2016 DIGITAL MARKETING TERMS

Well, a lot of novices must be keen to know and be updated with the latest digital marketing terms. In this blog, get acquainted with a few digital marketing terms:

Alt Text – This is a reference to text that is assigned to a particular image on your website. This is done on the backend. You would want images on your website to have alt text for a few reasons. One, it gives search engines an idea of what the image is about (they are getting better at recognizing images, but they are not all the way there yet). Two, some people turn images off within their browsers to make their Internet experience go faster. By having alt text on an image, these visitors will see the text you choose to describe the image. It could be as basic as a friendly face, or as important as a promotion that you use an image to explain. And three, for the visually impaired who have the content of your website read to them, the reading program will read the image alt text to help describe what the web page is all about.

Backlink – The term backlink refers to links on other websites that point back to yours. They can come from directories, industry websites, local business websites, chambers or any other site out there. Search engines recognize links from high quality, related websites as a factor in determining how well your website should rank on SERPs.

Blog – You could go to Wikipedia and read there extremely long explanation of what a blog is, or read a few, like ours, and see for yourself. Basically businesses use blogs to communicate with their customers on the Internet on a regular basis. Information on the company, a product, the brand and the industry can all be shared, with text, videos, images or links to other web pages.

Content Management System, or CMS – When we speak of a CMS, we are referring to a web CMS. These are applications that allow website managers to create and manage the content, and sometimes the design, or their website. Many are easier for non techies to use, allowing them to create and upload content by themselves.

Cookie – Tiny pieces of data sent from a website to a visitor’s browser. This enables the website to remember that the visitor has been to the site before, along with other bits of information, depending on the cookie. It can remember a user name for a site, keep products in an online shopping cart or even remembering user preferences.

CTR – Click-Through Rate – Click-through Rate identifies the percentage of people who click on link. Usually placed in an email, an ad, website page… etc. The higher the CTR percentage, the more people went through. CTR is extremely important for many parts of the Digital world.

CPA – Cost per Acquisition – Cost per Acquisition is a pricing model where companies are charged by advertising platforms only when leads, sales or conversions are generated. It’s been around for a while but has been generating much more traffic as a common pricing model in late 2013 and early 2013. Best part about CPA is you are only charged for the results that you want.

CPC – Cost per Click – Cost per Click is a pricing model where companies are charged by publishers for every click people make on a displayed/test ad which leads people to your company’s website (hopefully to a landing page!).

CPM – Cost per Thousand – Cost per Thousand is a pricing model where advertising impressions are purchased and companies are charged according to the number of times their ad appears per 1,000 impressions. It’s definitely a favourite form of selling ads by publishers because they get paid regardless by just displaying ads. CPM model really only makes sense if you are trying to increase brand awareness.

Conversion – When a visitor takes the desired action while visiting your site, it is called conversion. This can be a purchase, membership signup, download or registration for newsletter. So, Conversion rate optimization is a most useful term in online marketing.

Impressions – This term is used to define the number of times a company’s ad will appear to its target audience. Impression could also be related to a website and the number of times the web page appear in total. Example of how impressions work: 1 visitor could view 8 pages which would create 8 impressions. 3 visitors could view 8 pages which would generate 24 impressions.

Keyword – A keyword is word or phrase that your audience uses to search for relevant topics on search engines. If you are a flower shop, a relevant keyword could be “Buy Home Appliances” [short keyword] or “Looking to purchase home appliances from a kitchen accessories shop” [long tail keyword]

Organic Traffic – This is traffic that is generated to your website which is generated by a Search Engine. This could be traffic from Google, Yahoo or Bing. It’s also known as “Free” traffic. Organic traffic is the best type of traffic!

Paid Traffic – Paid search is when a company bids on keywords and makes advertisements around those keywords to be displayed on search engines. These results appear separately, either on the top, bottom or right side of a search results page. Paid traffic also encompasses any form of paid advertisement that directly points to your website.

SEO – Search Engine Optimization – This is a way a company optimizes its webpage allowing the website to rank higher on a search engine’s results page (SERP). The higher you’re ranking, typically more traffic is generated (if the keyword has traffic) and more targeted traffic.

SEM – Search Engine Marketing – SEM is a way companies can get higher placement on search engines by bidding on search terms.

Domain Authority – This is a scale from 1-100 that search engines use to determine how authoritative a company’s website is, 1 being the lowest rank and 100 being the highest. The higher your domain authority the more Search Engines trust you.

