Position 1 is the top organic result.
SERP (Search Engine Results Page)
The page Google or another search engine returns after a query, including organic results, ads, the local pack, AI overviews, featured snippets, and other features.
Domain Rating (DR)
An Ahrefs metric from 0 to 100 that estimates the strength of a domain's backlink profile.
Domain Authority (DA)
A Moz metric from 0 to 100, similar in spirit to Domain Rating. Used by BrightLocal and several other tools.
Backlinks
Links from other websites that point to a given site.
Anchor text
The clickable words used in a backlink.
Meta title (title tag)
The headline that appears in search results and in browser tabs for a given page.
Meta description
The short paragraph under the meta title in search results.
Schema markup (structured data)
Hidden code on a web page that tells search engines specific facts about the content.
Canonical tag
A line of code in a page's head that tells search engines which version of duplicate or near-duplicate pages is the authoritative one.
Sitemap (XML)
A file at /sitemap.xml that lists every page on a site for search engines to discover.
Robots.txt
A plain-text file at /robots.txt that tells search engine crawlers which areas of a site they may and may not access.
Hreflang
A tag that tells search engines which language or regional version of a page to show in which country.
E-E-A-T
Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trust. The framework search engines use to judge whether content is credible enough to surface.
Crawl
The process by which a search engine's bot, or an SEO tool, systematically visits every reachable page on a site.
Local SEO
Local Pack
The map-based block at the top of Google for queries with local intent, typically showing three businesses with their reviews, hours, and a map.
Google Business Profile (GBP)
A free Google listing that surfaces a business in Maps, in the Local Pack, and in branded search results.
NAP (Name, Address, Phone)
The three pieces of business information that must be identical everywhere the business appears online.
Citation
Any mention of a business name, address, and phone number on another website.
Local rank tracking
Monitoring where a business appears in search results from different physical locations.
AI visibility (AEO and GEO)
AI Overview
Google's AI-generated summary that appears above the standard organic results for many queries.
AEO (Answer Engine Optimization)
The practice of making content easy for AI search tools to surface as the answer to a user's question.
GEO (Generative Engine Optimization)
The practice of optimizing content to be cited inside AI-generated answers across search and chat interfaces.
HEO (Human Experience Optimization)
An emerging framework that extends SEO, AEO, and GEO by treating the full human experience of a brand as a visibility factor, rather than optimizing for algorithms alone.
LLM (Large Language Model)
A type of AI system trained on very large amounts of text. Examples include Claude, GPT, Gemini, and Llama.
Share of Voice (SOV) for AI
How much of the relevant AI search conversation a brand owns compared to competitors.
Brand consistency score
How consistently AI platforms describe a brand across different prompts and models.
Hallucination
When an AI system generates information that sounds correct but is not factually true.
Content and messaging
ICP (Ideal Customer Profile)
A description of the type of customer who is the best possible fit for a business: most likely to buy, most likely to stay, most profitable to serve.
Persona
A fictional but realistic individual who represents an ICP, giving the abstract profile a name, motivations, and barriers.
Audience segment
A subset of a total addressable market grouped by a shared characteristic: behavior, demographic, geography, or stage of relationship with the business.
Messaging framework
The set of words, phrases, and proof points used to describe a business consistently across every channel.
Value proposition
The single most important sentence in the marketing. It answers: what is offered, to whom, and why is it better than the alternative.
Positioning
The place a business occupies in the prospect's mind relative to alternatives.
Brand voice and tone
Voice is the consistent personality of the communication. Tone is how that voice flexes by context.
The marketing funnel
The staged journey a stranger takes from first hearing about a business to becoming a customer, then a loyal advocate.
CTA (Call to Action)
A prompt directing a visitor or reader to take a specific next step: schedule a call, download a guide, start a trial.
Email marketing and lifecycle
Open rate
The percentage of recipients who opened a given email.
CTR (Click-Through Rate)
The percentage of recipients (or impressions, in ads) who clicked a link.
Click-to-open rate (CTOR)
Clicks divided by opens. Isolates content effectiveness from subject line effectiveness.
Nurture sequence
An automated series of emails sent to a lead over time to build trust and move them toward a purchase decision.
Win-back campaign
Emails targeting former customers or lapsed leads to bring them back into the funnel.
List segmentation
Splitting an email list into groups so each one receives relevant content.
Deliverability
Whether sent emails actually reach the inbox versus the spam folder or a quarantine.
ESP (Email Service Provider)
The platform used to send marketing or transactional email at scale.
SPF, DKIM, DMARC
Three email authentication standards published as DNS records that protect deliverability and prevent domain spoofing.
