We’ve created the ultimate ‘A to Z of online marketing terms‘ which contains everything you need to know and is just what you need, because stepping into the unknown is always a bit scary. And, when the unknown is a sea of strange words that are of the utmost importance for your website’s success, that fear is more than justified. Believe it or not, “bounce rate” has nothing to do with any actual balls, and “clickbait” isn’t at all related to fishing (although some phishing might be involved, if you forgive the pun). All of this simply seems too confusing? We know, but you don’t have to worry about it any longer. We created our list of marketing terms specifically for service providers and business owners. So, whether you’re an eCommerce beginner or a photographer, you can definitely benefit from this list.
After you read our dictionary, you won’t only “get” the online lingo; you’ll also have the how-to necessary to boost your business. After all, you can never anticipate when you might need to use this knowledge.
A to Z of Online Marketing Terms
*Alt text
That is a descriptive text that helps inform search engines like Google and Bing about what a picture on your website contains. Bear in mind that it’s of the utmost importance to have this text for each and every image because it will help your site rank better.
*A / B testing
This term means that you are making a comparison between two designs of one of your web pages, in order to check which of them has a better performance. Pages you’re comparing should have specific differences, for instance – the cover photo, homepage title, or the shade of the “Email me” button.
Think of it like this – if you’re a business owner, you’ll want your website to encourage potential clients to contact you. Due to A/B testing, you can compare two designs of the About Us page, where your phone number, email address, mission and other info stand in different places, or in a different order.
*Blog
Implies a website that’s updated on a regular basis, where a professional, an individual, or a company share their tips and tricks, observations, and experiences along with relevant videos, links, and/or images.
For small businesses, blogging can be an essential branding technique. Furthermore, it can improve a website’s search engine ranking because search engines love websites that get regular updates.
*Branding
This process involves coming up with an original image and name for a service or product-based business. It implies using the same theme for all sales and marketing materials. The goal of branding is to differentiate a business from the competition so that you can attract more customers and build their loyalty. When it comes to branding, you will want both your online and offline presence to be in the same style. So, your business cards, website, logo, social media, and tagline should complement each other.
*Bounce rate
Signifies how many people leave a site after they’ve only seen a single page. If your website’s bounce rate is very high, you’ll want to make your homepage content better, and ensure that all of the pages on your website can easily be accessed to and that they are linked one to another.
*Booking
Reservation of a trip, accommodations, or services. For instance, if you’re a masseuse, your clients can use your website to book the services you’re offering.
*Call to action
A message on a website page, email, form, or online advertisement that directs the visitor to take action and is usually paired with a conversion path such as a telephone number or specific contact form. For example, “Call Now,” and “Sign Up Today” are common calls to action a businesses may choose to use.
*Caption
A short explanation that can present an image, a video, or a link post on social media. Furthermore, a caption should be short and witty, and it should complete the element it’s posted with. As a result, a caption is what will influence whether your followers will click on your post.
*Content marketing
Refers to creating and sharing relevant and valuable content (blogs, posts on social media, videos, etc.) for marketing purposes. That content has the task to attract your desired audience and get their interest in your services or products. For more info, you can also check definitions for SMM and Blog.
*Clickbait
Attention-grabbing text or image with a task to attract people’s focus and encourage them to go to your link. In SMM, that can be a very good caption. However, we have to warn you. While clickbait may bring more traffic to your website, for the benefit of your search engine optimisation – don’t push it. Don’t write captions that have no connection to the content of what you posted because it might make people bounce from your landing page the moment they open it. You can also check out Bounce rate.
*Conversion rate
It’s the percentage of the visitors to your website who perform an action you desire them to. That means that they’ve either subscribed to your newsletter or bought products, booked services, etc.
*Contact form
A website element that lets visitors reach the site’s owner. It contains fields where people can fill in their comment, address, and name.
It is a must for small and medium business owners. Also, don’t forget to link this form to your active email address so that you can get emails from people who might become your customers.
