DIGITAL MARKETING GLOSSARY

For Today Digital Marketer

 

In our future published material, we at Digital Marketer Steps will be covering a number of topics and processes related to Digital Marketing. We will be publishing digital marketing related articles and ‘digital marketing step-by-step guides’.

We thought it would be useful to develop a ‘digital marketing glossary’ of terms for those words and acronyms which will often be used in our guides when talking about SEO, Social Marketing, WordPress Sites, Technical Solutions, Online Advertising, Marketing Tools and Software, etc. Then refer to this glossary from within the guides instead of having to describe technical terms multiple times over a number of guides.

Feel free to come back to this glossary anytime during your online marketing learning sessions and activities. We hope you will find this useful and if there are terms you think should be added, please comment below and we will do our best to add your suggestions within our Digital Marketing Glossary on this page.

#

301 Redirect – Use when you want to forward a URL (Web Page) to a different URL (Web Page). 301 is for permanent redirects and efficient for SEO. It works to redirect both users and search engines to ‘that different URL’ you want them to see.

302 Redirect – We suggest not to use the 302 Redirect which was intended as a temporary redirect but search engines deal with this in ways you cannot always predict.

404 Error – Standard error message shown when you access a page that does not exist. The pay may have been moved but the link you used to get to that page was not updated with the new correct URL. Having 404 Errors within your site will lead Search Engine to assume your site is not well maintained which can translate into a loss of search engine ranking.

A

Abandonment Rate – See “Bounce Rate”.

Above The Fold – ​Term borrowed from the newspapers’ world. Newspapers are displayed folded therefore only the content in the top half of the front page is visible. This ‘visible’ content has to grab the attention and stimulate purchase of the newspaper. In the case of a web page, this term refers to the content visible in the web browser without scrolling down. This content has to grab the viewer attention and give the viewer reason to scroll down and keep reading (or click on links)

Ad Network – A managed aggregation of digital advertising space (for example app and websites offering advertising space).

AdSense – Is a ‘cost per click’ (CPC) or ‘pay per click’ (PPC) online advertisement service provided by Google. It allows you (the publisher) to place adverts (targeted based on the content on your site) on your page and earn revenue when your visitors click on those ads.

AdWords – Advertising program owned and run by Google. With AdWords you can place adverts on Google search result pages, Google ad network, YouTube. AdWords is based on Pay Per Click advertising (PPC)

ALT Text – Text description attribute used mainly for images. The original purpose of ALT Text is to provide descriptive text to help vision-impaired visitors (text to speech engine would read the image description). Keywords used in ALT Text can help with search engine rankings.

Anchor Text – The clickable text (visible to the reader) or ‘visible text’ of an HTML Hyperlink. Anchor Text is relevant for SEO. Anchor Text is considered to be an indication (for search engines) of the content of the destination site and can help improve the rank of the destination site for the keywords used in the Anchor Text.

B

Backlink – Also called ‘Inbound Link’ is the HTML link, present on another website, pointing to your website. Backlink can have SEO value. Websites linking to your site is proof of trust for your site and this can build Authority Value with Search Engines.

Below The Fold – ​(Also see Above The Fold for more info about ‘The Fold’) – Area of a web page only visible if the viewer scrolls down.

Bounce Rate – Expressed in ‘percentage’ and based on the number of visitors to your website who exit/leave/bounce away quickly without interaction. Visitors leaving your site without clicking or using any other page on your site. This is the same as Abandonment Rate.

C

Click Through Rate (CTR) – Expressed in percentage, it refers to the number of times people clicked on your Link or Advert after the link or advert has been displayed. For example, your advert is displayed 1000 times (1000 impressions) and it registered 50 clicks, therefore, your CTR would be 5%.

D

DNS – Domain Name System. Is a domain name service that allows the use of alphanumeric strings of text (your site URL) in place of numerical IP Addresses.

E

Email List – Email lists are sets of email addresses collected and divided by topic, interest and other segmentation parameters. For example, you could build an email list of customers who purchased your Product-A and you could send them marketing emails offering them a discounted upgrade to Product-B. Another Email List would contain emails of people who inquired about your Product A but they have not made a purchase yet.

F

Featured Snippet – An attempt from Google Search (or Bing) to present a summarized answer to the user search query. This appears at the top of the search results page in a featured snippet block. Google extracts the information from a web page and also includes a link to the source page, page title and URL.

G

Google Analytics – A Website and mobile App performance analytical platform by Google. There is Free and an Enterprise version. Google Analytics tracks and presents you with reports of your website traffic.

H

Hashtag (#) – When you place the hashtag symbol ‘#’ in front of a word or chained words, e.g. #digitalmarketing (this is now a TAG), and add this Tag to a piece of content (post, tweet, etc.) you are marking that content as relevant and searchable by other users and grouped together with all other content, tweets, Instagram posts tagged with the same Tag.

