So you’d like to start growing your business online, but are totally lost with all the technical jargon and acronyms. That’s why we’ve put together this digital marketing glossary, complete with all of the important, relevant and interesting terms used in Digital Marketing.
Ad Click
When a user clicks on an ad to see the full version – it registers as an ad click.
Ad Extensions
Additional pieces of information that you want to add to your ad, such as phone numbers, product prices, store locations, etc. They’re free to add and typically work on a cost-per-click basis.
Ad Impression
When a form of digital marketing (i.e. an ad) displays on a user’s screen. It’s an impression. The user doesn’t have to click it, it is merely the presence of the ad that counts towards an impression.
Attribution Model
Attribution models function based on rules. These rules assign credit towards certain touchpoints that were used to reach a conversion.
Banner Ads
An ad that is displayed by an ad server on a web page or app. Banner ads can be static or animated. Usually used for brand awareness or to get traffic to your site.
Bing Ads
These are ads displayed on either the Bing search engine or the Yahoo! search engine via Bing’s ad platform.
Bounce Rate
A bounce is a single page session on a site. This is used as a measurement of a user’s lack of integration with the site.
Breadcrumb
Breadcrumbs are graphical control elements that act as an aid to assist the users understanding of their location within the site or app. This helps the users know their digital location and shortcut back to their original location in the site or app.
Content Marketing
The creation and sharing of online content that aims to increase interest with the brand or its products/services. This content doesn’t have to be specifically involving the brand – but it will benefit the brand overall.
Conversion Rate
A conversion rate measures the percent of visitors who completed a goal (conversion) out of the total number of visitors. A high conversion rate indicates visitors are completing the goals you wish to measure.
Conversion Rate Optimisation – CRO
The process of systematically improving the percentage of visitors completing a desired goal. This involves knowing ‘who’ your users are and how they interact with your site, to increase conversions.
CPA – Cost-Per-Acquisition/Cost-Per-Action
A measurement of visitors/users that complete a desired action or goal. E.g. If a visitor/user completes a sale or makes a call to your store.
CPC – Cost-Per-Click
The price you pay for each click on your ad.
CPM – Cost-Per-Thousand-Impressions
The cost you pay per thousand impressions. This figure is calculated by multiplying the CPM rate by the number of CPM units.
Crawler
A web crawler is a program or automated script that crawls the internet typically indexing and keeping web pages up to date in search engines.
CTA – Call-To-Action
A marketing term that refers to anything that is designed to encourage an immediate response or sale from a consumer. EG: ‘Call Now!’
CTR – Click-Through-Rate
A measurement that states the rate at which visitors click your ad. This rate is calculated by dividing the number of people who clicked on your ad by the number of impressions from your ad.
Digital Marketing
The marketing of brands, products, and services using digital technologies, such as the internet, display advertising, mobile phones, and any other forms of digital medium.
Display Network
The Display Network is a part of the Google Advertising Platform. The Display Network, along with the Search Network, allow advertisers to get their ads in front of users. The Display Network allows for more media rich advertising as appose to the Search Network which is typically just text.
Duplicate Content
This is content that appears on the internet in more than one place. The ramifications for duplicate content become clear in SEO.
Google Analytics
A free analytics tool from Google to help advertisers analyse the traffic that comes through their websites.
Google My Business
A free tool that uses your chosen information about your business on the Google Search network and Google Maps. Information includes business name, location, hours, and sometimes reviews.
Google Search Console
A free service from Google that allows webmasters to monitor and maintain their sites in Google Search results.
Google Tag Manager
A Google tool that provides a solution to managing tags and snippets of JavaScript that sends information to third-parties while a user is using your website or app.
Google+
An internet-based social network from Google.
Facebook Ads Manager
Where you create, edit and organise ads for advertising on the Facebook Ad Network, includes Instagram ads as well.
Facebook Pixel
A piece of code placed on your website that helps you track conversions, optimise ads and build target audiences for future ads.
Facebook Engagement
The amount of people that are clicking, liking, sharing and commenting on your Facebook posts and ads. Generally, the higher the engagement the more people a post or ad will reach.