*Call-to-action
CTA is, simply put, a message that is there to persuade your visitors to do something you want (for instance, to “Buy Now”). If you are a personal trainer, you’ll want a call-to-action on your homepage to lead to your contact page from where people can book your services.
*Digital marketing
This expression regards every marketing activity related to digital channels. Furthermore, this includes websites, mobile apps, search engines, social media, and email. A strategy in this field always includes an SEO optimised website, an online presentation, a blog, a social media account, as well as paid ad campaigns on Instagram, Google, YouTube, or Facebook.
*Display advertising
A form of online advertising used to build brand awareness by placing advertisements in front of consumers as they surf the Web. By using targeting methods and demographics in display advertising, businesses can reach specific audiences based on the types of websites they visit, their geographic location, age, gender or even household income.
*Domain name
Basically, this is the memorable, positive, friendly name that you give to your web IP address. To put it simply, it’s your website’s location on the Internet. In www.lovewillfindaway.com, the name of the domain is “LoveWillFindAWay”.
If you’re looking to have a persuasive presence online, consider getting a domain that contains the name of your business, your product, or your name (for instance, janedoecoaching.com). Together with good branding, this will boost your website’s search engine optimisation significantly.
*eCommerce
Selling and buying of services and products by consumers and businesses over the World Wide Web, i.e., starting an online store.
*Email marketing
A form of direct marketing that uses email to distribute, marketing and sales information, special offers, events, a newsletter, or other type of content to a list of prospects and customers who have subscribed to receive emails from the business or specific brand.
*Email signature
Refers to that small bit of writing that ends the email that contains the sender’s contact information and name. For better results, don’t forget to create a detailed signature with the name of your business, links to social media accounts, as well as your logo.
*Engagement
Nope, we’re not talking about the kind that comes with a ring and leads to wedding bells. First of all, engagement in online marketing is a measurement that shows how many times people like, comment, and share your posts via social media. Furthermore, the quality and the ER (or engagement rate) let you see if your post was good or not and whether you should improve your social media marketing strategy.
*Fresh content
If you regularly add new content to your site, it will improve its search engine optimisation ranking. Furthermore, it will motivate people to visit more frequently.
We know there’s a 0.01% possibility you don’t know what this is, but we have to exercise our due diligence. Facebook is a social networking site that lets people create profiles, upload videos and photos, send messages, and also keep in touch with their colleagues, family, and friends. Due to all of this, it’s immensely popular.
For smaller businesses, this is the perfect online marketing tool. Owning a Facebook page dedicated to your business will make it simpler for people interested in businesses like yours to find you. Another benefit lies in the ability to share what you do so that people can admire and re-share it.
*Golden Triangle
A term related to web design. That is the area that attracts the most focus and will most probably receive engagement and user clicks. This triangle goes from the top left corner to the top right corner and then down and across to the bottom left corner of the page.
That means that your tagline, Call To Action, and information should be inside this enchanted area.
At the moment, the most used search engine, but also a verb that means searching the World Wide Web using this search engine. Also, if you want to know more about this, check out SEO.
*Google my business
This free tool helps businesses manage how present they are on Google. If you edit and verify your business info, you can make it easier for clients to find you, as well as present to them the tale behind your business.
If your business has a brick-and-mortar location, you definitely must be certain that your address, contact details, as well as the business name, are current. That is crucial for your local search engine optimisation efforts.
*Google analytics
This powerful service tracks the traffic on your website and lets you check the reports. Whatever you do, track your website on a regular basis. So, whether you’re in the middle of a paid campaign, or sharing something on social media, keep the Analytics tab open. To learn more about the people who visit your website, check the “Audience” segment. Furthermore, to learn what kind of content they prefer, you can check “Behavior”. Finally, you can also check “Acquisition” to see just how well your traffic sources and paid campaigns are doing.
