Digital marketing is ever-changing. Search engine algorithm updates, new marketing tools, performance indicators, and new marketing trends always keep marketing professionals on their toes. However, this keeps baffling business owners and entrepreneurs who are new to the digital marketing realm.
That’s why Upreports Infotech – a leading digital marketing agency in India – decided to create come up with a digital marketing glossary and list all the popular (and uncommon) digital marketing terms, concepts, and definitions in alphabetical order for quick reference.
A to Z digital marketing glossary
We recommend bookmarking this online marketing glossary webpage for future reference! Let’s start.
A
Affiliated Marketing
It is a marketing and advertising concept in which a company pays or rewards third-party websites to generate traffic or leads. Affiliate marketers get paid to recommend products, talk about services, and publish sponsored content.
Alt Text – Alternative Text
Alternative text is defined as a word or phrase that is inserted as an attribution in an HTML document to represent an image or graphic element. It also helps visually impaired users make sense of the visual element.
Anchor Text
Anchor text is a visible clickable text which is created to link one web page to another. Words contained in the anchor text (should) convey the information about the webpage you are linking. Keywords are used as anchor text for linking.
B
Backlink
Also known as inbound links, these are links that are usually created to redirect traffic from one webpage to another. In essence, backlinks to a webpage indicate to the search engine that others vouch for the content in this webpage.
Black Hat SEO
It is defined as a set of practices that are against search engine guidelines but used to get a higher ranking in search results. These frowned-upon practices (like cloaking, keyword stuffing, link farming, etc.) can result in a permanent site ban from search engines and affiliated sites.
Bounce Rate
It is a performance measurement term that represents the percentage of visitors who entered the website and left rather than staying to surf different web pages. A high bounce rate is usually considered bad in SEO.
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C
Call-to-action (CTA)
Call to action is a text or graphic prompt that is used to encourage an immediate response from the audience. Calls to action can be as direct as a button that says “Buy Now,” or a softer CTA such as “Read More.”
Churn Rate
The churn rate is defined as the percentage of web users that discontinued or unsubscribe from the service over a specific period of time. A higher churn rate simply means customers are not loyal to the brand.
Click Maps
Click Map is another type of Heat Map that indicates where the user clicks the mouse cursor on a desktop device. Click maps help website owners to figure out which area of the website is getting more engagement and which area needs improvement for growth.
Click Through Rate (CTR)
Click-through rate is the ratio of the users who clicked the specific link to the number of users who viewed that specific link. This is mostly used to measure the success rate of an online advertising campaign.
Competitive Analysis
Competitive analysis is a digital marketing strategy that involves researching your competitors to gain deep-dive insights about their services, sales, and marketing action plan. It helps SEO agencies in making the right strategy for growth.
Content Marketing
It is a type of marketing that primarily focuses on creating, publishing, and distributing content for a targeted audience available online. PPTs, infographics, blogs, videos, FAQs, and pictures are different forms of content used for marketing.
Conversion Rate
Conversion rate is the ratio of the number of conversions to the total number of interactions that took place at a particular time period. Raising website conversion rates is the ultimate goal of business owners and marketers.
Cost Per Click (CPC)
Cost per click is an advertising metric that determines how much an advertiser pays for every click on its ads. It is determined according to the keyword competition. Keywords with higher competition will always have higher CPC as compared to low competitive keywords.
Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)
Conversion rate optimization is the process of increasing the percentage of users or website visitors to take the desired action like buying products and services. By optimizing your conversion rate, you can increase revenue per visitor, acquire more customers, and grow your business.
Crawler
It is a program used by the search engine to track and gather website information through URLs. These crawlers collect the entire web page’s data and then assign value to that webpage. Depending upon the value, the webpage gets its ranking on search engines.
D
Data Visualization
Data visualization is a graphical representation of the information or data to help the reader achieve quick insights. In digital marketing, infographics, and PPTs are the assets of data visualization used by marketers to represent critical information.
