GLOSSARY OF DIGITAL MARKETING TERMS

If you are a business owner, employee or new to the world of digital marketing the amount of abbreviations, buzzwords and acronyms can be intimating. The glossary below was designed to make the language of digital more understandable.

ABBREVIATIONS

• B2B – Business-to-business refers to commerce between two business rather than a business trading with individual customers and consumers.
• B2C – Business-to-consumer is a model where businesses trade products and/or services with individual customers and consumers.
• CLV – Customer lifetime value. CLV is the total future value a customer has to a business. Often a monetary value a business would predict a customer can bring over the course of their relationship.
• CMS – Content Management System is a software application that is used to create and manage digital content. The most popular and well-known CMS would be WordPress.
• CPA – Cost Per Acquisition is a metric report which shows the cost per conversion from your Ad campaign.
• CPC – Cost Per Click is the monetary value you have paid for each click to your landing page.
• CPL – Cost Per Lead is the monetary value of each lead to your site. Often via contact form completions or phone calls.
• CPM – Cost per thousand, this report metric is based on impressions. The “m” stands for Mile which is Latin for Thousand.
• CRO – Conversion Rate Optimisation is the process of increasing the percentage of website visitors who take a preference action, most commonly a completed sale (conversion).
• CTA – Call To Action is a statement designed to get the reader/customer to take a desired action. Often ….
• CTR – Click-Through Rate is the percentage of visitors who follow a link/ad through to your landing page.
• DA – Domain Authority is a metric first coined by MOZ which acts as a ranking score for websites.
• KPI – Key Performance Indicator is a measurable value used to evaluate the success of an advertisement campaign.
• PA – Page Authority is a metric developed by Moz to specify the value of a page on a website. A 0 to 100 scale with the higher the number the more change the page has of ranking higher on search engines.
• PPC – Pay Per Click is an advertising model where advertisers pay each time of their ads is clicked. PPC most often refers to Google Adwords.
• SEM – Search Engine Marketing is a combination of the mechanisms used by digital marketing to increase visibility for a brand or business.
• SEO – Search Engine Optimisation is the practice of adapting a website to increase it’s rankings in search engines to improve organic traffic.
• UI – A user interface (UI) is a conduit between human and computer interaction – the space where a user will interact with a computer or machine to complete tasks.
• UX – User Experience is how a visitor interacts with your website/business.

