Glossary of Terms and Tools used in Digital Marketing

July 22, 2019

AdWords (Google AdWords) – Google’s online advertising service that is used by advertisers to place
ads on Google search results pages, on YouTube, and on Google ad network sites. This system allows
advertisers to reach customers through their search and display networks. Advertisers can bid on
keywords that allow their ads to show in Google search results and on Google’s network of partner
websites.

Analytics – A platform that allows webmasters to collect statistics and data about website visitors.
Google Analytics (sometimes abbreviated as GA) allows webmasters to see where web traffic comes
from and how visitors behave once on the site.

Anchor Text – The clickable words in a hyperlink.

Algorithm – A process or set of rules that computers follow to perform a task.

Banner Ad – A type of digital image ad that can be placed across various websites.

Blog – Short for “web log,” a blog is a webpage or a website that is regularly updated with new written
content.

Bot – An automated program that visits websites, sometimes also referred to as a “crawler” or a
“spider.”

Bounce Rate – The percentage of visitors to a website that leave immediately without clicking or
interacting with any portion of the page. For example, if 100 people visit a website, and 50 of them
immediately leave, the website has a bounce rate of 50%. Websites aim to have as low of a bounce rate
as possible.

Bread Crumbs – Navigation links at the top of a webpage that better help the user understand where
on the website they are. These links often appear near the webpage’s title and look something like this:
Home > Services > Specific Service

Call to Action (CTA) – An element on a webpage used to push visitors toward a specific action or
conversion. A CTA can be a clickable button with text, an image, or text, and typically uses an imperative
verb phrase like “call today” or “buy now.”

Campaign – A series of advertising messages that share a theme, and market a product or service. In
the context of digital marketing, campaigns can be run through search and display network advertising
platforms (Google, Bing), social media, email, or other online platforms.

Page 1 of 5
Click-Through Rate (CTR) – A metric showing how often people click on an ad after they see it. It can
be calculated by dividing the number of clicks on the ad divided by the number of impressions (how
many times it was seen). This ratio can be useful when determining whether an ad’s messaging matches
what the consumer is searching for and if it resonates with them.

Code – The languages used to build a website. The most commonly used languages in web design are
HTML, CSS, JS, and PHP.

Conversion – The completion of a predefined goal. This is often used to track the number of site visitors
that have been “converted” into paying customers. Other common goals are newsletter subscriptions
and downloads of content from the website.

Conversion Rate – The rate at which visitors to a website complete the predefined goal. It is calculated
by dividing the number of goal achievements by the total number of visitors. For example, if 100 people
visit a website and 10 of them complete the conversion goal (like filling out a contact form) then the
conversion rate is 10%.

Cost Per Click (CPC) – The amount of money spent for a click on an ad in a Pay-Per-Click campaign. In
the AdWords platform, each keyword will have an estimated click cost, but the prices change in real
time as advertisers bid against each other for each keyword.

Dashboard – A webpage that contains and displays aggregate data about the performance of a website
or digital marketing campaign. A dashboard pulls information from various data sources and displays the
info in an easy-to-read format.

Digital Marketing – According to Wikipedia, “digital marketing is the marketing of products or services
using digital technologies, mainly on the internet, but also may include mobile phones, display
advertising, and any other digital medium.” Traditionally, television was not considered digital
marketing, however the shift to streaming means that digital advertising can now be served to online TV
viewers. Digital marketing methods include search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing,
content marketing, influencer marketing, social media marketing, and email direct marketing.

Display Ads – Ads on a display network that include many different formats, such as images, flash,
video, and audio. Also commonly known as banner ads, these are the advertisements that are seen
around the web on news sites, blogs, and social media.

E-Commerce – A classification for businesses that conduct business online; short for “electronic
commerce.” The most common form of E-commerce business is an online retailer that sells products
direct to the consumer.

Email Automation – A marketing system that uses software to automatically send emails based on
defined triggers. Multiple automated emails in a sequence are used to create user funnels and segment
users based on behavior. For example, an automation funnel could be set to send email 1 when a person
provides their email address, then either email 2a or 2b would be sent based on whether the person
clicked on the first email.

Page 2 of 5
Email Marketing – The use of email with the goal of acquiring sales, customers, or any other type of
conversion.

Facebook Advertising – Facebook allows advertisers to reach its users through their ad network. A
range of ad types can be created to reach various goals set by companies. Facebook advertising is
unique in that audiences are set up based on vast demographic information that Facebook has about
their users, as compared to Google advertising that uses keywords.

Form Fill – When a visitor has filled out a contact form on a website.

Geofencing – A feature in a software program that uses the global positioning system (GPS) or radio
frequency identification (RFID) to define geographical boundaries.

Google Analytics – A free software platform created by Google, which is used to analyze nearly every
aspect of users accessing a website. Website traffic, conversions, user metrics, historical data
comparisons, and effectiveness of each channel of marketing can all be managed using this tool.