Social media
Engagement rate
Likes, comments, saves, and shares divided by followers (or impressions, depending on the calculation).
Reach
The number of unique people who saw a piece of content.
Impressions
The total number of times a piece of content was displayed, including repeat views by the same person.
User-generated content (UGC)
Content created by customers or fans, not by the brand.
Hashtag strategy
The deliberate choice of hashtags that match audience discovery behavior on a given platform.
Posting cadence
How often content is published on a channel.
Paid advertising
CPC (Cost Per Click)
The amount paid each time someone clicks an ad.
CPM (Cost Per Mille)
The amount paid per thousand impressions.
CPL (Cost Per Lead)
The total ad spend divided by the number of leads generated.
ROAS (Return On Ad Spend)
Revenue generated from a campaign divided by the cost of that campaign.
Quality Score
A Google Ads metric (1 to 10) that estimates the relevance of an ad and its landing page to a given keyword.
Negative keywords
Words and phrases that, when present in a search query, prevent the ad from showing.
Match types (broad, phrase, exact)
The rules that determine how closely a user's query must match a target keyword for the ad to show.
Audience targeting
The set of methods for choosing who sees a paid ad: lookalike, interest, and retargeting.
Conversion API / Pixel
A pixel is a snippet of code on a website that reports user actions back to an ad platform. A Conversion API sends the same data server-to-server.
CRM and pipeline
CRM (Customer Relationship Management)
The software that tracks contacts, leads, customers, and the interactions between them.
Pipeline
The visual representation of leads moving through stages from first inquiry to closed-won (or closed-lost).
Lead
A person who has shown some interest but has not yet bought.
MQL (Marketing Qualified Lead)
A lead who has met criteria that suggest they are likely to engage with sales.
SQL (Sales Qualified Lead)
A lead that sales has accepted as worth pursuing.
Conversion rate
The percentage of contacts who move from one stage to the next, or the percentage of visitors who take a defined action.
Attribution
The practice of assigning credit to the marketing channels that contributed to a sale.
Attribution model
A specific rule for distributing credit across channels: first-touch, last-touch, linear, time-decay, or data-driven.
Lead source
The specific channel or form a lead came from.
Churn
When a customer cancels, downgrades, or stops buying.
LTV / CLV (Lifetime Value / Customer Lifetime Value)
The total revenue an average customer generates before they churn.
CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost)
The total marketing and sales spend divided by the number of new customers acquired in a period.
CAC payback period
The number of months it takes for the gross margin from a new customer to cover the cost of acquiring them.
Website and technical
Core Web Vitals
Google's set of measurements for page experience: loading speed, interactivity, and visual stability.
LCP (Largest Contentful Paint)
The time it takes for the largest visible element on a page to render. The target is under 2.5 seconds.
INP (Interaction to Next Paint)
The delay between a user's interaction and the page responding. The target is under 200 milliseconds.
CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift)
How much the page jumps around as it loads. The target is under 0.1.
Bounce rate
The percentage of visitors who leave a page without interacting further.
404 error
A 'page not found' response, returned when the URL no longer exists.
301 redirect
A permanent redirect from one URL to another. Passes most of the SEO equity from the old URL to the new one.
302 redirect
A temporary redirect from one URL to another. Does not pass SEO equity the same way a 301 does.
HTTPS and SSL
HTTPS is the encrypted version of HTTP. It relies on an SSL or TLS certificate that proves the site is what it claims to be.
Mobile-first indexing
Google's policy of primarily using the mobile version of a site to determine rankings.
Site architecture
How pages on a website are organized and linked to each other.
Orphan page
A page on a site that has no incoming internal links from other pages on the same site.
Analytics and measurement
KPI (Key Performance Indicator)
A metric a business has chosen to track because it tells the team something important about health, progress, or risk.
Conversion event
A specific action a business wants a visitor to take: submit a form, complete a purchase, book a call, download a resource.
Funnel report
A visualization of how visitors progress through key steps on the path to a defined conversion.
Cohort analysis
Grouping customers (or visitors) by the period they joined and tracking how they behave over time.
UTM parameters
Tags appended to a URL that track the source, medium, and campaign that delivered the click.
GA4 (Google Analytics 4)
Google's current analytics platform, which replaced Universal Analytics in 2023.
GSC (Google Search Console)
Google's free tool that shows how a site performs in Google search.
GTM (Google Tag Manager)
A tool for managing tracking codes on a website without editing the site's source code each time.
Pixel
A snippet of code on a website that reports user actions back to a third-party platform.
Looker Studio
Google's free dashboarding tool, formerly Google Data Studio. Pulls data from multiple sources into a single visual report.