Direct Traffic
Also known as dark traffic, Direct traffic is referred to the amount of traffic that directly lands on a website by typing or pasting URLs. Google Analytics defines it as the traffic that has arrived on the website with no source or data. Bookmarks are also included in Direct Traffic.
Do-follow Backlink
These are the type of backlinks that helps a website in SEO by passing domain authority from the original website to the destination website. Acquiring do-follow backlinks is the most crucial SEO strategy used by digital marketers for ranking keywords.
E
E-A-T
It stands for expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness. E-A-T is a part of Google’s algorithm to determine the effectiveness and quality of search results. It helps in ensuring that the content people are consuming is not harmful. It is not a Google ranking factor but still, it goes hand-in-hand with SEO.
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Email Marketing
Email marketing is a direct form of marketing in which email is used as a medium to promote the products or services of a business. It plays a vital role in building relationships and keeping customers engaged. MailChimp is a popular email marketing platform.
Engagement Rate
The engagement rate is a metric that is used to define the average number of interactions your content receives. It is a hyper-critical metric used by marketers to make data-driven decisions on a website as well as social media.
F
Facebook Ad
Facebook ad is referred to an online advertisement that is created and published on the Facebook platform by defining a targeted audience and budget. This is a cost-effective advertising option for small and mid-sized businesses.
G
Google Ads
Google ads is an online advertising platform developed by Google to help businesses promote services, sell products, raise awareness, and increase website traffic.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a free web analytics service offered by Google to help website owners track and report website traffic. It allows webmasters to keep track of website and SEO performance.
Google My Business
Google My Business is a free web tool developed by Google to help business owners mark their entity or store on Google Maps. It also helps business owners achieve higher visibility on the Google search engine for relevant local searches.
Google Search Console
Formally known as Google Webmaster Tools, Google Search Console is a free web service hosted by Google to track website traffic, performance, and issues. It shows webmasters how their websites perform on the Google search engine.
H
Hashtag
A hashtag is a word or phrase prefaced by a # sign and is primarily used on social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram to classify or categorize the content. Hashtags have been abused by marketers in the past decade. Now, their value has been deprecated.
Hyperlink
It is a text or icon that is used to redirect a user to another webpage with related content. Hyperlink within your content helps the reader to stay for a longer period of time. Google recommends hyperlinking to relevant third-party content as well for credit.
I
Impression
The total number of times a digital ad or search result is served to a user online is known as impressions. This metric is used to measure the reach of a digital ad campaign or web page as it represents the total number of times a user has been exposed to the brand page.
Inbound Marketing
It is a digital marketing strategy focused on attracting prospective customers to your website or business assets for converting them into leads and sales. Content marketing, SEO, and SMM are part of inbound marketing.
Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing focuses on utilizing leaders to drive your brand’s message to the larger market. Rather than marketing directly to a large group of consumers (think TV ads), influencer marketing uses industry leaders, celebrities, or social media personalities to reach their followers and market to them.
Internal links
Internal links are hyperlinks that point to another page within the same website. They are important for SEO and usability, as they help users and search engines easily navigate through the website. Internal links also help in improving the website’s ranking on search engine results pages.
IP Address
IP Address is an Internet protocol address, which is the address of your computer or smart device on the Internet. Every device connected to the Internet has its own unique IP address.
K
Keyword
Keywords are the ideas and topics represented by search phrases that people search online to discover content, resources, and information. Long tail keywords are easier to target and rank on search engines.
Keyword Comparison
In digital marketing, keyword comparison is the process of comparing different keywords to determine the most effective ones for a given marketing campaign. Comparing keywords is essential for successful keyword optimization and search engine optimization (SEO) campaigns.
Keyword Difficulty
Keyword difficulty is a measure of how hard it is to rank for a given keyword in search engine results pages (SERPs). Ranking on keywords with higher difficulty often becomes hard for startups as there is already more competition on that keyword.
