The Ultimate Glossary Of Digital Marketing You Might Encounter

Algorithm: A system to generate results from search engines most famously recognized in the Google algorithm. Popular social networking site, Facebook, also employs algorithms to manage content and ads that appear for their users. Besides their sites, many other web pages also use specific algorithms which differ according to the site.

Alt text (Alternative text): Text used to input details of images you wish to use on your website on Google Bot. Usage of alt text will increase the visibility of users coming across your site while using Google Images. SEO also heavily depends on the alternative text.

Anchor text: Certain keywords in your content can be used to redirect the user to another website for additional information. The anchor text is usually hyperlinked with a particular URL and can be redirected to a page on a different website or within the same website (internal link). Google uses internal links to understand your content based on the selected keywords.

Audience: An intended group of people you intend to communicate with to get your message across. A prominent example is ads where you can set goals by reaching directly to your audience to increase traffic to your business.

Backlinks: Also known as inbound links or incoming links, these are links used by websites to link back to your website. Google also uses backlinks as an SEO factor to understand your content better thus providing more information for the readers.

Bot (Google Bot): Commonly referred to as “spider”, this Google tool collects data from pages to understand the particular content. In the future when users search using a search engine, your page will appear due to the spider’s effective data collection.

Bounce rate: A percentage of users that consume your content to completion without leaving midway to other pages or websites. A rate of 70% is exceptional while a 40% bounce rate is considered moderate. The rate can be monitored via Google Analytics.

CTA (Call to Action): If you have come across terms including “Shop Now” or “Find out more”, these are known as CTAs where they provide information to your users for them to click your site directly either to purchase the product or even fill up a form.

CTR (Click Thru Rate): A measurement used to determine the number of clicks an ad has received. CTR is calculated by taking the total amount measured and dividing it by the number of impressions and subsequently multiplying by 100.

Conversions: An expectation you have towards your customer or audience after they encounter your ads is known as a conversion. This can be observed via Facebook ads as well if a potential customer clicks on your ad to purchase your products. There are different types of conversion actions depending on what you expect from your customer.

CPA (Cost per Acquisition): The cost of one conversion from your paid ad. This is calculated by taking the total payout and dividing it by the number of conversions.

CPC (Cost per Click): Cost a business owner is charged per click on an ad. The cost is calculated by taking the total payout and dividing it by the number of clicks.

CPL (Cost per Lead): Cost incurred on marketing to obtain one lead. The cost is calculated by taking the total payout and dividing it by the number of leads. While seemingly similar to CPA, CPA casts a wider net to new customers while CPL focuses on qualified customers.

CPM (Cost per Thousand): Also known as the cost per mile., this cost is the amount you incur per 1000 ad impressions. To calculate, take the total payout divide it by the total ad impressions and multiply it by 1000.

Crawl or Crawling: Google Bot uses crawling to discover a site and subsequently downloads said data. The collected data will then be indexed making it easier for users to make their Google search and being shown only relevant searches based on keywords.

Demographics: The information regarding the population includes age, income group, location, gender. These demographics are used by advertisers to target specific groups to directly deliver ads.

Domain: The name of a website. For example, if your website URL is https://www.primal.com.my/, your domain name would be primal.com. This depends on your particular business as well.

Dofollow: Google Bot uses dofollow links to seek permission before following links to their destination sites. If the dofollow link between two websites is of high quality, the SEO will be positively affected.

Domain Authority: If your website provides excellent, educational content, it is considered trustworthy which increases its domain authority.

Email Marketing: A tactic employed by digital marketers to expand their business and connect with future customers. With necessary information regarding your future customers, you can further promote your business to those in your contact list and especially at a large amount at one time.

External Link: A link on websites allowing users to obtain more information from other sites.

Frequency: The number of times an ad reaches your target audience. When you advertise via Facebook ads, it will show you how many times the ad has been viewed by the same group of audience. A frequency of 3 to 5 times is considered good as any frequency higher than that will irritate your potential customers.

GA (Google Analytics): A Google Tool used to measure and analyse data about your business. Besides analysing given data, GA also advises on how to improve your campaign and how to understand your consumers better.

GTM (Google Tag Manager): A Google Tool used to manage all your tags in one place including GA, Google Search Console, Google Ads or even Facebook pixels. You may find this tool useful if you are coding-challenged.

GSC (Google Search Console): A Google Tool used to analyse your website itself. It reveals to you how users came across your site and advise which sections can be improved for a better user experience, which is essential for the SEO process.

HTML (Hypertext Markup Language): A core language for computer codes concerning period web page creation to write a web page running on a web browser. HTML tags make up a web page to display images and text.

HTTP (Hypertext Transport Protocol): Data transfer and communication between web browsers and servers use HTTP as a protocol. Websites nowadays should use HTTP for the security of their users when the website involves money translation or request for personal information.

Impressions: The frequency of your ads being shown to users regardless of whether it was clicked or not. In the case of an ad being shown to the same viewer multiple times, it is regarded as a new impression.

Internal Link: Embedded link which links to the same website through different pages for information regarding a particular on the same site.

Index or Google Index: Google Bot enters your website, analyzes your content and collects data for its database using Index. If a user searches for keywords similar to your content, your website will appear on the search engine results page.

JavaScript: Programming language used alongside HTML to make your web page more interesting by providing the option of styles and effects.

Keyword Research: Process of analyzing phrases, words, terms or keywords that can be used on your website for users to search on search engines while finding out about your business. This inadvertently helps you create more relevant content directly for your users.