DIGITAL MARKETING WORDS AND PHRASES

• 301 Redirect – A 301 redirect is a permanent redirect that sends site visitors to a different URL to what they originally typed or clicked on.
• 302 Redirect – a 302 redirect sends a visitor from one page to another web as a temporary. Move. These are often used during A/B testing and when a webpage is being updated.
• 404 Error – A 404 error is an error code where the server could not find what was requested.
• Ad Extensions – Ad Extensions are additional pieces of information you can add to your Google ads. Key selling points and other contact information such as phone number can be used as Ad Extensions.
• AdWords – Google Adwords is Google’s advertising system in which advertisers can target specific keywords to gain more traffic to their website.
• Alt Text – Alt text also known as Alt Attribute are used within HTML code to describe an image of a webpage.
• Analytics – Digital Marketers will most likely be referring to Google Analytics when using the term analytics when talking about how users interact with a website.
• Adsense – Google Adsense is a programme that allows you to run ads on your website. 
• Algorithm – Algorithms in digital marketing are complex systems that are designed to give users of search engines and media platforms the best possible content results.
• Automation – Automation is a process that is controlled via technology with minimal human assistance. Often scripts and automated tools.
• Average Position – Google uses average position in AdWords to highlight where your ads were shown across a selected time period.
• Backlink – A backlink is a hyperlink which directs people to another website. There are two types DoFollow and NoFollow. DoFollow backlinks offer good SEO link equity if from a site with good relevance and authority.
• Banner Ad – A banner ad is a form of advertising where a banner image will often display across the top of a website advertising a service or product.
• Bing – Bing is a search engine owned by Microsoft. Bing competes with Google offering a variety of search results; including web, image video and map listings.
• Black Hat – Often referred to as Black Hat in the digital marketing world. These are a set of practices designed to increase search rankings that violate the search engines’ terms and rules.
• Blog – A blog is an online content published on a section of a website or its own website. Blogs are a platform to showcase the latest news and share views on an individual subject.
• Bot – A Bot is a software application that runs automated tasks, in digital marketing bots have negative of bringing fake traffic and clicking on ads.
• Bounce Rate – Bounce rate is the percentage of users that visit a website and navigate away after only viewing one page.
• Business Manager – In digital marketing, Business Manager often refers to the business manager on Facebook. This is where you can view, manage and create; Ads, Pages and Pixels.
• Canonical – Canonical tags are a way of presenting to search engines that a specific URL represents the master copy of a webpage.
• Click-through-rate – A click-through rate is the percentage of visitors who follow a link or ad click to a landing page.
• Contact Form – A contact form is often a box on a website that allows a user to fill out their contact details and send the web pages admins a message without having to email.
• Content Marketing – Content marketing is a form of marketing which focuses on creating and publishing content for a targeted audience online.
• Conversion – A conversion is when a user fulfils the desired end action on a website. In e-commerce, this is often the sale of a product.
• Conversion Rate – A conversion rate is the percentage of users that complete the desired goal from your website.
• CPA – Referred to as Cost Per Acquisition or Cost Per Action is a metric that shows you how much it costs to get a user to perform a designed action.
• Cookie – A cookie is a small piece of data sent from a website and stored on the user’s browser.
• Cost Per Click – Cost per click is the most common advertising model to drive traffic to a website. Advertisers pay each time an ad is clicked. Often referred to as PPC (Pay-Per-Click) in reference to Google Adwords.
• Crawler – A crawler is an automated script that has predefined actions to read web pages to create entries for the search engines index.
• Conversion Rate Optimisation – Often referred to as CRO. Conversion Rate Optimisation is the process of increasing the percentage of visitors that convert into customers.
• **CSS – “**Cascading Style Sheets” is a language used to manage the design of web pages.
• Call to Action – Call To Action is a statement designed to get the reader/customer to take the desired action.
• Directory – A directory is a list of businesses providing information such as business category, location, contact and website.
• Display Ads – Display advertising is advertising on apps, social media or on websites through images.
• Display Network – Display Network is one of Google’s advertising networks where advertisers can place display ads.
• DNS – DNS stands for Domain Name System
• DoFollow – DoFollow refers to backlinks that pass link equity on to the website they link too.
• Duplicate Content – Duplicate content is the term used to describe content that appears on more than one web page.
• E-commerce – E-commerce refers to buying and selling items using the internet.
• Email Automation – An automated email is sent to a user once they perform a certain action. E.G fill out a contact form showing interest in a service.
• Email List – An email list is a list of emails that allows for widespread distribution of information via email, can also be referred to as an email customer list.
• Email Marketing – Email Marketing is sending a message to a group of people often from an email list with commercial intent.
• Featured Snippet – A featured snippet is a summary of the user’s search that displays at the top of the search results.
• Facebook Advertising – Facebook Advertising is a form of social advertising across the Facebook platform. This can be done across the newsfeed, messages, articles and many other channels.
• Google – Google is the world’s leading search engine.
• Google Analytics – Google Analytics is the web tracking service offered by Google that gives marketers reports of website traffic and behaviours.
• Google Adwords – Also known as Google Ads is Google’s online advertising platform. Often PPC will refer to Google Adwords.
• Google Chrome – A web browser developed by Google. First released in 2008.
• Google Maps – A web mapping service developed by Google.
• Google My Business – Allows business owners to create their own business listing on Google, which will appear high in the search engine results for their brand name.
• Google Partner Agency – Google Partners is a marketing program for agencies that manage Google Ad accounts on behalf of other businesses.
• Google Hummingbird – Google Hummingbird is an algorithm update that focuses more on conversational search.
• Google Panda – Google Panda is an algorithm update from February 2011 that focuses on increasing the presence of high-quality websites in their search results.
• Google Penguin – Google Penguin was a major Google update aimed towards discrediting link schemes and keyword stuffing.
• Google Pigeon – Google Pigeon was initially released in August 2013 and mainly focused on Google’s Local results.
• Google Reviews – Google Reviews is a review service developed by google. The review service allows anyone with a gmail account to leave reviews on any business or place on google listings.
• Google Search Console – Google Search Console is a free web service by Google, that allows webmasters to check indexing status’ of websites.
• Google Tag Manager – Google tag manager is a system created by Google to manage HTML and Javascript tags.
