SEO Glossary

Google Search Console (GSC) is a free tool from Google that lets you monitor, maintain, and troubleshoot your site’s presence in Google Search results. It shows you which queries drive impressions and clicks, how Google crawls and indexes your pages, technical errors hurting your rankings, and which sites link to you. For SEO professionals, GSC…

Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) is the systematic process of increasing the percentage of website visitors who complete a desired action—whether that’s making a purchase, filling out a form, signing up for an email list, or calling your business. It’s about getting more value from the traffic you already have, rather than obsessing over getting more…

The local pack (also called the map pack or 3-pack) is the block of three local business listings that appears at the top of Google search results for local queries, displayed alongside a map showing their locations. It’s prime real estate—appearing above organic results and capturing 33% of all clicks for local searches (Moz, 2024)….

NAP consistency means your business Name, Address, and Phone number are identical across every online listing, directory, citation, and page where they appear. Not similar. Not close enough. Identical—character for character, punctuation for punctuation. I learned how brutal NAP inconsistency can be when a client dropped from #2 to #9 in the local pack after…

Google Business Profile (GBP, formerly Google My Business) is a free tool that lets you manage how your business appears across Google Search, Google Maps, and the local pack. It’s the single most important ranking factor for local SEO—more impactful than backlinks, domain authority, or even your website for local search visibility. I’ve seen businesses…

Local SEO is the practice of optimizing your online presence to attract customers from local searches—queries that include geographic modifiers like city names, “near me,” or are implied to be local based on the searcher’s location. It’s how you dominate the map pack, rank for “best [service] in [city],” and get found when someone 3…

Voice search optimization is the practice of structuring content and technical SEO to rank for spoken queries delivered through voice assistants like Siri, Google Assistant, Alexa, and Cortana. Unlike typed searches, voice queries are conversational, question-based, and typically longer—and they demand immediate, concise answers. I realized voice search mattered in 2021 when a client’s “best…

Zero-click search is when Google (or another search engine) answers a user’s query directly on the search results page, eliminating the need to click through to any website. The user gets their answer, Google keeps the traffic, and you get… impressions but no clicks. I first noticed this hitting hard around 2019. One of my…

Topical authority is when Google recognizes your site as a go-to expert on a specific subject because you’ve published comprehensive, interlinked content covering all major subtopics within that niche. It’s not about one great article—it’s about owning an entire topic through depth and breadth. I learned this the hard way. Years ago I published a…

Entity SEO is the practice of optimizing content and websites around entities—distinct, well-defined things like people, places, products, brands, or concepts—rather than just keywords. Instead of optimizing for the string “best running shoes,” entity SEO focuses on specific shoe brands (Nike, Adidas, Brooks), shoe types (trail running shoes, racing flats), and the relationships between them….

Semantic SEO is the practice of optimizing content based on meaning, context, and user intent rather than just exact-match keywords. Instead of stuffing a page with “best running shoes” 47 times, semantic SEO focuses on comprehensively covering the topic—discussing shoe types, materials, use cases, brands, fit, and related concepts that searchers actually care about. I’ve…

LLM Citations are references that large language models (ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Gemini) include when answering user queries, crediting specific sources that informed their responses. Unlike traditional search results where you click links, LLM citations appear inline within AI-generated answers—and getting cited means capturing traffic before users ever see a traditional SERP. Why LLM Citations Matter…