Hashtag – A phrase beginning with the symbol “#” used in social media as a way for tagging content for
users to find. Adding hashtags to a post allows users to find that post when searching for that topic. This
can be used for finding users looking for broad topics on social media, as well as more niche topics.

Heat Map – A graphical representation of how users interact with your site. Heat maps are used to
collect user behavior data to assist in designing and optimizing a website. Heat-mapping software is
used to track where users click on a page, how they scroll, and what they hover over.

Impression – A term used in Pay-Per-Click advertising that represents how many times an ad was
shown.

Impression Share – Used in Pay-Per-Click advertising, this metric refers to the percentage of times
viewers have seen an advertiser’s ad, in relation to the total possible amounts that ad could have been
seen. If an ad campaign’s impression share is 70%, then the ads showed 7 out of 10 possible times.

Inbound Marketing – Inbound marketing refers to the activities and strategies used for attracting
potential users or customers to a website. Inbound marketing is crucial to having a good web presence,
as it’s used as a way to attract prospective customers by educating and building trust about your
services, product, or brand. “Inbound” is a more recent euphemism for what has traditionally been
called Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

Influencer – Individuals who have influence over potential customers. Marketing activities can be
oriented around these influencers.

Keyword – A word or phrase indicative of the major theme in a piece of content. When you search for
something in a search engine, you type in a keyword and the search engine gives you results based on
that keyword.

Page 3 of 5
Landing Page – The destination webpage a user lands on after clicking on a link. Some landing pages
are designed with the purpose of lead generation, and others are with the purpose of directing the flow
of traffic throughout a site.

Link – Also known as a hyperlink, a link is a string of structured text used to connect webpages on the
internet. There are two main forms of links: internal links that point to pages on the same site and
external links that point to webpages on a different website.

Organic Traffic – A source of traffic to a website that comes through clicking on a non-paid search
engine result.

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) – PPC is a method of driving traffic to a website by paying a publisher every time
the ad is clicked. One of the most common types of PPC is Google AdWords, which allows for payment
for top slots on Google’s search engine results pages at a price “per click” of the links placed.

PDF – A digital document format that provides a digital image of text or graphics. PDFs are the preferred
document type when uploading documents to the internet because of its ease of use and its ability to be
imported or converted easily. PDFs can be read and indexed by Google just as a normal webpage can.

Rankings – A general term for where a website appears in search engine results. A site’s ranking may
increase or decrease over time for different search terms or queries. Ranking is specific to each
keyword, so a website may have keywords that rank on the first page and others that don’t.

Responsive Web Design – A philosophy of creating a website that allows all of the content to show
correctly regardless of screen size or device.

Search Engine – A program that searches an index of information and returns results to the user based
on corresponding keywords. The most well-known search engines are Google, YouTube, Bing, and
Yahoo.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – The process of improving a website’s performance and
positioning in search engine results through a variety of methodologies including content production or
improvement, technical and code improvement, and link acquisition. One major goal of SEO is to have a
website show in search results for as many keywords as possible.

Social Media – Forms of electronic communication (such as websites for social networking) through
which users create online communities to share information, ideas, personal messages, and other
content (such as videos).

Tracking Pixel – A graphic with dimensions of 1x1 pixels that is loaded when a user visits a webpage or
opens an email, and is used to track certain user activities. Also called a 1x1 pixel or pixel tag.

Twitter Advertising – Allows marketers to promote a tweet on users’ feeds without that user having to
follow the brand on their feed. These advertisements can be used to grow brand awareness, gain more
followers, extend social media reach, or reach out to prospective customers about a product or service.

Page 4 of 5
Unique Visitors – A metric used in web analytics to show how many different, unique people view a
website over a period of time. Unique visitors are tracked by their IP addresses. If a visitor visits the
same website multiple times, they will only be counted once in the unique visitors metric.

User Interface (UI) – The area with which a user interacts with something through a digital device.

User Experience (UX) – UX refers to how a user interacts with a website or app (where they click, which
pages they visit). A good UX drives repeating users and engagement.

Visitors – A metric in Google Analytics that quantifies a user of a website over a particular period of
time. Visitors are often broken down between “new visitors” who are browsing for the first time in the
allotted time period and “returning visitors” who have already browsed at least once in the given time
frame.

Web 2.0 – The second major phase of development of the World Wide Web, marked by a shift from
static webpages to dynamic content, as well as social media and user generated content.

Webinar – An online seminar used to train, inform, or sell to an audience of viewers who signed up to
view the presentation.

YouTube Advertising – YouTube offers advertising in six different formats: display ads, overlay ads,
video ads that can be skipped, video ads that cannot be skipped, bumper ads, and sponsored cards.
These ads can all be created and run through the Google AdWords platform.

Yahoo! Advertising – Yahoo and Bing ads are both run through the Bing Ads platform. These search
engines share advertising networks.

Page 5 of 5