Important Digital marketing Terms

Digital marketing is an umbrella term for the marketing of products or services using digital technologies, mainly on the internet, but also including mobile phones, display advertising, and any other digital medium.

Pull or Push Digital marketing- It consists of pull or pushes online communication tactics. These tactics can also be referred to as inbound or outbound marketing as well. Pull digital marketing is characterized by consumers actively seeking marketing content. Push digital marketing occurs when marketers send messages without the consent of the recipients.

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. The best part about CPA is you are only charged for the results that you want.CPA is Important Digital marketing Terms

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 favorite 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 a conversion. This can be a purchase, membership signup, download, or registration for the newsletter.

Impressions- This term is used to define the number of times a company’s ad will appear to its target audience. The 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 5 pages which would create 5 impressions. 2 visitors could view 5 pages which would generate 10 impressions.

Keyword- A keyword is a 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 Red Roses” [short keyword] or “Looking to purchase roses from a flower shop” [long tail keyword]. Keyword plays the main roll in Important Digital marketing Terms

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

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

SERP – Search Engine Results Page- Search Engine Results Page is the list of results provided by a search engine after a search query is made. Essentially, if you are looking for where your website ranks for “Best Digital Marketing Agency” a SERP report will let you know that your website is ranked #4. Meaning that your website is in the Fourth position (1st page).

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.

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 of 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. This could simply be the homepage, or specific to their search terms with form.

Blogging – The act of creating a weblog – a personal online web space where users can write their thoughts and anything else they want.

Cookie – A small text file on the user’s PC that identifies the user’s browser (and hence the user) so they’re ‘recognized’ when they re-visit a site. A cookie allows usernames to be stored and websites to personalize their offering.

CTR (Click through Rate) – The percentage of those clicking on a link from those to whom the link was displayed.

FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) – A document provided by many websites (and sometimes email lists) with general information about a newsgroup or email list. Sometimes used with a press release to cover technical details of an announcement.

HTML (HyperText Markup Language) – The code, placed in special markers called tags, that’s added to a text document to make it function as a web page.

Hyperlink – Also called ‘Call-to-action’ links. Links in online marketing campaigns that take the reader to the next step in a process.

IE (Internet Explorer) – The most popular web browser in the world.

ISP (Internet Service Provider) – A company that provides dial-up or other kinds of access to the Internet to individuals and businesses. Online services have their own proprietary content but also serve as ISPs for their users.

ROI (Return on Investment) – The percentage of profit or avoided costs generated by an expenditure. ROI is hard to calculate for marketing expenditures because tracing exactly which sales are the result of which marketing expenditures is very difficult. However, try to compare ROI for Internet marketing expenditures versus other marketing expenditures in order to help you allocate resources wisely.

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) – A technology that allows people to receive constantly updated content without having to revisit a website.

Spam – Another word for unsolicited commercial email, bulk email, or junk email.

TLD (Top-Level Domain) – The three letters at the end of an Internet domain name that denotes the type of organization that owns the website. Examples are .com for a commercial organization or business or .edu for educational institutions.

URL (Uniform Resource Locator) – The technical name for a web address. The URL allows you to locate services via the Internet.

www (World Wide Web)

What is the difference between Linux and Windows hosting?

Linux and Windows are two different types of operating systems. Linux is more secure and more efficient than Windows. Linux also has more of the features web designers expect, so unless you have websites that need specific Windows applications, Linux is the preferred choice.

Windows applications which require a Windows server:
ASP.NET  MSSQL    MS Access    Visual Basic development    Remote Desktop (dedicated servers only)

ROBOTS.TXT-  A file that says to a search engine WebCrawler “do not search me!” Placing a file named robots.txt in the main directory of a website allows the webmaster to block all web crawlers from accessing the page, or specifically block certain WebCrawlers, and therefore stop appearing in results of search engines.

WEB CRAWLER – (Sometimes called a bot, robot, or spider) Search engines work by indexing all available webpages and scoring them based on a number of factors to gauge their trustworthiness or popularity. WebCrawler’s are automatic routines that travel the web using links and carry out evaluations of each individual website. Google’s PageRank WebCrawler is possibly the most famous.

NEIGHBOURHOOD/LINK NEIGHBOURHOOD – Search engines evaluate the trustworthiness of a website based on how many links point to that website. But links from trustworthy sites are better than links from untrustworthy, and potentially spammy, websites. If a website is within a system of bad websites that all link to it, it is seen to be in a bad link neighborhood. So while the website may have many links pointing to it, a search engine may still evaluate it untrustworthy based on the websites that point to it.

FILTER BUBBLE- Nowadays Google and other search engines attempt to pre-empt what you want when you are searching. Geo-Targeting is one example of this, but the search engine will also try to guess what you want, and tailor your results, by your past search history. This means that over time, as the search engine gathers a profile of what you are like, the more constricted the results may be. This can be a positive thing, as it stops results you are unlikely to want from appearing, but it also separates you from new and potentially interesting things that may be happening outside the bubble.