Keyword Stuffing: While the usage of keywords is highly encouraged, the excessive usage of keywords or “keyword stuffing” is frowned upon as it affects SEO. This might give the impression that you’re simply trying to get more readers instead of producing educational content.

Landing Page: A specific page you want your visitors redirected to when they click on a particular URL. This depends on how quickly you want your readers redirected thus you can set the landing URL how early you want in your page.

Lead: A potential customer or a person who has expressed interest in your business. Several persuasive approaches to make them a confirmed customer.

Lookalike Audience: A focus, simulated group to mimic your desired demographic. Through Facebook Ads, you can search for people similar to your target audience. The similarity ranges from 1% to 10% where the closer the percentage is to 1%, the higher the lookalike factor is.

Meta Description: A short description of no more than 150 words is used to explain the content on your site. The meta description appears on the Google results page after the title thus it shouldn’t be any longer than 2 lines. SEO keywords usage is highly encouraged to be used here as well.

Meta Title: Also known as Meta Tag is a title to inform readers about the content they’re about to read. The meta title is closely associated with the HTML and is typically 50 to 60 words long.

No Follow: A situation when Google Bot does not attribute a value to destination links. Fortunately, a website with Nofollow links can still be considered a good website compared to previously when a Nofollow link could affect your ranking.

Organic Traffic: Visitors to a website that was not motivated by paid ads. Organic searches are when a user finds your website for more information and this directly affects your ranking when doing SEO.

Outbound Link: A link that directs a user from one website to a different website. Typically, the links are related to one another i.e. linking related products or purchase pages.

Page Speed: The speed of a website when downloading to display the text and graphic content whether on browsers or mobile devices. Three factors to consider when taking into account page speed is Request for files, Loading Time and Page Size. Page speed can affect your website ranking while doing SEO.

PPC or Pay-Per-Click Advertising: Advertisement which typically appears above organic search results labelled ‘Ad’.

Pixel: Also known as Facebook pixel is a Facebook tool that installs a code on your website that analyzes, interprets and evaluates a user who made action on your page. The Pixel value will be used to improve advertisements which are used target groups in a more focused way.

Quality Score: A Google-based score to determine when your ad is displayed. The quality score shows the standard of your ad and the relationship between your produced ad and the users’ keyword search. The scale of this score is between 1 to 10 where the closer you are to 10, the higher your ad quality is.

Retargeting: Also known as remarketing is when you reconnect with a customer you have interacted or transacted with. Retargeting is to spark the customer’s interest in your business once again and eventually convince them to make a purchase.

ROAS (Return on Ad Spend): The evaluation of ad results you’ve produced. The value is calculated by taking the value received from the ad and dividing it by the ad budget.

Robots.txt (Robots Exclusion Protocol): A file informing search engines on whether or not to collect data from your website. These bots will usually collect necessary data but with the inclusion of Robots.txt, we can make sure data on some pages are not collected (disallow). You can even check if a website has Robots.txt with the addition of ‘/robots.txt at the end of your URL.

ROI (Return on Investment): To calculate the ROI, take the income and minus it with the investment fund and divide the amount with the investment fund.

SIS (Search Impression Share): The percentage of advertisements appearing on Google Search compared with other ads on the same search page. The SIS value shows the amount of time your Google ads have been observed by the users.

SEM (Search Engine Marketing): Marketing on Google or other search engines. SEM can be divided into SEM that you have to pay for (Google Ads) or free ones (SEO).

SEO (Search Engine Optimization): A process is done to rank first on Google’s search page. This is done by improving your content for a better user experience. Despite being time-consuming, if done properly, you can find yourself as a top-ranking search in a short period of time while not spending any money.

SERP (Search Engine Results Page): The page that appears when you make a search on search engines. In the SERP, about 100 websites will have the keywords you have mentioned to Google.

Sessions: Users visiting and iterating in your website within a timeframe.

Sitemap: The layout of a website that helps visitors find out what your website is all about.

Spider: Also known as Google Spider. A Google tool that analyzes and collects data from your website (crawling). Post crawling, indexes are created which is shown via the website ranking.

Trigger: A control panel for tags on Google Tag Manager and will act according to based on user behaviour. The data collected from Triggers can also be used during the remarketing process.

URL (Uniform Resource Locator): The location of your intended files also known as the link of a website which can only be attributed to one page. If your URL changes, your access to the page will also be altered. Besides being pages, URLs can be presented for images, voice files, videos or online documents.

UTM Tracking: Parameter attached to the end of an URL when it’s shared on social media to present the source of the traffic to a website. This source is tracked from the respective websites through Google Analytics.

Value Proposition: The compensation delivered to your clients through your services or products. In order to stand out from your competitors, your value proposition should be presented as an advantage to potential customers.

Web browser: A programme users employ to access your web page using HTML which has been converted to appear less complicated. A user would have to put in the domain name or the name of your website. Examples of web browsers include Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox.

Web page: Window that produces texts, images, files and any sort of data in the format of HTML. This data is accessible to everyone.

WordPress: A content management system (CMS) to manage every aspect of a website. If you’re interested in doing SEO, you would find that the programme itself is suitable for SEO.

XML Sitemap: A website layout for Google Bots to understand your structure and the content. If the XML Sitemap is planned properly and the website is user friendly, this will be good for SEO management.

Yoast: Also known as Yoast SEO is an installable plug-in to manage content and other technical elements which can be installed alongside WordPress.