All the jargon you need to know in order to:

• Hire a digital marketing agency
• Try it yourself
• Hire an in-house digital marketer

Stop feeling like an outsider or feeling unsure about what you hear by reading this glossary.

Note: This glossary is not a complete one, it just contains the words or phrases that based on our experience, small businesses need to know, yet often have confusion about.

AdWords

AdWords is the previous brand name for Google Ads, Google’s famous online advertising platform. This term was used so broadly and for such a long time that even after Google rebranded from AdWords to Google Ads in 2018, many people continued to recognize it by the same name.

I’d like to run an AdWords campaign for my business.

Ad relevance

Ad relevance refers to how relevant an ad and its destination are to what the user needs. If an ad is not relevant enough, then it won’t be shown to the user.

You currently can’t see your ads because their ad relevance is low for your desired search terms.

Ad Quality score

Ad quality score refers to the quality of your ad and the likeliness of it being shown.

Because my ad quality score is too low, I pay a very expensive CPC.

Alt text

Alt text or alternative text describes an image if the viewer is not able to see it for any reason. Using Alt texts is a good practice for SEO.

Use Alt text for all your images, except the ones which are purely decorative.

Alexa rank

Alexa is a famous company that analyzes websites, their traffic, and their popularity. Alexa rank will show the website’s popularity globally or nationally.

This website has a fairly low Alexa rank, maybe it’s not suitable to run ads on it.

App

An app or an application is software that can run on mobiles, tablets, or computers. Every app is designed for specific functions or features. 

You can build an app for your online shop to make shopping easier.

Backlink

Backlinks are links from various websites and sources on the Internet to another website or source. In digital marketing, quality and valid backlinks have a positive effect on SEO.

We need some high-quality backlinks to our website.

Banner ads

Banner ads are digital banners that are shown on the internet on various websites or apps. They’re just like billboards but digital ones.

I saw a banner ad for black Friday on the Khaleej Times website.

Blog

A section on websites that regularly publishes posts, articles, or news about a certain topic.

I’d like to run a blog and post articles about physical fitness exercises at home.

Bounce rate

Bounce rate refers to the percentage of users who have entered your website and then have exited or “bounced back” without any further action or page view. 

The bounce rate on this page is very high. Maybe users don’t find it interesting.

Browser

Browsers are application programs that let you browse and search on the Internet for various information such as Google Chrome or Firefox.

I prefer chrome browser to Firefox. I work easier with it.

Campaign

A campaign refers to a set of actions, operations, and efforts for reaching a marketing goal.

Let’s launch a campaign for Christmas sales.

Content 

Any piece of information in the form of text, video, or image is a type of content.

Their company mostly creates video content.

Content marketing

The process of creating relevant, unique, and constant content in order to answer users’ questions and needs and finally market a business to them is known as content marketing.

Red Bull was able to increase its sales through content marketing.

Cookie

Cookies are small pieces of data inside text files used to identify your computer on the internet.

Some websites leave cookies on your system to track you later for showing you ads.

Conversion rate

Conversion rate refers to the percentage of visitors who have done something a business wants (for instance subscribed to a mailing list) or turned into customers.

Out of 10 meetings, 2 companies purchased from us, that’s a 20% conversion rate.

CTA

CTA stands for call to action and refers to directing users to take specific actions in marketing efforts.

This banner says “call us now”. This is a clear CTA or call to action.

CTR

CTR stands for click-through rate and refers to the percentage of people who see your ad or your website somewhere and click on it as opposed to the ones that don’t.

100 people saw our ad yet only 5 people clicked on it. That’s a 5% CTR.

CMS

CMS stands for content management system and refers to the system behind websites that lets you enter, update and manage your business content.

Our website’s CMS is very easy to work with.

CRO

CRO stands for conversion rate optimization and refers to actions and efforts done to increase the conversion rate without necessarily spending more money in marketing or sales.