PAGERANK- The algorithm or WebCrawler that powers Google’s search. It is named after Larry Page, a co-founder of Google and not webpages. PageRank indexes all the accessible webpages on the web and ranks them by how many important websites link back to a particular page. The higher the rating, the further up the results page they are than similar websites

A/B TESTING- This is testing a new technique (A) of online marketing (whether it be PPC or SEO) against a control (B) to see if the new technique is more effective.

HIT- Saying a website got X many hits is saying how many people visited that website.

LINK BUILDING- The process by which you increase the number of links to your website. It may involve generating more interesting or newsworthy content, creating a blog, asking clients to link, plus many other techniques.

LINK BAIT – A webpage with great, interesting content that people will share with others. They may share it through email, or over Facebook or Twitter, or even social. The linkbait may depend on your market; it could be an interesting infographic, a funny video, etc. Depending on who links to it, creating link bait is vital for creating a high search rank.

BLACK/WHITE HAT SEO- White hat activities are any technique to increase a website’s rank that follows search engine rules. More generally, this means ethically promoting a website without resorting to spam and other such ‘black hat’ activities. Black hats are unethical. We should always use authentic and ethical ‘white hat’ techniques.

LONG TAIL- It is very difficult for a starter company to compete against the established websites. However, on the other hand, there are a vast amount of terms that are searched for relatively rarely. These terms are said to be part of the ‘long tail’, as the terms are searched for infrequently. It is far easier for a starter company to rise to the top of the results with long-tail keywords, albeit with fewer potential searchers.

GEO-TARGETING- The practice of search engines displaying results dependant on where you are.

PENGUIN- Google Penguin is the latest version of its PageRank WebCrawler which improves its spam detection. It is better at detecting CLOAKING, KEYWORD STUFFING, and DUPLICATE PAGES.

ALEXA INTERNET- A website and toolbar that tracks the number of hits (visitors) to a particular website and ranks them based on this amount.

GOOGLE TRENDS- A tool that shows search density by keyword. It can show the keyword popularity in comparison to others, as well as popularity over a given amount of time.

WEB 2.0- Several years ago the web was ‘one way’, meaning that users were only able to consume information; they did not contribute to the web themselves but now there is Web 2.0.

GOOGLE+ – Google plus is the latest competitor to the social networking market, and offers the benefit of merging all other Google services under one social networking site.

BLOG- Short for weB LOG, a blog is a website that is maintained by one user, or a group of users, where the users post updates.

TWITTER- A social media website where users can post short messages, known as tweets (up to 140 characters) for anyone who is following them to see. It is sometimes known as microblogging

DIGG – An online news website that has a unique algorithm. The site lets its readers submit articles and also allows people to vote whether or not they liked the article.

FLICKR – A social network based on picture sharing. Users can store and share photos here.

FORUM – An online discussion board. People post about whatever topic they wish to generate an online discussion.

INSTAGRAM – A photo-sharing social network with differs from others as it runs as a mobile application.

LINKEDIN – A corporate social network used to connect professionals.

404 – An error message when a page cannot be found on a website.

301 Redirect – A permanent redirect from one URL to another URL. 301 redirects are often used to mask affiliate links.

302 Redirect – A temporary redirect from one URL to another URL.

Adsense – A contextual ad serving platform ran by Google which allows webmasters to create an income stream by placing ads on their sites.

Affiliate – When you are affiliated with a company or service. Usually by selling/advertising their products/services for a commission on sales.

Affiliate Marketing – Marketing/advertising products or services that you do not own in exchange for a commission on confirmed sales or leads you have generated.

Algorithm – A set of criteria or rules used to rank websites in search results. Often referred to as the Google Search Algorithm.

Alt Text – The ALT tag or ALT text is a bit of HTML code that is added to an image. This is the text that appears when you hold your mouse over an image on a website.

Analytics – The collection and analysis of data. Most people collect data about traffic coming to their website including the number of visitors, pages visited, and so forth using Google Analytics.

Anchor Text – The clickable text of a link.

Authority – The overall authority a website has based on a range of factors such as popularity, traffic, backlinks, social media shares, and so forth. The more popular a website is, the more authority it has. An authoritative site in its niche that is well established with a great user experience and fantastic content.

Blogosphere – The blogging community

Bounce Rate – The percentage of people that leave a site without visiting any other pages.

Breadcrumbs – A navigation trail on a website that allows you to see where the current page is in the hierarchy/structure.

Broken Link – A backlink that points to a page that no longer exists and returns a 404 error.

Cache – Serves static versions of dynamic web pages to reduce server load, bandwidth and increase page speed.

