The Phrasebook

Information. Sometimes useful information. The word "actionable" is doing no work here — insights that aren't actionable are just called "wrong." Used to make a report sound more purposeful than it is.

Plain English: findings.

Capacity, or time. Bandwidth is a technical measurement of data transfer. In an agency context it means "we don't have enough people to do this right now" — which is a perfectly reasonable thing to say without borrowing the vocabulary of network engineering.

Plain English: capacity. Or: we're busy.

We think this is good. "Best in class" implies someone has assessed the entire class and ranked it. They haven't. It's an opinion dressed as an audit result.

Plain English: good. Or: we think this is good.

Ideas unconstrained by reality, budget, or whether they'll work. Sometimes useful as a workshop activity. More often used to generate slides that will never be actioned, which can feel productive without being so.

Plain English: brainstorming. Or: ideas we haven't costed.

Do too much. Usually appears as "we don't want to boil the ocean" — meaning we've noticed the scope of this project and would prefer not to do all of it. A reasonable position, expressed unnecessarily.

Plain English: that's too much to do at once.

Return to this later. The circularity implies motion without progress. You are going round in a circle and returning to where you started, which is only useful if you've learned something on the way round.

Plain English: let's revisit this. Or: I'll come back to you.

A phrase from 1996 that has been repeated so many times it has shed all meaning. It was Bill Gates's point that the internet would be driven by content creators rather than infrastructure — a reasonable observation in 1996. As SEO advice in the present day, it tells you nothing about what content, for whom, answering what question, at what length, in what format.

Plain English: nothing useful.

We look at numbers before deciding things. The opposite — making decisions without data — is called guessing. Data-driven is not a methodology; it is a baseline expectation. Claiming to be data-driven is like claiming to be punctual.

Plain English: we use data. As does everyone.

A thorough look at something. The depth implied is rarely delivered. A deep dive that produces a three-slide summary is a paddle.

Plain English: a detailed review. Or: a thorough look.

Different from what came before, possibly significantly so. Originally a precise term from Clayton Christensen's work on innovation — a disruptive technology enters at the low end of a market and eventually displaces incumbents. Now used to mean "we have a website and a slightly unusual colour palette."

Plain English: different. Or: new.

Explore that further. A computing metaphor used in meetings to sound dynamic. Single-clicking opens something; double-clicking executes it. Neither is a useful model for a conversation. Just say "tell me more about that."

Plain English: can you say more about that?

Meets basic technical standards. Usually appears in website pitches to mean "we won't do anything that actively harms your rankings." A low bar presented as a feature. Google does not have feelings about your website.

Plain English: technically sound. Or: meets basic SEO requirements.

Detailed. Granular is a texture, not a methodology. When someone says they want to get "really granular" they mean they want to look at detailed data — which is fine, and has a word.

Plain English: detailed.

Growing quickly, often by unconventional means. In practice: A/B testing, referral loops, and paid acquisition presented as insurgent tactics. The "hacking" implies rule-breaking. Almost none of it breaks any rules. Often used to describe doing normal marketing slightly more quickly.

Plain English: marketing. Or: optimising for growth.

We will look at more than one thing. Used to distinguish a service from a narrow specialist offering — but so universally applied that it now distinguishes nothing. Every agency takes a holistic approach. It's like saying you take a comprehensive approach to being comprehensive.

Plain English: we consider the whole picture. Or: nothing, specifically.

Having an effect. Impact is a noun. Impactful is an adjective formed from it that adds nothing. A campaign either has impact or it doesn't. How much impact? In what direction? On what? "Impactful" answers none of these questions.

Plain English: effective. Or: significant. Or: specify the impact.

Use. A lever is a mechanical device that amplifies force. Leveraging your existing content means using your existing content. The word "use" exists, is shorter, and means the same thing. "Leverage" in this context is use dressed up in a hard hat.

Plain English: use.

Easy wins. The metaphor implies that somewhere above the easy wins is harder, better fruit that will require more effort. Agencies tend to stop at the low-hanging fruit and write a case study about it. The orchard above is rarely visited.

Plain English: easy wins. Or: the obvious things we haven't done yet.

Make a measurable difference. A reasonable aspiration. Used so often that it has become a way of promising results without specifying what they are, by how much, or by when. The needle is never described. Moving it in which direction?

Plain English: make a measurable difference. Then specify the measurement.

Look more carefully at something complicated. The implication is that layers of complexity will be revealed — which is fine. The onion metaphor falls down because peeling an onion reveals more onion, not clarity. Consider whether "look more carefully" serves better.

Plain English: investigate further. Or: look more carefully at this.

Change direction. Originally a startup term for a significant strategic change — dropping one business model for another. Now used to describe any minor tactical adjustment. Sending your emails at a different time is not a pivot.

Plain English: change. Or: adjust. Or: we were wrong, here's what we're doing instead.