Keyword Stuffing – This is the practice of using too many keywords in content in hopes of making it more visible on search engines. You will be penalized by search engines if you resort to it. Never keyword stuff, just provide great and valuable content.

META Description – The META description is the few lines of text that appear on the search engine results page.

RSS – Really Simple Syndication – Really Simple Syndication is a technology that allows users to become subscribers of content and ultimately get automatic alerts if updates are made. They would need an RSS Reader which is where they receive all the updates. Here are a few popular RSS Readers: Feeder and Feedly.  It is a feed format (which most people see with blogs) used with websites that have frequently updated content. The standardized format allows the publisher to develop the content once, and then it is able to be viewed in many different programs.

Viral Marketing – This is a way of marketing where the audience is encouraged by companies to pass on their content to others for more exposure. Usually a successful viral marketing campaign has an easy share functionality. If you had to pay a lot to generate awareness, it wouldn’t be considered “Viral Marketing” (it would be considered paid traffic).

Subscriber – A subscriber is a person who allows a company to send him/her messages through email or other personal communication means. These subscribers are high value to publishers and businesses alike. Subscribers keep coming back!

Social Networking – Social networking is the practice of using web-based platforms (or mobile) to build online communities where people share common interests or activities. The most common social networks are: Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, Pinterest… just to name a few.

Landing Page – This is the page on a company’s website that is optimized to act as the entry page to a site. When redirected from external links, this is where the visitors will be led back.

Keyword Rankings – Keywords or keyword phrases are terms used to describe the words that a person may type into a search engine to find something. For any particular business, there are keywords that their target audience would type in when looking for their product or service. When someone types in these phrases, a business would want to show up near the top of a SERP because that is where the most clicks through to websites happen. Where a particular website ranks for a keyword is called the Keyword Ranking (i.e., If I am a shoe website, and someone types in ‘Air Jordans’, I would want my website to come up in the first placement, with a keyword ranking of #1. But maybe I am a new site, and I am on the bottom of page 2. In that case, my keyword ranking may be #20.).

Long Tail Keywords, or just long tail – When people reference “long tail keywords” they are typically referring to phrases that have at least 3 words in them. They tend to be narrowly focused, and more in line with what the searcher is truly looking for. Many times they may not be as popular as the most commonly typed in phrases, but are typically easier to gain good keyword rankings for.

Mobile website – Most websites are initially built for a big screen, either a desktop or a laptop. However, as more and more people are browsing the Internet with their SmartPhones, websites that look good on a monitor aren’t always looking their best on a smaller phone. When this happens, web developers build a Mobile Website, which is a version of a website that looks good and performs well on a SmartPhone.

Online Reputation Management – In a narrow sense it refers to the practice of trying to get any negative comments/pages/mentions about a person or business to appear lower on Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). In a broad sense it means taking inventory of what people are saying about you online, and doing what you can to have the most positive view of you or your business represented. This includes responding to negative reviews or ratings that may be out there.

Pay Per Click Ads (PPC, CPC) – These are online advertisements that businesses purchase, that appear in some of the most desirable locations on the SERP page. Buyers pay only when a visitor clicks on the ad. The ad could run forever, and have hundreds of thousands of impressions, but if nobody clicks on the ad, the business would not be charged. We see PPC ads on search engine pages and on websites of all types.

Retweet – when someone who reads a tweet decides to post the same tweet to their followers, this is ‘retweeting’ it. It allows information to be quickly dispersed.

Search Engine – A search engine is a website (or section of a website) that allows a user (you) to type in a query or search phrase, and then returns results throughout their website or the Internet that match your query. The best search engines will be able to decipher your intent and bring back quality results so you don’t have to refine your search.

Search Engine Results Pages, or SERP’s – When you do a search on a search engine, the page that shows the list of results is, ironically enough, called a Search Engine Results Page. So Google would be the search engine, but after I do a search on ‘pay per click consultants’ the page I land on (example SERP) is a SERP.

Smart Phone – For our purposes, when we speak of a Smartphone, we are talking about a cell phone that has the capability to easily connect to and browse the Internet. Popular ones would be the iPhone and Android.

Tweet – A tweet is a post on twitter, no more than 140 characters in length. The tweet is published to the users account, and also fed to all of their followers.

Twitter Hashtag (#) – In short, they are a useful way for people to categorize different tweets.

Virality – Refers to the potential of a piece of content to be shared in a short time period. It could be a web page, news article, Facebook posts, YouTube video, news article or any piece of content. Something that is shared a lot of times in a short amount of time is said to have high virality. Many and probably a hundreds more Website or Internet Marketing terms could have been listed.