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Keyword Research
Keyword Research is the process to find the right keywords for a business. Without comprehensive keyword research, it is hard to create an effective SEO strategy for business growth. UberSuggest, Ahrefs, and SemRush are some of the best keyword research tools available online.
Keyword Density
Keyword density is the ratio of how often a keyword or phrase appears in relation to the total number of words on a web page. High density can lead to keyword stuffing which can damage ranking prospects on search engines.
Knowledge Graph
A knowledge graph is a database in Google that uses data to create a network of relationships between entities, such as people, places, organizations, and topics. Using this, Google serves quick snippets of information in the info box that appears beside the main search results.
Knowledge Panel
Knowledge Panel is an information box that appears on the right side of search engine search results pages when users search for a person, place, organization, or thing. It provides quick access to facts about that subject, including a brief summary, images, and links to related content.
KPI
KPIs are known as Key Performance Indicators. These are used to estimate progress in the direction of business goals. Businesses define KPIs before starting to work on new projects to measure progress and justify the investment.
L
Landing Page
Landing Pages are pages that people visit after clicking on paid search campaigns. These pages contain marketing copy and digital media like images, infographics, animation videos, and CTAs. Product and service pages also sometimes act as landing pages.
Last Touch Attribute
A marketing attribution model that gives credit to the last touchpoint a customer interacted with before making a purchase. This model assumes that the last touchpoint was the main influence on the customer’s decision to buy a service or product.
Lead
Leads are potential customers who have expressed interest in a company’s products or services. Generally, leads are created by the marketing department using promotional material and knowledge resources.
Lead Capture
Lead Capture represents converting the random site visitor or any social media follower to a customer. Lead capturing typically involves the use of paid promotions, online forms, landing pages, social media posts, email campaigns, and more.
Lead Form
The lead form is the part of a landing page where the lead fills in their details. It usually contains fields related to name, email, message box, and phone number. Lead forms are relevant to service-focused businesses.
Lead Generation
It is the process of identifying potential customers and obtaining their contact information to pitch products or services. Lead generation is a key component of a successful marketing strategy and is used to build relationships with potential customers.
Link Building
Link building is a critical process in SEO where a marketer creates linkbacks for the business from different sources on the internet. Do-follow links and no-follow links are two major types of links. Do-follow links are more relevant in terms of SEO as compared to no-follow links.
Link Profile
This process is very similar to link building but the difference is that the link profile process is done by building your business profiles on different social media platforms and linking them with your business.
Link Velocity
Link velocity is also part of link building but, link velocity mainly focuses on the quantity or speed of the link building whereas link profiles focus on quality link building.
Local SEO
Local SEO focuses on optimizing web pages, media, or resources for local searches. It is usually for the local businesses that want to market in a specific area or location.
Long Tail Keyword
Long Tail Keywords are very useful for targeting queries that are in the form of a question or contain more than 3 words. Generally, these keywords have low search volume and are easy to rank on search engines.
LTV
LTV is a lifetime value metric used to measure the total value a customer brings to a business over the course of their lifetime. It is calculated by estimating the total revenue a customer will generate minus any costs associated with maintaining the customer relationship.
M
Marketing Automation
It is the use of software and technology to automate marketing processes, such as email campaigns, social media posts, and website tracking. Marketing automation enables marketers to efficiently manage campaigns, track customer data, and optimize marketing efforts.
Marketing Funnel
A marketing funnel is a process used to attract, convert, and retain customers. It is made up of several stages, starting with awareness at the top and ending with loyalty and advocacy at the bottom.
Multichannel Marketing
It is a strategy that uses multiple channels such as email, social media, blogs, and websites to reach potential customers. Multichannel marketing allows marketers to connect with customers on multiple levels, track customer engagement, and tailor messaging to different target audiences.