Facebook Ad Impression
The amount of times an ad is shown – how often your ads were ‘on screen’ for your target audience.
Hyperlink
A hyperlink, often referred to as a link, is text, a graphic or an icon on a webpage that links to another file or object.
Image Optimisation
For the web this is the process of producing the best quality image in the right format, dimension, size and resolution, while keeping to the smallest possible size. Optimisation can be done by resizing images, caching or by compressing image size. Image optimisation is important for mobile sites.
Inbound Marketing
A strategy used to attract potential users or customers to a website by educating and building trust about a product or service. Inbound Marketing utilises many forms of pull marketing such as content marketing, blogs, events, SEO, Social Media and more, to create brand awareness and attract new business.
Keyword Density
A percentage of how often particular keywords are used in webpage content. Having the recommended keyword density is an important SEO ranking factor.
Landing Page
A landing page is the entry point to a website that a user will arrive on either via organic search or online advertising.
Long Tail Keywords
Are longer and more specific keyword phrases (3-4 words) that visitors are more likely to use when they’re closer to a point of purchase or when they are using voice search.
Meta Title
A meta title or page title is the main headline/title that shows up at the top of search result pages, generally around 65 characters. The meta title can often be the deciding factor between someone clicking on a link or going somewhere else. For this reason, it is important to make the title accurate and reflect what the webpage is about.
Meta Description
A snippet of text (below the meta title) of up to 155 characters which summarises a page’s content. This is the description that shows up below the title in search results. Search engines show the meta description in search results mostly when the searched for phrase is within the description, so optimising the meta description is important for on-page SEO.
Meta Tags
Snippets of text that describe a page’s content in the page’s code. They are little content descriptors that help tell search engines what a web page is about. Meta tags help search engines understand what to do with page content, for example, to include or not include in search engine result pages.
Online Marketing
Also known as online advertising is a form of marketing that uses the internet to deliver promotional marketing messages to consumers.
PPC
Stands for ‘pay-per-click’ which is a model of internet marketing where advertisers pay a fee each time one of their ads is clicked on. Search engine advertising is one of the most popular forms of the PPC model. Essentially it is a way of buying visits to your website as opposed to earning them organically.
Quality Score
a variable used by search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing that can influence both the rank and cost per click of ads. It is an estimate of the quality of your ads, keywords and landing pages. Higher quality ads can lead to lower prices and better ad positions.
Remarketing
Remarketing is a clever way to connect with visitors to your website who did not make an initial purchase or enquiry. It allows advertisers to position targeted ads in front of a defined audience that has previously visited their website – as they browse elsewhere around the internet.
Responsive Web Design
An approach to web development where a website is planned, designed and developed to appear optimally on a range of devices i.e. Desktop, mobile and tablets.
SEM
Search Engine Marketing aka SEM is the process of gaining website traffic and visibility from search engines through both paid and unpaid efforts. Generally, SEM refers to paid search marketing where businesses pay Google to show their ads in the search results.
SEO – Search Engine Optimisation
The process of optimising the online presence of a website or blog via unpaid means to enhance search rankings and increase website traffic organically. Good SEO will help your website rank in the top three search engine (i.e. Google) result pages.
Site Speed
Site speed refers to how fast your website pages load and is an important ranking factor in SEO. Pages should ideally load in less than 3 seconds. Having a fast loading site is important as site speed is known to affect bounce rate, search ranking, page views and conversion rate.
Sitelink
A sitelink is a hyperlink to a website’s subpages that appear under certain Google listings, they help users to navigate to certain areas of a site.
Sitemap
A sitemap is a file where you can list of all the pages on your website that you would like to index in search engines. Sitemaps help Google and other search engines understand the structure of your site and allow web crawlers to more intelligently crawl your site. Sitemaps are also used by web designers during the planning and development stages of a website.
YouTube Optimisation
A strategy to enhance your video views and search rankings by implementing the right titles, keywords, call to actions, descriptions and more.
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