Out of 10 meetings, only 2 agreed to buy, which is a 2% conversion rate. If we can increase it to 3 out of 10, that’s conversion rate optimization or CRO.

CRM

CRM stands for customer relationship management and refers to the process and software businesses use to manage their customers’ data and relationships.

The number of clients is increasing. We should buy CRM software for organizing their data.

CPC

CPC stands for cost per click and refers to the price businesses pay for every click on their online ads.

There was 100 click on our ad and we paid 100 AED in total. So our CPC is 10 AED, 10 dirhams for each click.

Digital marketing

All marketing efforts that are done through the internet or digitally are known as digital marketing. For instance, google ads are a form of digital marketing.

Digital marketing is so much more affordable than traditional marketing.

Display ads

Display ads are a form of online advertisement that will show digital banners of businesses over the internet.

We decided to run some display ads with banners of our company, brand, and slogan in order to raise brand awareness for our business.

Domain

Domains are basically website addresses typed into browsers.

Try to choose an attractive domain for your new website.

Domain authority

Domain authority is a score that shows a website’s rank, authority and strength.

Amazon’s domain authority is very high.

Ecommerce

eCommerce refers to selling goods or services online. The “e” at the beginning stands for electronic. 

I need an eCommerce website to sell my homemade cookies.

Google Ads

Google Ads (formerly AdWords) is an online advertising platform that provides various advertising methods. It’s currently the most used and popular form of online ads.

Promote your business with Google Ads.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a service from Google that gives you data from your website or apps in order to improve your business and get more sales. It has both free and premium versions but the free version is usually more than enough.

We asked our web developer to set up Google Analytics for our website so we can analyze the visitors’ data and behavior.

Google search console

Google search console (formerly known as Google Webmaster Tools) is a free service from Google that lets you monitor and optimize your website’s health and technical issues.

You must have a Google search console set up for your website to make sure it’s technically healthy.

Google map

Google map is a map and location service provided by Google.

Please find directions to our office on Google Map.

Google my business

Google My Business (GMB) is a listing service provided by Google that lets businesses build and manage profiles for themselves. 

You must definitely register your business on Google My Business.

Hashtag

Hashtags are words used to categorize content in social media.

I found your shop through related hashtags on Instagram.

Impression

In digital marketing, Impression refers to the number of times a particular content or ad was seen by internet users.

In pay-per-click ads, you only pay for clicks not impressions.

IP address

IP address is your computer’s, tablet, or mobile’s unique address on the internet, sort of like a postal code.

His IP address belongs to Qatar.

Keyword or key phrase

In digital marketing keywords or key phrases are terms searched by users in search engines for finding information. 

We provide home cleaning services in Dubai. One of the popular keywords/key phrases people search to find us is “daily maids”.

Keyword difficulty

In digital marketing, keyword difficulty refers to the competition around a keyword and the difficulty of ranking on that keyword through SEO.

The keyword difficulty for “bitcoin” is very high. You need a lot of money to rank number 1 in Google for this keyword.

Keyword stuffing

keyword stuffing refers to an old technique of adding many keywords of a certain topic in a piece of content, in order to show its relativity to Google. This technique is outdated and is considered a bad practice in SEO.

Her article didn’t seem natural, it was all keyword stuffing.

Landing page

A landing page is technically any page that users land on it and enter your website through it, so basically it could be all the pages of your website that are discoverable on the Internet. But mostly we refer to a landing page as specific pages designed for specific marketing campaigns.

Can you design a specific landing page for my company only for the black Friday sale?

Lead

Lead refers to potential customers who have had at least 1 connection with your business and particularly shared a contact method with you.

We had a visitor on our website today. She gave us her email address. This is the first lead of today.

Long-tail keyword

Long-tail keywords are longer keywords that are usually easier to rank for through SEO and content marketing because the competition is lower around them.

