A plain-English guide to every term you’ll see on your Event Hawk SEO report, plus the wider SEO concepts your team may reference. Bookmark this page.
Section 1: Everything in your report
Performance metrics
Clicks
The number of times someone clicked from a Google search result to your website. Real traffic.
Impressions
The number of times your site appeared in a Google search result, whether the person clicked or not. Measures visibility.
CTR (Click-Through Rate)
The percentage of impressions that turned into clicks. A 3% CTR means 3 out of every 100 people who saw your listing clicked it. Low CTR usually means your title or description is not compelling enough.
Avg Position
Your average rank in Google search results across every query your site appears for. Position 1 is the top of page one. Anything under 10 is page one. Party rental sites typically want core keywords sitting between 1 and 5.
AI Readiness Score
A 0 to 100 score that measures how prepared your website is to be cited by AI assistants like Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT, and Perplexity. Higher is better. Combines schema, AI crawler access, content extractability, and structural signals.
Traffic and visitors
Sessions
A single visit to your site. If one person comes back tomorrow, that is two sessions.
Users
Unique visitors. If one person visits three times in a month, that is three sessions but one user.
Engaged Sessions
A session where the visitor stuck around, scrolled, or interacted with the page. Not a bounce.
Bounce Rate
The percentage of sessions where the visitor left without doing anything. High bounce on a landing page usually means the page doesn’t match what they were searching for.
Landing Page
The first page a visitor sees when they arrive from Google. Different from your homepage. Your city pages, product pages, and blog posts are all landing pages.
Where traffic comes from
Organic Search
Visitors from a Google, Bing, or Yahoo search result that you did not pay for. The most valuable channel for a party rental business because it is free and repeats.
Direct
Visitors who typed your URL, used a bookmark, or clicked a link from an app that Google can’t see (like a text message).
Referral
Visitors from a link on another website. Yelp, The Bash, Nextdoor, or a local news article all count as referral.
Paid Search
Visitors from a Google Ads click. Stops when you stop paying.
Social
Visitors from Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, or other social platforms.
Email
Visitors who clicked a link inside an email newsletter or reminder.
Display
Visitors from a banner ad on another site.
What people find you for
Query
The exact phrase someone typed into Google that led them to your site. “Bounce house rental near me” is a query.
Branded
A query that includes your business name. Someone typing “Bounce N Putt” is a branded search.
Non-Branded
A query that does NOT include your business name. “bounce house rental Dallas” is non-branded. These are the searches that bring in brand-new customers.
Top Non-Branded Queries
The best-performing searches from strangers, ranked by clicks. Growing this list is how you take market share.
Local view
State-Filtered Sessions
Traffic filtered to visitors physically located in the state you serve. Out-of-state clicks (data centers, VPN traffic, wrong-region hits) get removed so the number reflects real prospects.
Time windows
Rolling 90 Days
The last 90 days ending today. Rolls forward each day. Used for headline metrics.
Weekly Trend
The last 12 to 13 full weeks of data, one bar per week. Reveals whether Google is trending you up or down.
Year-over-Year (YoY)
Same period this year vs. the same period last year. The only fair comparison for a seasonal business like party rentals.
Section 2: SEO fundamentals
The basics
SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
The work of making your website easier for Google to understand, trust, and rank. Long-term investment. Compounds over months.
Local SEO
The specific type of SEO that gets you found by people searching in your city or service area. Google Business Profile is the biggest lever here.
Google Search Console (GSC)
Google’s free tool that shows how your site performs in search. Where clicks, impressions, and average position come from on your report.
Google Analytics 4 (GA4)
Google’s free tool that shows how visitors behave on your site once they arrive. Where sessions, users, and bounce rate come from.
Google Business Profile (GBP)
Your business listing on Google Maps and in the Local Pack. For a party rental company, this is the single most valuable digital asset you own.
On the page
Meta Title
The blue clickable headline that appears in Google search results. 40 to 70 characters is the sweet spot. Should include the city and service.
Meta Description
The short paragraph under the meta title in search results. 140 to 155 characters. Does not affect ranking directly, but drives CTR.
H1
The main headline on a page. One per page. Should match the search intent.
H2, H3
Sub-headings. Google reads these to understand page structure. Question-form H2s (“How much does bounce house rental cost?”) are AI Overview candy.
Alt Text
The text description attached to an image so screen readers and Google crawlers can understand what the image shows. Every product photo should have alt text.
Canonical URL
The one “official” version of a page when duplicates exist. Prevents Google from splitting ranking signals across duplicate URLs.
Internal Linking
Links between pages on your own site. Helps Google understand which pages are most important and passes ranking authority around.
Under the hood
Schema Markup (Structured Data)
Hidden code (usually JSON-LD) that tells Google exactly what a page is about. A LocalBusiness schema tells Google your address, hours, and category. Improves rich-result eligibility.
Sitemap
An XML file listing every page on your site. Submitted to Google so it knows what to crawl.
Robots.txt
A small text file that tells search engines and AI crawlers which pages they can and cannot access. Blocking ChatGPT’s crawler here means you will never be cited by ChatGPT.
llms.txt
A new standard file that tells AI assistants (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude) which pages on your site are the highest-signal sources to quote. Think of it as an AI-native sitemap.
Core Web Vitals
Google’s three page-speed metrics: LCP (how fast the main content loads), INP (how fast the page responds to a click), and CLS (how stable the layout is while loading). All three factor into ranking.
Indexing
When Google adds your page to its search database. A page has to be indexed before it can rank. Slow indexing is a common problem for new sites.
Crawling
When a search engine bot visits your page to read it. Different from indexing. A page can be crawled and still not indexed.
What Google reads
Keywords
The words and phrases people type into Google. Your target keywords are the searches you want to rank for.
Search Intent
What the person is actually trying to do when they search. “Bounce house rental Dallas” is buying intent. “How does a bounce house work” is research intent. You want pages for the buying intent.
Featured Snippet
The boxed answer that sometimes appears at the very top of Google, above the regular results. Steals CTR from position 1.
Local Pack (Map Pack)
The map with 3 local businesses that appears for location-based searches. Owned entirely by Google Business Profile signals.
Rich Results
Enhanced search listings with extra info like star ratings, prices, FAQs, or event dates. Driven by schema markup.
AI search
AI Overviews
Google’s AI-generated answer at the top of search results. Powered by Gemini. Appears for 48% of Google searches. Different from the Local Pack but often shows alongside it.
ChatGPT Search
The web-search feature inside ChatGPT. Cites specific websites when it answers. To be cited, your site must allow the GPTBot crawler and have extractable content.
Perplexity
An AI search engine that cites every source it uses. Growing user base. Same crawler access rules apply.
Citation
When an AI assistant quotes your site or names your business in its answer. The goal of Answer Engine Optimization.
Housekeeping
301 Redirect
A permanent forwarding rule from an old URL to a new one. Preserves ranking signals when pages move or sites migrate.
404 Error
The “page not found” error. A broken link. Search engines de-rank sites with lots of 404s.
Domain Authority (DA)
A third-party score (0 to 100) from Moz or Ahrefs that estimates how well a site can rank based on its backlink profile. Not a Google metric, but useful for competitive comparison.
Backlinks
Links from other websites pointing to yours. Historically the #1 ranking factor. Still matters, but for local businesses brand mentions and Google Business Profile signals now matter more.
Questions about a term not listed here? Email your SEO team at internal@eventhawk360.com.