• Hashtag – A hashtag #, is a type of tag used on social media; mainly Twitter and Instagram. Allowing users to find other posts among the same topic.
• Header code – Most often referred to as HTML Header Code is often the first element on a web page.
• Heatmap – A heatmap is representation of data in the form of image of your website which indications where users visit on the site.
• HTML – Hypertext Markup Language is the standard and most common markup language for creating web pages.
• HTTPS – HyperText Transfer Protocol Secure is the most secure version of HTTP. HTTP is the protocol of data being sent between your browser and the website you are visiting.
• Hyperlink – A hyperlink is a reference to a link that points from one website to another. The text that is linked from is referred to as Anchor text.
• Impression – An impression is a metric that refers to how many time an advert was viewed by users.
• Index – Index or Indexing is the system google used to ensure your webpage shows up for the correct search times post crawling your site.
• Ip Address – A unique set of numbers separated by full stops that identities each device using the internet.
• Javascript – Is a computer programming language commonly used to create interactive effects on websites.
• Keyword – A keyword is a certain word or phrase that aim to be the desired word a marketer would want their webpage to be found on search engines.
• Keyword Stuffing – Keyword Stuffing refers to the practice of overcrowding a webpage with a keyword while attempting to manipulate a site’s ranking in the search engine results.
• Knowledge Panel – A knowledge panel appears when users type in a business’s name. It will feature information about the business such as popular times and location.
• Landing Page – Is the page a user enters a website on.
• Lead – A lead is the initial stage of consumer interest or enquiry into a product or service. Ad campaigns often run with a target of lead generation with potential customers often filling out forms to show their intent.
• Lookalike Audience – A lookalike audience is an audience type on Facebook ads. It allows you to target an audience that is similar to your best existing customers.
• Long Tail Keyword – A long tail keyword are generally phrases that are aimed towards customers who are further on the acquisition cycle. E.G “Buy Red Running Shoes” used to target a more niche audience.
• Map Pack – The map pack is the businesses that appear on the map at the top of a google search result.
• Meta description – A meta description is a snippet of up to 155 characters used to showcase what your website is about in the search engine results.
• NAP – NAP stands for Name,Address, Phone Number and is critical for businesses aiming to rank in the local organic results.
• NoFollow – NoFollow is an HTML attribute which enables an outbound link to be ignored by Google.
• Organic – Organic refers to the natural way to drive traffic to a site using unpaid methods, such as from search engine results.
• PPC – Pay Per Click often used to refer to Google Adwords. Google’s online advertising platform where advertisers pay for each time their advert is clicked.
• Penalty – Referring to a Google penalty, this is a punishment against a website which has broken Google’s violations. The website will often be punished with bad search engine rankings.
• Quality score – Quality score is google rating of the relevance and quality of the keywords and PPC ads.
• Query – A question a user will search into a search engine such as Google.
• Rankings – In SEO rankings refer to a website’s position in the search engine results, the higher the rankings often means the more organic traffic a website will have.
• RankBrain – RankBrain is a component of Google’s Hummingbird algorithm. Rankbrain uses machine learning in an attempt to improve search results judged on how users are interacting with websites.
• Reciprocal Link – A reciprocal link is a link between two sites that link back to each other, they are generally used when there is a partnership between two websites.
• Redirect – A URL redirect is a function that sends a websites user from one URL to another, commonly used if a website has moved or merged with another business.
• Referral – Referral traffic is Google’s method of showing visitors that landed on your site from sources outside of it’s search engine.
• Rel Canonical – Also known as the “canonical link” is an HTML element that allows you to prevent duplicate content.
• Re-marketing – Also referred to as retargeting is a method of targeting ads to people who have already visited on your website.
• Responsive Web Design – Responsive web design is a method of web design where the web pages automatically resize to fit and look good on all devices.
• ROI – Return on investment is a performance financial metric used to measure profitability of a marketing campaign. It is used to calculate the net profit of marketing campaigns.
• Schema – A schema markup is website code that allows for structured data to appear in the search engine results. Such as reviews.
• Search Network – Most commonly meaning the Google search network, which is a group of search related websites where your ads can appear.
• Search Engine – Search engines are places you can enter your search terms, the most popular being Google.
• Search Operator – A search operator is a string of characters used in a search engine query to create a more focused search.
• SEM – Search engine marketing is marketing designed to improve websites positions in the search engine results (SERPS)
• SEO – Search engine optimisation is the process of improving the quality of a website with the goal of improving it’s rankings and traffic.
• SERP – Search engine results pages are what the search engines display in response to a query by a searcher.
• Sessions – A session are used in Google analytics as a unit of measurement of a website visitors actions taken within a period of time.
• Sitelink – Sitelinks are hyperlinks to web pages that appear under search results. Most commonly used under Google Ads.
• Sitemap – A sitemap is a list of all the pages on a web site. Search engines such as Google read this file to intelligently crawl your website.
• Slug – The term slug is used to describe the part of the URL which identifies a particular page on a website.
• SSL – Secure Sockets Layer is the most common security technology used for creating an encrypted link between a web server and a browser.
• Tag – Tags are short pieces of code written in JavaScript designed to perform specific tasks on a website.
• Title tag – A title tag is an HTML element that specifies the title of a web page. These are displayed in the SERPs as the main headline of the result.
• Tracking Code – Often referred to as UTM codes are used to track a source, medium and campaign name. Allowing Google analytics to tell you where your visitors come from and which campaign directed them to the website.
• Unique Visitors – Unique visitors refers to the number of people who have come to your website at least once. The number does not increase if someone visits the website more than once.
• UI – User Interface is the visual elements a user can interact with on a website or app.
• UX – User experience refers to how visitors react with a website. UX testing is how you learn what users are reacting to on a web page.
• Visits – Visits are a reporting metric that defines how many times people have viewed a website.
• Visitors – Visitors is the number of people who have visited a website or page.
• White Hat – Commonly known as white hat SEO is the use of techniques that follows the search engines rules and policies.
• Wireframe – A wireframe is a visual guide that represents the framework of a website. These are used to arrange the elements of a website.
• XML – XML stands for eXtensible Markup Language.