*Google+
Google’s social networking website. Not incredibly popular, but very important when it comes to improving how your website ranks on Google. If you are advertising in social media, invest a few additional minutes and share it on Google+ too – it will be worth it.
*Hashtag
A pound sign that goes in front of a phrase or a word. It’s used to mark messages related to a particular topic. Hashtags are very powerful when it comes to social network promotion, especially if you’re looking to promote on Twitter or Instagram.
Bonus tip: Every time you share anything on Instagram and Twitter, use topic-related popular hashtags to increase the exposure your post gets beyond your existing followers. Making a post related to a hashtag that’s trending can’t be a wrong move.
*HTML
HT stands for Hypertext, ML for Markup Language. It is in use for web page creation. At the moment, the most sophisticated and the newest version of this is HTML5. However, you don’t have to fret. You don’t have to know how to code in order to create an HTML5 site. Actually, you don’t have to know how to code in order to create any website – just use one of the numerous tools that do it for you.
*Impression
The number of possible views an advertisement or piece of shared content receives over a specific given amount of time. An impression typically applies as a standard of measurement for display advertising.
*Influencer
Someone who has a lot of influence in a certain field over a large number of people on social media. If, for instance, you have an extremely popular Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram account, brands might contact you with paid offers. Usually, this includes promoting their products, campaigns, or services to your audience.
Online photo-sharing platform that has global popularity. Because of its nature, this is the ultimate marketing channel for photographers and other visual artists. Just make sure you read all the tips and tricks relevant to this platform.
*Internal Linking
This term refers to a link on a page on your website that takes the visitor to a document, an image, or another page within that website. Good internal links will not just make navigating through your website easier and better; they will also have a positive effect on the SEO of your website.
*Java
We’re not talking about the island. Nope, not talking about the coffee either. In online marketing terms, Java is a kind of coding language. Still, we have to say that many websites replaced Java with HTML5 to optimise their speed.
*Jabba the Hutt
That hideous creature that kidnapped Princess Leia in George Lucas’ Star Wars. Nope, it isn’t relevant to online marketing; we’re just checking you didn’t fall asleep.
*Keywords
Keywords, when related to search engine optimisation, are 2-5 word sentences that describe what your website or business is all about. They help people find your online content, whether it’s a social media account or a website, through search engines like Google and Bing. However, you can’t use just any words and expect results; you need to find the ones that are ideal for your website.
*Landing page
That is a web page that’s separated from your website. A landing page is something you need to make when you have an upcoming event or a product you want to promote. For instance, if you’re advertising a discount for Christmas, it’s better to make a landing page just for that discount where you clearly state what the offer is and you include a good call to action.
*Layout (also, Gallery)
The way you choose to present the photos on your website.
Business-centric social networking platform. It seems like businesses often ignore this website, which you can use to your advantage.
*Local search engine optimisation (or SEO)
When you optimise your website and all of your social media strategies for product and service promotion to an audience based in one location (state, city, postal code).
*Logo
A visual representation of your business. Usually, it’s a symbol or the name of your business written in an original form. Its purpose, above all, is to increase brand recognition. When you’re considering logo design, you should take into consideration the trends regarding logos in your niche.
*Meta tag
A small bit of text that has a purpose to showcase the content of the page it’s linked to. These tags won’t show up on a page on their own, but solely in the code of the page in question. Their task is to improve SEO ranking by helping search engines learn what the page is all about. Make sure all of the pages on your website have these tags. If you want even better results, put your keywords and location into the meta tag.
*Microsite
This website exists outside of the main website of a business, although it has the same branding and is related to that business. If you’re a designer, for instance, you can make microsites for your clients so that they can share your work for them with others while your logo remains on it.
*Mobile-friendly
Simply put, this signifies just how easy it is to use a certain website from a smartphone. That is especially relevant if you want people with devices with smaller screens to be able to access your website with ease. And, you do want all the people with Samsungs, Huawei phones and iPhones to be able to use your website via their devices. Once you make your website mobile-friendly, you will see an increase in the number of visits and the number of new potential clients.