The keyword “coffee maker” is a difficult one because I can’t compete with big coffee maker brands. But “best coffee maker for espresso without milk frother” is a long-tail keyword and a less competitive one.

Online ads

Online ads are digital advertisements of various kinds. 

Since magazine ads were too expensive and inefficient for us, we decides to try online ads.

Organic results

Results of Google (and other search engines) that are not paid ads are considered organic results.

I usually trust organic results more than paid ads.

PPC

PPC stands for pay per click and refers to online advertisements that charge the client when somebody clicks on the ad not when somebody sees it.

PPC ads are very reasonable because you only pay for clicks.

Rank or position

In digital marketing ranks or positions typically refer to website’s places on search engine result pages.

Unfortunately our competitors’ ranks are higher in Google.

Redirect

Redirecting is the process of linking a URL onto another one for various reasons, either temporarily or permanently.

Their .com domain is redirected on .org.

Remarketing or retargeting

The act of showing ads to users who have already interacted with your business is called retargeting which is known as remarketing in Google Ads.

I was on the Carrefour website last week. This week I saw many Carrefour ads. They must be using retargeting.

Responsive website

Responsive websites are ones that work well on mobile, tablets, and computers. In fact, they respond to the screen size and resolution changing.

Their website works poorly on mobile, it is not responsive at all.

Search intent

Search intent is the real reason behind a user’s search on the Internet. It could be commercial for buying something, informational for researching about something, or navigational for directing to a specific page.

She searched “Amazon” on Google. She needs to go to the Amazon home page, so her search intent is navigational.

SEO

SEO stands for search engine optimization and refers to a set of regular optimizations and actions done on web pages and their content in order to rank higher on Google and other search engines over time without any ads. 

You can invest in SEO for your website.

SEM

SEM stands for search engine marketing and refers to marketing efforts done to promote businesses to show up on search engines. SEM technically consists of search engine ads and SEO. but today most people use SEM and search engine ads interchangeably and separate it from SEO.

We want to promote our business through SEM.

Search ads

Search ads are a form of online advertisement that will show business ads to users searching for similar services or products on search engines.

I searched for “best coffee maker” in Google and saw some search ads.

SERPs

SERP stands for search engine result page and refers to a page of results that search engines show when somebody searches for something. 

I can’t find my website on Google SERPs.

Search engine

Systems such as Google that look for, categorize and show results for searches on the Internet. Although there are various search engines on the internet, the most well-known is Google.

Google is the most popular search engine in the world.

Social media marketing

Social media marketing refers to any marketing activity done on social media, including posting content and running ads.

We increased our followers through social media marketing.

Sale funnel

Sales funnel refers to the journey potential customers go through to become actual customers.

Usually the number of potential customers is higher at the beginning of the sales funnel.

SSL

SSL certificates verify the authority and safety of a website in the online world. The green lock sign next to the domain name shows the website has an SSL certificate.

You need an SSL certificate for security reasons in order to register for a payment gateway.

TLD

TLD stands for top-level domain and is the last section of a website’s address, for instance, .com or .net.
Common TLDs like .com are usually cheaper than special ones like .pro.

URL

URL is the address for a unique page on the web.

Can you give me the exact URL for the blog post you mentioned?

 UX

UX stands for user experience and refers to the overall experience a user has with a website or app.

I’m studying UX design in order to design high-quality and attractive apps.

UI

UI stands for user interface and refers to the visual layout a user sees and works with on a website or app.

I hate this bank’s app. It has horrible UI and is very hard to work with.

Website speed

Website speed refers to the time your web pages take to fully load for a visitor.

Their website speed is very low. I had to wait 1 minute for a page to load.

WordPress

WordPress is a platform for building websites and managing your content. It’s mostly popular for its lower costs and flexibility.

This company mostly builds websites on the WordPress platform.

Web Host

Web hosting provides spaces for websites and apps to be stored on the internet and seen by users.

Since you have many products on your online shop, you need a spacious web host for your site.