Header Tags – HTML tags used to create headings for sections of content on your page. There are six header tags (H1, H2, H3, H4, H5 and H6). Using the main keyword in your H1 and H2 headings can help with Search Engine Ranking

I

Impression – When an advert or a search engine listing is shown to the user it creates an impression. If your advert is shown 300 times it will be defined as 300 impressions.

Inbound Link – Also called ‘Backlink’ is the HTML link, present on another website, pointing to your website. Inbound Links can have SEO value. Websites linking to your site is proof of trust for your site and this can build Authority Value with Search Engines.

J

JavaScript (JS) – A scripting language used to add functionality to web pages, functionality otherwise not possible using only HTML.

K

Keyword and Keyword Phrases – Terms used as queries in search engines. Terms targeted by the Website Publishers or Ad Creators in the attempt to have the website shown as a result (listing) in Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) for those specific searches/queries or to have the Ad shown on content relevant to those keywords.

Keyword Density – Quantity, expressed in percentage, of keywords present in your page in relation to the total number of words present on that same page. For example, if your page content is 800 words long and your keyword is included 8 times you would have a Keyword Density of 8%.

L

Landing Page – The web page a user ‘lands’ on usually after clicking on an advert or clicking a link in an email. Landing pages are designed with a specific goal, for example, gather opt-in emails, direct users to another page, make a sale.

M

Meta Tags – Text used (within the section of the page’s HTML) to provide search engines with information about the content on the page. It normally includes publishing date, page title, author, etc. Meta Description and Meta Keywords are Meta Tags.

Meta Description- A brief description of the page which can appear in search engine listings (but search engines may use text from other areas of your page).

Meta Keywords – A brief list of keywords depicting the focus of your content.

N

NoFollow – A link attribute the webmaster can use to tell search engines not to assign Page Rank or Anchor Text value to those links. It can be used per page (all links on a page) or for individual links.

NoIndex – The meta tag you can use to prevent a specific page from being Indexed by search engines.

O

Organic Listings (Natural Listings) – Search engine results listings purely based on the search engine ranking algorithm (no paid listings).

Organic Traffic – Visitors reaching your page from search engine natural (organic) listings as opposed to reaching your page from paid listings/adverts.

P

PPC or Pay-Per-Click – A form of online paid advertising where the advertiser pays per each click received on the displayed advert. Popular PPC platforms are those related to placing paid adverts on Search Engine Results Pages where advertisers ‘bid’ to have their ads shown when a web user searches for specific keywords/queries.

Q

Query – words used by web users in search engines’ search field

R

Rankings – Term commonly used to indicate the position of your website on a search engine results page. Ranking is specific to keywords and is variable.

Redirect – See ‘301 Redirect in the # section’

Retargeting or Remarketing – A form of online advertising that shows your ads to users who have previously visited your site. During the visit to your site, a ‘cookie’ is stored in the user’s web browser. This cookie allows your advert to be shown when the user visits other websites which contain advertising space accessible by your advertising platform.

S

SEM – Search Engine Marketing. General term indicating marketing making use of search engines or paid marketing on search engines (e.g. PPC)

SEO – Search Engine Optimization. It includes everything you can do with the intent of improving your site organic position/rank for specific keywords on search engine organic listings. E.g. relevant content, site loading speed, etc.

SERP – Search Engine Results Page. The search engine page showing results after a user query is entered.

T

Title Tag – HTML element specifying the title of your web page. This ‘Title’ is displayed on the Tab of the web browser when visiting your site and also on search engine results pages where this ‘Title’ can be clicked.

U

URL – Uniform Resource Locator. Commonly called Web Address is the reference to an online resources and specifies its location.

V

Visitors – Analytics metric data indicating the number of users visiting your website within a specified Start and End time. Visitors data can be further divided into ‘new visitors’ which are first time users of your site and ‘returning visitors’ which have visited your website before (within that same specified Start and End Time)

W

Webinar – A seminar attendees access online (on the Web). During the webinar, attendees can ask questions through a chat room.

White Hat – White Hat Marketing includes all ethical digital marketing strategies and processes that are considered to be not unethical, not spam.

X

XML Sitemap – XML file created to be used by Search Engines. It contains a list of all your site pages and files (for that particular domain) so that search engine crawlers can easily find all your content.

Y

YouTube Advertising – YouTube advertising program offering a number of ad formats allowing the advertiser to place ads within a video or on the YouTube page showing specific videos. It can be accessed through Google Adwords.

For more resources visit:

Digital Marketing Resources

For additional tools:

Digital Marketing Reviews

Pin It on Pinterest

Share This