When you’re looking into digital marketing for the first time the number of new terms and abbreviations can be daunting. We’ve compiled a list of the top keywords that you’ll need to know when discussing digital marketing.
1. Backlink
A backlink is any incoming hyperlink to your website from any other website.
2. Bounce rate
This is presented as a percentage and means the proportion of site visitors who arrived and then left without leaving the original page they landed on.
3. CPC
Used predominantly with paid marketing this stands for ‘cost per click’ and tells you how much it has cost you on average to generate one click on your ad.
4. CPI
(other than consumer price index) Similar to CPC with is used to describe a cost per impression, how much it has cost you to have one person view your ad.
5. CPM
The problem with impressions is that you could have well over a million impressions in one campaign and then measuring per impression becomes pointless. This is where CPM comes in handy, standing for ‘cost per mille’ CPM means the cost per one thousand impressions on your ad.
6. CRO
Conversion rate optimisation is the process of increasing the rate of conversion on your site. This could be product purchases, lead submissions or even time spent on a page.
7. CTA
Short for ‘call to action’ CTA is the most important part of any ad or piece of content as it tells your customer what you want them to do. Whether it’s ‘buy now’, ‘subscribe here’ or ‘register today’.
8. CTR
Click through rate is a vital part of ad reporting. It gives you a real insight into how engaging or effective your marketing content is. For example if you know 1000 people saw your ad and 500 people clicked it then you have a CTR of 50%.
9. Domain authority
Domain authority is a sign of a website’s relevance for a specific subject, area or industry. This ranking has a direct impact on the organic search rankings on search engines such as Google and Bing.
10. GDN
Google Display Network (GDN) is an extremely useful and widely used tool for running banner campaigns. You can use GDN to display your own banner ads across Google’s huge network of participating websites.
11. Impressions
An ad impression is recorded anytime an ad is loaded of a user’s screen.
12. Keyword stuffing
Keyword stuffing is a blackhat SEO technique in which keywords and loaded into a websites content. This is now highly monitored by search engines and the use of this technique will lead to an organic ranking penalty.
13. Landing page
This is simply any page on a website that receives traffic from an outbound source.
14. Link building
This is an SEO technique of acquiring hyperlinks from other websites to your own. This falls under the SEO category of off-page optimisation.
15. Meta title/description
Meta titles and descriptions are bits of HTML code in the header of a website. A page's title tag and meta description are usually shown whenever that page appears in search engine results.
16. On-page optimisation
This refers to any form of SEO optimisation that takes place on your own website. These include; meta title and descriptions, image alt tags, H tags and more.
17. Off-page SEO/optimisation
This refers to any form of SEO optimisation that takes place not on your own site. These include; link building, social media marketing, guest blogging and more.
18. Page rank
Page rank is a value assigned to a web page as a measure of its popularity or importance, it is a direct factor in the order of organic search engine results.
19. ROI
Standing for ‘return on investment’’ ROI is a way of measuring the effectiveness of your advertising efforts. For example if you spend £100 on facebook advertising and earn £400 from the traffic this sent to your site then your ROI would be 4.
20. SEM
Search engine marketing, similar to SEO but predominantly for paid search traffic. So the ads you see at the top of google search results all fall under SEM.
21. SEO
Search engine optimisation, the practice of improving both the quantity and the quality of organic search traffic to your website.
22. SERP
Standing for ‘search engine results page’ are pages shown to users when they search for something online using a search engine, such as Google or even the search bar on your own website.
23. Re-marketing
Re-marketing is the process of specifically targeting people who have already interacted with your brand in some way.
