Local SEO terms, in plain English.
Written for the person reading a proposal rather than the person writing one. Where a term is a tool vendor's invention or simply does not matter, it says so.
You will be able to read an SEO proposal or a monthly report and tell which parts describe real work and which parts are vocabulary.
The terms that matter and the ones being used at you
Most glossaries in this field treat every term as equally important, which is convenient for anyone who wants to sound impressive. Several of the words below describe genuine mechanics you should understand. Several describe metrics invented by tool companies and used in reports because they move.
Where a term falls into the second group, the entry says so. That is the most useful thing a glossary in this field can do.
A to Z
- Attributes
- Yes or no facts on your listing: wheelchair accessible, outdoor seating, delivery, women-owned. Several are used as filters, which means a blank attribute excludes you from that filtered search rather than ranking you lower in it. Which ones you can set depends on your category.
- Backlink
- A link from another website to yours. Genuine editorial links from real local sites are among the strongest signals a small business can earn. Bought links and directory submissions are not the same thing and mostly do nothing.Also called: inbound link
- Citation
- Any mention of your business name, address and phone number on another site, whether or not it links to you. Ten on platforms that actually rank in your city are worth more than a hundred on directories nobody visits.Also called: NAP listing
- Core Web Vitals
- Three measurements of how a page feels to load and use: how quickly the main content appears, how quickly it responds to a tap, and how much the layout jumps about. They matter for the visitor more than for the ranking.
- Domain authority
- A score invented by a tool company to estimate how strong a website is. Google does not use it. It appears in reports because it moves, which is not the same as meaning something. Treat a report built around it with caution.Also called: DA, domain rating, DR
- Duplicate listing
- Two profiles for the same real business. They compete with each other, split whatever standing you have built, and one will eventually be removed, not necessarily the one you would have chosen.
- E-E-A-T
- Experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trust. A description of what Google's quality raters are asked to look for rather than a setting you can change. In practice it means: is this written by somebody who has actually done the thing.
- Grid rank tracking
- Checking your position for one search from many points across your area rather than from one place. It is the only honest way to see your local visibility, because your own address is the most favourable point you will ever be checked from.
- Impressions
- How many times you appeared, whether or not anyone noticed. Useful next to clicks and enquiries, meaningless alone, and a common filler metric in reports that have nothing better to show.
- Local pack
- The block of three business listings with a map that appears above the ordinary results for local searches. Being in it is worth far more than ranking fourth, which is why the difference between third and fourth is the difference that matters.Also called: map pack, three-pack
- NAP consistency
- Your name, address and phone number written identically everywhere. Suite 4 and Unit 4 are different businesses as far as the matching is concerned. It matters less than it used to and it still causes real problems when it is badly wrong.
- Primary category
- The single most important setting on your listing. It decides which searches you are eligible for at all and which profile features you get. Also the setting most often wrong on the listings we audit.
- Prominence
- How well known your business is, including links, reviews and how often you are mentioned elsewhere. One of the three factors Google names. It is the slow one, and it is the only route to outranking businesses physically closer to your customers.
- Proximity
- How far you are from the person searching. One of the three factors, and the only one you cannot change. It explains why you rank first at your own desk and eighth three suburbs away.Also called: distance
- Relevance
- How well your business matches what was typed. Driven largely by your category, your services and the words on the matching page of your site. The most fixable of the three factors and usually the cheapest problem to solve.
- Review gating
- Asking customers how happy they are and only sending a review link to the ones who answer positively. It is prohibited, it is common, and it is recommended as a best practice on several pages currently ranking for review advice.
- Schema markup
- Structured facts about your business added to your page in a format machines read: your address, hours, services, FAQs. It does not make you rank higher on its own. It makes you easier to describe accurately, which increasingly matters.Also called: structured data
- SERP
- The results page. Used constantly in this industry and it simply means what you see after you search.
- Service area business
- A business that travels to customers rather than receiving them. Required to hide its address, which is a guideline rather than a choice. The address is still recorded and still used to calculate distance.Also called: SAB
- Suspension
- Your listing being removed from view, usually for a guidelines breach. Reinstatement takes weeks and is not guaranteed, which is why the guideline items are worth more attention than the optimisation ones.
- UTM parameters
- Tags added to a link so you can see in your analytics where a visitor came from. Useful, and they only track people who reach your website. Calls and direction requests happen inside Google and are invisible to them.
- Vanity metric
- A number that reliably goes up and does not correspond to money. Total keywords ranking, impressions with no click data, domain authority. Their presence in a report is usually a sign that the useful numbers were not favourable.
About the vocabulary
Which terms should I actually care about?
Primary category, proximity, prominence, relevance and review gating. Those five cover most of what determines whether you appear and whether what you are being sold is legitimate.
Is domain authority worth asking about?
Only as a test. If a provider leads with it, they are reporting a third-party tool's estimate rather than anything Google uses, and it is worth asking what they would report instead.
Why does everyone use so much jargon?
Some of it is genuine shorthand between practitioners. Some of it makes ordinary work sound technical. The distinction is usually whether the person will explain the term plainly when asked.
What should I ask when I do not understand a term in a report?
What decision does this number help me make. If the answer is none, the number is filler regardless of how technical the term sounds.