N
Non-Branded Keywords
Non-branded keywords are search terms that do not include a company, product, or service name. They can be any combination of words that describe a product, service, or topic. Examples of non-branded keywords include smartphone accessories and home security systems.
O
Organic Keyword
Any keyword that brings organic traffic to your web page is known as an organic keyword. Organic keywords play a major role in building strategy for your website. These keywords are the main source of your organic traffic from search engines.
Outbound Marketing
Outbound Marketing is a form of marketing that reaches out to the consumer with the goal to sell. Marketing strategies like Google ads, social media ads, flyers, cold calling, and email marketing are part of outbound marketing.
P
Page View
A page view is a count of how many times a page is loaded to the browser. Looking at this metric helps to track the visits to a specific page.
Paid Keyword
Paid keywords are words and phrases that are used in search engine marketing campaigns. They are typically purchased through the PPC system, where advertisers bid on specific words and phrases in order to appear in search results related to those terms.
Pay Per Click
Pay per click literally means ‘whenever someone clicks on the advertisement, you need to pay’. Google came up with and popularized this advertising model with PPC ads.
Programmatic Advertising
Programmatic advertising uses artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities to show the ad to the right people at the right time. Using these advertising techniques makes it easy to show advertisements to the right people.
Q
Quality score
The process of Google rating the PPC ads, keywords, and relevance to the landing pages is known as the quality score. Having a high-quality score helps in bringing down the actual cost per click on a search engine advertising campaign.
Query
Any group of words or a phrase (usually long tail) a searcher types in the search engine to find a relevant product, service, or information on search engines is called a query. Some people also use voice search to ask queries on search engines.
R
Reach/Reachability
The term reach in digital marketing refers to the size of the audience you are reaching online. Reachability includes social media followers, email subscribers, website viewers, and customers.
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Referral Marketing
When you or your customers invite family members, friends, or other connections to trigger a sale, subscription, visit, or query is known as referral marketing. The majority of businesses offer coupons or discounts to customers for referral marketing.
Referral Traffic
The traffic that came to your website from an external ‘shoutout’ is known as referral traffic. Reaching a site by clicking on a link or media on another website is counted under referral traffic in Google Analytics.
Retargeting
This digital marketing term refers to targeting people who have already visited your site before. Retargeting helps in increasing the conversion rate by recapturing potential leads and customers for business growth.
Retention Marketing
Targeting existing customers to turn them into returning customers or loyal customers is referred to as retention marketing. Putting exemplary efforts into marketing, sales, and customer support helps in retention marketing.
ROI
Return on Investment helps measure the loss or profit generated from an ad or marketing investment. High ROI indicates that you have invested in the right marketing strategy.
Real-Time Bidding (RTB)
It is the automated auctioning process during programmatic advertising in an ad exchange. It helps in purchasing and placing ads in less than a second. RTB also involves a demand-side platform (where advertisers published the ad) and a supply-side platform (where publishers list inventory).
S
Search engine
Search engine is a software system that identifies and assigns value to relevant content on the web related to a specific search query. People use search engines like Google and Bing to discover products, information, and media.
Search intent
Every searcher on a search engine has intent behind searching. The intent of the user refers to the motivation that drives the user to search for a particular term on search engines. Modern search engines like Google are advanced enough to identify the motivation and show results accordingly.
SEM (Search Engine Marketing)
A paid advertisement that runs on search engines like Google and Bing falls under search engine marketing. Any strategy followed by businesses or individuals to maximize traffic by paying for ads is SEM. It is one of the favored marketing techniques to reach relevant audiences FAST.
SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
SEO represents the marketing techniques that help a web page, media, or resource rank on search engines like Google. It begins by identifying the terms (also known as keywords) the audience is using.
SERP(Search Engine Ranking Page)
The Google result page where we see the results of our query is known as the Search Engine Result Page or Search Engine Ranking Page. On Google, we see 10 search results on the first SERP by default but Google has started experiencing infinity SERPs now.
