Digital Marketing Jargon Breakdown

Posted 19.10.2018

By Lucy Bradley

Digital marketing is one of those industries that is full of jargon, and we’re probably guilty of going a little jargon crazy from time to time… So today, we thought we’d put together a summary of the keywords we often refer to when we’re talking about digital marketing, so if you’re unsure, you can double check here.

SEO

SEO

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation and it is the complex process of boosting rankings, and your online presence within the search engines.

SERPs

Stands for ‘Search engine results pages’; you’ll typically hear the phrase ‘move further up the SERPs’. This refers to your site moving higher up in the search results, or rankings, towards that all important number 1 spot!

Rankings

Rankings refer to whereabouts you sit in the SERPs, i.e if your website is at the top of the search engine results, you rank position 1, page 1. Anything between 1-10 is page 1, 11-20 page 2 and so on…

Backlink

A backlink refers to a webpage that is linking to your page. If your page has many backlinks, you are more likely to rank higher in the SERPs, as backlinks act as a sign of trust and authority in Google’s eyes.

Local SEO

GMB

GMB is your ‘Google My Business’ profile and looks like this.

frogspark derby google my business

Every business can make or claim a GMB profile, and it is a really important tool to tell customers information about your business, such as address, opening hours and your contact details.

NAP

Not the type of nap you wish you had more of, ‘NAP’ in digital marketing refers to your name, address and phone number. It is critical your NAP is consistent across the web in directories, on your website and on any other web pages in order to boost your local rankings in the search engines.

Rich Snippets

Bits of text, data or visual content that appear as a summary of a Google search engine results page, take a look at the example below.

google rich snippet

PPC

PPC

Beginning with the basics, PPC is ‘Pay Per Click’ and refers to a paid form of advertising where advertisers pay for each click received on their ad.

Impression

This refers to the number of times your ad has been seen, think of it as a view.

CTR

This refers to your ‘Click Through Rate’, and you’ll often hear that you want the highest CTR possible. It is calculated by dividing the number of users who clicked on an ad, by the number of impressions that ad received times by 100. For example, if an add received 2000 impressions and 80 clicks, that ad would have a 4% CTR.

Quality Score

Each ad you put out will be assigned a ‘Quality Score’, which is where an estimation of its quality is made. This is related to the expected CTR, ad relevance and landing page experience. The higher the quality score, the lower the price you’ll pay and better ad positions you’ll receive.

Quality Score Example

Bid

The maximum amount you are willing to pay for a click on your ad.

CPC

This refers to your ‘cost per click’, and this is the amount you are paying for a single click on your advert.

Content

Content

Written, visual or auditory information available in a range of different formats such as blogs, images, reports, infographics and videos.

Copy

Copy refers to written material or content, such as the text within this blog post, or the text contained within a search ad.

Tone of voice

The tone of voice works alongside copy, it doesn’t refer to the word choice, but the way in which those words are said, or read. It’s important this stays consistent and in line with your branding.

Conversion Optimisation

Conversion

A conversion is otherwise known as a lead. However, depending on the marketing campaign, it is the point at which the user performs the action you want them to and responds to your desired call to action.

Conversion Rate

Usually presented as a percentage, this figure is calculated by dividing conversions by either website users or clicks (depending on what you’re looking at the conversion rate of) times by 100 and shows the rate at which either your website or ad results in a conversion.

User Journey

User journey is all about identifying the way users navigate through your site and the understanding the path that they take towards goal completion.

A/B Testing

A/B testing is the process of comparing 2 different versions of an ad or landing page etc, to decipher which one is more effective at driving conversion.

Technical

Bounce rate

Bounce rate is a figure that’ll show you the percentage of users that land on your website, and do not navigate to a further page, or carry out any other action on your site during their session. In other words, they fail to show any engagement on your site.

XML Sitemap

A sitemap is essentially a file that lists the pages of your site so that Google and other search engines can better understand and navigate your site content. You can generally find it by typing websitename.com/sitemap.xml

XML Sitemap Example - Digital marketing Jargon Breakdown

Broken Links

A broken link, or a 404 error, occurs when a webpage contains a link to another page or resource that no longer exists.

301 Redirect

A 301 redirect is a permanent redirect from one URL to another. For example, if you changed one of your page URLs from websitename.com/this-is-about-us to websitename.com/about, you’d put a 301 redirect on the old URL pointing to the new one, meaning if users tried to go to the original page, they’d be automatically redirected to the new one.

Structured Data

A specific type of code that makes it easier for search engines to see and display your website content.

Image optimisation

This is all about compressing an image, whilst upholding quality to ensure that they are fast loading within a webpage.

How many of these did you already know? More or less than you thought? If there are any you want us to add to the list, or if there are any pressing questions you want to know, make sure to tweet our digital marketing team at @frogsparkstudio on Twitter – test our knowledge! Take our digital quiz to find out how much you know about digital marketing…

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