Marketing glossary.

• AggregateRating

  Schema & Tech

  A piece of structured data (schema.org markup) that tells search engines the average rating, total review count, and rating scale for your business. When present, Google can show the star rating and review count directly in your search results — the visual signal that a business looks credible at a glance.

  Without it, Google has to infer your rating from third-party data; with it, you control what shows up in the rich snippet.

  • → Why local businesses are invisible to Google

• AIR

  AI receptionist · voice agentAI & Automation

  Aspireco's AI voice agent. Picks up your business phone outside hours (or during overflow), screens calls, qualifies leads, books appointments to your calendar, and texts you a transcript within 60 seconds. Trained per business on your services, hours, and pricing.

  For trades and clinics, after-hours leads going to voicemail is the single biggest revenue leak — AIR captures those at roughly 1/10 the cost of a human receptionist.

  • → AIR vs hiring a receptionist
  • → Market Dominator tier (where AIR ships)

• Audit dossier

  Conversion

  A structured report scoring a business across the six dimensions Aspireco measures: first impression, mobile, search visibility, calls to action, trust, and booking. Each dimension scored 0-10, with specific findings and prioritized fixes. Typically 8-15 pages.

  Replaces the ambiguity of "we should do better marketing" with a specific, ranked list of fixes you can hand to any competent implementer.

  • → The six dimensions explained
  • → Read a complete sample

• CASL

  Canada's Anti-Spam LawConversion

  Canada's Anti-Spam Law. Requires explicit opt-in consent before sending commercial electronic messages (email, SMS, social DMs). Includes specific identification rules (sender, contact, unsubscribe path) and steep fines for violations.

  Toronto businesses building marketing automation must use express opt-in flows; the older "implied consent" rules have largely sunset.

• Citation

  NAP citationLocal SEO

  A mention of your business's Name, Address, and Phone (NAP) on another website — Yellow Pages, Yelp, RateMDs, BBB, Apple Maps, industry directories. Citations are how search engines verify that a business exists and is consistent across the web.

  Inconsistent citations (different addresses or phone numbers across directories) hurt local-pack ranking; cleanup is part of the standard local SEO sprint.

• Close rate

  Conversion

  The percentage of inbound leads (calls, form submits, walk-ins) that become paying customers. Most local SMBs land between 15-35%, depending on niche and how qualified the lead is.

  The ROI calculator on our pricing page uses your close rate to project the customer impact of more leads — without an accurate close rate, ROI math is just hopes.

  • → ROI calculator on /pricing

• Conversion rate

  Conversion

  The percentage of website visitors who complete a target action — usually booking, calling, or submitting a form. Tracked separately for desktop vs. mobile; mobile conversion rates are often dramatically lower for local businesses, signaling a mobile UX problem.

  Average local SMB site converts mobile visitors at about 1.4-2.8%; sites with clean booking flows and fast LCP can hit 5-7%.

  • → Fix your dental clinic's mobile booking flow

• Core Web Vitals

  CWVSchema & Tech

  Google's set of three performance metrics: Largest Contentful Paint (LCP, "good" under 2.5s), Interaction to Next Paint (INP, "good" under 200ms), and Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS, "good" under 0.1). Google uses CWV as a ranking factor for mobile search results.

  A site failing CWV thresholds is suppressed in mobile rankings; fixing them is one of the fastest SEO wins because it does not require new content.

• CTA

  Call to actionConversion

  The action you want a visitor to take — book, call, contact, request a quote. The dominant CTA on a page should be visually distinct from secondary actions; competing equally-weighted CTAs split attention and reduce overall conversion.

  CTA design is one of the six dimensions in every Aspireco audit; weak CTA scoring is the most common reason a high-traffic site converts poorly.

  • → The six dimensions

• Dossier

  Conversion

  See "Audit dossier."

• GBP

  Google Business Profile · Google My Business · GMBLocal SEO

  Google Business Profile (formerly Google My Business). Your business's presence on Google Maps and in the local pack of search results. Includes your name, address, phone, hours, photos, posts, reviews, and 47 attributes across nine high-impact categories.

  For local businesses, GBP completeness is the single biggest factor in local-pack ranking; missing attributes cost 3-5% visibility each.

  • → What a real GBP audit costs
  • → Why local businesses are invisible to Google

• INP

  Interaction to Next PaintSchema & Tech

  A Core Web Vital metric (replaced FID in March 2024) measuring how responsive a page is to user input — the delay between when a visitor taps or clicks and when the page responds visually. "Good" is under 200ms.

  Heavy JavaScript or third-party scripts (chat widgets, ad pixels, booking iframes) commonly tank INP and trigger Google ranking penalties on mobile.

• JSON-LD

  Schema & Tech

  JavaScript Object Notation for Linked Data — the format Google prefers for schema markup. A small block of structured data placed in the head or body of an HTML page that explicitly tells search engines what the page is about.