Sessions
Every activity of the visitor from where they come to how long they stayed at your website is included in sessions. Tracking the number of pages viewed and session duration helps in understanding the visitor’s engagement.
Social influencers
Influencers have the capability of influencing a larger or small audience on social media platforms. In short, social media influencers are extremely active on their chosen channels, have a solid reputation, and usually have a good number of followers. Social media influencers help businesses in promoting their products or services.
SSP – Supply Side Platform
It is a software system that allows publishers to offer their available inventory and put it for auction on the ad exchange. SSP plays a crucial role in programmatic advertising. Google Ad Manager is one of the top supply-side platforms.
T
Tag
These are a set of characters in HTML, the standard coding language for the web. Tags give instructions to web browsers and bots on how to show your content to the audiences. Heading tags, canonical tags, and Meta tags are some popular tags relevant to SEO.
Tracking Cookie
These are placed on a visitor’s browser to track their browsing history. They play a crucial role in advertising and marketing to target the right audience. Tracking cookie collects all information about the audience such as keywords and geographical locations.
U
URL
It stands for Uniform Resource Locator. URL is the address of a given resource on the search engines. In easy words, a URL is known as the address of a web page. Adding keywords in the URL helps audiences recognize the page easily.
UTM
Universal Transverse Mercator is attached to any URL to generate Google Analytics data for digital campaigns. UTM helps in tracking important information such as which campaign the visitors came from and what they have clicked to reach you.
V
Value proposition
Also known as USP, it refers to what your potential customers will get when they will buy your product/service. Value proposition helps in describing the advantages to the users. Make sure your value proposition is unique to your products.
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Video SEO
The process of optimizing the video content for some specific keywords to compete in Search Engine Ranking Results is known as video SEO. Add keywords in the video title and description to optimize your video for SEO to get more views and shares.
Video Marketing
Using video content for marketing refers to video marketing. Sharing your content through videos helps in distributing the content to a large audience. YouTube is the top video-sharing platform for businesses and individuals to grow in the digital world.
Viral Marketing
When a lot of people spread your brand message or talk about a campaign at a lightning pace is known as viral marketing. Creative and emotional campaigns have a higher chance of going viral.
W
Webinar
It is the combination of two words, web and seminar. To put it simply, a seminar when conducted over the web is known as a webinar. They have grown very fast in B2B marketing.
WordPress
Started in 2003 as a blog-building site, it is now one of the most popular platforms in the world for creating websites. Over 60% of business owners use WordPress to build their websites.
White label
White label represents services rendered without taking any credit publicly. Some service provider enter white label arrangement with other agencies to deliver projects when they are resource scarce. Check out our white label SEO services, white label content services, and ORM reseller services
X
XML site maps
It is a file that lists essential pages of a website to help Google find and crawl them quickly. XML sitemaps also help Google in understanding the structure of a website. These are very important because it makes easy for Google to find your site’s pages. It is uploaded to the root directory and then linked from Search Console.
Y
YMYL
YMYL stands for Your Money or Your Life. It refers to the pages that can potentially impact a persons future happiness, financial stability, health, or safety. Google clarified all the topics that fall under YMYL in the July 2022 update of the guidelines.
Yoast SEO
It is one of the most important plugins in WordPress. Yoast SEO has over 5 million active installations all across the globe. It helps in ranking websites on search engines by helping people in optimizing the content and keywords.
Z
Zero-click-queries
When a searcher finds the answer to their query without clicking through your website is known as zero-click-query. In simple words, keywords that rank you on the search result but don’t bring traffic are known as zero-click-query.
A-Z Digital Marketing Glossary
We hope that the above post helped you learn about critical digital marketing and advertising terms. Did we miss anything? Please share the missing term in the comments and we will add it to our blog.
Have queries to ask about digital marketing services? Email them at hello@upreports.com to get a quick reply from our team of digital marketing experts.
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