Things that can be done quickly and will show results soon. Not inherently a bad thing — quick wins are sometimes genuinely useful and morale-building. The problem is they are often used to fill the first month of an engagement while the slower, more meaningful work is quietly deprioritised.

Plain English: easy improvements. Ask what comes after them.

A link equity manipulation technique from approximately 2008, involving the use of noindex directives or rel="nofollow" on internal links to concentrate PageRank toward priority pages. Google changed how PageRank flowed through pages in 2009, rendering the practice largely ineffective. Its appearance in Google's 2026 consumer guidance on identifying shady SEOs suggests the document was written by someone whose working knowledge of the discipline has a fifteen-year lag. If a practitioner is actively offering PageRank sculpting as a service in 2026, that is a warning sign — though probably not the one Google intended.

Plain English: a 2008 tactic that stopped working when Gordon Brown was Prime Minister. Although you could also argue, like Labour, that it was never really working either.

Ranking isn't data. It's a perspective. What a rank tracking tool shows you is the position it sees — from its location, on its device, at that moment, without your personalisation, search history or device applied. It is not what your customers see. It is not universal. With AI Overviews, local packs and personalised results occupying more of the page, the gap between a reported ranking and what any individual user actually sees has never been wider. Rankings have been used as the primary SEO metric for decades largely because they're easy to produce and clients expect them — not because they reliably indicate business performance.

Plain English: one data point, one perspective. Not the full picture. Never was.

A method for combining results from multiple search ranking systems into a single ranked list. A legitimate technical concept from information retrieval research — but one that migrated from academic papers into agency decks suspiciously quickly, where it tends to appear as evidence of sophistication rather than as a solution to a specific problem. If someone is explaining RRF to you in a pitch, ask what problem it's solving on your site specifically.

Plain English: a way of merging ranked lists. Ask why it's relevant to you.

We try to get results. The alternative — a consultancy that is not driven by results — does not exist in the wild, or at least not openly. Results-driven is a claim to normalcy dressed as a differentiator.

Plain English: we aim to deliver results. As does everyone.

Thorough, or reliable. A robust strategy is a thorough strategy. Robust appears in SEO writing constantly as a modifier that sounds substantive without being specific. What makes it robust? How was this determined?

Plain English: thorough. Or: reliable. Or: explain why.

Can be done in larger quantities later. Sometimes this matters — a process that only works for ten clients and breaks at a hundred is a real problem. Usually it means "we could do more of this if you paid us more," which is true of almost everything.

Plain English: can be expanded. Or: depends how much you want to spend.

Without visible joins. Applied to everything from user experience to agency handovers to migration processes. The seams always become visible. "Seamless" is an aspiration, not a deliverable — and aspiration should not appear in a proposal as though it were one.

Plain English: smooth. Or: well-managed. Or: we'll try not to break anything.

Agreement about what we're doing and why. A reasonable goal. Usually deployed in sentences like "we need to ensure strategic alignment across stakeholders" to mean "not everyone agrees on this and someone needs to sort it out."

Plain English: everyone agrees on the plan. Or: they don't, yet.

Two things working together to produce a better result than either would alone. A genuinely useful concept when it applies. Used in proposals to mean "we are going to combine two services and charge you for the combination." The synergy is often more visible in the invoice than the results.

Plain English: working together. Or: combined effect. Or: we'd like to sell you both.

Discuss this separately, without the current audience. A useful social function in meetings — not every conversation should involve everyone. The phrase is fine; it has just become reflexive enough to use for things that should simply be resolved in the meeting.

Plain English: let's discuss separately. Or: this needs a different conversation.

Someone with notable expertise and influence in a field. The trouble is that thought leadership has become an ambition rather than a recognition — you declare yourself a thought leader rather than being recognised as one. Publishing LinkedIn posts about your industry does not automatically produce thoughts worth leading with.

Plain English: expert. Or: influential voice. Earned, not declared.

Make contact briefly. A baseball metaphor applied to email. Touching base in baseball involves physically tagging a base to register progress. In business it means sending a short message to check in. The sport adds nothing.

Plain English: check in. Or: get in touch.

Openness about what's happening and why. A genuine value when practised. Often appears in agency positioning as a promise of openness while reporting dashboards remain carefully curated, difficult numbers stay in appendices, and difficult conversations get scheduled for next quarter.

Plain English: we'll tell you what's happening. Check whether they do.

Content that is not duplicated from elsewhere. The minimum viable standard for anything published on the web. "Unique" in this context means "not copied" — it says nothing about whether the content is useful, well-written, or worth anyone's time. Uniqueness is a technical requirement, not a quality signal.

Plain English: original content. Which is the baseline, not the achievement.

Something extra, included at no cost. The phrase positions what is often a standard service feature as a bonus. If it adds value, it should be part of the service. If it doesn't, why mention it. "Value-add" frequently describes things that were going to happen anyway.

Plain English: included. Or: this is part of what you're paying for.