Back to Basics: 25 Must Know Terms for Marketers

Sometimes digital marketing can feel like another language. Whether you’re talking to your co-workers or reading a report, knowing the basic terms associated with digital marketing can help you get ahead and focus on what’s important. Here are 25 must-know terms for digital marketers.

1. Pay-Per-Click – Also known as “PPC,” this type of paid search marketing involves placing advertisements that run above or besides (and occasionally below) the free search engine listings on Google, Bing, and Yahoo!. Typically, to get the highest position among these ads, website owners place a per-click bid. It’s not uncommon to participate in a bidding war for coveted top spots. For example, if a website’s listing is among the top 3 advertisements on a page, the same ad appears in the same location on partner websites.
2. AdWords – The pay-per-click (PPC) search engine marketing (SEM) program provided by Google.

3. Click-Thru Rate (CTR) – The percentage of people who actually click on a link (e.g., in an email message or sponsored ad) after seeing it.

4. Content – Any text, image, video, audio, app or other material published on the Internet for audience consumption.

5. Conversion Rate – This is the percentage of visitors to a site or ad who actually take further action, like buying a product or filling out a survey. For example, let’s say your primary goal is to collect survey data through your website. If 25 people complete the survey from the 100 visitors to the site, you have a conversion rate of 25%.

6. Crawler – An automatic function of some search engines that index a page, and then visit subsequent pages that the initial page links to. As the cycle continues over time, search engine crawlers or bots/spiders can index a massive number of pages very quickly.

7. Crowdsourcing – In the context of social media, this is a process used by many social bookmarking sites where individuals are allowed to vote on news stories and articles to determine their value and relevancy within the site. Related to other social media concepts such as collaboration and collective intelligence, it can also be a research tool. Due to its significant popularity, this new word famously has entered standard English dictionaries in recent years.

8. Forum – An area on a website (or an entire website) dedicated to user conversation through written comments and message boards, often related to customer support or fan engagement.

9. HTML – Hypertext markup language (HTML) refers to the text-based language which is used to create websites.

10. Hyperlink – Known as “link” for short, a hyperlink is a word or phrase which is clickable and takes the visitor to another Web page. This page can be within the same site or on a completely different site. Instead of a full URL string, a word or phrase is typically displayed in the body copy for the linked page (see “anchor text”), which can bring both reader and SEO benefits.

11. Impression – An instance of an organic search-engine listing or sponsored ad being served on a particular Web page or an image being viewed in display advertising. In paid search, “cost-per-impression” is a common metric.

12. IP Address – This series of numbers and periods represents the unique numeric address for each Internet user.

13. Keywords – The terms that a user enters into a search engine. They can also signify the terms a website is targeting to rank highly as part of an SEO marketing campaign.

14. Landing Page – A stand-alone Web page that a user “lands” on, commonly after visiting a paid search-engine listing or following a link in an email newsletter. This kind of page often is designed with a very specific purpose (i.e. conversion goals) for visitors.

15. Search-Engine Optimization (SEO) – The process of using website analysis and copy/design/structural adjustments to ensure both the highest possible positioning on desired search-engine results pages and the best experience for a given site’s users.

16. Domain Authority – This is a scale from 1-100 that search engines use to determine how authoritative a company’s website is, 100 being the highest score. The stronger your domain authority, the more search engines trust your website.

17. Bounce Rate – Refers to the percentage of a given page’s visitors who exit without visiting another page on the same site. This term is often used in e-commerce in conjunction with merchandise shopping carts. Also known as “abandonment rate.”

18. Pop-Up Ad – A form of advertisement which automatically opens (or “pops up” in) a new window in a browser to display an ad. Also seen in the form of “pop-under” ads, a slightly less intrusive version. These interruptive approaches to advertising are generally disliked (and therefore ignored) by Internet users. Many browser-based and stand-alone software programs exist to block these ads.

19. Query – The term(s) entered into a search engine by the user.

20. Ranking(s) – The position of a website’s listing(s) in search-engine results pages. The higher a rank for a specific keyword, the more generally visible a page is to search-engine users.

21. Results Page – What is displayed after a query is entered on a search engine. Commonly referred as “search engine results page.”

22. META Tags – Also called META data, this information formerly affected many of the SEO marketing strategies online. It included a description, keyword sets, and other information. Generally, search engines may include the characters in their ranking criteria, but they don’t display the description as in the past and the keywords are having less influence.

23. Tag – A keyword (often in a string) which is attached to a blog post, tweet (see “hashtag”), social bookmark or media file. Tags help categorize content by subject.

24. User-Generated Content – Commonly abbreviated as “UGC,” it is any piece of content created by a member of a given website’s audience for use on that website and sometimes to be freely distributed on the Web. Wikis (and Wikipedia) are examples of UGC.

25. Webinar – A Web-based seminar containing audio and video, often in the form of a slide deck.

We get it. Sometimes you just need a refresher. Especially in a field that evolves every year. Bookmark this glossary and refer to it when you’re lost.

What other terms do you think all digital marketers should know?

By: ParadigmNext https://paradigmnext.com

Google+: https://plus.google.com/+ParadigmNextChicago

ParadigmNEXT, Inc. is a new kind of marketing agency that integrates the two sides of the brain: strategic communications and business know-how. Connecting creativity with expertise in multiple industries, we are able to deliver measurable improvements and maximum impact.