# Digital marketing glossary for trades

> Plain-language definitions of the marketing terms home-service owners hear most: PPC, CPC, CPL, Local Services Ads, Google Business Profile, map pack, SEO, AEO, NAP, schema markup, conversion tracking and more.

## Marketing terms, in plain language

What your agency means when it says CPL, NAP or AEO.

## Terms

### PPC (pay per click)

Advertising where you pay each time someone clicks your ad. Google search ads are the most common PPC for trades.

### CPC (cost per click)

The average amount you pay Google for one click on your ad.

### CPL (cost per lead)

What you pay, on average, for one call or form from a potential customer. Total spend divided by leads.

### Cost per booked job

Total marketing cost divided by the jobs it produced. The number that matters most.

### Local Services Ads (LSA)

Google ads that appear above other results with a Google Verified badge. You pay per lead instead of per click.

### Google Business Profile

Your free business listing on Google Search and Maps, formerly Google My Business.

### Map pack

The box of three local businesses with a map shown for local searches such as "plumber near me".

### NAP

Name, address and phone number. Keeping them identical everywhere online helps local rankings.

### Citation

A mention of your business NAP on another website, such as a directory.

### SEO (search engine optimization)

Improving your website so it ranks higher in Google’s regular, unpaid results.

### AEO (answer engine optimization)

Making your business easy for AI assistants like ChatGPT and Google AI Overviews to understand and recommend.

### Schema markup

Code that describes your business, services and FAQs in a format search engines and AI tools read reliably.

### llms.txt

A proposed standard file that summarises a website for AI tools, with links to its key pages.

### Conversion tracking

Recording calls, forms and bookings so you know which ads and pages produce customers.

### Negative keyword

A search term you tell Google never to show your ad for, such as "jobs" or "DIY".

### Landing page

The page someone arrives on after clicking an ad, ideally about exactly what they searched for.

### Core Web Vitals

Google’s measures of how fast and stable a page feels to visitors.

### 301 redirect

A permanent redirect from an old URL to a new one, which passes on most of the old page’s ranking value.