Call To Action (CTA) – Words or buttons that encourage the user to take a certain action. Clicking on a link or making a purchase for example.

Captcha – A challenge/response test to reduce spam. Usually asking people to type in the characters they see in an image or solve a simple math problem.

Citation – Mention your business name or address on another webpage, with or without a backlink.

Cloak – When you show different content to search engines and humans. Usually serving up a highly optimized page to search engine bots and an entirely different page to human visitors.

Content Management System (CMS) – A user-friendly system to manage and publish a range of content online including text, images & videos. This blog is run on WordPress CMS.

Dedicated Hosting – Website hosting that is not shared with anyone else. You have a dedicated server serving only your website without sharing resources with other sites.

Deep Linking – When you create a backlink to an inner page of a website (any page that isn’t the homepage).

DoFollow – A backlink that can be followed by search engine spiders/crawlers/bots.

Domain Name – A unique name made up of letters, numbers, dashes, and periods to identify a website such as www.amazon.com

Duplicate Content – Two web pages that feature either duplicate or very similar pieces of content. This is a key cause of the Google Panda penalty.

E-commerce – Electronic commerce is the buying or selling of products/services on the internet.

Email Marketing – A form of direct marketing delivered to people’s email inboxes. Sometimes this may be an email to alert of a new blog post or new special offers etc.

Expired Domain – The used car world of domains. An expired domain was previously registered by someone else but they chose not to renew it and let it expire.

External Link – A link on a webpage that points to a webpage on a different site/domain name.

Google Dance – When a website’s rankings in Google are fluctuating rather than remaining stable. Google Dances often happen in the first few months of a website’s life or after link building. It is also Important Digital marketing Terms

Inbound Link – A backlink pointing to your website.

Keyword Density – The percentage of a keyword appears on a page in comparison to the rest of the text. If you have 100 words but 3 of those are your target keyword – you would have a 3% keyword density. Overdo is called Keyword Stuffing.

Keyword Research – Researching keywords according to their search volumes, commercial intent, and strength of competition in search engines.

Keyword Spam – When you repeat a keyword on a page multiple times through a variety of methods to manipulate the search engines.

Made For Adsense (MFA) – Websites that are specifically built to make money with the Google Adsense program.

Meta Robots – A meta tag placed in the head section of a webpage to tell search engine spiders whether to index or follow that specific page.

Meta Tags – A collection of tags that include the Meta Title, Meta Description, Meta Keywords & Meta Robots tags that each serve different purposes.

Niche – A specific topic or market that you target. You must decide your Niche because it is Important Digital marketing Terms

NoFollow – A tag that can be added to links telling search engines not to follow them or give them any weight when calculating rankings. Any paid or affiliate link should have the no-follow tag.

NoIndex – A tag used to tell search engines not to index the current page. You can also no index entire sections of websites with the robots.txt file.

Off-Page SEO – Search engine optimization techniques that are applied without making changes to your websites such as link building or increasing social signals. OFF Page is also Important Digital marketing Terms

On-Page SEO – Search engine optimization techniques that are applied by making changes to the website pages.

Organic Link – A backlink to your website that is created naturally by another webmaster.

Outbound Link – A link on a webpage that points to a webpage on a different site.

Panda – The Google Panda update & penalty was introduced in February 2011 targeting low-quality sites and duplicate content. You must know about Panda because it is Important Digital marketing Terms

PHP – A programming language also known as Hypertext Preprocessor and is usually used to serve dynamic content and interactions with databases.

Plugin – A file or bit of code that can be easily installed to add new functionality to a website or content management system. The plugin is also Important Digital marketing Terms

Popup – An advert, banner, or webpage that is automatically triggered to appear on top of the current web browser which is highly intrusive.

Reciprocal Link – When you link to a webpage and they return the favor by linking back.

Redirect – When you redirect a user from one webpage to another.

Rich Snippet – HTML tags used to mark up specific data such as a review, review rating, price, address, phone number, etc that Google is now using to display directly in search results.

Site Audit – Conducting a full review or analysis of a site to meet a variety of goals. Such as ensuring a smooth user experience by checking for broken links or an in-depth SEO audit to identify onsite SEO problems.

Sitemap – A page that links to all other pages on the site allowing spiders to easily find all of the pages on your website. Please also see XML Sitemap. It is also Important Digital marketing Terms

Traffic – How many people visit your website.

Traffic Generation – Marketing activity with the goal of increasing traffic to a website.

Virtual Private Server (VPS) – A virtual server usually running Windows or Linux that you can remote into.

Webmaster – The owner of a website.

Webmaster Tools – Usually meaning Google Webmaster Tools or Bing Webmaster Tools you can get additional information about the status of your website in the search engines. The webmaster is also Important Digital marketing Terms

XML Sitemap – A list of pages you want search engines to find created in a standard XML format.

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