*Native advertising
Any form of advertising that is designed to fit within the environment it lives. For example, a display ad within a news site that is designed to look similar to the additional stories on the website is one form of a native advertisement. Also, a native post is a post created directly from from the Facebook “Update Status” section and not from a third-party site like Hootsuite or Pinterest.
*Newsletter
An email related to your business or blog that you send on a weekly or monthly basis to your subscribers. You can share news, discounts, photos, event promotions and much more via these emails. You gather subscribers by offering people who visit your website to add them to your newsletter mailing list. If you use it well, email marketing is a powerful tool that can help your business grow.
*Networking
Simply put, it’s connecting to people to swap information and create new contacts that can help your business or career. Luckily, social media made it easy to network and maintain those contacts. Just like people’s images or blogs from time to time, and they will do the same. However, bear in mind that you can’t ignore real-world networking. You need to keep your offline connections live as well.
*Online portfolio
A digital showcase of your work. The point of having one of these is so that your potential clients can see what you can achieve. That way, they can get a feel of who they’ll be working with if they choose you, and whether you’re the right person for the job they need you to do. If you’re a writer, a designer, photographer, or an architect, and you have no portfolio available online, you’re chances of finding a job will be pretty slim.
*Online advertising
Check out more about this at PPC.
*Organic traffic
This term refers to all the incoming traffic that you didn’t pay for. This type of traffic is the main purpose of search engine optimisation – to help you get as many unpaid visitors as possible.
*Pinterest
This social media website allows users to “pin” images and videos from all around the internet to their profile’s albums and share them. Users can create pinboards in categories they’re interested in.
Small businesses can easily benefit from Pinterest. Whether you decide to share original ideas, or your own incredible photographs and images, if you do it right, you can attract a lot of potential new clients to your website.
*Paid directories
Online aggregators of websites that charge a fee to include you. Can be niche-specific or general.
*Pageviews
This metric is important for the analytics of your website because it shows just how many of your website’s pages were viewed within a certain time frame. By using this, you can see if the people visiting your website are interested in your content enough to go beyond the landing page or the homepage. The higher this metric is, the better for you.
*PPC
This internet marketing technique is one of the most used ones today for both social media platforms and search engines. Pay-per-click advertising means that every time someone clicks on one of your ads, you pay for it. Although this campaign can grow your reach, it can also be a waste of money if you aim the wrong audience, or if the click costs more than you can earn from it.
*QA
When people see this, their first thought is Questions and Answers. But, that’s not what QA means. This abbreviation stands for quality assurance, and it’s a way to prevent defects or mistakes in your products and/or services. Before you send out a newsletter or publish a website, show it to people whose opinions you value. Ask those people to check everything out and give you their thoughts and suggestions. If they see a mistake, you can fix it, and it won’t be a big deal. However, if a potential customer sees it, they might decide to steer clear.
*Quality Score
A number that can affect the ranking of a link within the SERPs and the cost per click of online ads based on the relevance and usefulness of the link and the keywords associated with it. Optimized text ads with qualified keywords and landing pages that provide value are a few key factors influence your quality score.
*Ranking
In search engine optimisation, this relates to how a website is positioned on the results page of a search engine. This position depends on over 150 different factors such as backlink quality, keyword density, reading ease, bounce rate, or how relevant the content is for the keyword people search for.
*Referral traffic
This term refers to the traffic you get from other sites. Those are the people who come to you through links other people or business owners posted, instead of coming from search engine result pages. This type of traffic is extremely relevant because it increases your websites ranking in search engine results.
You can get referral traffic by writing a blog post about a certain service, business, or product, and then offer their website to add a link to your blog post to one of their website pages. Also, traffic from social media can help immensely. Furthermore, you can increase your referral traffic by over 40% if you simply add a “Like” button to your website.
