DIGITAL MARKETING GLOSSARY

SEO

• Alt text: A description of an image which isn’t displayed to the end user unless the image is undeliverable, helping search engines index pictures.

• Broken links: A link that leads to a non-existent (or dead) resource, either internally within your site or to an external site.

• Crawl: When a page is visited by a bot and then analysed.

• Heading tag: An HTML tag that categorises the headings within a webpage, forming a hierarchy that tells the search engine which heading is most important.

• h1: The most important HTML heading tag and the heading that will make the most impact to SEO — so make sure you have an optimised h1 heading on every page.

• Index: When a bot stores the information of its content analysis, essentially ranking the page.

• Keywords: Also known as organic search terms, keywords are words that your target audience searches online, that you would in turn like search engines to rank you highly for.

• Link building: The process of acquiring inbound hyperlinks to your website from other websites, known as backlinks.

• Internal link building: Adding hyperlinks from one page on your website to another.

• Meta descriptions: HTML tags providing a brief summary of the content on a webpage, visible on search engine results pages to encourage click-through and indexing.

• Orphaned pages: A website page that is not linked anywhere on the same site, leaving it isolated within the website’s infrastructure. They are rarely indexed by search engines and therefore harm SEO, likely inaccessible to users unless they know the URL.

• Organic traffic: Website visitors who arrive at a site through unpaid, natural search engine results rather than through paid advertising.

• SEO: Search Engine Optimisation is the process of ensuring that a website ranks highly on a search engine results page for relevant keywords.

• SERPs: Search Engine Results Pages are the pages displayed by search engines in response to a user's query.

EDM (Emails)

• Automation: Pre-scheduled aspects of email campaigns, such as welcome emails

• Transactional email marketing: Sending automated, targeted messages based on user actions such as purchases and adding items to cart

• B2B email marketing: Business-to-business email marketing promotes products or services from one company to another

• B2C Email Marketing: Business-to-consumer EDM marketing is where the sender communicates directly to individual consumers to promote their products or services.

• Body copy: The primary text component within an email message

• Bounce rate: The percentage of sent emails that are returned to sender as undeliverable due to delivery issues such as invalid email addresses and full inboxes

• CRM: Customer Relationship Management refers to the use of software and tools to personalise and analyse the email marketing experience.

• Drip email marketing: Campaigns where a series of pre-written, scheduled emails are sent in sequence to a specific set of recipients, such as onboarding sequences.

• Email campaign: A series of targeted, strategically planned electronic messages sent to a specific group of recipients with the aim of promoting products, services, or engaging them in a meaningful way to achieve marketing objectives.

• Lead nurturing: Following up on opportunities to connect with customers to ultimately guide them through the sales funnel.

• Open rate: The percentage of delivered emails that recipients have opened.

• Opt-In: The explicit permission granted by individuals to receive promotional messages or newsletters, ensuring compliance with anti-spam regulations.

• Opt-Out: Also known as unsubscribing, when someone on a mailing list decides that they no longer want to receive emails from that sender.

• Personalisation: Tailoring email content to individual target recipients based on specific criteria.

• Pre-header: Acts as preview text or a secondary subject line, appearing immediately after the primary subject line to give email recipients an introduction to the content.

• Subject line: The headline recipients see in their inbox.

• Segmentation: Dividing an email subscriber list into distinct groups based on specific criteria to enable personalised communication strategies.

• Sender score: A numerical representation of the sender's reputation to help assess the trustworthiness and effectiveness of their email campaigns, calculated using factors like reply rate, engagement, and bounce rate

• Spam: Unsolicited and/or irrelevant promotional messages sent to a large number of recipients without their consent

Paid Ads

(we have an introduction to paid ads for beginners on our blog and an E-Book course coming soon)

• Conversions: The desired actions that users take on a website, such as making a purchase, filling out a form enquiry, or subscribing, as a direct result of clicking on or interacting with the paid advertisements

• CPA: Cost Per Acquisition refers to an online advertising model where you pay a fee each time a specific action is completed conversions

• CPC: Cost Per Click refers to the amount an advertiser pays each time a user clicks on their advertisement

• CPM (Cost Per 1,000 Impressions): The cost per 1000 views of your ad.

• Display Ads: Ads presented in the form of banners, images, or multimedia elements placed on websites or online platforms.

• Interest-Based: Audiences that you manually target based on interests and behaviours.

• Targeting: Tailoring your strategy and content for specific audience segments.

• Lookalike: Audiences that you target based on having similar traits to your existing audience.

• Placement: The specific location within the platform where an advertisement is positioned, such as the Facebook news feed or Instagram Stories.

• Paid Search: A digital advertising model where you bid on specific keywords or phrases to have ads displayed prominently in search engine results, paying fees only when users click on these ads.

• Prospecting: Campaigns that focus on new customer acquisition.

• PPC (Pay Per Click): The cost per link click or web page visit.

• Re-targeting: Campaigns targeting users who’ve already engaged with your website or social media profile in the past.

• Re-marketing: Campaigns targeting users who’ve already completed a business transaction with your brand.

Social Media

• Algorithm: A set of rules and processes employed by platforms to present, ranking, and deliver content to users.

• Carousel: Where multiple images or videos are shared in a single post, using a method f digital storytelling called scrollytelling.

• Direct message: Abbreviated to DM, a private communication sent between users within a platform away from public timelines or feeds — either an exchange of messages or multimedia attachments.

• Engagement: The level of interaction that users have with content beyond just views, measured through forms of participation such as likes, comments, and shares.

• Feed: A stream of posts, photos, and updates displayed to a platform user, constantly updated in chronological or (most commonly) algorithmically curated order based on their interests and network.

• Impressions: The number of times your content was seen, measured by tracking the total number of times your content was displayed across an individual platform.

• UGC: User-Generated Content is created by individuals rather than the platform itself, leveraging the contributions of users within the online environment. In the context of marketing, it refers to brand-specific content created by customers at no cost to the brand — for example, unboxing videos and hauls.

General

• Channel: The specific platform or medium used to reach and engage with its an audience, such as social media, email and search engines.

• Clickbait: Headlines or thumbnails designed to attract online attention and encourage link clicks — often exaggerated, sensational or misleading to arouse more curiosity. The aim is to generate higher website traffic rather than deliver relevant, valuable, and accurate information.

• CTR: Click-Through Rate measures the ratio of clicks on a specific link divided by the total number of impressions (views) it gets, serving as a key metric to assess the effectiveness of a campaign in engaging user interest.

• CTA: A Call-to-Action is a prompt or directive encouraging users to take action, often presented as a button or link.

• HTML: The coding language used to structure content on web pages

• Home page: The starting point for a website’s navigation, focused on brand awareness. It functions as an introduction to the brand and/or overview of the site’s content. It directs users to various other landing pages and receives the most traffic from search results.

• ISP: Internet Service Provider, or the company that provides users with access to the internet

• KPI: Key Performance Indicators are quantifiable metrics used to evaluate the success of digital campaigns and strategies.

• Landing page: A standalone web page delivering more targeted information than the home page. It’s foxused on driving conversions. It directs users to take a specific action and receives the most traffic from online ads, emails, or social media.

• Lead: A potential customer who has shown interested in a product or service by providing contact information or through previous engagement, typically through actions such as filling out a form, subscribing to a newsletter, and interacting with content.

• Marketing funnel: A framework for the customer journey, starting at awareness and leading to conversion and retention.

• ROI: The measurable value or profit generated from a specific online campaign or strategy.

• Unique selling proposition: The distinctive aspect of a product, service, or brand that sets it apart from competitors, informing the messaging of digital marketing communications.