  Schema markup is a Day-8-to-14 deliverable in our standard onboarding; properly formatted JSON-LD lifts rich-result eligibility immediately.

• LCP

  Largest Contentful PaintSchema & Tech

  A Core Web Vital metric measuring how long it takes the main content of a page to render. "Good" is under 2.5 seconds; under 1.5s is excellent. A common cause of poor LCP is unoptimized hero images.

  Slow LCP causes mobile visitors to bounce before the page renders; converting hero images to WebP/AVIF is one of the highest-leverage single fixes.

• Local pack

  Map pack · 3-packLocal SEO

  The grouping of three businesses Google shows at the top of search results for queries with local intent ("dentist near me", "plumber Toronto"). Includes name, rating, hours, action buttons, and a map. Position in the local pack drives most of the click-through for high-intent local searches.

  Most local businesses get 70%+ of their organic traffic from local-pack positions; being in the pack vs. on page 2 is the difference between visibility and invisibility.

• LSA

  Local Service Ads · Google Local Service AdsPaid acquisition

  Google's pay-per-lead ad product for service businesses (plumbers, electricians, lawyers, locksmiths, more). Ads appear above organic results and the local pack, with a Google Guarantee badge. Requires background checks, business licensing, and a minimum review threshold (typically 25+ reviews at 4.0+ stars).

  For qualifying trades, LSA leads typically cost 60-80% less than equivalent Google Ads leads; getting past the review threshold is often the unlock.

  • → Durham region plumbing case study

• No-show rate

  Conversion

  The percentage of confirmed bookings that do not show up. Industry baseline for service businesses is 12-15% without an active reminder system; structured reminders (email + SMS at the right cadences) typically cut this to 4-6%.

  For a clinic running 80 weekly bookings, dropping no-shows from 13% to 5% recovers ~6 chair-hours weekly — typically $50k+ in annual revenue.

  • → Fix your dental clinic's mobile booking flow

• PIPEDA

  Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents ActConversion

  Canada's federal privacy law. Governs how businesses collect, use, and disclose personal information of customers. Requires identifying the purpose, obtaining consent, limiting collection to what is necessary, and providing access on request.

  Toronto SMBs handling customer data have PIPEDA obligations; our privacy policy page is structured around these rights.

  • → Aspireco privacy policy

• PSI

  PageSpeed InsightsSchema & Tech

  Google PageSpeed Insights — a free tool (and API) that scores a page's performance, accessibility, SEO, and best-practices, with separate mobile and desktop scores. Returns specific recommendations and identifies the elements causing each issue.

  The Aspireco lite audit (the 15-second one on the homepage) calls the PSI API live for real numbers — not heuristic estimates.

• Repeat-booking rate

  Conversion

  For service businesses with recurring customers (salons, dental, medical), the percentage of customers who book a second appointment within the expected window. Without active rebooking nudges, the industry baseline is around 38%; with email + SMS rebooking systems, 60-65% is typical.

  New customers cost 3-5× more to acquire than repeat customers; rebooking automation is among the highest-ROI marketing investments for any service business.

• Review velocity

  Reviews & Reputation

  The rate at which a business receives new reviews — measured in reviews per month. Google weights recent reviews heavily; a business with 50 reviews from the last 12 months can outrank a competitor with 300 reviews from 4 years ago.

  Review velocity is the strongest single predictor of local-pack rank in our cohort; automated review request flows make this a sustained advantage rather than a one-off push.

• Schema markup

  Schema.org · Structured dataSchema & Tech

  A vocabulary of structured data tags (defined by schema.org) that tell search engines explicitly what a page is about — what type of business, what hours, what services, what reviews. Different from prose because Google can read it deterministically.

  For local businesses, schema is what unlocks rich snippets (star ratings, hours, prices) in search results; absence is the most common SEO gap we find.

• Sentiment

  Reviews & Reputation

  The emotional tone of a review — positive, neutral, negative. Aspireco's review automation scores sentiment automatically and routes negative reviews to a human-review queue rather than auto-replying with templated text.

  Defensive or templated replies to negative reviews are public forever and visible to every prospect; the right response is thoughtful and individual.

• Tap target

  Conversion

  An interactive element on a mobile screen (button, link, form input). WCAG 2.5.5 recommends a minimum size of 44×44 CSS pixels with at least 8px between adjacent targets. Smaller targets cause miss-taps, especially for older or arthritic users.

  Footer navigation links are the most commonly under-sized tap targets; bumping them to 44×44 measurably reduces accidental clicks and improves analytics quality.

• TTFB

  Time to First ByteSchema & Tech

  The time from when a browser requests a page to when it receives the first byte of the response. "Good" TTFB is under 800ms; under 200ms is excellent. Determined primarily by server response time, not by page weight.

  High TTFB indicates a backend or hosting issue rather than a content issue; common in WordPress sites on shared hosting.

Want to see these terms applied to your business?

The audit dossier walks through GBP completeness, schema health, CWV, review velocity, and the rest in a structured report tailored to your site.