*Reputation management
The process of tracking, monitoring, and managing a business, brand, or company’s Web presence. Reputation management often includes generating positive content for your business and responding to comments on social media and review sites.
*RSS
This abbreviation stands for rich site summary, and it’s a standard of world wide web technology that lets people get updates for content that’s in their areas of interest. So, if you have a blog, add an RSS option so that people who like reading it can get automatic updates in their RSS feeds.
*SEO
Stands for search engine optimisation, and it’s a part of your website’s development that you should pay the most attention to. You see, this is what makes your website more or less visible to search engines. Improving SEO includes creating better content, targeting keywords related to your niche, building internal and external links, improving on-site navigation, and much, much more.
*SERP
This is a page on a search engine that includes a list of Web pages and search advertisements generated by the results of a particular keyword search.
*SMM
You must have heard this a million times, and it always sounded like a kinky role-play game. However, this stands for social media marketing, and it’s a type of marketing that uses social networking platforms to reach potential and existing customers. The goal of all social media marketing is to create content that people will want to share with their friends across social platforms, which will, in turn, help the business reach more potential customers and increase their brand exposure and recognition.
*Target audience
That is the demographic you’re aiming at, the people you want to receive your ads, the ones most likely to buy your product or use your services. All of your efforts should be aimed at this audience – your social media posts, marketing, website content – everything.
*Targeting
The practice often used in paid search advertising and display advertising to place ads in front of consumers based on a whole host of different factors, including their geographic location, online behaviours, terms they have searched for, and websites they have visited. Targeting consumers can help build brand awareness and drive more conversions to a website.
*Testimonials
People like hearing that others liked something they are considering using. That’s why you need testimonials – happy customers testifying about just how and why they like your product or service. Believe it or not, simple testimonials can increase your conversion rate significantly (according to research, they can increase it by up to 60%). So, when a client is happy, ask them to write a short review and add it to your website’s recommendation section.
Social networking website that’s completely based on messages that can contain a maximum of 280 characters (or tweets). If you know how to use it, this can be a powerful marketing tool, especially if you can publish your work in real time.
*URL
That is short for Uniform Resource Locator, and it’s the address of a website. It consists of a domain name and an extension.
*USP
This factor is what makes you different from your competition. A Unique Selling Point can be a new feature, a great price, or the amazing quality of what you’re offering.
*UX
You want to make sure to provide the best user experience (UX) possible. This term speaks of what people’s attitudes, opinions, and emotions are towards your services or products.
*Video marketing
Popular social networks change their algorithms frequently, and thanks to recent changes, videos have become hugely popular on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. That’s a simple and cheap content marketing that engages your audience. That’s why no business should skip using it and posting across all platforms.
*Viral marketing
The use of specific marketing techniques, like entertaining videos, memes and images, to help a piece of content rapidly spread through online networks such as social media, although there is no guarantee that a piece of content will “go viral.” Viral content is often humorous, innovative, or suprising in some way, which leads to it spreading.
*Watermark
When referring to something online, this is a design, a symbol, or a signature that’s put onto the intellectual property by the author. Photographers, graphic designers and architects use this most frequently, while many other online businesses and service providers could benefit from this practice.
*Website
Interlinked group of pages on the Internet that are under the same domain. Usually, a website is focused on one topic or niche, or a lot of different topics that are related to each other.
*Xenopus
Has absolutely nothing to do with online marketing. However, we weren’t able to find a word that starts with this letter. Well, at least we’ll tell you something you probably didn’t know before. A Xenopus is an aquatic frog from Africa that’s frequently used in biological research.
*YouTube
The most popular video sharing platform online at the moment. Users can upload videos so that others can watch them, and watch other people’s videos in return. Many businesses have benefited from starting their own YouTube channels.
*Zebra
Also, check out Xenopus.
If you require further information or have any specific questions, don’t hesitate to give a member of the GoPromotional team a call on 0800 0148 970 or simply email us today.
